A man pleaded not guilty Tuesday to murder and arson charges stemming from his wife’s death at their San Marino home.
Yoon “Kevin” Lai is charged with the Jan. 6, 2025, death of his 56-year-old wife, Irene Gaw-Lai, a doctor with whom he had twin teenage sons.
He was ordered held without bail Jan. 13 after Deputy District Attorney Alexander Bott added two special circumstance allegations — murder for financial gain and murder while lying in wait — at a hearing in which Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Shelly Torrealba found there was sufficient evidence to allow the case against the 62-year-old man to proceed to trial.
Lai is due back in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom Feb. 9 for a bail review hearing requested by his new attorney, Michael Kraut.
He had been free on a $2.25 million bond posted less than a week after his first court appearance until being taken into custody again just over two weeks ago.
At Lai’s first court appearance last year, Assistant Head Deputy District Attorney Habib Balian told a judge authorities are alleging that Lai beat his wife to death and then tried to cover it up by setting the house on fire.
The prosecutor said the two had experienced “some marital discord,” telling the judge that cellular site data and surveillance video suggests the defendant was at the home shortly before the blaze.
Lai’s then-attorney, James Tedford, countered that the county medical examiner’s office has listed the woman’s cause of death as “undetermined.”
The defense lawyer — who said Lai had been in “full cooperation with law enforcement” — said there were electrical issues at the home, saying that “more than likely we have an electrical fire.”
In testimony during the hearing earlier this month, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s arson investigator who reviewed the evidence testified that he concluded “someone intentionally set this fire” and noted that was also the conclusion of the original investigator, who was among three people killed in an unrelated explosion last year.
Tedford asked the judge to dismiss the charges, saying he did not believe they had been proven. He argued that he didn’t think the testimony was sufficient to “rule out an electrical fire.”
Bott countered that Lai’s wife had filed for divorce in 2024 and the defendant was aware of what a divorce would cost him financially, with the prosecutor calling it a “financially motivated murder” by the “only person who could have started” two fires that were confined to the den in the family’s home.
Jocelyn Gaw testified that her younger sister had filed twice for divorce and had accused her husband of having an affair, and had not withdrawn her divorce petition despite her husband agreeing to revoke a prenuptial agreement that was one of the conditions if the two were to reconcile. She said she is now the guardian of the couple’s two sons.
The couple’s next-door neighbor, Caroline “Connie” Chappell Morris, testified that she initially observed what she thought was steam and later determined was a small stream of brown smoke coming from a portion of the house after she returned from the park, where she had been walking with a friend.
She said she saw Lai “peering out the door” and heard him ask, “What’s going on?”
“I say to him, `Your house is on fire’ and pointed to the back,” she testified.
She said Lai questioned where his wife was since her car was still there and she was supposed to pick up their sons, telling the judge that he eventually said he had to leave and pick them up while his wife was still missing. She said he subsequently returned without his sons, who showed up later.
In a statement released shortly after the case was filed, District Attorney Nathan Hochman said, “The violent death of Dr. Irene Gaw-Lai is heartbreaking and deeply disturbing. She was not only a respected physician and business leader, but a mother who deserved safety and dignity in her home. We will not rest until the person responsible for this senseless tragedy is held fully accountable.”