On Dec. 15, 2015, after a two-month trial and four days of deliberation, a New Jersey jury found Sui Kam “Tony” Tung guilty in the brutal murder of his ex-wife’s new partner, Robert Cantor.
Cantor’s sister, Leslie Padron, had been anxious about whether prosecutors could land the conviction: Authorities had no murder weapon, no DNA and no proof that he’d even been in the same town as her brother the night of the killing. It was a relief when the jury returned its guilty verdict, she said.
But last year, after an appeals court overturned Tung’s conviction over improper evidence, the anxiety turned to agony as another round of court proceedings got underway, Padron said.
“We knew he was [going] to put us through this again,” Padron said of Tung. “To draw this all up to the surface, to make it so raw all over again, was just horrible.”
For more on the case, watch ‘The Room Downstairs’ on ‘Dateline’ at 10 ET/9 CT tonight.
In her first interview about her brother’s murder, Padron spoke to NBC’s “Dateline” about facing the man accused not once but twice of murdering her brother — and about what it was like to observe the prosecution’s efforts to send Tung, 60, to prison for the murder of Cantor on March 6, 2011, at his home in Teaneck, New Jersey, just west of New York City.
Tung was convicted again in July, and he was sentenced to life in prison in November. He has denied killing Cantor, 59. In an interview after his first trial, Tung told “Dateline” he had no clue who was responsible for Cantor’s death.
“How would I know?” he said. “I’m in New York.”
Set off by an affair
Prosecutors argued that the killing was motivated by rage. In early 2010, Tung installed spyware on a computer that belonged to his then-wife, Sophie Meneut, and discovered her affair with Cantor, according to the decision in Tung’s appeal that overturned his conviction.
Meneut later told a jury that her marriage was already in trouble when she began…
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