Woman Found Dead in Car Trunk Identified

SEAL BEACH — The body of a young woman found in a car trunk has been identified as that of Kristie Nhung Nguyen, 20, of Anaheim.

Nguyen had been shot once with a small-caliber gun in the upper torso, Lt. Kenny Mollohan said.

Nguyen, missing since May 18, was identified through dental records because the body was badly decomposed. It was discovered Saturday in a 1997 green Honda Civic that belongs to relatives, police said.

“Now we just want to find the person who did this,” Mollohan said.

Police were called to the car by residents who had noticed a foul smell. The car had been parked in the same spot for at least two weeks on Electric Avenue, a block from the beach.

Residents were horrified when they realized there might be a body in the unfamiliar car. While they had pool parties and Memorial Day picnics, jockeyed for scarce parking spots and tried to get rid of a strange odor in their kitchens or yards, the car sat there.

Mike Perez, who lives on Electric Avenue, had worried all last week about the smell in his apartment. He had watered the tree and flowers near the sidewalk, right next to the Honda. He even picked up litter from the gutter. But he kept thinking the problem was in his apartment.

“It was OK at night because the wind blows off the ocean, away from the houses, but when I’d get home from work, it was terrible,” he said.

Last Tuesday, he said, “I scrubbed the entire apartment,” bleaching the tub, sinks and toilet, putting air freshener on the rug, and installing a second fan.

“I had so many chemicals in there, I couldn’t smell anything else,” he said.

On Saturday, said resident Jim Davis, the woman who lives behind him called police and told them there was a bad smell coming from the car. An officer pried open the car, setting off an alarm.

“It was tense,” said Tom Gilbride, Perez’s brother-in-law and next-door neighbor. “When the cop popped the trunk . . . we all knew.”

Gilbride’s wife, Irene, said, “Whoever it was had the keys to the car, turned it off, locked it, put on the alarm and left.”

Hundreds of missing-person reports are filed each month, Anaheim Police Lt. Ted LaBahn said, and Nguyen’s report was nothing unusual.

“It was just the standard, ‘She left and she always calls,’ ” he said. “In the two years I’ve been here I don’t really remember where we had a missing person report that turned out to be a homicide,” LaBahn said.

Anyone with any information is asked to call Seal Beach police at (562)431-2541.

Also contributing to this report was Times staff writer Thao Hua.