Note to readers • This story discusses suicide and intimate partner violence. If you or people you know are at risk of self-harm, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline provides 24-hour support. The Utah Domestic Violence Link Line is available 24/7 at 1-800-897-LINK (5465). Utah’s 24-hour Sexual Violence Help Line is 801-736-4356 (English) or 801-924-0860 (Spanish).

Provo • Keith Nguyen tried to plug his ears as the recording of the last 12 minutes of his daughter’s life played out in a courtroom.

But the sound of her sobbing and final pleas infiltrated his attempts. She begged the man she was dating to stop. But he didn’t.

In the audio captured on Rena Nguyen’s phone, prosecutors say Caleb Aidan Rees can be heard confronting her for talking to police about having thoughts of suicide. An officer had hung up the phone with her minutes before, according to court records, after a worried friend called for a welfare check. But Nguyen repeats to Rees that she wasn’t the one who called and that she didn’t tell police anything.

Rees says he doesn’t believe her. “When I say get the f--- off the phone with the police, I mean get the f-- off the phone.”

He then continues on to call her dumb and stupid, to tell her she needs to move out of his place immediately, to say she should be locked up at a “mental institution.” The courtroom was silent as each insult echoed over the speakers.

Nguyen’s last words are quiet. “Stop, please!”

Then there’s a click that prosecutors say is Rees setting a gun on a table, in Nguyen’s line of sight. It’s followed by the sound of his footsteps walking out of the room.

When Keith Nguyen heard the quiet, he knew what would come next. He wanted to walk out, he later said, or hum loudly to block out the coming sound. But he didn’t.

His wife and Rena’s mom, Rose Nguyen, sat next to him on the wooden court bench. Unlike her husband, she listened to every word while staring down at her favorite photo of their daughter that she’d brought with her. She visibly flinched at the end. They both cried.

Rena Nguyen died by suicide on Oct. 1, 2021. She was 20 years old, a promising biology student at Brigham Young University in Provo who dreamed of becoming a radiologist.

For the past five years, her parents have been pushing for some sense of justice in her case. That finally came Friday in what’s believed to be a first in the United States.

Rees, Rena Nguyen’s boyfriend at the time of her death, now 31, was officially sentenced for manslaughter — enhanced for domestic violence — for pushing her to the point of suicide, not only in those final minutes but for months of emotional abuse leading up to it.

Prosecutor Charlotte Howard and several attorneys in the state said it’s the only case like it they’ve seen in the country. Just one other, in Scotland, has been similar, where a jury convicted a husband in the suicide death of his wife after years of abuse; he was sentenced earlier this year to eight years in prison.

“Rena was not a victim of suicide,” Howard said. “She was a victim of domestic violence. Mr. Rees is culpable for her death.”

In response, 4th District Judge Sean Petersen handed down the maximum possible sentence — which Nguyen’s family had sought. Rees’ attorneys had asked for a shortened jail sentence, to include the time he’s already served, before additional probation.

Rees ultimately pleaded guilty to four felonies as part of a deal with prosecutors to avoid a trial and to have six other charges dismissed. The counts he was sentenced for Friday included two charges for the possession of firearms as a restricted person and one for possession of drugs with the intent to distribute.

Petersen ordered him to serve zero to five years in prison for each count. Those sentences will run consecutively, meaning Rees could serve up to 20 years in prison.

Petersen said he hopes that time offers a chance for Rees to reform after one of the most difficult cases he’s ruled on during his time on the bench.

“I’ve seen and heard some of the saddest and hardest situations imaginable,” he said. “… This case was different for a lot of reasons. This is a case that I, frankly, find disturbing on many levels.”

The audio, which had also been played during a preliminary hearing, “is nothing short of horrific,” Petersen said.

“The repeated threats, demeaning statements and ridicule, Mr. Rees, that you heaved upon Rena is just unnerving,” the judge continued. “To treat someone this way whom you have a close relationship with, gives me a lot of pause about your future relationships and the safety of the public.”

The victory doesn’t bring back their daughter, Keith and Rose Nguyen said, and they won’t be celebrating the sentencing. But they hope it’s the start of a move in the criminal justice system to hold perpetrators more accountable for domestic violence and where it can lead.

“Hopefully this will serve as a precedent for other victims,” Rose Nguyen said outside the doors of the courtroom.

As excruciating as it was to hear, they ultimately want their daughter’s final minutes to matter.

Previous police reports

Rena Nguyen enrolled at BYU after graduating early and with honors from her high school in the San Francisco bay area. She flourished, her family says, until the fall of her junior year in 2020.

At that time, her parents gifted her their old Mercedes to drive around Utah County. Nguyen cherished it so much that she joined a Mercedes club in Ogden to meet other fanatics like her, and that’s where she first ran into Rees, who was 25 years old at the time — six years her senior.

Howard, the prosecutor with the Utah County Attorney’s Office, said the relationship was tumultuous, with Rees taking advantage of Nguyen’s youth and naiveté and isolating her from family and friends. In many ways, she said, he went by the playbook of intimate partner violence.

Laurin Crosson, who met Nguyen weeks before her death, recalled at the sentencing Friday how she’d first bumped into Nguyen at a karaoke event in Provo. Soon after learning that Crosson ran a nearby safe house for those escaping sexual violence, Crosson said, Nguyen “clung to her” like a lifeline.

Nguyen started confiding in Crosson, she said, about Rees, including his drug use. Rees has four prior convictions on drug and alcohol charges, including one as a juvenile, his attorney confirmed during the sentencing Friday. He also pleaded guilty to one prior misdemeanor for assault.

“Certainly, Mr. Rees doesn’t present before the court today without a criminal history,” acknowledged his counsel, Evan Muir.

Crosson said Nguyen had tried to get Rees to stop using and selling drugs, including trying to get him into treatment. But he refused. When he was later arrested related to Nguyen’s death, police found six pounds of controlled substances in his apartment, according to court documents, and six firearms.

The two had dated for 10 months. During that time, Nguyen also repeatedly called police to report that Rees was violent toward her.

That started with a first report on Dec. 1, 2020, when Nguyen called 911 to say Rees was “wildly swinging firearms in her presence while intoxicated,” according to court documents. During the call, she said her boyfriend was “out of control” and that she was “scared to go home with him.”

She called police again on June 24, 2021 — this time to request assistance so she could safely retrieve personal items from the residence she shared with Rees.

While an officer accompanied her to get her belongings, Nguyen told him that Rees “was physically abusive to her and that he regularly used illicit drugs,” according to a complaint her parents later filed against Orem Police Department. That was also documented in a police report.

That same report mentioned that Nguyen said Rees had threatened to kill her the day before and had assaulted her multiple times over the past months, including holding “a gun to her face previously as well,” the police report said, and forcing her to have sex.

The officer had Nguyen undergo a domestic violence risk assessment, which found that she was in the “high risk category,” according to court documents. He allegedly told Rena that she’d usually be put in touch with a victim advocate, but since one wasn’t available, the officer “advised her to contact a victim advocate if needed,” her parents’ complaint said.

Police took no further action, court documents say.

Then, three months later, on Oct. 1, 2021, Orem police received a call from Crosson at around 10 a.m., saying that Nguyen had sent her a text message saying she had a gun to her head. Crosson confirmed that in her remarks at court Friday. And a screenshot of it was displayed on a screen; Nguyen had written: “I can’t keep doing this. I want to live but not like this.”

Crosson said the text came late, while she was sleeping.

“I wish I had heard the ping of my phone that night, but I didn’t,” she said, choking back tears.

After waking up, Crosson said, she tried calling Nguyen, but she didn’t pick up. Crosson called police and asked for an officer to go over to the apartment Nguyen shared with Rees. An officer called instead and spoke briefly to Nguyen, who refused to talk or give her address.

Minutes later, Nguyen had shot herself, and Rees called the police to respond. She died in a hospital two days later.

A landmark case

Nguyen’s parents sued Orem’s police department in 2023, alleging officers failed to intervene when they knew Nguyen was at risk. They also say officers didn’t follow the law after Nguyen’s assessment; they should have arrested Rees at that time.

That lawsuit was ultimately dismissed, with a judge ruling the officers had governmental immunity to the claims.

The Nguyens didn’t stop, though. They hired a private investigator, Michael Anderson, who uncovered several of the recordings on Rena Nguyen’s phone, including her final moments.

Those were handed over to prosecutors in Utah County, who charged Rees with manslaughter in August 2024 — nearly three years after Nguyen’s death.

“This is a unique case, perhaps the first in the nation, to hold an individual criminally liable for a death by suicide that followed an episode of emotional abuse,” said Jim McConkie, one of the attorneys who’d previously represented Nguyen’s parents in their lawsuit.

Richard Lambert, another attorney who advocated for the family, told the judge Friday that the history with police shows that the day of Nguyen’s death was not an isolated event, but part of a pattern of abuse over time that left her vulnerable and depressed. There is a direct causal chain, he said, that led up to her suicide.

Muir, Rees’ attorney, argued otherwise, saying that Rees was just an immature young man “being reckless” during one bad day in a relationship.

He also said Rees has expressed grief, shame and genuine remorse for his actions — and that’s why he ultimately agreed to plead guilty.

“He has accepted responsibility,” Muir said. “In the five years since this occurred, he has done a lot of growing up.”

Rees, wearing a lime green jail jumpsuit and chains around his wrists and ankles, sat quietly at the front of the courtroom Friday as the audio of his last words to Rena Nguyen played.

He also spoke briefly, reading from handwritten notes. He said he can’t imagine the pain of Nguyen’s parents.

“I know that recording says otherwise,” he said. “But that was just one day out of 10 months” in which he said he cared for Nguyen.

If he could go back, Rees said, he would have responded differently. He said he wishes he’d better understood mental health challenges at the time, but has since gained more knowledge. And he wants to make a difference moving forward.

“Oct. 1, 2021, will be a day that haunts me for the rest of my life,” he said. “I will never again make the mistakes I made on that day.”

His mom, Maribel Rees, also spoke and asked for leniency for her son.

But Judge Petersen said because of how “staggering” he found the case to be, he couldn’t order a lighter punishment for Rees. He hopes Rees does go on to make a difference some day, he said, and he’d let the state parole board decide whether to give Rees credit for the two years he’s already served in jail.

As he handed down his sentence, he looked directly at Rees: “I know you wish you could have that night back … but the fact of the matter is that a young woman with all the promise in the world died because of your recklessness.”

Remembering Rena

Rose Nguyen said she’s grateful to Petersen for taking the case seriously. Every day since her daughter’s death, she said, has been nearly unbearable.

“As her mother, I was the one who prepared Rena for her funeral,” she said. “No parent should ever have to do that.”

Rena Nguyen’s body, her mother recalled, was covered in bruises when her family buried her. “Knowing what she endured is a trauma I will have to live with for the rest of my life,” she said.

“There is nothing more devastating than knowing your child’s final moments weren’t filled with peace or comfort, but excruciating pain,” she added.

Every holiday and birthday is a reminder that she’s not there. Rena Nguyen’s younger brother recently graduated from college, and his sister wasn’t alive to celebrate it. Every day, Rose Nguyen said, she thinks about not getting a phone call from her daughter, who might’ve been excited now to tell her about starting a medical career or having a baby.

“The absence is permanent,” Rose Nguyen said.

The mother wore dangling butterfly earrings Friday to court, which she calls “a lucky charm.” They remind her of the butterflies that Rena Nguyen used to love to draw. She was passionate, too, about graphic design, skiing and ice skating.

Keith Nguyen said even just speaking about his daughter is often too difficult to manage. Writing the statement he read in court Friday was “one of the hardest things I have ever done.”

“I want to remember my daughter as she truly was: bright, kind, joyful and full of promise,” he said. “But since her death, nothing has eased my pain. … The grief never leaves.”

Moving forward, he plans to push for reform to have reports of domestic violence taken more seriously and ensure “we do more than just teach victims to escape abuse.”

The parents then carefully placed bubble wrap around the canvas photo of their daughter before leaving the courtroom behind.

Correction: July 18, 2026, 11:15 a.m. • This story has been updated to correct a quote from attorney Evan Muir.