Plumber Found Guilty In 2012 Quintuple Homicide

Plumber Found Guilty In 2012 Quintuple Homicide16 Howth Street, where five members of the Lei family were slain in 2012. | Photo: Google
Will Carruthers
Published on December 11, 2017

After a five-week trial and six days of deliberation, a jury has found a San Francisco man guilty of murdering five people in an Ingleside home in 2012.

On Monday, a San Francisco Superior Court jury found Binh Thai Luc guilty of five counts of first-degree murder for killing members of the Lei family at their Howth Street residence on March 23rd, 2012, along with two counts of burglary and five counts of robbery.

Luc, a 41-year-old plumber and Vietnamese immigrant, was arrested at a San Mateo hotel shortly after the bodies were discovered by one of the victim's 12-year-old niece at 7:45am the morning after the murders. When police arrived, they found bloody bodies doused with household cleaners, and a house that had been intentionally flooded.

The prosecution used evidence like spatters of a victim's blood on a pair of Luc's jeans and his fingerprint found on a spray bottle in the house to connect him to the crime. A murder weapon was never recovered, but prosecutors claimed Luc used a hammer.

The defense argued that although Luc was at the scene near the time of the crime, someone else committed the murders.

According to SFGate, Luc had been observed gambling large sums of money in the weeks prior to the killings; when he was arrested, police found $6,518 in cash on his person. Relatives of the Leis said the family kept large sums of cash in the house.

District Attorney George Gascón did not seek the death penalty, but because Luc lay in wait for one of his victims and committed a mass murder, he faces life imprisonment.

Tomorrow, Judge Carol Yaggy will set a date for sentencing.