Documents say evidence connects man to killing, burying of woman

MILPITAS >> A man charged with killing his neighbor last week, after the victim’s body was found buried in his backyard, was initially implicated because of his suspicious injuries and an array of bloody items in his home and in his truck, according to police investigators.

Court documents indicate that 34-year-old Michael James Dovlet was linked to the slaying of 59-year-old Tuyet Anh Phan after rapid DNA tests were performed on blood found on a bedsheet that Dovlet had hastily thrown out and on a mat in his pickup truck.

And in an investigative summary accompanying the official murder complaint against Dovlet, police state that Wednesday, one day after he was initially brought in for questioning — with several “fresh” scratches, cuts and abrasions showing on his right arm — he reportedly confessed to killing and burying Phan.

That same day, authorities exhumed Phan’s body. On Monday, the Santa Clara County Medical ExaminerCoroner’s Office confirmed that she died because someone broke her neck. A motive, and insight on how the two knew each other, remained unclear, based on a reading of the court documents. Police have only said there was no known romantic relationship between Dovlet and Phan.

The investigative sheet authored by Detective Michelle Sanchez generally affirms the account released by Milpitas police Thursday, but offers additional details into how Phan was thought to be heard screaming near her home at the Mobilodge Mobile Home Park on North Milpitas Boulevard several days before her body was found.

That screaming anecdote, however, was provided to investigators after the fact; no one alerted police when the scream reportedly occurred sometime after 4 a.m. on Jan. 29. A neighbor would later tell a police officer that she looked out her window that morning and saw “a male of large build standing next to Phan’s vehicle holding a shiny unknown object in his hand.”

Detective Sanchez wrote that video surveillance showed Phan driving away from the mobile home park, but that she never showed up for her shift at a local McDonald’s.

Police were first alerted that something might be wrong two days later, Jan. 31, after a relative of Phan’s requested a welfare check on Phan “because she had not heard from her for approximately four days.” Officers determined that her cell phone was still nearby because it was still pinging a tower in the area.

The following morning, officers conducting a missing person investigation approached Dovlet, who lived at the mobile home park, and he reportedly volunteered to speak with officers at police headquarters located about a halfmile south. Sanchez wrote that investigators simultaneously obtained a search warrant for Dovlet’s home and for his pickup truck.

During the police interview, Dovlet apparently elicited suspicion because of the scratch injuries on his right arm. The same day he was interviewed, a Santa Clara County Search and Rescue team with a cadaversniffing dog fixated on a dirt mound in Dovlet’s back yard “that appeared freshly disturbed and multiple shovels with fresh dirt.”

Also that day, officers serving the search warrant found a plastic mat with dried blood in the bed of Dovlet’s truck, blood traces throughout his bathroom and on a comforter, and a freshly stripped bed. Officers reported finding bloodied bedsheets in a recycling bin, and a shoe matching Phan’s size in another waste bin.

Blood swabs taken from the sheet, and the mat in the truck, were sent to the Butte County Coroner’s Office, which has the capability to perform rapid DNA analysis, Sanchez wrote. The tests revealed that blood tested came from a female profile. Police then obtained a benchmark DNA sample from Phan’s maternal aunt, and additional analysis reportedly found that the blood source recovered from the mat in Dovlet’s truck “determined the DNA to be from a niece of Phan’s maternal aunt.”

Dovlet was charged and arraigned Thursday, and continues to be held without bail at the county Main Jail in San Jose. The murder charge filed against him contains potential sentencing enhancements based on allegations that the killing entailed a “high degree of cruelty, viciousness, or callousness,” that “the victim was particularly vulnerable,” and involved “indicates planning, sophistication, or professionalism.”