Trial opens in 2014 kidnapping, torture, and murder of Vietnamese brothers found dumped in the Schuylkill

Stabbed eight times and sodden from the Schuylkill waters after freeing himself from captors who had tied him to a bucket of cement and thrown him in the river to drown, Tan Voong managed to pull himself from the inky depths and flag down a passing motorist for help.

In the eight years since that night, his physical wounds have healed. But the psychological toll of that brazen act of gang violence still lingers as he prepares again to confront one of his would-be killers in court.

Federal prosecutors on Tuesday opened their case against Jason Rivera, 36, one of six men charged in connection with Voong’s 2014 abduction — an attack that led to the deaths of fellow victims, brothers Viet and Vu “Kevin” Huynh.

The three men were targeted over a drug debt they owed a powerful gang member in New York. And while others may have wielded the knives that stabbed the victims dozens of times, knotted the chains that tethered all three men to cement buckets and rolled them off the riverbanks near Boathouse Row, Rivera, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert J. Livermore, “stood there and watched.”

“I’m going to ask,” the prosecutor implored the jury of nine women and three men in his opening statement Tuesday, “that you hold everyone accountable for their roles in this offense.”

» READ MORE: How the FBI tracked linked a brutal 2014 murder to a gang that terrorized New York City in the '90s

The trial comes six years after Voong’s account about that night helped put another of his captors — Tam Minh Le, 52 — on Pennsylvania’s death row.

And his testimony is again expected to play a key role in the proceedings set to play out in federal court over the next six days.

Also expected to testify is Lam Trieu, a Vietnamese mobster who has since pleaded guilty and who prosecutors say was one of the masterminds behind the attack.

Investigators say both Le and Trieu were onetime ranking members in a gang of immigrants called Born to Kill, after a slogan painted on the helmets of some U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam War.

Based on Canal Street in Manhattan’s Chinatown in the 1980s and 1990s, its members were mostly migrants who had fled the political strife the war created in their native country as children, only to turn their aggression against Chinese and other Asian business owners after arriving in New York.

They robbed rival gangs, ran protection rackets, and left a string of bodies across New York and New Jersey before a 1993 federal prosecution sent much of the gang’s leadership, including Trieu, to prison.

And while Born to Kill was believed to have died out after that case, Trieu’s old gang ties led to his involvement in Voong’s abduction and the Huynh brothers’ deaths.

Pleading guilty to kidnapping and conspiracy charges last year, Trieu admitted he reached out to Le, his old BTK associate, to collect on the $300,000 debt the Huynh owed to a marijuana supplier known as the “Fat Man” in California.

Le had fronted the drugs to the Huynhs, whom authorities had long known as drug dealers in South Philadelphia and lured them to his garage in hopes of getting them to pay what they owed.

Waiting for them there, prosecutors say, were Rivera and two other enforcers — John Dao, 44, and Trung Lu, 41 — whom Trieu had sent from New York to collect on the debt. The men stripped the brothers down to their underwear, zip tied their wrists, bound them in duct tape and tortured them for hours before they eventually agreed to call Voong, who arrived with $40,000.

But while Trieu insists he only ordered the men kidnapped and, if necessary, returned to New York as hostages, Le took matters into his own hands and ordered the Huynhs and Voong driven down to the riverbanks to die.

In court Tuesday, prosecutors said Rivera rode in the van with the bound victims, helped carry them down to the grandstands near Boathouse Row and then stood by as Le and another man — Minh Nguyen — repeatedly stabbed them.

“The evidence will not show that Jason Rivera stabbed the victims or that he rolled them into the river,” Livermore said. But it will show that “he and the others kidnapped the Huynh brothers, and they died as a result of that kidnapping.”

For his part, Rivera has said little about the case since his arrest in New York two years ago.

He sat stoically in the courtroom Tuesday next to his attorney, Thomas S. Mirigliano, as his name was repeatedly invoked in connection with the murders.

Mirigliano has maintained that his client as been wrongfully accused by overzealous investigators and conspirators like Trieu eager to cut deals for shorter prison terms by implicating as many people as possible.

He’s noted there are no cellphone records linking Rivera to the Philadelphia area on the night of the crime. And he’s balked at prosecutor’s characterization of a line from the 1990 movie Goodfellas that Rivera has tattooed on his forearm — “F— you. Pay Me.” — as evidence of his role as a drug gang enforcer and debt collector.

“This is a harrowing tale, there’s no doubt about it,” Mirigliano said in his own opening pitch to jurors Tuesday. “But this is not a scripted movie, and I ask that you keep an open mind about the whole case.”

Testimony in the trial is expected to resume Wednesday.

Should Rivera be convicted on the charges including conspiracy, kidnapping and extortion he faces, he could be sentenced to up in life in prison.

Unlike in Le’s state case, federal prosecutors have opted not to pursue the death penalty.