“Society has lost a beautiful, compassionate and ambitious young woman,” Julie Pham wrote of her only child, whom she worked two jobs to support and raised alone. “My dreams of her finishing college, falling in love and giving me grandchildren are gone. I have a tombstone where I go to visit Vanessa, and all I can do is place flowers there and have a one way conversation.”
The letter was read by Fairfax County Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Casey Lingan as he argued for Julio Blanco Garcia, 27, to be given 49 years in prison — the maximum possible sentence — for “his greed, his malice and his evil.” Circuit Court Judge Jane Marum Roush agreed, imposing the punishment recommended by a jury in August when Blanco Garcia was found guilty of first-degree murder.