What Reno, Nevada’s Robert John Lanoue did to Seaside, California’s Anne Sang Thi Pham

Robert John Lanoue, 70, of Reno, Nevada, United States is a retired U.S. Army sergeant and a registered sex offender. He is accused of killing a Vietnamese girl named Anne Sang Thi Pham in 1982.

Tuong Pham

Tuong Pham was a devout Catholic, a fisherman and a soldier. He and his wife originally lived in a small coastal village in North Vietnam.

Seven of the couple’s 10 children were born in Vietnam including the eldest child Kheu Van Pham, who was born in 1959. The other three were born in the United States.

As a soldier, Tuong fought for the Vietnamese emperor Bao Dai against the Viet Minh. He also served in the South Vietnamese Army for 10 years.

When the South Vietnamese government fell to the Communists in 1975, Tuong and his wife left Vietnam and moved to Texas, USA with Kheu and Kheu’s six siblings. The family was sponsored by St. Anne’s Catholic Church.

In 1976, Tuong’s wife gave birth to Anne Sang Thi Pham in Beaumont, Texas. He had a hard time providing for his family in Texas so he looked for another place where he could work again as a fisherman.

In 1978, Tuong and his family moved to Seaside, California, USA. In the same year, Kheu entered San Jose State College in San Jose, California to pursue a bachelor’s degree in electronic engineering.

Anne Sang Thi Pham

Anne became a kindergarten student at Highland Elementary School in Seaside, which is just blocks from her family’s home. Her mother usually walked her to school.

But on January 21, 1982, Anne insisted on walking by herself to her kindergarten class while her mother stayed home. The girl did not make it to school and disappeared at around 11:00 a.m.

On January 23, 1982, an Army Criminal Investigation Division investigator stumbled on Anne’s deceased body while looking for illegal marijuana grow in the brush along South Boundary Road at Fort Ord, a U.S. Army post on Monterey Bay of the Pacific Ocean coast in California. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled to death.

Robert John Lanoue

Born in San Diego, California, Lanoue lived in Seaside, California around the corner from Tuong, his wife and their 10 children. Lanoue allegedly murdered Anne on the day she went missing.

On June 3, 1998, Lanoue was convicted of lewdness with a child under the age of 14 years in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was not related to the case of Anne, which went cold.

In 2018, Lanoue was released from a Nevada prison. On June 8, 2022, he was booked into the Washoe County jail without bail for a parole violation.

On July 8, 2022, Lanoue was arrested for Pham’s murder and on July 22, 2022, he pleaded not guilty. On December 13, 2022, he had a medical emergency and failed to make his scheduled court appearance.