In the quiet community of Waddell, Arizona, a horrific event unfolded in the early morning hours of August 10, 1991, at the Wat Promkunaram Buddhist temple. Among the nine lives tragically cut short was that of Somsak Sopha, one of the temple's monks. The brutal crime, which would become the deadliest mass shooting at a place of worship in the United States at the time, was motivated by robbery.
The victims, all of whom were Thai or of Thai descent, were discovered later that day by a
cook. They had been shot in the back of the head. The other victims included the temple's abbot, Pairuch Kanthong, four other monks, Surichai Anuttaro, Boochuay Chaiyarach, Chalerm Chantapim, and Siang Ginggaeo, a nun named Foy Sripanpasert, her nephew and novice monk Matthew Miller, and a temple employee, Chirasak Chirapong.
The investigation into the shocking murders eventually led authorities to two teenagers, Johnathan Doody, who was 17 at the time and of Thai ethnicity, and 16-year-old Allesandro Garcia. Garcia confessed that he and Doody had gone to the temple armed with a. 22-caliber rifle and a 20-gauge shotgun with the intention of robbing it. The pair made off with approximately $2,600 and some audio-visual equipment.
Both Doody and Garcia were charged with armed robbery and first-degree murder. To avoid the death penalty, Garcia pleaded guilty in 1993 and received a 271-year prison sentence. Doody was convicted in 1994 and sentenced to 281 years. Although Doody's conviction was later overturned on appeal, he was found guilty again in a subsequent trial in 2014 and sentenced to nine consecutive life terms.
