The Couple Who Entered A Store In Canada And Never Went Out Alive (the boy appeared in a landfill)

Today’s case takes us to Vaughan, a city in Ontario Canada, where in 2021 25-year-old Kristy Nguyen lived with her 37-year-old boyfriend Quoc Tran.

The two were part of the Vietnamese community of that city and enjoyed spending time with the big family they had formed there.

Kristy graduated from Wilfrid Laurier University in 2018 with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and completed the legal assistant diploma program at Seneca College in Toronto.

In 2019, she did an internship at a local law firm, which consolidated her desire to become a lawyer. Later he went on to manage the family beauty salon, until at one point she thought of moving to England to obtain her law degree.

Quoc also had big dreams. The boy owned a hydroponic equipment store that opened during the health emergency and over time managed to find his niche among gardening enthusiasts. His intention was to expand to other markets one day.

Economically, the couple was doing very well, so much so that they had planned to get married in the coming months. According to Vietnamese culture, Quoc asked Kristy’s parents for permission and after this both families began to organize the details of the link.

But unfortunately that day never came because someone killed Kristy and Quoc’s life in a brutal way.

The facts:

September 18, 2021 was Saturday and that night several relatives were waiting for Kristy and Quoc for dinner. However, everyone began to worry when the couple didn’t show up.

The family tried to contact them by text message and calls, but without success. This was strange since the two were quite punctual and when they were late they always warned. Desperate, they approached the York regional police to report both disappearances.

The police immediately began to investigate the case, but since they did not know where to start on September 21, they issued a statement to request citizen collaboration.

Thanks to this statement it was learned that on September 18 at about 5 to 10 in the afternoon Kristy and Quoc were seen in the neighboring city of Markham, near Highway 7.

The agents dedicated themselves to investigating all the clues that arrived from the missing couple, but not only that... they also placed special emphasis on reviewing the security cameras and telephone data to put together a timeline.

Let’s remember that before the family reunion Kristy and Quoc were seen in Markham. In this place there was a shopping center so the investigators thought that the couple had stopped here to buy last-minute items for dinner.

Through the security cameras they learned that after that the two returned to Vaughan and stopped at the Quoc business, and although the store closed on Saturdays, it was not surprising that the man stopped by. Kristy and Quoc were recorded entering the business at 5:30 p.m. but they never left again.

Ultra Garden Supply, which was the name of the store, was located in a large office complex on Zenway Boulevard. Each rental unit had two floors and at the back of the building there was access to loading docks with security cameras in front of the front parking lot and the back alley. The agents knew that these cameras would be crucial to solving the mystery.

The investigation:

On September 27, the police closed the office complex to exhaustively search for the couple. In this search they included all the garbage containers in the area.

The owner of another store said that the officials not only removed the garbage containers to check their contents but also asked the owners of the other businesses to give them the surveillance images they could have from September 18.

During the review of these images, the agents found something that aroused their interest. Apparently on September 18 at about 11:30 p:m a white delivery truck was recorded behind the building. The question was what a delivery truck was doing at that time with all the businesses closed, and most importantly: who drove it?

On September 28, that is, ten days after the disappearance of the couple, the Regional Police made a devastating announcement: According to them, everything indicated that Kristy and Quoc had been killed. They also published images of the delivery truck in case someone from the public could provide information since it was classified as a vehicle of interest in the case.

At the same time, they announced that they believed that Phuong Tan Nguyen, 35, was responsible for the death of Kristy and Quoc.

Despite sharing a surname with Kristy, the researchers affirmed that Phuong, known as “Mike”, was not related to her and that this surname is very common in the Vietnamese community.

Even so, and to protect the investigation, the agents did not give more details of the connection between Mike and the couple or why they believed he was to blame for their disappearance. They only added that they believed that this suspect was armed, that he was dangerous and that perhaps he had already fled.

Just when the news was going through the media, the police made another announcement, and it was that a second suspect had been arrested.

This time it was Recaldo Liburd, 36 years old. It seems that thanks to several witnesses the subject was arrested and identified as the driver of the white delivery truck. Days later, Recarldo was accused of two charges of being complicit in murder.

With a suspect in custody and a fugitive, the investigators had no time to waste, so they continued to look for Kristy and Quoc relying on security images to track the path of the delivery truck. This led them to a new discovery.

Found a Body:

On October 1, police announced that they had recovered Quoc Tran’s body at a landfill in Watford, two hours from Vaughan. The police believed that Kristy’s body would appear in the same place, but this was not the case.

Unfortunately, months passed without any update. Kristy was still missing and the main suspect was a fugitive from justice. Finally, in January 2023, the York Regional Police held a press conference to update how the investigation was going.

The superintendent of investigation services, Rhonda Corsi, spoke to the press and said that Quoc had died of a gunshot wound. Kristy could not confirm if she had died in the same way since they still couldn’t find her body. What she could assure is that they had checked every inch of the landfill where Quoc appeared and another that was right on the border of United States.

The journalists asked why they were so sure that Kristy was dead if they had not found her body, to which Rhonda replied that they had evidence of her death that they could not reveal because the case had not yet gone to trial.

The police also talked about Phuong Tan Nguyen, alias “Mike”, the main suspect and who to this day is still unknown.

Superintendent Corsi confirmed that Kristy and Quoc knew their murderer, but she didn’t say what the connection was. According to her, Mike was last seen on September 22, 2021 taking a plane to Mexico. The York Regional Police is currently working with the Mexican authorities to find him and, if he is in Mexico, it is likely that he will be extradited to Canada to be tried.

Another thing that has been known this year is that the police have partnered with the Bolo Program, a Canadian initiative that takes advantage of technology and social networks to find wanted fugitives. Through this program they have offered a reward of $50,000 for any information that leads to Mike’s capture.

At the press conference, the chief of police, Jim MacSween, spoke about Kristy and Quoc and how their tragic deaths affected the community.

They also read a letter written by Kristy’s family in which they talked about her personality and the joy she brought to everyone.

“It’s very difficult for us to talk about Kristy in the past tense because many days we just can’t believe that she’s dead... How can it be that our beautiful, reliable, intelligent and ambitious Kristy is no longer here? How could it be that someone wost this for her? Kristy disappeared almost a year and four months ago. Every day since then have been full of anguish... All the remarkable things that she could have been were stolen from us... We don’t know why she needed to die, but we do know that at least one person has the answers we desperately need for any possibility of peace.”

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