'Many years. Many beatings': Sisters confess to killing mother in videos played at trial

In separate, remarkably candid interviews with homicide investigators just hours after their mother was found dead, two sisters confessed to attacking her as she slept and killing her because they were "so angry" following years of emotional and physical abuse.

The admissions were made in videotaped interviews at Ottawa police headquarters on Elgin Street on Oct. 31, 2022, hours after one of the women called 911 and told a dispatcher and arriving officers what they had done.

Both interviews were played in court this week, and in them the two women — Chau Lam, then 56, and Hue Lam, then 59 — appeared to be wearing the same puffy winter jackets they've been wearing each day since their trial started last week (navy blue for Chau, black for Hue).

Chau Lam, now 59, and Hue Lam, now 62, have both pleaded not guilty in Superior Court in Ottawa to first-degree murder in the killing of their mother Kieu Lam, who was 88. The family came to Ottawa in 1992, and the sisters had lived with their mother since then.

In one of the interviews, Hue Lam told lead investigator Det. Guy Seguin through a Vietnamese-language translator that ever since the girls were little, their mother Kieu Lam was controlling and had a "hot temper." She couldn't speak, read or write in English, couldn't be left alone and wouldn't let them go out.

'There was pressure on me for many years'

Hue Lam said their mother's behaviour became more difficult about four or five years before the killing when she fell and broke her arm and hip, and stopped going out at all. Sometimes she yelled so much that the sisters went into the bathroom to try to sleep, but they couldn't get away from her there either because none of the doors had locks.

"Very horrible. Crazy, crazy," Hue Lam said.

"So she was very abusive," Seguin replied.

"Yes, correct."

Hue Lam wasn't able to work and wasn't married. Wiping tears from her face, she said her mother "cursed" her for that.

"There was pressure on me for many years," Hue Lam said through the translator. It came to a head the previous Monday, a week earlier, when Kieu Lam yelled at her, beat her and pulled her hair, she said. The sisters later made a plan to kill their mother if she kept yelling and cursing them.

'She knows my sister is sick, but she beat her'

After they covered the details of the killing, which involved a hammer and a piece of string made from a curtain, Seguin asked if they have any other siblings. Hue Lam said she had an older brother with a different last name. "Not close. Not close at all," she said of their relationship.

Seguin suggested it would be good for police to tell the brother what happened, so he won't have to find out through media reports.

"No, let him know through the news. If I don't like to talk to my brother, he has no right to talk, to speak," she said through the translator.

In a separate interview with now retired Det.-Sgt. Dan Brennan, Chau Lam corroborated the details her sister provided. Chau Lam confirmed Hue Lam had health problems and couldn't work, and that their mother called it "a shameful thing ... that makes people laugh at her," she said through the translator.

"The old lady, she knows my sister is sick, but she beat her, she beat her a lot."

'Thank you for being very honest'

The interview then turned to how the sisters planned to kill their mother, and the killing itself.

"Thank you for being very honest. I know this is very difficult, and I can see you're in a lot of pain right now," Brennan said.

"Many years. Many beatings," Chau Lam replied.

Later, near the end of the interview, Brennan asked if she has anything else to say or questions to ask, and she motioned no.

"You committed a crime," Brennan says, and Chau Lam nodded.

"And you're going to be charged with first-degree murder. It is the most serious crime in Canada.... This is a long process, it's going to be very stressful, so I wish you luck."

The only divergence in the sisters' stories was about their relatives. When asked by Brennan if they had any other family, Chau Lam said no.

"No brothers or sisters?" Brennan asks.

Chau subtly and briefly shook her head.

The trial continues.