Linda Moore

Commercial Appeal

A man arrested nearly five years ago for a 1994 homicide has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and has been released from jail.

Phanhsay Phanivong, 41, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the death of 23-year-old Angela Perkins, who was shot during an attempted robbery on Feb. 14, 1994 near Mendenhall Road and Spottswood Avenue.

Phanivong, from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, has been in jail since his 2014 arrest on a first-degree murder charge.

Because his sentence is based on the law that was in effect at the time of the murder, Phanivong was eligible for parole after serving 30 percent of a 15-year sentence, according to the Shelby County District Attorney General's office.

He will serve the remaining 10 years of his sentence being supervised by the Community Corrections Program, which diverts felony offenders from the prison system and provides supervision to reduce future criminal behavior, the DA's office said.

Perkins' killing went unsolved until 2014 when investigators got a tip from Ngoc Baoco “Ice” Huynh. He was serving 40 years in Texas on a murder charge and told MPD investigators that he knew who killed Perkins.

Phanivong was 16 at the time of Perkin's death.

His plan was to steal a car or a car radio to get money to buy his girlfriend a Valentine's Day gift, Huynh testified during a transfer hearing in Shelby County Juvenile Court in 2014.

He tried to hold up Perkins, who drove past Phanivong in an attempt to escape.

Days after the shooting, Huynh told the court that Phanivong confessed to him, showing off a newspaper clipping and bragging that he'd "made the news."

Phanivong went back to Murfreesboro.

Over the years, he became a soccer dad, a former state employee and a graduate student, his attorney, Matthew Ian John, told the Juvenile Court Judge Dan Michael in 2014.

John argued that the only proof the state had was the word of Huynh, who was in prison for murder and was a "proven liar."

Phanivong was then 37. His case was transferred to criminal court, where he was jailed without bond.

According to news reports from 1994, Perkins had graduated from Ole Miss in August and taken a job as a waitress at Newby's on South Highland Avenue. Her shift ended at 6:30 p.m., but she hung around until about 2:40 a.m.

At about 4 a.m., a police operator received a call from a woman. All the operator understood was: "I can't talk."

With no way to trace the cell phone call, officers were dispatched to search areas near a busy intersection for a woman in trouble.

They never found her.

A passerby found Perkins body in the parking lot of 712 Mt. Moriah at 6:30 a.m., her Mazda RX-7 sports car nearby and her phone off the hook.

Perkins was a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority and a 1988 graduate of The Hutchison School.