John van Trung Tran

VICTIMS: 5

1987 could almost be called the year of Mass Murder in Australia. Up until then we had no real gun massacres, but in that year first there was Julian Knight then Frank Vitkovich. Here in Australia these two are considered the pioneers of Mass Murder, but one man overlooked by the mass media is John Tran.

John Tran was engaged to Lieu Huynh until late September, 1987, when she broke it off and immediately became engaged to another man. Not surprisingly this annoyed Tran a little, and he swore revenge on her. He instantly went into planning mode and her demise was sealed.

Tran's plan was acted out on October 10, 1987, when he showed up at the backdoor of his ex's families home in Canley Vale, a suburb of Sydney.

The first to feel his wrath was Thuan Huynh,63, Lieu's father. He was shot repeatedly in the head and body until he managed to escape to the back yard, where he died.

Tran then stormed through the house killing Lieu's mother, one sister and one brother along the way. Lieu's other brother was seriously wounded as well.

Eventually Tran found what he was looking for, the whore who had humiliated him. He finished her with one shot, then raised the gun to his head and did as all good mass murderers do, blew his brains out.

Amusingly, kind of, Tran could have easily killed Lieu's two other sisters, who were in the room when he killed himself, but as he had completed his mission, he chose not to. I bet the surviving sisters wished that Lieu had opened the door, meaning they would still have a family.