Suspect in killings of Oberlin professor, wife held on $3 million bond

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — An Oberlin College professor and his wife are dead, and the educator’s 31-year-old child is being held on a $3 million bond and facing murder charges in their deaths.

The bodies of Pipo Nguyen-Duy, 64, a studio art and photography professor and acclaimed fine art photographer, and his wife, Tran Thi Nam Phong, 56, were found shot in their home a few blocks off campus on Wednesday, according to police. The professor was on the first floor of the home, his wife on the second.

Asia Nguyen-Duy, previously known as Daniel Jones, of Ashland, Oregon, was arraigned Thursday on charges of murder, felonious assault and tampering with evidence, according to court filings. A motive has not yet been released.

The younger Nguyen-Duy, face tattooed and bloodied, was initially carried into the municipal courtroom before later being wheeled in a chair. The suspect said they are gender neutral and no longer go by the name Daniel Jones. Identification found in a car that police found set afire near the college’s conservatory of music, which led them to the scene of the crime, listed the name Daniel Jones.

Oberlin City Prosecutor Zachary Simonoff told the judge that the accused had offered a confession to the crimes and led them to the father and stepmother’s address.

Simonoff also told Oberlin Municipal Court Judge Farah Emeka that the defendant’s mother had been in touch with police to let them know that her child was “currently psychotic” and needed medication. A message was left with Asia’s attorney.

The case has been bound over to Lorain County Common Pleas Court, where it will next go before a grand jury. The suspect is being held in the Lorain County Jail.

The deaths have rocked the private liberal arts college, where students had just returned this week from fall break.

Studio art classes were paused or modified in the wake of the professor’s death. An exhibit of his internationally acclaimed photography was placed on display at the campus art museum to provide students, alumni and collaborators a place to gather and reflect. A memorial tribute for Nguyen-Duy, who arrived at Oberlin in 1998, also is being planned.

Digital forums for sharing condolences and memories also were set up by Oberlin and some regional institutions, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland.

Carmen Twillie Ambar, president of Oberlin College and Conservatory, called it “a deeply challenging moment for our community.”

“Tragedies such as this one intrude upon our lives in jarring ways,” she wrote in an open letter. “I am simply overwhelmed with sadness, and I am deeply concerned about the impact of the devastating loss of Pipo to our community.”

Pipo Nguyen-Duy was also mourned by the Guggenheim Foundation, where he was a 2011 photography fellow. The foundation said he immigrated to the U.S. from Vietnam in 1975 and took up photography in his late 20s. He had a bachelor’s degree in economics from Carleton College and both a master of arts and a master of fine arts degrees from the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque.

“In his wide-ranging body of work, Nguyen-duy considered immigration and emigration, intimacy, abandonment and decay, cultural assimilation, and the cost of war,” the foundation said on Instagram.