On January 3, 1994, two men, Duc Cong Huynh (Vietnamese: Huỳnh Đức Công; 1955 – December 26, 1995) and Alvaro C. Calambro (May 10, 1973 – April 5, 1999), committed a robbery at a U-Haul store in Reno, Nevada. During the robbery, Calambro and Huynh, the latter who used to work at the store, rounded up two of Huynh's former co-workers, Peggy Crawford and Keith Christopher, and killed them by bludgeoning them with a hammer and tire iron. After the double murder, the pair fled to California, and they were later arrested in Los Angeles.
Both men were extradited back to Nevada and charged with murder, and they were sentenced to death after pleading guilty in separate courts. However, Huynh committed suicide while on death row before he could be executed, while Calambro, who volunteered and waived his right to appeal, was executed by lethal injection on April 5, 1999, in spite of the plea from his family and the Philippines Government for mercy.
Double murder On January 3, 1994, two men entered a U-Haul store in Reno, Nevada, where they committed a robbery that led to the death of two employees.
On that day, at about 7pm, the two victims, 21-year-old Keith Christopher and 28-year-old Peggy Crawford, were the last to remain at the store as they volunteered to close the U-Haul center at the end of work. While they were checking the pumps and locking the doors, the duo were attacked and held at gunpoint by two robbers, 20-year-old Alvaro Calambro and 38-year-old Duc Cong Huynh, the latter who previously worked at the store before he was fired several weeks before the murders. Huynh and Calambro, who was the brother of Huynh's wife, plotted the robbery since he knew that there would be money inside the premises.Calambro v. State , Nevada Supreme Court (United States).
After attacking the duo, Calambro and Huynh ordered the two victims to get on the ground behind the counter, and Huynh ordered Christopher to retrieve money from the store's back office safe. Calambro gagged both victims with tape and used the company twine to tie up both the victims side by side, before he first attacked Christopher by smashing his head with a hammer multiple times, and while he was bludgeoned, Christopher put up a struggle and was also injured in the wrists, hands, and legs. Calambro also went as far as to use a tire iron to stab Christopher's skull and separate it by nearly half. Afterwards, Crawford was killed by Calambro, who similarly inflicted multiple blows on her head, and stabbed her head with a crowbar. Autopsy results showed that both Crawford and Christopher died as a result of fatal head wounds caused by the beating.
After the double murder, the pair escaped the crime scene with $2,400 stolen from the store. In the following two weeks, the pair would commit more crimes in both Nevada and California, including the robbery of a Reno gun store, carjacking a newspaper delivery man and the robbery of a bank in San Jose, California. Two weeks later, the men became the subject of a high-speed pursuit by police in downtown Los Angeles, and the chase ended at the Los Angeles Hall of Records, where both Huynh and Calambro held a security officer hostage and engaged in a nine-hour standoff with the police before they surrendered. After their arrests, the men confessed to their involvement in the U-Haul murders.
Perpetrators Alvaro Calambro was born in the Philippines on May 10, 1973. Calambro and his family immigrated to the United States in 1983 when he was ten, and settled in Delano, California. While he was not a naturalized U.S. citizen, Calambro lived in the U.S. for 11 years up until his arrest for murder. According to sources, Calambro had a troubled childhood given that his parents neglected him and his seven siblings, and his father, who was reportedly mentally ill, was physically abusive towards his mother and also sexually assaulted one of Calambro's sisters. Calambro dropped out of school at sixth grade and worked in various jobs (including a hotel-casino in Reno, Nevada), and in 1993, Calambro joined a Filipino gang known as S.I.G. in Delano. Calamrbo had a history of truancy and arrests for minor offences.
Duc Cong Huynh, a Vietnamese immigrant and native of Saigon (present-day Ho Chi Minh City), lived in the United States for a number of years, during which he, at one point, became married to one of Alvaro Calambro's sisters, Maria Calambro, and therefore became Calambro's brother-in-law. Together, the couple had a son, Binh Canto Calambro. However, Binh died at the age of four shortly after Huynh's arrest for the U-Haul murders, becoming the victim of a murder-suicide pact entered by his parents. After Huynh disclosed the plan during a suicide attempt in custody at the Los Angeles Jail, authorities intervened at the family's Nevada residence. Maria survived the incident, but Binh died after his mother fed him a lot of sleeping pills and slit his wrists with a steak knife. As a result of their son's murder, Maria was charged, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, and she lost her appeal in 1998. Maria, who served her sentence at the Southern Nevada Women's Correctional Facility, was paroled and released in 2021.
Charges On January 27, 1994, a Washoe County grand jury formally indicted both Huynh and Calambro for the murders of Christopher and Crawford.
Aside from the Nevada murder charges, both Calambro and Huynh were also charged in California with various kidnapping and firearm offences, and they were sentenced to multiple life sentences after pleading guilty to at least 28 felony counts.
In addition to the murders at the U-Haul in Reno, Huynh was also charged with the murder of his son Binh, who died due to the murder-suicide pact he earlier hatched together with Maria during his detention at Los Angeles. He was set to be separately tried for these three homicides. Maria was also charged with helping her husband and brother to evade arrest from the authorities, and therefore sentenced to the maximum term of five years' imprisonment, which would run consecutively with her life sentences for her son's murder.
On June 3, 1994, Supervising Deputy District Attorney David Stanton announced that the Nevada prosecution would seek the death penalty against the pair.
In September 1994, nine months after their arrests, both Calambro and Huynh were extradited back to Nevada, and formally arraigned in court for the charges of murder in the U-Haul case.
Trials of Alvaro Calambro Guilty plea and first death sentence In December 1994, Alvaro Calambro first pleaded guilty to the murder of one of the victims, Peggy Crawford, but he claimed that he was innocent in the other murder of Keith Christopher, and a three-judge panel was set to decide on Calambro's sentence. On March 4, 1995, Calambro pleaded guilty to murdering both victims.
Calambro's sentencing trial took place on March 17, 1995, nearly two weeks after his guilty plea and conviction, and during the hearing, several detectives and a pathologist testified about the graphic details of the U-Haul murders. On March 18, 1995, the three-judge court sentenced Calambro to death for the murder of one of the victims, Peggy Crawford.
First two execution attempts After his sentencing, Calambro expressed that he did not wish to appeal the death sentence and hoped to be executed as soon as possible. On April 19, 1995, Washoe District Judge Mills Lane signed Calambro's death warrant, scheduling Calambro to be put to death on May 22, 1995.
In late April 1995, the Nevada Supreme Court issued an order to the trial court to appoint a lawyer to represent Calambro in a mandatory appeal against his death sentence. Reportedly, despite carrying out the court order, Judge Lane criticized the higher court's order and stated that it was an unnecessary chanelling of court resources to allow Calambro to file an appeal since Calambro did not wish to appeal and also wished to be executed.
On July 28, 1995, the Nevada Supreme Court affirmed Calambro's death sentence and rejected the appeal, paving way for Calambro to be executed on a later date.
On August 22, 1995, Judge Mills Lane signed a second death warrant for Calambro, ordering that he be executed on September 11, 1995.
On September 7, 1995, Calambro's family members filed appeals, seeking to halt his execution. The defence argued that Calambro had low IQ and suffered from schizophrenic disorders, and that his mental competency was improperly evaluated to determine if he should be liable for both trial and capital punishment.
On September 9, 1995, Calambro was granted a stay of execution, after he stated he changed his mind and would proceed with the appeal.
Second death sentence On September 12, 1995, shortly after Calambro's execution was stayed, Chief Deputy District Attorney David Stanton announced that he would seek a second death sentence for the murder of the other victim, Keith Christopher. The sentencing for this case was originally not carried out on account of Calambro's earlier promise to not appeal against his first death sentence for Peggy Crawford's murder before he changed his mind.
On September 20, 1995, the Nevada Supreme Court was set to appoint a three-judge panel to determine whether to sentence Calambro to the death penalty a second time for Christopher's murder.
In July 1996, Calambro's second sentencing trial began before another three-judge panel, and during the proceedings, two psychologists testified that Calambro had a history of schizophrenia and low IQ, which were factors the defence raised in their arguments against a second death sentence for Calambro. It was reported that in midst of the process, Christopher's mother wanted Calambro to be executed for the murder of her son.
On July 12, 1996, Calambro was sentenced to death a second time by the three-judge court.
Duc Cong Huynh's trial and suicide On March 23, 1995, Duc Cong Huynh pleaded guilty to both the murders of Keith Christopher and Peggy Crawford, and like Calambro, he faced the death penalty for his involvement in the double murder, and a three-judge panel was set to sentence him on both murders.
In June 1995, a three-judge panel sentenced Huynh to death for the U-Haul double murder. A month later, Washoe District Judge Mills Lane signed a death warrant for Huynh, scheduling him to be executed on September 11, 1995. Huynh's execution date coincided with the scheduled date of Calambro's execution and they were set to be executed an hour apart of each other, although it was possible that Huynh's execution might happen a month later than Calambro, given that his appeal would likely take at least a month in order to be resolved. Similar to Calambro, Huynh expressed that he wished to be executed for his crimes and to not appeal against his death sentence.
On September 4, 1995, the Nevada Supreme Court issued a stay of execution for Huynh, and it ruled that it was mandatory for Huynh's case to be reviewed and that his mental competency should be evaluated to ensure if he was fit to give up his appeals and be executed. Later that month, Huynh affirmed that he wanted to die for his crimes.
On December 26, 1995, 40-year-old Duc Cong Huynh was found dead and hanging in his one-man cell at Ely State Prison, where he was held on death row alongside Calambro. According to prison officials, Huynh's death was assumed to be suicide and this was his third suicide attempt.
Execution of Calambro Appeal and death warrants On April 17, 1997, Alvaro Calambro's lawyers filed an appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court, seeking to overturn the death sentence on the grounds that three of the four aggravating factors required for the judges to impose a death sentence were not fulfilled in this case. On January 22, 1998, Calambro's appeal was denied by the Nevada Supreme Court.