In the early hours of August 10, 1991, a mass shooting occurred at Thai Buddhist temple Wat Promkunaram (Thai: วัดพรหมคุณาราม; RTGS: Wat Phrom Khunaram) in Waddell, Arizona, killing nine people. At the time, this was the deadliest mass shooting at a place of worship in U.S. history, until it was paralleled by the Charleston church shooting in 2015, which also killed nine people,^[1] and then superseded by the Sutherland Springs church shooting in Texas in 2017. As of 2024, it is the deadliest mass shooting in Arizona history.^[2]

The shooting happened at the Wat Promkunaram Buddhist temple during the early hours of August 10.^[3] The victims were all linked to the temple and either Thais or of Thai descent: the abbot, Pairuch Kanthong; five monks, Surichai Anuttaro, Boochuay Chaiyarach, Chalerm Chantapim, Siang Ginggaeo, and Somsak Sopha; a nun, Foy Sripanpasert; her nephew, Matthew Miller, who was a novice monk; and a temple employee, Chirasak Chirapong.^[4] Their bodies were found later the same day^[5][6] by a cook who entered the temple.^[7]

The victims were shot in the back of the head and placed face down in a circle.^[8] 17 spent rifle casings and 4 spent shotgun shells were found at the scene.^[9]

After the shooting, four men from Tucson were arrested. Mike McGraw, a patient in a mental hospital in Tucson, had called sheriff's investigators in Maricopa County, saying he knew who did it and providing names.^[10]

Three of the four men, some having been kept awake for more than 30 hours and all interrogated for long periods – one for 13 hours straight – by shifts of well-rested Maricopa County Sheriff's Office deputies, confessed in writing following the interrogation.^[7][11] The fourth suspect maintained his innocence through two extensive rounds of interrogation and was later released, after investigators finally looked into his alibi and found video evidence showing him working at a dog racing operation hundreds of miles away at the time of the murder.^[12]

It was later discovered one of the murder weapons – a Marlin Firearms .22 caliber rifle, which the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office had in its possession, but did not bother testing for nearly two months^[a] – was connected to two local teenagers, and had no connection whatsoever to any of the four suspects.^[10] Charges against the four, later dubbed the "Tucson Four" by the media,^[13] were dropped, resulting in a major controversy over the investigation.^[3]

Police found the murder weapon, a .22-caliber rifle belonging to a 16-year-old, in the car of a friend of 17-year-old Johnathan Doody, an ethnic Thai born in Nakon Nayok in Thailand.^[14] That led the investigation to Doody and 16-year-old Allesandro Garcia (born June 12, 1975).^[15] According to Garcia, he and Doody went with the .22-caliber rifle and his 20-gauge shotgun to the temple and robbed it of approximately $2,600 and some A/V equipment. Garcia claimed that Doody panicked, thinking that one of the monks had recognized him as a brother of a temple-goer, then shot all of the victims in the head with the rifle, while Garcia shot four of them again in the torso with the shotgun.^[4][16] According to Garcia, the crime had been planned and leaving no witnesses was part of it.^[16]

Both men were charged with the crime of armed robbery and first-degree murder. Garcia pleaded guilty in 1993 to avoid the death penalty^[17] and was sentenced to 271 years in prison.^[10] Doody was convicted in 1994^[17] and sentenced to 281 years in prison.^[10] Garcia, along with his girlfriend Michelle Hoover, also pled guilty to murdering Alice Cameron two months after the temple massacre.^[18]

Doody's attorneys later appealed, claiming Doody's father had not been present during the interrogation and that Doody's confession was not voluntary because authorities improperly administered the Miranda warning.^[10]

Doody's conviction was overturned in 2008 by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and again in 2011.^[4] Doody's second trial resulted in a mistrial in 2013.^[5]

The third trial concluded in January 2014 and found Doody guilty on all counts, including the nine murders. The jury based its findings on Garcia's testimony and circumstantial evidence. Doody was sentenced to 9 consecutive life terms.^[19][20][21] Johnathan Doody is imprisoned at the La Palma Correctional Facility.^[22][b]

The investigation process into the murders is now viewed as botched.^[23]

The initial arrests of the Tucson Four have generated controversy over how the investigation was conducted.^[24]

Initial suspect McGraw, while offering tantalizing details on the shooting for months,^[25] was later found to be unreliable, as he had a history of making outlandish claims while he was in prison in 1988. The investigators, despite little evidence that placed McGraw or the others anywhere near the crime scene at the time of the crime, deemed McGraw a reliable witness because they believed he was hospitalized as a psychiatric patient only out of suicidal guilt over the killings.^[26]

It was also discovered that the investigation was beginning to focus on Doody and Garcia following the discovery of the murder weapon. But that part of the investigation stopped after McGraw's phone call led to the Tucson Four's arrest – the actual murder weapon sat behind a door in a detective's office for weeks before being tested.^[10][11]

Eventually, it was discovered that the men were coerced into confessing,^[27] with investigators extracting false confessions by exaggerating evidence, badgering them with leading questions, and threatening the death penalty.^[24] A homicide chief for Maricopa County Sheriff's Office at the time said the interrogators hammered on the suspects until their will was broken, and that "after a while, they were willing to say anything."^[10] The Sheriff's Office also put great credence in details the suspects confessed to, stating that they had information which only the perpetrators would know; it was later revealed that the interrogators poisoned this part of the so-called confessions by placing the suspects in a staged room, complete with crime scene photos and written reports, in the hopes of rattling the nerve of the suspects before the interrogations began – which also fed so-called unknowable details to the suspects.^[11]

The initial suspects, excluding McGraw, later filed lawsuits against Maricopa County, and in 1994, two received $1.1 million each (equivalent to $2.3 million in 2023), while a third received $240,000 (equivalent to $493,000 in 2023).^[10]

Interrogation techniques similar to those used on the Tucson Four were also used against Doody and Garcia^[10] and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2011 that Doody's confession was illegally coerced.^[10] Gary L. Stuart, a lawyer with deep knowledge of the case, said Doody's confession never should have stood up in court at the 1994 trial.^[10]

The investigation led to public outrage over then-Maricopa County Sheriff Tom Agnos. It eventually turned into a campaign issue when Joe Arpaio, who was a former DEA agent at the time, campaigned on a promise to restore credibility to the office. Agnos was eventually defeated by Arpaio in the November 1992 general election.^[24][23][28]

• Mano Laohavanich – Thailand politician with involvement in the case

Citations

• Stuart, Gary L. (2010). Innocent Until Interrogated: The True Story of the Buddhist Temple Massacre and the Tucson Four. Tucson, Arizona: The University of Arizona Press. ISBN 978-0-8165-2924-7. Retrieved August 16, 2020.

33°31′50″N 112°25′47″W / 33.53064°N 112.42979°W / 33.53064; -112.42979