KATHY & SANDRA - CBS NEWS
International exchanges and expatriations are becoming commonplace in a world of constant movement. The desire to travel is growing, and it is no longer rare to meet foreigners who have made the choice to live their dream in a country at the other end of the world.
This is the choice made by CAROLYN JOYCE ABEL, who, at the age of 26, decided in 1988 to accept a position as an English teacher in Seoul at the ELS—English Language School.
CAROLYN has always had dreams of travel and escape. Upon leaving university, the young American goes around the world, living sporadically in Pakistan, France, Germany, before starting teaching English in Nepal. She eventually finds a job in Japan, where she meets TOMOYUKI AYAGAKI with whom she develops close ties until he proposes. Still young, and still thirsty for adventure, the prospect of a quiet life, married, frightened her, and to take a step back and weigh the pros and cons, she decided to go to Korea in September 1988, where she begins her new job, after leaving TOMOYUKI alone in Japan.
“My mother said in retrospect it was almost like [CAROLYN] knew she didn’t have a lot of time… She wanted to do as much as she could in the time she had, and not waste a second” – WANDA ABEL, sister of CAROLYN.
CAROLYN quickly starts her job, and sympathizes with her colleagues who show her Seoul and the surrounding area. She has a reputation as a funny and loving teacher, regularly singing with her students, and as someone sociable, perhaps too much, not suspicious of an unknown person. KATHY PATRICK, one of the ELS’s principal teachers, quickly became her close friend, travelling together, and meeting regularly to party in the Itaewon district which at that time had the reputation of being the red light district of the Korean capital.
On October 20, CAROLYN did not show up for work after leaving the day before at about 10:30 p.m. Three days earlier, TOMOYUKI took a plane to Korea in the hope of meeting the woman with whom he wants to spend the rest of his life, in order to ask her for an answer to his proposal. However, since they could not find time to meet, the Japanese will never be able to get an answer to his fateful question. KATHY, worried because CAROLYN does not answer the phone either, decides with some students to go to her apartment around 12:30, which to everyone’s surprise was not closed, and whose things had been turned upside down. In the room, KATHY is shocked to find CAROLYN’s lifeless body.
KATHY is the first to enter the apartment, trying to keep students from seeing CAROLYN’s body. The latter has numerous defensive wounds, and more than thirty stab wounds, as well as a laceration to the throat, from one ear to the other. Quickly, TOMOYUKI is suspected, the police considering revenge after CAROLYN has «fled» to Korea. However, his alibi quickly removed him from the list of suspects, who then refocused on KATHY for having found the body. All teachers and staff working in the ELS were also interviewed, with police even asking if some were sent to Korea as spies for the FBI.
One day, the teacher received an anonymous phone call saying that CAROLYN had been murdered by a US military officer deployed in the Itaewon camp. The Korean police brought in from the US JOHN BOATWRIGHT, chief of detectives of the Army’s criminal investigation division, to investigate the the camp, but it was discovered that the call came from a Korean woman who, upset at being left by the American officer, unfairly denounced him to make him pay for the breakup. The man was cleared, having never even met CAROLYN in his life. A few weeks after the murder, KATHY finally decided to leave Korea and returned to Washington, as police turned to another suspect also present when the body was found: SANDRA AMES.
Autopsy of CAROLYN establishes that she died from a knife wound to the right lung, and that her throat was cut post-mortem. It was also understood that the murderer must know the victim, as there were no signs of burglaries, and that two cups of coffee had been found in the apartment. SANDRA, having accompanied KATHY and her students on the 20th, was placed on the same list as KATHY as a potential murderer, and quickly took a lawyer after hesitating during her interrogation to answer “no” to the question “Did you kill CAROLYN ABEL?” She was subjected to a lie detector, which ruled that she was not telling the truth, and that she knew where the murder weapon was. Finally, after several days of questioning, she finally declared that KATHY had killed CAROLYN, then begged her to help her make it look like a robbery gone wrong. On the night of the murder, when SANDRA arrived at the apartment after being contacted by KATHY, she discovered CAROLYN’s still warm body and as a precaution, cut her throat.
« I went to the kitchen, got a knife, and came back, and I cut her throat to make sure she was dead ». — SANDRA AMES
Yet, in her official statement, she stated that it was KATHY who had committed this ultimate act. SANDRA would have only cleaned the knife and helped to mess up the apartment. Over time, she changed versions several times to become less and less involved, but five months after the murder, she finally pleaded guilty to harboring a criminal, being KATHY’s roommate, and to having suppressed and falsified evidence, In particular, by having cleaned the knife. She was only given a year in prison, but was released after six months after paying a judge to release her earlier, and returned immediately to Washington.
Another teacher, TAMARA DOAK, suggested that KATHY killed CAROLYN out of “love.” Indeed, KATHY would have confessed her feelings to CAROLYN, who rejected her not being lesbian, and in an already complicated situation with TOMOYUKI, and jealous of not being able to be with her, would have killed her. An arrest warrant was filed against KATHY, but no extradition treaty existed between the United States, and nearly forty years after the murder, KATHY was never sent back to Korea to face justice. From the U.S. perspective, since she did not commit the crime—which she is still presumed guilty of— on American soil, it is not possible to charge her.
The FBI asked SANDRA to help them catch her ex-roommate, but in vain. Since then, KATHY has accused SANDRA of being the real culprit and vice versa. As for CAROLYN’s family, they filed a lawsuit against the government and the American justice system to arrest KATHY, which again led to failure. The latter even tried to contact the family, but they were afraid of the potential repercussions and refused to meet. The American lawyer in charge of the case at the time, STEVEN SHROEDER, tried to charge KATHY with perjury, false testimony, or obstruction of justice so that she would be behind bars, but everything was dismissed without further action. She was never arrested and continued to teach for decades.
Although the crime of CAROLYN remains unpunished, the US Congress passed a law in 1994 to be able to charge all US nationals on their territory if they have committed a murder of another American, no matter which country in the world. Thus, if a similar case is brought forward again, it will be possible to arrest the culprit. In Korea, the case has since been dismissed and the limitation period has expired. The family of CAROLYN will never get answers to their many questions.
Journalist: Pillet Anaïs
Photos: under pictures
Sources: KSTATION TV
