Superior Court Judge William Froeberg had intended to announce punishment this morning for convicted Montessori killer/rapist Jonathan Phong Khanh Tran, 22. But Tran’s mother switched defense lawyers and, through new counsel Al Stokke, asked for a five-month delay. Froeberg granted the request.
The decision means that Tran continues living in the Orange County Jail, where family members can easily visit. A prison sentence could land him at, say, Pelican Bay State Prison near the California-Oregon border. The OCJ isn’t a nice place, but it’s probably more ideal than life inside Pelican Bay or any other state prison.
Between now and September, it’s highly probable that Stokke—known as a clever lawyer with impressive connections—will attempt to overturn Tran’s March 13 convictions. A jury said the gregarious Orange County car salesman was guilty of murdering 15-year-old Hanna Montessori and forcibly raping three other Santa Ana teen prostitutes.
The case won international media attention because Montessori was the runaway, great-great-granddaughter of the founder of world-famous Montessori schools.
Previous OC Weekly coverage of the Tran case includes “Nicest Killer I’ve Ever Met” and “I Want The White Girl.”
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.