HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — Ten years of detective work have led to authorities charging a Houston man with the murder of his mother.
Donny Daosavanh, 37, is accused of killing Amnoun Sayphana in 2014 when she was about 60 years old.
The Houston Police Department said the mother and son lived together at the time. Still, no one knew Sayphana disappeared until 2017 when Daosavanh told detectives he had hit his mother with a blunt object and then buried her in an unknown location.
At the time, Daosavanh wouldn’t tell detectives where he allegedly buried his mother’s body, and there was not enough evidence to charge him. Something changed recently, and the police arrested Daosavanh last Thursday.
On Monday morning, he appeared in court, where a judge set his bond at $500,000. Prosecutors said they still haven’t located the mother’s body but believe they have enough evidence to move forward with the case.
“The law allows us to charge a person with murder even if we don’t have a body if we can prove the crime beyond a reasonable doubt, and in this case, we believe we can do so,” Assistant District Attorney Samantha Knect said.
In the years following his mother’s disappearance, Daosavanh built an entirely different life where the people in it had no idea he was a suspect in his mother’s death.
At the apartment he shares with his live-in girlfriend, the young woman answered the door and told ABC13 that “he’s a very nice man” and “she (believes) he didn’t do that.”
Daosavanh worked for the past six years at a Tyson chicken plant, and more than one worker considered him a literal family member.
“Donny hasn’t done anything. I don’t believe it,” Troy Bevel, a coworker who considered Daosavanh a little brother and helped him find the apartment he was living in, said. “Can’t make me believe it. Donny’s a good dude. I don’t I don’t think he killed nobody’s mother.”
Another woman, who literally called Daosavanh her “son,” befriended him because her husband also worked at the chicken plant. On the phone, she said she had no idea Daosavanh’s real mother was dead and was shocked to find out that investigators charged him with murder.
One person not shocked by the charges is the mother of Daosavanh’s baby daughter. Over the phone, she told ABC13 she depended on him to pay child support but that he hasn’t lived up to his end of the bargain, causing her to take him to court.
The HPD and prosecutors wouldn’t elaborate on what new evidence they obtained to allow for the murder charge after a decade. They also didn’t elaborate on a motive, but they are still hopeful someone will know where the body may be.
“It’s certainly going to be a challenge,” Knect said about the case. “But, I think that we’re up to the challenge, and we would not have filed this case if we didn’t think we can prove it.”
