A Harris County jury has convicted 29-year-old Polie Phan of capital murder for the January 2023 killings of two Oregon marijuana growers, James Martin III and Dana Ryssdal, who were shot to death in Houston within days of arriving in the city. Phan will serve life in prison without parole, a mandatory sentence under Texas law once prosecutors decline to pursue the death penalty in a capital case.
According to the Houston Chronicle, authorities contend Phan lured Martin, 37, to his girlfriend's Houston apartment on January 26, 2023, then killed him in the apartment garage. Prosecutors said Ryssdal, 35, likely interrupted Phan's search for drug money and was fatally shot while entering the residence. Martin and Ryssdal were business partners at Rogue Valley Cannabis, which operated three marijuana dispensaries in Oregon, and Phan was one of Martin's clients, according to the Chronicle's reporting.
Court records reviewed by the paper indicate Phan may have owed Martin money, and prosecutor Samantha Knecht said Martin was bringing marijuana from Oregon to Texas for Phan when the dispute turned deadly. The Chronicle reported that Martin was selling marijuana out of state, per records, and that a Texas-bound marijuana shipment worth at least $1 million had been stolen after Phan and others invested in it. Phan's defense attorney, Jose Julio Vela, argued the slain men may have instead been targeted by others in the illegal drug trade, and said it remained unclear whether the marijuana or cash later found in Martin's home were connected to the missing shipment. Vela also said either Martin or Ryssdal allowed the shipment to be lost and brought to California, according to the Chronicle.
A Body in the Trunk, a Truck Gone Missing
Houston police patrol officers first responded to a welfare check at a T.C. Jester Boulevard townhome on January 27, 2023, where they found Ryssdal shot to death and discovered that Ryssdal's white Dodge Ram truck and Martin were both missing, according to the City of Houston. The truck turned up three days later on Cullen Boulevard. Investigators searched Martin's vehicle on February 1, 2023, after a neighbor called police upon noticing a car running inside a closed garage; another resident reported hearing three gunshots, and a neighbor said Ryssdal's dog was heard barking outside the home into the night, per the Chronicle. Martin was found duct-tape bound in the trunk of his own vehicle.
Phan drove Martin's car to his Heights-area townhome in the 1700 block of T.C. Jester Boulevard, the Chronicle reported, and neighbors noticed strange activity at the home the day after the killings. Martin's mother, Jeanne Martin, said police found evidence that her son had been tortured before being shot in the mouth, and she told the paper that her son, known as Jimmy, was missing for six more agonizing days before his body was found. Martin had written a prayer, “make me an instrument of peace,” in a gratitude journal on the morning of the killings, according to the Chronicle. A friend, Dante Concetto, said Ryssdal was murdered when he walked into Jimmy's house with nothing but his gym bag and dry cleaning.
Nearly $200,000 in Drugs and Cash Left Behind
Beyond the roughly $36,000 in cash police found in a freezer at the T.C. Jester townhome, officers also recovered nearly 130 pounds of plastic-wrapped marijuana in that same freezer, according to the Chronicle. Court filings cited separately by Willamette Week indicated investigators also seized 10 pounds of concentrated hash oil during their search — narcotics whose value far exceeded the cash left behind. The scale of the seized product underscored the size of the illegal distribution operation authorities say Phan was tied to.
Manhunt Stretched to a Vietnamese Jungle
Phan and co-defendant Jaidan Nguyen fled to Vietnam following the killings, and were apprehended in June 2023 after Vietnamese authorities, working alongside the U.S. Marshals Service, the FBI, and Harris County prosecutors, tracked Phan hiding in a Vietnamese jungle while Nguyen was located in Ho Chi Minh City, according to Click2Houston. The two were later transferred to U.S. custody and extradited through San Francisco before being booked into the Harris County Jail in late July 2023, per the outlet's reporting, in a process that required coordination between federal law enforcement and Vietnam's Ministry of Public Security.
Nguyen, who is charged with capital murder, remains jailed after 262nd District Court Judge Lori Chambers Gray formally denied him bail in July 2023, following prosecutors' presentation of cell phone records and video surveillance linking him to the shootings, according to the Houston Chronicle. His defense attorney has separately pushed to keep prosecutors from pursuing the death penalty in his case, which remains pending along with charges against a third co-defendant.
Cleanup Note and FaceTime Calls Implicate Third Defendant
Kathy Vu, who was living in the apartment where Martin was lured, is charged with tampering with evidence, a third-degree felony. Police found a note on Vu's cell phone listing items to buy for a crime cleanup — including bleach, towels and iodine — and recorded six FaceTime calls Vu made to Phan within a 25-minute span immediately after the killings, according to Willamette Week's review of court filings. Vu was charged and released on a $40,000 bond; her defense attorney has argued she purchased the cleaning supplies strictly under directions from her boyfriend. Tampering with evidence carries a potential sentence of two to ten years in Texas. Her case, like Nguyen's, remains pending.
An Oregon Grower's Path to Houston
Ryssdal grew up in Corvallis, Oregon, graduated from Oregon State University, and served as vice president of the Portland-based cannabis marketing firm LTRMN Inc. before partnering with Martin, according to a Medium account of the case. He had arrived in Houston just days before he was killed.
Harris County court records compiled this year show capital murder jury trials in the county result in a 95.2% conviction rate, the highest among all felony crime classifications, according to Show Me The Justice. Phan's conviction adds to that record, though the fate of the missing $1 million shipment that allegedly set the killings in motion remains unresolved, and questions about who else in the drug trade might have been involved remain open as Nguyen's and Vu's cases move forward.
