Su-Ya Kim

[sdb4884]

Originally Posted by JamminSalmon

So sometimes I try to find the locations from Unsolved Mysteries. From what I've seen nobody has posted this location anywhere.

If Unsolved Mysteries filmed at the actual location.. here it is...

https://i.imgur.com/ovUL5KS.jpg


https://i.imgur.com/xwq9Z29.jpg


https://i.imgur.com/FaNUhhi.jpg



40.690892000258955, -73.93944021814055

This was one of the first cases I watched of U.M and has always stuck with me. I'd like to visit those sites, maybe if i'm in New York someday.

[MediaHoarder]

Just watched this segment so felt compelled to write something.

Starting with the motivation for the crime. I think it is significant that she did not live in the same borough as the store was located. Unless they were both on the border that implies a significant distance between them, at least enough to rule out any store association unless she was being stalked.

The crime may or may not have had a sexual motivation. As to it being staged to look that way...odd choice to say the least. Staging a home homicide to look like robbery gone wrong is a well known tactic, but staging a homicide to look sexually motivated seems more questionable. I lean towards her clothing being a removed either for getting rid of some evidence or for a purpose. Its possible that violence resulting in her death or some type of interruption forced the perpetrator to change plans, which would explain the lack of clothing but no evidence of rape.

Conversely, I don't see there being any significance in the number of stab wounds. 9 is well within what might be expected from a struggle that has no "personal" or "vengeance" overtones.

She almost certainly did not go anywhere with the car, but since this is NY that does not mean she had to have been in the garage when she was abducted/killed. Hard to say if the garage being relatively desolate made it a better location for the abduction than the crowded streets or if the fact that nothing was found there points to elsewhere.

Regarding the license plate and car. There is plenty of room for something to go wrong here. Guard gets a partial or incorrect plate, mistakes the model of vehicle, etc. So the car found on long island may not even be relevant. That said, the possibility that the exchange student lied seems plausible.

I don't see that the police failed here in any respect, they investigated the leads that were available, but most random crimes like this are exceedingly difficult to solve. As has been pointed out, crime in the 1980's was so rampant that even making it this far in following leads was an accomplishment.

One final thought. The perpetrator was wearing jogging shorts and a tank top, have to wonder if he was a runner. If so, that would fit with the police theory that he "knew the area well" like a cab driver would. Anyone who has been into running knows how well you can learn a city or area by running different routes thorough it. You get a slower, more intimate view of the streets than you get in a car, and pick up on things that you would otherwise miss. Just a thought.

[DALLASTEXAN!!]

I noticed someone on the UM website left a comment about the LISK on the Su-Ya Kim page. The eye witness description does not match up. The LISK is quite larger. others will point to the profile angle. I don't think the LISK was SU-YA's murderer. I would think NYC detectives are making sure they investigate other cold case crimes in the area?

[drew790]

^ to me that LISK idea just sounds like fan fiction.

Everyone else was a prostitute solicited from the internet and a random housewife store owner out shopping?

[MediaHoarder]

Originally Posted by drew790

^ to me that LISK idea just sounds like fan fiction.

Everyone else was a prostitute solicited from the internet and a random housewife store owner out shopping?

I think there is a definite tendency of armchair detectives and even investigators to assign blame to known offenders when it comes to cold cases. For the armchair detectives it seems to be a "closing the loop" psychological factor where they want to solve every case and find well known killers that are vaguely in the same region and assign it to them even if it is highly unlikely they were involved.

For investigators, writing a case off to be a known perpetrator, especially one that is dead, allows them to close the books on cases that may otherwise be unsolvable and improve their public optics.

[The_King]

NYC is big and a lot of people get murdered every day there. You really have to have an unusual situation for a murder to really get traction in a place like that (just see two serial killers names being dropped in this thread). That doesn't make Kim's death any less tragic or anything, but the police and media resources are just stretched more thin.

I think the circumstances caused some extra issues here. The husband of Kim wasn't interviewed in English, which makes me think his English is not that great. That definitely would limit some of the research on this one. The husband and the family went back to Korea, so there weren't people around to follow up on the situation and keep it in the news. We've seen in some cases where anonymous people would leave phone calls with tips but if the family is gone, they can't really do that. Had the husband not left, the chances of this being solved are much higher. Su-Ya's name was spelled wrong in at least one newspaper which further hurts the search for info.

As anyone who watches a lot of UM here knows, UM doesn't show every detail to a case. This was not one of the cases UM covered in great detail and it makes it so hard to come up with guesses on what happened.

[mphs95]

Originally Posted by Orange_Sody_84

What more could he have done? he could have investigated the incident further! granted he couldn't arrest the guy just for being suspicious but he could have if he had looked in the dumpster before the guy booked it. I mean c'mon... the Blood on his shirt should have been a Red flag.

"hey sir! you can't dump here!"
*w/ blood on his shirt. & wearing running shorts and a tank top all at an ungoldy hour* "I can't?"
"No sir. you can't."
"Alright than." *leaves*
*Guard discovers body*

Really? so the guard gets off the hook because he contacted the Cops after the fact?*sighs* i'm getting all worked up over it. Hindsight is a bitch. he didn't seem like the sharpest tool in the shed. and I guess it just really bugs the hell out of me.

Honestly, he did the right thing. How do we know that the killer wouldn't have went after Jones if he refused to let him dump? Yeah, he's stronger than Su Ya, but Jones didn't know a dead woman was in there at the time.

[DALLASTEXAN!!]

Originally Posted by drew790

^ to me that LISK idea just sounds like fan fiction.

Everyone else was a prostitute solicited from the internet and a random housewife store owner out shopping?

yeah in no way does it the bill, not even the location. as others mentioned, NYC area is a massive area by population and commerce. There is a lot of crime there.

[DALLASTEXAN!!]

Originally Posted by The_King

NYC is big and a lot of people get murdered every day there. You really have to have an unusual situation for a murder to really get traction in a place like that (just see two serial killers names being dropped in this thread). That doesn't make Kim's death any less tragic or anything, but the police and media resources are just stretched more thin.

I think the circumstances caused some extra issues here. The husband of Kim wasn't interviewed in English, which makes me think his English is not that great. That definitely would limit some of the research on this one. The husband and the family went back to Korea, so there weren't people around to follow up on the situation and keep it in the news. We've seen in some cases where anonymous people would leave phone calls with tips but if the family is gone, they can't really do that. Had the husband not left, the chances of this being solved are much higher. Su-Ya's name was spelled wrong in at least one newspaper which further hurts the search for info.

As anyone who watches a lot of UM here knows, UM doesn't show every detail to a case. This was not one of the cases UM covered in great detail and it makes it so hard to come up with guesses on what happened.

those are some good points, one thing that Su-Ya's case had going for it was UM. It is difficult for most victims to get media attention. I think UM and the NYC investigators had empathy for the situation and it was good of them to show it given the circumstances. You are right though about NYC resources most likely being thin. I think any L.E.A. can play that card when it is convenient for them and its not necessarily wrong of them because its true. The fact is that one has to care enough to go the extra mile to invest their time for someone in unusual circumstances such as language/culture barriers/etc. and that can be a slippery slope to climb for law enforcement because their jobs by nature already ask a lot of them.

[TheCars1986]

She was found naked and stabbed repeatedly. The motive was almost certainly sexual, IMO.

[Omar the Satanist]

Originally Posted by TheCars1986

She was found naked and stabbed repeatedly. The motive was almost certainly sexual, IMO.

You would think that at first glance, but there was no evidence of sexual assault.

I think this was either a thrill killing or a robbery gone wrong.

[DALLASTEXAN!!]

Originally Posted by Omar the Satanist

You would think that at first glance, but there was no evidence of sexual assault.

I think this was either a thrill killing or a robbery gone wrong.

not saying you are wrong. but there also doesn't have to be evidence of a sexual assault for it to have been the reason she was attacked. some men get violent when women don't comply with their advances and it goes that way. we've seen it many times over.

[1990 UM fan]

The killer's blood could have ended up on Su-Ya's clothes as he was stabbing her, so he discarded her bloody clothing.

Makes me think Su-Ya's murder wasn't his first, or at least not his first violent offense. He was likely in the system prior and didn't want his blood traced back to him. I would think that some would have ended up on the dumpster as he was dumping her body.

[tvscript124]

Originally Posted by 1990 UM fan

The killer's blood could have ended up on Su-Ya's clothes as he was stabbing her, so he discarded her bloody clothing.

Makes me think Su-Ya's murder wasn't his first, or at least not his first violent offense. He was likely in the system prior and didn't want his blood traced back to him. I would think that some would have ended up on the dumpster as he was dumping her body.

The composite of the suspect was so scary because it was fairly ordinary. This is a guy who is used to flying under the radar.

[Rayroy]

If the security guard was telling the truth, it was late June, so it could have been a humid day in New York.

When I hear people with some of their theories here, I wonder about their sanity, but yours in this case could be a possibility. They were married for 10 years. It's possible she could have been involved with someone else. Maybe the 10-year anniversary made her feel a little guilty and she decided to break up with him and he killed her like the Hungarian woman in Forest Hills a couple of years ago. When the witness is a different race from the suspect, I often wonder if they have a "They all look alike." thinking and give general descriptions. The sketch looks like Joel Rifkin, but he is 6'2" and the guard said he was 5' 6". 8 inches in height is too large to mistake.

Her car may have been in the garage because she was going near by shopping and maybe it was random. Then again, he could have picked her up if your theory is true. The girl who owned the car was likely lying. How does the security guard tell you a blue Nissan with partial plates and then you find a bule Nissan with the plate information you have? The car owner's race makes me think that this guy liked women from that part of the world. It is odd though that no blood was found in the car and apparently she was not wrapped in plastic in the dumpster, but the security guard saw blood on the ground. That's a very lucky coincidence there for the killer. Maybe he was able to keep her body in the car without dripping or he had plastic protecting it all. I'm surprised they never caught the killer.

You could see the pain int he husband's eyes. His world was destroyed.

Originally Posted by ddelta

Okay can we talk about this case for one moment. I was watching it on one of CrystalDawns set this weekend and I am absolutely perplexed by it all.

Just to recap, this was the woman who came from Korea and lived in NYC. Her husband and her had run two stores...one in Manhattan and one Brooklyn. She left her apartment one Saturday afternoon to go shopping and is not seen again. That night a security guard doing his rounds in Brooklyn, comes across a white male hanging around a dumpster. He is dressed in a running outfit with blood in it. After giving the security guard $20 to dump in the dumpster, he leaves. The security guard gets his partial license plate and make/model of car. Then he finds Su Ya Kim's naked body in the dumpster stabbed to death.

I was confused as to why Ms. Kim's car was located in her home garage not used that day. You have to assume she was probably abducted from her apartment condo.

I do believe the security guard and his story....don't know why, really I didn't get the vibe he was very smart and was being truthful He admitted that he took $20 from the guy.

Why did the partial license plate and car/model match up with a LI College woman's car who claimed she never used her car that night?

And finally why would this man be wearing a running outfit.

My gut feeling on this from the facts presented on UM (which are usually not a complete set of them) is that Mrs. Kim was having an affair with this man who was seen at the dumpster. Makes sense that he would be in everyday clothes, when something happens and he kills her. Mrs. Kim was also stabbed 9 times....that seems like overkill to me. Plus UM kept harping on the fact of how happy she was in her marriage and they had just celebrated 10 years together...I was wondering if that was the husband take on it.

Anyone else feel like this might be the case??