THE DARK SIDE OF FLORIDA
Chris Madalone
#967308
photo courtesy FDC
Full Name: Christopher Anthony Madalone
Date of birth: September 19, 1972
Conviction: 2nd-degree murder
County: Broward
City: Coral Springs
Current Location: Released
Partners in crime: Christopher Anderson, William Madalone, Terry Jamerson, Brad Mills
Date of Crime: August 15, 1992
Release date: March 8, 2000
Victim(s): Luyen Nguyen
Date of birth: September 19, 1972
Conviction: 2nd-degree murder
County: Broward
City: Coral Springs
Current Location: Released
Partners in crime: Christopher Anderson, William Madalone, Terry Jamerson, Brad Mills
Date of Crime: August 15, 1992
Release date: March 8, 2000
Victim(s): Luyen Nguyen
It was a humid late-summer Saturday evening in South Florida in 1992, a few days before Hurricane Andrew barreled through. A group of teens gathered around a keg in a Coral Springs apartment. They placed the drinking game, Quarters, and tried to hook up with the opposite sex.
There were about 30 kids in unit 203 of Springside Apartments that night. The group comprised of honor students and gangbanger wannabes, metal-heads and hicks, stoners and boozers. Grunge was at its peak, so there were a few people in flannel shirts despite the muggy weather. Kids spilled onto the second-story balcony. A bottle of Jim Beam was passed around.
Shortly after 11 p.m., 19-year-old Luyen Nguyen, a pre-med student at the University of Miami, showed up with two friends, Jeff Sintay and Ryan Guerra. The trio hardly knew anyone at the apartment. They tried to mingle, but instead, got into a heated discussion with other partygoers about whether it was better to be in the Army or the Marines. Feeling unwelcome, Luyen, Jeff and Ryan left.
On their way out, Jeff thought he heard someone say “chink” and “sayonara.” The three friends stopped outside the apartment. Luyen was Vietnamese-American; he’d emigrated to the US with his family when he was six. Had he heard the insults? Jeff asked. No, Luyen said, but learning of them, the slightly-built youth was full of bravado and wanted to confront the taunters.
So he did. And a pack of young men punched and kicked him until he was unconscious. Luyen escaped from the crowd only to be chased down and pummeled again. One blow landed behind his right ear, at the base of his skull, fracturing his second cervical vertebra and lacerating the vertebral artery. This single blow to the neck killed him almost instantly.
The attack grabbed national headlines for its brutality, and also for the contrast it presented with the picturesque town where it took place. Coral Springs was a seemingly successful experiment in suburban utopia, carved out of marshland in 1964 and marketed as the perfect place to raise a family. Strict aesthetic codes – grass must be eight inches or less! – compelled tidiness. All the buildings were painted pastel tones and the streets were supposed to be quiet and safe. More often than not, the parents were affluent; their children, college-bound. Coral Springs was a privileged, sanitized, middle-class milieu. But apparently, it was also a place where spoiled teens sometimes drifted in search of alcohol, drugs and mischief.
With the world over its shoulder, Coral Springs police gathered statements from teen witnesses who waffled. When one suspect stood trial first, alone, Court TV broadcast his trial live. Ultimately, five young men who were at Springside Apartments that night would be found guilty of second-degree murder for their roles in the beating.
Bradley Mills went to trial first. He was sentenced to 50 years for the beating death of Luyen Nguyen – though he still swears he never touched him. Brad spent his first few years inside lifting weights and playing the tough guy, he said, but now his five-foot-eight-inch frame has some extra padding and he’s more focused on developing vocational skills such as plumbing. His left eye droops, a souvenir from the time he was shot in the face.
The bullet nearly snuffed out Brad’s young life. He was 15, the victim of a neighbor playing with a loaded gun. He was hospitalized for five weeks and when he got out, he had a speech impediment, a bad one, owing to the paralysis of parts of his esophagus and tongue. He said that he talked like Marlon Brando in The Godfather, and that it gave him a bad complex so he just stayed quiet. H was also treated for PTSD, though he likely received PTSD from another accident – when he was hit by a car while riding his bike at the age of 12.
In any case, Brad says he’s not sure who hit Luyen that night. After the first slap it was like Wrestlemania, he said. Fists flew but you couldn’t tell who was punching. It went by so fast, he said, saying that if the whole incident took as long as two minutes, he’d be surprised.
As he was going to the party that night, Brad came upon Luyen with Jeff and Ryan outside the apartment. The three were agitated, talking loudly. Brad asked them to keep their voices down so they didn’t bug the neighbors. He asked what the problem was. “Racial slurs,” they said. Brad asked them what they wanted him to do about it. Jeff, Brad said, suggested he call out the name-callers. To sort things out. They were up on the balcony and Brad summoned them. Next, a bunch of kids from the party spilled onto the black-asphalt parking lot and milled around the three friends.
Brad doesn’t remember exactly what Luyen said that riled up the party, but he does remember that Luyen was confrontational. Others said Luyen told them they were a bunch of drunks who would end up cutting his lawn. Luyen and his friends were outnumbered and outmuscled. Brad said he told Jeff, who he had known because their mothers were friends, to get out of there. Then someone slapped Luyen. It was a signal and guys pounced him.
The medical examiner testified at Brad’s trial. He showed the jury photos of Luyen’s bruised corpse. He spent 30 minutes detailing the insults to the body of the five-foot-six-inch, 139-pound pre-med student. Each blow could have contributed to a stunning effect, he said, so when the final blow came, Luyen was disoriented. His reflexes were gone. The cause of death, he said, was a subarachnoid hemorrhage due to a lacerated vertebral artery. In other words, someone whacked Luyen so hard at the base of his skull that they split his artery, killing him. It was an extremely rare injury, he said.
Jeff testified. He told the jury he saw Brad punch Luyen at the start of the brawl. Using another man as a stand-in for Luyen, Jeff faked a jab, twice, to demonstrate. But…it was almost just the opposite of what Jeff initially told the police.
Asked by police if Brad hit Luyen, Jeff said, “Er, I don’t think so.” Jeff told police that he’d met Brad before that night and said that Brad “was the one that was trying to keep anything from happening. He knew me and, you know, I guess he liked me or whatever. And he was telling me, you know, ‘Something’s gonna happen if you don’t take your friends and go.” A few weeks later, Jeff told a jury that he’d never met Brad before that night.
In subsequent trials, attorneys for three of the others accused would get their clients’ statements to police suppressed. The judge would rule that Detective Milford improperly used threats and promises to try to get confessions from the other teens. By the time the last set of defendants were on trial, Milford had been demoted for allegedly pushing a teenager’s head against the wall after the youth insulted him.
After Brad’s trial, four men were prosecuted together in 1994. William Madalone, who had given a graphic confession to police, was sentenced to life. Terry Jamerson, who admitted only to pushing Luyen, got 22 years. Chris Madalone, who pleaded guilty, got 16 years. And Chris Anderson, whose slap initiated the fight, got 13 years.
The last two defendants went before the judge in 1995. Derek Kozma’s confession, in which he told police that he kicked Luyen in the head four times, was acquitted by the jury. A few months later, Derek was charged with splitting the head of another teenager with a beer mug. Michael Barychko, the last defendant, said he caved under police pressure and admitted to kicking Luyen when he actually had only nudged the young man’s still body with his foot to see if he was okay. On the stand, Michael looked straight at Luyen’s mother and said that another youth, Dave Michaelson, kicked her son in the head as he lay helpless on the ground. Michael had told the police the same thing years earlier, but Dave was never charged. Michael was convicted of aggravated battery and sentenced to 18 months in prison.
To this day, Michael still insists that he witnessed the killing blow. “I saw a kid lying on the grass and people running from the body. I tapped him on the back to see if he was moving. I said, ‘Hello? Are you OK? Hello?’ I was standing over him when Dave Michaelson kicked him in the head.’”
Witnesses pegged the number of attackers at perhaps a dozen. Michael Barychko said that the police investigation was a clumsy witch hunt. Teens vouched for their friends and accused others that they didn’t like. Justice was not done, he said. Brad Mills agreed. “This is Coral Springs: big money,” he said. “Police had to make a move. I don’t believe they cared one bit about getting the right people.” “What happened to Luyen is terrible. For real it is,” Brad continued. “If I could change any of that, I would.”
There were about 30 kids in unit 203 of Springside Apartments that night. The group comprised of honor students and gangbanger wannabes, metal-heads and hicks, stoners and boozers. Grunge was at its peak, so there were a few people in flannel shirts despite the muggy weather. Kids spilled onto the second-story balcony. A bottle of Jim Beam was passed around.
Shortly after 11 p.m., 19-year-old Luyen Nguyen, a pre-med student at the University of Miami, showed up with two friends, Jeff Sintay and Ryan Guerra. The trio hardly knew anyone at the apartment. They tried to mingle, but instead, got into a heated discussion with other partygoers about whether it was better to be in the Army or the Marines. Feeling unwelcome, Luyen, Jeff and Ryan left.
On their way out, Jeff thought he heard someone say “chink” and “sayonara.” The three friends stopped outside the apartment. Luyen was Vietnamese-American; he’d emigrated to the US with his family when he was six. Had he heard the insults? Jeff asked. No, Luyen said, but learning of them, the slightly-built youth was full of bravado and wanted to confront the taunters.
So he did. And a pack of young men punched and kicked him until he was unconscious. Luyen escaped from the crowd only to be chased down and pummeled again. One blow landed behind his right ear, at the base of his skull, fracturing his second cervical vertebra and lacerating the vertebral artery. This single blow to the neck killed him almost instantly.
The attack grabbed national headlines for its brutality, and also for the contrast it presented with the picturesque town where it took place. Coral Springs was a seemingly successful experiment in suburban utopia, carved out of marshland in 1964 and marketed as the perfect place to raise a family. Strict aesthetic codes – grass must be eight inches or less! – compelled tidiness. All the buildings were painted pastel tones and the streets were supposed to be quiet and safe. More often than not, the parents were affluent; their children, college-bound. Coral Springs was a privileged, sanitized, middle-class milieu. But apparently, it was also a place where spoiled teens sometimes drifted in search of alcohol, drugs and mischief.
With the world over its shoulder, Coral Springs police gathered statements from teen witnesses who waffled. When one suspect stood trial first, alone, Court TV broadcast his trial live. Ultimately, five young men who were at Springside Apartments that night would be found guilty of second-degree murder for their roles in the beating.
Bradley Mills went to trial first. He was sentenced to 50 years for the beating death of Luyen Nguyen – though he still swears he never touched him. Brad spent his first few years inside lifting weights and playing the tough guy, he said, but now his five-foot-eight-inch frame has some extra padding and he’s more focused on developing vocational skills such as plumbing. His left eye droops, a souvenir from the time he was shot in the face.
The bullet nearly snuffed out Brad’s young life. He was 15, the victim of a neighbor playing with a loaded gun. He was hospitalized for five weeks and when he got out, he had a speech impediment, a bad one, owing to the paralysis of parts of his esophagus and tongue. He said that he talked like Marlon Brando in The Godfather, and that it gave him a bad complex so he just stayed quiet. H was also treated for PTSD, though he likely received PTSD from another accident – when he was hit by a car while riding his bike at the age of 12.
In any case, Brad says he’s not sure who hit Luyen that night. After the first slap it was like Wrestlemania, he said. Fists flew but you couldn’t tell who was punching. It went by so fast, he said, saying that if the whole incident took as long as two minutes, he’d be surprised.
As he was going to the party that night, Brad came upon Luyen with Jeff and Ryan outside the apartment. The three were agitated, talking loudly. Brad asked them to keep their voices down so they didn’t bug the neighbors. He asked what the problem was. “Racial slurs,” they said. Brad asked them what they wanted him to do about it. Jeff, Brad said, suggested he call out the name-callers. To sort things out. They were up on the balcony and Brad summoned them. Next, a bunch of kids from the party spilled onto the black-asphalt parking lot and milled around the three friends.
Brad doesn’t remember exactly what Luyen said that riled up the party, but he does remember that Luyen was confrontational. Others said Luyen told them they were a bunch of drunks who would end up cutting his lawn. Luyen and his friends were outnumbered and outmuscled. Brad said he told Jeff, who he had known because their mothers were friends, to get out of there. Then someone slapped Luyen. It was a signal and guys pounced him.
The medical examiner testified at Brad’s trial. He showed the jury photos of Luyen’s bruised corpse. He spent 30 minutes detailing the insults to the body of the five-foot-six-inch, 139-pound pre-med student. Each blow could have contributed to a stunning effect, he said, so when the final blow came, Luyen was disoriented. His reflexes were gone. The cause of death, he said, was a subarachnoid hemorrhage due to a lacerated vertebral artery. In other words, someone whacked Luyen so hard at the base of his skull that they split his artery, killing him. It was an extremely rare injury, he said.
Jeff testified. He told the jury he saw Brad punch Luyen at the start of the brawl. Using another man as a stand-in for Luyen, Jeff faked a jab, twice, to demonstrate. But…it was almost just the opposite of what Jeff initially told the police.
Asked by police if Brad hit Luyen, Jeff said, “Er, I don’t think so.” Jeff told police that he’d met Brad before that night and said that Brad “was the one that was trying to keep anything from happening. He knew me and, you know, I guess he liked me or whatever. And he was telling me, you know, ‘Something’s gonna happen if you don’t take your friends and go.” A few weeks later, Jeff told a jury that he’d never met Brad before that night.
In subsequent trials, attorneys for three of the others accused would get their clients’ statements to police suppressed. The judge would rule that Detective Milford improperly used threats and promises to try to get confessions from the other teens. By the time the last set of defendants were on trial, Milford had been demoted for allegedly pushing a teenager’s head against the wall after the youth insulted him.
After Brad’s trial, four men were prosecuted together in 1994. William Madalone, who had given a graphic confession to police, was sentenced to life. Terry Jamerson, who admitted only to pushing Luyen, got 22 years. Chris Madalone, who pleaded guilty, got 16 years. And Chris Anderson, whose slap initiated the fight, got 13 years.
The last two defendants went before the judge in 1995. Derek Kozma’s confession, in which he told police that he kicked Luyen in the head four times, was acquitted by the jury. A few months later, Derek was charged with splitting the head of another teenager with a beer mug. Michael Barychko, the last defendant, said he caved under police pressure and admitted to kicking Luyen when he actually had only nudged the young man’s still body with his foot to see if he was okay. On the stand, Michael looked straight at Luyen’s mother and said that another youth, Dave Michaelson, kicked her son in the head as he lay helpless on the ground. Michael had told the police the same thing years earlier, but Dave was never charged. Michael was convicted of aggravated battery and sentenced to 18 months in prison.
To this day, Michael still insists that he witnessed the killing blow. “I saw a kid lying on the grass and people running from the body. I tapped him on the back to see if he was moving. I said, ‘Hello? Are you OK? Hello?’ I was standing over him when Dave Michaelson kicked him in the head.’”
Witnesses pegged the number of attackers at perhaps a dozen. Michael Barychko said that the police investigation was a clumsy witch hunt. Teens vouched for their friends and accused others that they didn’t like. Justice was not done, he said. Brad Mills agreed. “This is Coral Springs: big money,” he said. “Police had to make a move. I don’t believe they cared one bit about getting the right people.” “What happened to Luyen is terrible. For real it is,” Brad continued. “If I could change any of that, I would.”
Source: Broward Palm Beach New Times