Nearly two years after Hopkins senior Linda Trinh was found dead in her Charles apartment, her killer has pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, confessing at a Baltimore Circuit Court hearing on Tuesday that he had strangled Trinh during a burglary.
Donta Maurice Allen, a 28-year-old former restaurant worker, broke into Trinh's apartment on Jan. 22, 2005, with the intent of robbing her, according to a prosecutor's statement presented at the hearing.
When Trinh walked in on the attempted burglary, a violent confrontation began that ended with Allen fatally choking the 21-year-old student who was found hours later face-down and unresponsive in her bathtub.
Allen, who was arrested in March 2005 on charges of first-degree murder and first-degree burglary, entered into a plea bargain that allowed him to secure a simple life sentence, a reduction from the life sentence without parole that prosecutors were originally seeking.
Allen will receive his official sentence from the court on Jan. 8, 2007. He is expected to serve approximately 15 years in prison, after which he may receive parole.
Defense attorney Warren A. Brown said that Allen decided to plead guilty when it became clear that the prosecution had enough evidence to convict him.
"The evidence was overwhelming, and he was overwhelmed with grief -- he was sorry that he took someone's life," Brown said.
Among the evidence accumulated by prosecutors was a statement that Allen gave to police when he was arrested, in which he admitted that he had assaulted Trinh during a botched burglary but had not killed her. Investigators also collected DNA evidence from Trinh's fingernails that linked Allen to the crime.
Brown said that Allen had not intended to take Trinh's life. "It was an accident to the extent that he didn't know she was going to be [in the apartment]," he said, "and he didn't wake up that morning thinking he would kill someone."
Assistant state's attorney Matthew Fraling refused to specify why the prosecution agreed to discontinue their pursuit of a life sentence without parole for Allen, saying that he could not comment on the case while sentencing was still in progress.
Brown speculated that prosecutors may have wanted to avoid a drawn-out and high-profile trial out of respect for the victim's family. Members of Trinh's family were present at the hearing and expressed relief to several local media outlets that the perpetrator had admitted his guilt without the potentially long process of a jury trial.
"[Trinh's] family didn't want to go through a long trial," Brown said. "And in Baltimore, you go to trial and I don't care how good their case is -- they aren't guaranteed a result. They get the right or wrong jury, and they could lose."
According to the prosecutor's report, Trinh confronted Allen after he broke into her apartment, and the physical confrontation broke out when she threatened to use her roommate's cell phone to call the police.
Allen then beat and strangled Trinh, leaving her in the bathtub in two inches of standing water, where she was later discovered by her roommate. The prosecution also reported that he took several purses with him when he left the apartment.
Brown said that his client had not sexually assaulted Trinh, and the prosecutor's report also made no mention of evidence pointing to sexual assault. To date, an explanation for Trinh's position in the bathtub has not been determined. Allen, Brown said, "did not talk about that, not to me and not to the police."
Having been a frequent presence in Charles Village, Allen was no stranger to Trinh. He had socialized with members of Alpha Phi, the sorority in which Trinh spent a year as president, and dated one of Trinh's sorority sisters. Before Trinh's death, Allen had been under suspicion for several incidents of theft.
A high school dropout with a history of depression, Allen also had a previous criminal record -- he had been arrested twice in Baltimore, once for the malicious destruction of property and another time for possession of marijuana.
Mixed responses to a case's end
The Hopkins community, which was left reeling by Trinh's death nearly two years ago, has responded to news of the closure of her case with mixed reactions of relief and continued anger at the perpetrator.
"I think it's great that there's going to be some closure to this, and that someone's taken responsibility for what happened," Rob Turning, the Greek Life coordinator at Hopkins said.
For Turning, the sense of closure is a particular relief because Trinh "was very special to me."
"She was the first [Greek] chapter president who reached out to me when I came to Hopkins three years ago," he said.
Susan Boswell, dean of Student Life, also said that the case's outcome spares Trinh's family and friends unnecessary grief. "I'm just grateful that people don't have to go through the agony of the trial," she said.
While Trinh's closest friends on campus -- her Alpha Phi sorority sisters -- have refrained from commenting publicly on her death, other students who remember the tragedy commented that the plea bargain prevented justice from being done.
"I think once you murder someone, you shouldn't be given any way to get out of paying for what you did," junior Adit Tal said in reaction to the guilty plea.
Matt Ruegger, a senior, agreed. The plea bargain, he said, "seems lenient to me, but I guess that's just the nature of the legal system."
Trinh's death came just nine months after the homicide of another Hopkins student, Christopher Elser, who was killed during a burglary at the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity in April 2004. His case remains unsolved.
