Man was found guilty of killing two Vietnamese men in a Las Vegas hotel room in 2018

LAS VEGAS – A jury has found a man guilty of breaking into a room at a Las Vegas Strip hotel-casino and robbing and killing two Vietnamese tour guides in June 2018.

Julius Damiano Deangilo Trotter stood with his attorneys, shaking his head and glancing several times at the jury as the unanimous verdicts were read Tuesday in Clark County Circuit Court, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

Trotter, 37, faces a possible death penalty or life in prison after being convicted of murder, burglary and robbery with a weapon. He was convicted of the stabbings of Sang Boi Nghia and Khoung Ba Le Nguyen at the Circus Circus Hotel.

The same jury began hearing testimony and evidence Tuesday in the penalty phase of his trial.

Jurors deliberated for about three hours after hearing about two weeks of evidence and testimony, the Review-Journal reported.

They learned that Nghia, 38, owned a travel company with her husband in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Nguyen, 30, was Nghia's employee. Their bodies were found on June 1, 2018, after they failed to show up for a group tour. Police said hotel staff later discovered that her room's door lock was not working properly.

Trotter was identified as a suspect in the murders before he and his girlfriend Itaska Dean were arrested about a week later after a police chase in Chino, California.

Trotter was serving a five-year probation sentence at the time after pleading guilty to the felony charge of resisting a police officer with a weapon, authorities said. He was jailed in Las Vegas while awaiting his trial, which has been postponed several times due to the COVID-19 pandemic and pretrial litigation.

Dean pleaded guilty in California to evading arrest. She was not charged with any crime in connection with the killings of Nghia and Nguyen and testified at Trotter's trial.

Trotter testified last week that a friend who had given him stolen goods to resell in the past had given him items belonging to Nghia and Nguyen, the Review-Journal reported. But prosecutors showed video of Trotter in a hotel elevator with a backpack that police said contained a purse, two wallets, a cellphone, jewelry, watches and Vietnamese cash.

Prosecutor Michelle Fleck called Nghia and Nguyen “completely innocent people” who did nothing to deserve death, the Review-Journal reported.

Defense attorney Lisa Rasmussen argued there was a lack of forensic evidence and that Trotter's DNA and fingerprints were not found in the hotel room, the newspaper said.