FORT SMITH — A Fort Smith man charged with murdering a woman last year said when first interviewed by Fort Smith police that he barely knew her, but later said he thought of her as a sister.
Sebastian County Circuit Court jurors in the first-degree murder trial of Kevyphonh Sounyaphong watched the video of a Fort Smith police interview from March 2013 in which Sounyaphong, 60, contradicted an interview he gave police just days after the Jan. 24, 2013, strangulation death of Sakounsouk Vilayhong, 50, at her Fort Smith home.
In an interview at the Fort Smith Rheem plant where Sounyaphong and Vilayhong worked in the same department, Sounyaphong told police he didn’t know Vilayhong and had never been to her home, said Jim Fesperman, former Rheem employee relations manager in whose office police officers interviewed Sounyaphong.
Fesperman said Sounyaphong “protested vigorously” that he knew nothing about her death and seemed very nervous talking about the case with police.
Sounyaphong also denied that he was at Choctaw Casino in Pocola, Okla., on Jan. 24, 2013, the day Vilayhong died. According to testimony, she was at the casino from about 8:30 a.m. to about 1:50 p.m. and had won a $1,200 jackpot.
The wallet where Vilayhong kept her money was missing when her husband, Samdy, returned home from work about 3:45 p.m. to find his wife dead on their living room floor.
In the video of the March 25, 2013, interview at the Fort Smith Police Department, Sounyaphong said he knew Vilayhong, had been to her home two or three times and thought of her as a sister.
He told Fort Smith police Detective Adam Creek that he was at the Choctaw Casino on Jan. 24, 2013, arriving at 9 a.m. and not leaving until 5 a.m. the next day. He acted cheerful and forthcoming in talking with Creek in the police interview room and consented to allow Creek to swab the inside of his mouth for a DNA sample.
Mary Simonson, a forensic DNA examiner with the state Crime Laboratory, testified Tuesday that the DNA from a hair found and recovered from a jacket Vilayhong was wearing the day she died matched Sounyaphong’s DNA.
Sounyaphong is accused of strangling Vilayhong to death with some type of ligature, which Arkansas Associate Medical Examiner Daniel Dye testified was some type of rope or cord used to put pressure on her neck and cut off the flow of blood and oxygen to the brain. He ruled her death a homicide.
But defense attorney William James Jr. of Little Rock told Circuit Judge J. Michael Fitzhugh that he wants to present jurors with evidence that Vilayhong could have committed suicide or that Samdy Vilayhong killed her. Both defenses, he said, would be based on Vilayhong’s addiction to gambling.
James called the Vilayhongs’ daughter, Tina, who testified Monday, back to the witness stand Tuesday to question her about her parents. She testified that her mother’s gambling losses totaled about $100,000 and that her father recorded the losses in a book he kept for as long as a year before Sakounsouk Vilayhong’s death.
Tina Vilayhong said her mother would go gambling after work and on weekends but especially when Samdy Vilayhong was away on hunting trips. She would lie about her gambling, Tina Vilayhong said, remembering one time when her father was off hunting and her mother said she was going to take the car and buy gas; instead, Sakounsouk Vilayhong went to the casino for several hours.
Sakounsouk Vilayhong’s gambling was driving a wedge in her 29-year marriage with Samdy Vilayhong, Tina Vilayhong said.
She said she no longer trusted her mother because she lied about her gambling. At the same time, she said,she got closer to her father because he would confide in her about the troubles with his wife.
Sakounsouk Vilayhong also denied she had a gambling problem when confronted and told Tina Vilayhong at one point, “‘What would happen if I just died,’” Tina Vilayhong said.
Her testimony contradicted that of her father, who James also recalled to the witness stand Tuesday. Through an interpreter who spoke Laotian, Samdy Vilayhong denied that he knew how much money his wife lost gambling, never kept a record of her losses and denied keeping track of them in a book.
He said he warned his wife about her gambling, but they never fought about it and her gambling did not affect the family. He denied he had to borrow money from his three children to pay the bills because Sakounsouk Vilayhong was gambling away the family’s money.
James suggested in arguments before Fitzhugh that Sakounsouk Vilayhong’s gambling losses and her statement about dying were indications that she was capable of suicide.
Dye testified Tuesday that he believed that someone strangled Vilayhong from behind because the furrow left by the ligature was straight across her neck, not at an upward angle that would indicated she was hanged.
James questioned Dye about whether it was possible to asphyxiate oneself lying down, as on a table. Dye replied it was possible as long as one could cut off the flow of blood and oxygen to the brain long enough.
Testimony resumes this morning.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 04/16/2014