HOUSTON — A judge set bond Monday for a Houston man accused of killing his mother 10 years ago.
Donny Daosavanh, 37, was arrested on a murder charge last Thursday, Aug. 2, a decade after his mother disappeared without a trace.
Amnoun Sayphanya, 60, was reported missing back then by family members who couldn't reach her.
Cold case detectives with the Houston Police Department reopened the case in 2017. Now, they say they've uncovered evidence that Daosavanh killed his mother with a blunt object on Aug. 1, 2014.
Sayphanya's body was never found.
“So this is an unusual case in that we don’t have a body and so we’re hoping that by filing this case and getting the facts of this case out there, that maybe someone out there knows something," prosecutor Samantha Knecht told us.
Daosavanh confessed to several people that he killed his mother, according to Knecht, but she admitted that trying the case without a body would be a challenge.
“But I think that we’re up to this challenge and we would not have filed this case if we didn’t think we could prove it,” Knecht said.
A judge set Daosavanh's bond at $500,000.
Records show Daosavanh was also convicted of assaulting a family member in 2010.