By Khalida Sarwari
Before Paul Ray Castillo was formally sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, he stood up, faced the sister and daughter of the woman he shot between the eyes last September and asked for their forgiveness.
“My state of mind was not the same as of the man that stands before you today,” he said, reading from a note he held in his hands.
Minutes later, Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge David Cena sentenced the 34-year-old Castillo, clad in an orange and brown jumpsuit and bound in handcuffs, to a total of 208 years in prison for nine felonies to which he had pleaded guilty or no contest, including assault with a deadly weapon, robbery, auto theft and the murder of Cindy Nguyen, a 60-year-old real estate agent and popular Vietnamese radio show host from Campbell.
Nguyen’s family filled up the rows on one side of the courtroom as Castillo’s family sat on the other side. Sniffling could be heard throughout the hearing from relatives on both sides.
Prior to the sentencing, Nguyen’s sister, Christina Tran, and eldest daughter, Tulam Lu, addressed the court, as did Nguyen’s close friend and colleague Nick Pham.
“There was no reason to kill my sister after taking her car,” Tran said, her voice wavering. “Why didn’t he just let her walk home? My sister could not have done anything to hurt him.”
Lu recounted receiving a text message from her mother on the morning of Sept. 16, just hours before her death, wishing her a happy birthday.
“Had I known it would be the last text message I’d receive from her, I wouldn’t have slept through it as I did,” she said. “It wasn’t only her life that was taken that day; it was all of ours.”
Castillo apologized to Lu and said he sought her family’s forgiveness.
“I’m truly sorry to both you, the Nguyen family, as well as my own family,” Castillo said, before bailiffs escorted him out of the courtroom, his eyes red and filled with tears.
Michael Ogul, a public defender representing Castillo, also apologized to the family on Castillo’s behalf. He said Castillo had told him he had wished for Nguyen to find peace and happiness in her death.
Afterward, deputy district attorney James Leonard said he was glad the case was resolved within less than a year.
Of Castillo’s apology, Leonard said, “I hope it was sincere. I want to believe that he was sincere. If it gives Cindy’s family some bit of comfort, I hope it will, but nothing he does will bring Cindy back.”
Sept. 16 will mark one year since Castillo abducted and killed Nguyen as part of a violent crime spree. At the time, the death of Nguyen, a single mother of three, reverberated throughout the Vietnamese community.
Castillo was a parolee from San Jose with a criminal history that includes domestic violence, carjacking and drug-related offenses. On the morning of Sept. 16, Castillo attempted to rob and then shot a 42-year-old man while he was pumping gas at a Chevron gas station on Lincoln Avenue in San Jose. The man survived.
Castillo then fled in a stolen Nissan that he dumped later at The Plant shopping center at Monterey Road and Curtner Avenue, about a mile from the gas station, where he carjacked Nguyen around noon. According to prosecutors, a witness saw him punch her, wrestle her into her own Lexus and then drive away.
Friends of Nguyen said she had called her assistant from the area to ask for help jump-starting her car battery, but then she had called back to say some people had come by to help her. That was the last time anyone heard from Nguyen.
Castillo wasn’t seen again until six hours later, when police spotted him driving the stolen Lexus near a condo complex near Mabury and North King roads. An officer fired several shots at him after he tried to run over the officer. He crashed the car and fled on foot.
Nguyen’s car, a white 1997 Lexus, was found in the area. Her body was found the following morning wrapped in a carpet in the garage of Castillo’s sister’s home on N. 12th Street. Prosecutors said she had been shot between the eyes at close range, with the same .357 Magnum that was used in the shooting of the man at the Chevron station.
Officers searched for Castillo throughout the weekend, even using a grounded police helicopter, until they tracked him down at a pizzeria in West Sacramento and took him into custody on the evening of Sept. 18.
Pham, Nguyen’s friend and colleague at PN Real Estate, said he found Castillo’s apology insincere.
“Apologizing is not going to make a difference at all,” he said.
Still, if Nguyen had survived, “she would have forgiven Mr. Castillo,” Pham said. “I know that’s how she would be.”
As the anniversary of Nguyen’s death approaches, Pham said he and other friends, co-workers and relatives of Nguyen would mark the occasion with a private celebration of her life and the ways she made an impact on the lives of others, from donating wheelchairs to people in the villages of Vietnam to stopping and giving money to the homeless in San Jose.
“For a lot of us, there’s not a day that goes by that we don’t think about her,” said Pham.
Castillo apologizes to Nguyen’s family, friends after getting life
