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Slaying Of Abducted Jogger Has Gibsonton Residents Edgy

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By VALERIE KALFRIN | The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 17, 2007

GIBSONTON - Jay Romer walked through the knee-high grass of an empty lot Monday, following the faint ruts of tires that last week led to a disturbing sight.

It was about 6:30 a.m. Thursday when he first heard the popping sounds, he said. Other neighbors heard them too. One thought it was a tire blowing out on Interstate 75, which runs behind the subdivision. Someone else thought it sounded like gunshots.

An alarmed phone call from a neighbor made Romer run outside to learn the true cause: A stolen van was burning in the lot at 9413 Bullfrog Court. Inside was the body of a woman investigators later identified as Cuc Thu Tran, 50. Tran, a manicurist, was abducted roughly an hour before the fire during her morning jog in Seffner, about 13 miles away.

The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office continues to piece together what happened to Tran. Meanwhile, her family, co-workers and strangers like Romer puzzled over her death.

"Nothing adds up," Romer, 48, said Monday, smoking a cigarette while walking a visitor through the knee-high grass to a tree stump where the van had burned. The front grill of a Dodge and pieces of a bumper lay on the charred ground. "Why here? Why would you come here?"

The sheriff's office has not released the cause of Tran's death. Tran's son had reported her missing about 4 p.m. Thursday, unaware of the burning van, investigators said. He had last seen her about 5:30 that morning, when she left the Grandview Mobile Home Park at 5220 County Road 579 in Seffner for a jog.

Deputies in recent mornings have stopped hundreds of motorists near where Tran lived and where the van burned, asking people whether they remember anything suspicious, sheriff's spokesman J.D. Callaway said.

Detectives do not know whether Tran jogged the same route every day or even whether she left at the same time each day, Callaway said. "We're just not sure," he said.

Relatives at the mobile home declined to speak to a reporter Monday.

At Lee Nail Spa at Westfield Brandon mall, where Tran had worked for about six years, co-workers set out a small offering of cakes, coffee and water for her hungry spirit, a Vietnamese custom. They also said they had prayed for her.

The blue 1993 Dodge minivan in which Tran was found had been stolen between late Wednesday and early Thursday from an Advance Auto Parts parking lot at 11850 E. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. in Seffner, about a mile from the mobile home park, investigators said.

Callaway declined to release the name of the van's owner, citing the open investigation.

The lot where the van burned is at the end of a cul-de-sac inside the Bullfrog Creek Estates subdivision off East Bay Road in Gibsonton.

Bullfrog Creek Estates is one of several subdivisions and mobile home parks along East Bay Road. Because the lot is tucked inside the subdivision, neighbors wonder whether whoever abandoned the van knows the area.

"Obviously, they have some familiarity with this area to have chosen that spot," said Robert Berg, 53. "We presume they must live nearby."

His wife, Vickie, 46, said they have warned their daughters, who are both in their 20s and live nearby, not to walk outside.

"It's just creepy," Vickie Berg said. "We don't even feel safe walking in our own neighborhood. … When I'm home alone, my doors are locked."

The couple and Romer thought whoever abandoned the van had escaped through the grass behind a neighbor's house and along the woods to East Bay Lakes, a nearby subdivision. They said they saw a trail in the wet grass and noted people often walk through the grass between the subdivisions.

A house once stood on the grassy lot but burned down years ago, Romer said. News reports show a 2-year-old boy drowned in the former house's backyard pool in 1999.

Romer said he has chased teens smoking marijuana and others "in need of a motel room" away from the end of the cul-de-sac. He hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary the night before the fire.

"It's been a quiet neighborhood," he said. "You feel invaded in a sense."

Reporter Valerie Kalfrin can be reached at (813) 259-7800.

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