Vietnamese Publisher Killed in Arson Fire

The editor and publisher of a prominent Vietnamese magazine in Orange County was killed in an arson fire that destroyed his office in the Little Saigon area of Garden Grove early Sunday.

A police spokesman said the fire was “definitely arson,” making the death a murder.

The victim, identified by the coroner’s office as Tap Van Pham, 48, died when the 2 a.m. fire swept through his small one-story publishing office at 10708 Westminster Ave. Pham’s body was found on the floor of the office after firefighters extinguished the blaze. Also known by his pen name, Hoai Diep Tu, Pham was editor of Mai magazine, a “very popular” publication that covered entertainment news.

Some Vietnamese journalists said they believe that Pham was killed by militant anti-Communists upset by his publication of an advertisement for an allegedly pro-Communist firm. All requested anonymity because of fear of reprisals.

Controversial Ad

“I know about politics,” a Vietnamese newspaper editor said. “I know better than to run that ad.”

The controversial ad was for a company with a Montreal mailing address offering to accept United States dollars from Vietnamese in the United States, convert them to Vietnamese currency and deposit the funds in Vietnam for friends or relatives. According to sources in the county’s Vietnamese community of 120,000, the firm is suspected of having Communist sympathies.

“Tap accepted that ad and didn’t know anything about it,” said a 35-year-old former employee who spoke outside the magazine office Sunday morning. The woman broke into tears frequently as she described her former boss.

“He was not a Communist,” she said. “He escaped on the same boat with me in 1981. He had a wife named Mai--the same as the magazine--still in Vietnam with three children, and he was trying to get them to America.”

“I have a newspaper of my own, but I didn’t run the ad of that company. My husband was in politics in Saigon,” another Vietnamese woman at the fire scene said.

Doubts Expressed

However, the editor of a Vietnamese-language daily newspaper in Orange County said in a telephone interview that he doubted that the fire was prompted by the ad.

“Other papers have published that same ad,” he said.

But he acknowledged that he would not use the ad “because I don’t want to give support to the Communist regime.”

The editor, who asked that his name and that of his newspaper not be used, said that Pham “was very popular, and his magazine was doing very well, making a lot of money.”

Capt. Jerry Halberstadt, an acting battalion chief for the Garden Grove Fire Department, said Sunday that the fire caused an estimated $40,000 damage to the magazine office and $5,000 to its contents.