Charged in brutal stabbing

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Nimol Tep, 40, watched Sambo Nau repeatedly stab her 47-year-old friend and roommate Taing Thai in an argument over money inside their second-floor apartment on the 2100 block of South Seventh Street, Homicide Sgt. Anthony McFadden told the Review. When Nau, 21, from the 400 block of Jackson Street, was done with Thai, he turned his blade on Tep, the sergeant said. Both women and the suspect are Cambodian.

Tep was murdered because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time — having been in the shower when she heard commotion in the dwelling and coming out to check on things, the sergeant said.

Nau paid Thai a visit sometime between 5 and 6 p.m. April 25 to ask for a loan to buy a house, McFadden said, adding she met her death when she refused.

After the stabbing, the suspect took jewelry and other items from the home, the sergeant said, declining to elaborate.

In what police officials described as a gruesome scene, the victims were stabbed multiple times in their neck, back, arms and chest — one found in the kitchen and the other, the living/dining area, McFadden said.

Twelve hours later, when a van driver rang the doorbell to pick the women up for work at 6 a.m. but got no answer, a third-floor neighbor went to check on them. The woman found the front door ajar, as well as the horrific scene.

More than six hours after the victims had been discovered, Crime Scene Unit investigators and homicide detectives were still combing the area looking for evidence.

As news of the horror spread throughout the tight-knit Asian enclave near Seventh Street and Snyder Avenue, Nau and his mother — who was a friend of Thai’s — showed up at the scene, McFadden said.

Police noticed a large, bloody gash on the man’s right hand and conversed with him briefly at the scene, along with other family friends, then brought him in for questioning later that day.

After nearly three hours of interrogation, with his story not adding up — including his claim the hand wound was defensive and sustained in a mugging attempt — he confessed to the slayings, McFadden said.

Nau was arraigned that night on two counts of homicide, robbery and possession of an instrument of crime.

April 30 at 6 p.m., more than 100 mourners paid their respects during a candlelight Cambodian-spoken vigil at Seventh and Jackson streets. A traditional Asian offering of fruit, water, salt, incense, flowers and candles was placed on the steps of the victims’ dwelling, where seven Buddhist monks from a neighborhood temple chanted prayers for more than a half-hour in memory of the dead.

The Cambodian Association of Greater Philadelphia organized the service that also was attended by South Police Division Inspector Steve Johnson, 4th District Capt. Joseph Zaffino, Chief Inspector of Community Affairs Joseph Tiano and other police officials.