A California doctor was beaten with a frying pan before being set alight in her $2.6 million mansion after asking her husband to void their prenup, prosecutors say.
Irene Gaw-Lai, 56, was found in the torched den of the San Marino home where she and her estranged husband Yoon ‘Kevin’ Lai, 63, shared 16-year-old twin boys.
Six months after the horror unfolded on January 6, Lai was charged with his wife’s murder after investigators found she had been brutally beaten and suffered injuries including a broken nose, fractured eye socket and a lost tooth.
A frying pan believed to have been used was found next to a metal baseball bat, both of which had traces of blood on them, according to a death investigation summary filed in court.
The room where she was found had then been set on fire, and Gaw-Lai was found to have burns across 60 percent of her body.
According to court records reviewed by the LA Times, the shock death was the conclusion of a turbulent 22-year marriage between the couple that included multiple divorce filings.
In the most recent filing in August 2024, Gaw-Lai asked a judge to revoke the couple’s premarital agreement because she said she had discovered several properties that the couple owned but were solely under her estranged husband’s name.
Relatives told the Times that the couple had talked about reconciling, but Gaw-Lai had made a series of demands of her husband including that he void their prenup and put her name on all their properties.
In text messages included in court filings, Gaw-Lai told her brother that Lai was ‘begging me to come back’ after she filed for divorce last year.
When she told her brother about the demands, which also included requiring Lai to go to therapy, her brother asked: ‘That seems a lot, do you think he’ll agree?’
‘It depends on what’s more important to him…’ she responded.
Their premarital agreement was officially ended in September 2024, and Gaw-Lai’s name was added to their property empire, which included a number of real estate investments.
But relatives revealed that Gaw-Lai was still planning to go ahead with the divorce.
She warned relatives that she was increasingly fearful of her husband, and said she was afraid ‘for her safety if she was left alone with Kevin’, one of the court filings said.
Lai had moved out of their home but often stopped by to drive their twins to baseball practice and events, and Gaw-Lai would always make sure her boys were around her when he arrived, relatives said.
On the morning of the doctor’s death, Lai arrived around 7am to take the twins to baseball practice.
Six minutes later, data from their Ring doorbell cameras indicated that sensors for the dining room and garden cameras – which pointed to where Gaw-Lai’s body was found – were ‘manually disabled’, court records said.
Lai then told his sons that he was going to work after dropping them at practice, but Ring camera footage showed a car similar to Lai’s returning to the area at 8:19am, the LA Times reported.
Cops were called to the area at 9:46am after a neighbor said she saw smoke coming from the home, and the neighbor said that she saw Lai inside.
The neighbor said she briefly talked with Lai, who seemed ‘bewildered’ when she mentioned the smoke before saying that his wife was picking the twins up from baseball practice.
The neighbor added that she saw Gaw-Lai’s car still outside the home, per the reported court documents.
When firefighters raced to the home and found the mother’s body in the den of the home, they said they found two ignition points – one next to her body and another about six feet away.
According to a death investigation summary, Gaw-Lai had suffered blunt force trauma to the head before being set on fire.
That night, the couple’s 16-year-old sons spent the night with their aunt as they said they did not want to be around their father, family court records said.
‘They were afraid,’ Gaw-Lai’s attorney, and cousin, said.
Lai is now facing charges of murder and arson, which he has pleaded not guilty to. He has been released on a $2.25 million bail, and his attorney told the Times that he ‘looks forward to defending these false allegations in court.’
Gaw-Lai had her own medical practice in Arcadia, and her patients have been leaving tributes on the business’ Yelp page.
