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Man Who Changed Name To Lucifer Is On Trial For Deadly Crime Spree
A Minnesota man who legally changed his name to Lucifer is now in court for a hellacious summer day of crimes.
Lucifer is on trial.
A Minnesota man who legally changed his name to Lucifer is now in court for a hellacious summer day last year that included aggravated robbery, kidnapping and murder.
Lucifer Nguyen, 44, pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and other charges for the day-long crime streak. His trial began Monday.
According to a criminal complaint obtained by Oxygen.com, Nguyen began his July 29 rampage by breaking into a grandmother’s house at 9 a.m. in Mendota Heights, a suburban city on the edge of the Twin Cities, and robbing her at gunpoint while her 2-year old grandchild watched.
Police spotted Nguyen driving in the vicinity and chased him at high speed through the neighborhood until he crashed into a pond, according to the complaint.
Nguyen managed to get away and moments later entered a nearby senior care facility, where he took a worker’s keys and forced her into a laundry room, the complaint says. Police followed closely behind and located the woman locked inside the laundry facility, but there was no sign of Nguyen.
As police evacuated seniors from the building, a call came from a nearby office building about blood seeping from beneath a doorway.
Behind the door police found Beverly Cory, a 48-year-old financial adviser, dead with a bullet wound to the head. Cory lived in a nearby subdivision with her partner Kim, according to the Star Tribune, and a neighbor described her as "the kindest soul."
Next, police say, Nguyen stole Cory's 2005 Toyota Corolla and fled the scene. He ditched the car at a local fairground later in the morning, the report indicates, and hitched a ride to a local casino. Police arrested Nguyen three days later in a traffic stop after a regional manhunt, according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
Nguyen chose the moniker “Lucifer” more than a decade ago, according to WCCO-TV in Minneapolis, and his run-ins with the law are nothing new. He has prior convictions for theft and drunk driving. Police nabbed him last year with nearly a pound of crystal meth and he then assaulted an inmate in jail, the Pioneer Press reported. He got out of jail on bond for those crimes just five days before the deadly crime spree.
[Photo: Dakota County Sheriff's Office]
