Murder of Lê Hoàng Hùng

Tran Thi Lieu was convicted of murder with "vile motives" and sentenced to life in prison on 29 March 2012.

Lê Hoàng Hùng (1960 – 29 January 2011), a Vietnamese investigative journalist, worked for Người Lao Động (The Worker) in Tân An, Vietnam, where he covered corruption and crime. He was burned to death by his wife.

BBC News reported on 23 February 2011, Tran Thi Lieu, who was 40 years old, was in police custody and authorities had discovered that she had amassed debts of "one billion dong ($47,000, £29,000)" from gambling excursions to Cambodia. Police were conducting an "expanded investigation" to check if anybody else had been involved and were holding Lieu for 4 months beginning 30 June 2011.

While the killing of journalists seldom happens in Vietnam, Reporters Without Borders ranked Vietnam 165 of 178 countries on press freedom in 2010. Hung's colleagues in Vietnam had called for an investigation into his death because of his reporting on sensitive issues and police were initially also focused on this motive. This brought international attention to press safety concerns in Vietnam.

Police discovered that Hung's wife Tran Thi Lieu had a gambling problem, Hung and his wife had argued about money and that he had an insurance policy should he be killed. Police confirmed that Lieu did owe VND1 billion (US$51,000) from gambling in Cambodia. A source told Tuoitrenews that she wanted to sell the house to settle the debt but Hung refused. An unconfirmed source told Tuổi Trẻ that the victim had bought a life insurance with a payout of VND1 billion several months before his death. Lieu, as his wife, is of course the main beneficiary. Drivers of taxis and rental cars she used to on her gambling trips to Cambodia said that Lieu carried along VND30-100 million (US$1,500-5,100) in cash per trip. One regular driver even saved her number on his cell phone as "ZKC L.Casino". However, Lieu denied any gambling, insisting she went to casinos only to sell wet cloth tissues to gamblers there. Police found Lieu lied about the gambling. In 2010, she made 22 trips to Cambodia to visit casinos there.

The last journalist to have been killed in Vietnam for his journalism was Duong Hung Cuong in 1988. When the Committee to Protect Journalists listed Hung as a "motive confirmed" case after his death, this would have made Hung the first journalist who would have been killed as a result of reporting in Vietnam in 23 years, except it was learned later that he was killed by his wife for a non-reporting motive.

Fatal attacks against journalists in Vietnam have been rare. Most journalists who had died in Vietnam had died covering the Vietnam War, such as Larry Burrows or Dickey Chapelle. The last foreign journalist to be killed in Vietnam was in 1979 when Japanese journalist Isao Takano was shot near the Vietnam-Chinese border in Lạng Sơn. The last case of a Vietnamese journalist having been murdered on account of duties was Duong Hung Cuong in 1988 while he was being held by authorities.