THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 15, 1995 TAG: 9507150331
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Interview
SOURCE: BY MARC DAVIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long : 153 lines
It took a little boy to make Lanna Son want to live again.
About a month after her husband was murdered at the Witchduck Inn, Lanna was deeply depressed. She had a gun in an upstairs bedroom. She told her 5-year-old son she wanted them both to join Daddy.
The boy hugged his mother. ``You and Daddy love me,'' he said sadly. ``You're not supposed to make me die. If you did, then you borned me for nothing.'' Lanna hugged the boy tight and cried like never before.
That was the low point of Lanna Son's life.
A year later, life is better, though still a struggle. The killers have been convicted, and one has been sentenced to death. Lanna runs her own bar in Kempsville, Lanna's Village Inn, but it's a seven-day-a-week grind, 15 hours a day.
One thing makes it bearable: the little boy, Josh, now 6. He was asleep in the back room of the Witchduck Inn when his father - who owned the bar - and three others were shot execution-style on June 30, 1994. At the time, one of the killers, Denise Holsinger, wanted to shoot the sleeping Josh along with the others. The boy was saved by last-minute pangs of conscience by the other murderer, Michael Clagett.
One year later, her husband's death still haunts Lanna Son, even after watching a jury condemn Clagett to death on Thursday.
``I think about it every day, every hour, every half-hour, sometimes every 15 minutes,'' Lanna says inside her small, dimly lit bar. ``I just like to live in peace, just me and my son. That's all I want.''
They were strangers in a strange land.
Lanna Son, now 40, grew up in Vietnam, before the Communist takeover. She was a college student when she fled in 1975, two days before the fall of Saigon.
She arrived in Virginia knowing two English phrases: ``thank you'' and ``good morning.''
LamVan Son arrived in 1980. In Vietnam, he was a navy lieutenant. In America, the foreign credentials meant nothing. He wound up cutting grass at Lynchburg College and doing farm work.
They met at a friend's house in Lynchburg and married after a five-year engagement.
Joshua, the dark-haired, bright-eyed child, was born in 1988. ``He was Lam's shadow,'' Lanna recalls. ``Wherever you see Lam, you see Josh.''
The couple worked hard, mainly for Josh. Lanna bought a small bar in Kempsville. It was called Miss Kitty's Too, but Lanna quickly changed it to Lanna's Village Inn.
The Sons had a typical immigrant dream: own your own business, work hard, make money quickly. Move to a good school district - Great Neck, zoned for Cox High School - and save every dollar for college and retirement.
For Lanna, it meant ridiculously long hours. The bar opened at 11 a.m. and closed at 2 a.m. She was there nearly every minute.
``I was cook, I was bartender, I did every single thing. I cleaned up under the sink,'' Lanna recalls.
Hard times got harder when Lam bought his own bar, the Witchduck Inn, in January 1994. It sucked up every dime of profit from Lanna's bar and almost every hour of Lam's time.
He built the place himself, from scratch.
``He wanted to show himself he could work as hard as I could,'' Lanna recalls. ``It was something he dreamed of, to have his own place, and he was very proud of it.''
But the his-and-her bars came at a price. The family was stretched too thin. ``We had no time together,'' Lanna says. ``I was in one place, he was in one place, my son was in another place.''
So the Sons agreed: Lam would sell the Witchduck Inn in July, or find a manager to run it. Then he could stay home with Josh while Lanna ran her bar.
On June 30, Lam threw an impromptu party to celebrate the last renovations at the Witchduck Inn.
That night, he and the others were killed.
``He never had time to enjoy himself,'' Lanna says. ``He worked, worked, worked. What's wrong with this picture? He worked all the time. He died for it.''
Josh was asleep when police arrived at the bar. Luckily, a regular patron had found the bodies - and Josh - before the boy awoke and found them himself.
When Lanna arrived, she was nearly hysterical. Police wouldn't let her see Lam, shot through the head, lying in a pool of blood on the floor near the kitchen.
It was about 1 a.m., but Lanna composed herself long enough to talk Josh into leaving with her brother-in-law. He didn't want to go. He saw the police cars, but Lanna told a white lie. She said someone was sick at the bar, and Daddy was sick, too, and he was at the hospital and couldn't see anyone.
``Don't forget,'' the boy said, ``to tell Daddy good night.''
Reminders of Lam are everywhere at Lanna's bar.
Two tiny valentines hang in the cramped office. Josh made them in February, in crayon, eight months after the murders. One says, ``i [heart - love] u DAD.''
On the opposite wall is a heart painted in silver sparkles on red construction paper. Josh made that, too. The inscription, written by an adult, says, ``God gives to us. We give to each other!''
``Have Michael Clagett think about that,'' Lanna says.
On the desk, there are pictures of Lam and Josh smiling together, and a plaque with the names of all four victims of the Witchduck Inn tragedy. Taped to the wall is a typed ``CONTACT LIST'' with the names and phone numbers of all the victims' relatives.
Nearby is a small, red evidence tag from the Virginia Beach Police Department. What it's for, Lanna isn't sure. It came from the Witchduck Inn.
Lanna wears Lam's gold wedding ring on the middle finger of her left hand. She will never take it off, she says.
And at the bar itself, a string of blinking lights ends near a corner TV set in a large, blinking, lighted heart.
``I made that heart,'' Lam told Lanna one day after installing the lights. ``It's my heart for you.''
For 10 months, Lanna wore black. Every piece of clothing in her closet, every shirt, dress and pair of shorts, was black.
After a while, Lanna's sister urged her to get rid of the stuff and move on, but Lanna couldn't. She also couldn't bear to move the clothes out of her husband's closet.
Finally, Lanna asked prosecutors to let her see photos of the murder scene. They were gruesome and detailed.
``To me,'' Lanna says, ``you marry for the better and the worse. When he died, they didn't let me see him for the last time. I only wanted to see how he looked when he died.''
Seeing the horrific pictures turned her life around.
Lanna still weeps when she sees the pictures - she wept at Clagett's trial when prosecutors showed crime-scene photos and videotape, and again when they showed autopsy pictures - but that's OK, she says.
``It makes me feel like, yes, I was with him when he died,'' Lanna says.
For the three-week trial, Lanna sent Josh to live with her sister in Ohio. She attended the trial alone, every day, with support from other victims' relatives.
She could not have gotten through it, she says, without help from the victim-witness program, the prosecutors, the police and friends.
Clagett's death sentence leaves her with mixed emotions. ``The mean in me says, yes, kill him,'' Lanna says. ``But the other side of me says, golly, why do you want someone else to die?''
Above all, she thinks of Josh. He has grown up a lot since the killings, too fast, Lanna says. But he is tough, too. He wants to take karate lessons to protect his mom, and he no longer cries around her. He saves that for private moments.
Now, when Lanna comes home and remembers that Josh is in Ohio, she feels depressed and alone again. Soon, though, Josh will be back home and all will be right again. Almost.
``I don't know if anyone knows how I feel when I see a family pass me with a mother, a father and a kid,'' Lanna says slowly, teary-eyed. ``I don't want to be a single parent. I didn't plan on that. It's hard . . .
``I just try to prepare everything for Josh. Josh is my life right now.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photos]
Joshua Son, 6, recently visited the grave of his father, LamVan, who
was murdered in the bar he owned.
JOSEPH JOHN KOTLOWSKI
These days, Lanna Son keeps busy at Lanna's Village Inn, the
Virginia Beach bar she owns. A year after her husband, LamVan, was
killed at the Witchduck Inn, her love for her son keeps her going.
by CNB