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| “Lost and Forgotten?” |  |
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| November
1, 2001 It’s nearly four in the morning when Stacy Paik pulls up outside Building 17 of the State College Park Apartments. A blue moon hangs in the autumn sky. The complex, a typical series of identically modern, three-story buildings, is quiet. All of the Halloween goblins and witches have long ago retired to assess the evening’s rewards. Alone in the parking lot, the bunny rabbit is easy to spot. Paik says goodnight and watches as her friend, weary from an evening of rinking and dancing, walks away toward her empty apartment. Dressed in brown knee-high boots, a short white skirt, a pink sleeveless top and a red hooded jacket, complete with ears and a cottontail, Cindy makes her way up the stairs as Paik drives away. The rabbit is never seen again. Three days later, a Saturday, Cindy Song’s friends reported her missing after she failed to show up for classes and work. By that time, Cindy was long gone. You do remember Cindy (HyunJung) Song? She is, of course. the South Korean-born Penn State student whose Halloween vanishing act has since proven worthy of any Las Vegas magician, shocking friends and family and leaving local, state and federal authorities stupefied. To this day, there is no solid evidence, suspects or significant leads. No one knows what happened except, without the aid of smoke or mirrors, Cindy Song did the impossible. She simply ceased to be. Cindy Song is dead. At least that is the common opinion among her fellow students and local observers. Although her case is still officially classified as a missing persons investigation, police are treating it as a homicide. The apparent lack of progress in the frustrating and often bizarre investigation has also helped transform Cindy’s case from front-page news into another unfortunate footnote in a local history stained with several prominent, unsolved and subsequently forgotten crimes against young women. The situation looks increasingly unfavorable for those trying to keep Cindy’s case in the public eye. In the past two years, nearly all of her friends and classmates have graduated and moved away. People who knew her and have a personal interest in her whereabouts are as scarce as the missing posters which once adorned virtually every shop window and bulletin board in Centre County. The remaining cobwebbed and tattered few serve as haunting reminders of just how long she has been gone. Even the second anniversary of her disappearance, last October, was marked by an obvious decline in community interest. Despite the recovery of several garbage bags of human remains from the Luzerne County home of a convicted bank robber and a subsequent flourish of police activity, there were no public vigils in her honor. Local media, which once urged residents to keep Cindy alive in their hearts and minds, fell silent. Yet a glimmer of hope can cut through the seemingly impenetrable haze of probability to illuminate the outermost possibilities. It’s a lesson the ntire nation learned just months ago when 15-year-old Elizabeth Smart was returned to her family after nearly a year in the hands of her kidnappers. In Utah, faith, public awareness, determination and luck combined with hope to produce miraculous results. It’s something that could happen here. With an already cold case developing freezer burn and public interest waning, several people involved in the investigation, and some of those closest to Cindy, have agreed—many for the first time—to share their stories. searching for cindy Three days passed before Cindy’s friends reported her missing, but the Ferguson Township Police didn’t rush to initiate a manhunt. It wouldn’t be the first time a college student took off for a weekend without telling anyone. Another two days passed before the case landed on the desk of Detective Brian Sprinkle. The hunt was on. But Cindy’s trail only grew colder as police, family and friends waited for her to return. More than a week after she was reported missing, Cindy’s mother, Bansoon Song, a delicate woman who wears her grief in circles below her eyes, traveled more than 6,800 miles from Seoul, South Korea, to State College. She immediately met with detectives and Penn State officials, while olice and volunteers, equipped with bloodhounds and helicopters, conducted several fruitless searches of local parks and wooded areas throughout the community. On November 20, Cindy’s brother, Kiho Song, also made the trip from Seoul. The following week, Penn State’s Black Caucus held a meeting to organize student efforts to help find Cindy. Finally, in early December, the police received what seemed to be their first break—more than 200 miles east of State College. A woman claimed to have seen a young Asian woman, resembling Cindy, in a vehicle parked in downtown Philadelphia in late October or early November. According to the Song family’s attorney, the informant claimed the young woman was crying, “ Help me! Help me!” When she approached to offer assistance, a dark-skinned man climbed out of the driver’s seat yelling, “Get out of here! It is none of your business.” The woman later told authorities she might have seen the man adjusting what could have been restraints on the young woman’s legs. FBI agents interviewed the woman, and local detectives eventually discounted the lead, pointing to several discrepancies in the woman’s story. Shortly after the tip was received, Penn State officials met with Song family members and announced a $27,000 reward for information regarding Cindy’s whereabouts. Approximately one week later, in an attempt to further publicize the case, Cindy’s friends sent an e-mail petition to major media outlets and, by December 22, both the Pittsburgh Post Gazette and the Philadelphia Enquirer published new articles. In early January, frustrated by the lack of progress, the Song family hired a private investigator and on the 15th, Cindy’s family called a press conference to complain about the lack of media attention and the slow progress of the investigation. On the last day of the month, the Song family, their attorney Jin Han and the Black Caucus held another press conference in the Penn State student center, condemning the police for dismissing the Philadelphia lead and criticizing university officials for failing to use their influence. Later that day, the university offered to provide Cindy’s mother with housing and an e-mail account. In an attempt to placate the Song family, the Ferguson Township Police Department released the details and a sketch of the dark-skinned man to the media, more than a month after receiving the Philadelphia tip. On February 21, Kiho Song returned to South Korea while Han sent letters to the White House, governor and various other state officials detailing the Song family’s problems with the investigation. In mid March, nearly four months after Cindy disappeared, state police crime scene investigators conducted the first forensic sweep of her apartment. Although no blood was found, police attempted to collect several samples of Cindy’s DNA with the hope of later using it to identify a body. However, prior to the search, neither her bedroom nor the apartment had been sealed off and friends, roommates and family members continued to use the apartment and her room, contaminating the scene. According to police, shortly after arriving in State College, Bansoon cleaned her daughter’s bedroom, unwittingly destroying potentially valuable evidence in the process. The apartment, since rented to new tenants, has never been considered a crime scene; as no evidence exists that any crime actually occurred on the premises. More than six months had passed when Ferguson Township Detective Sprinkle recruited a psychic to help find Cindy. The move, covered by media outlets throughout Pennsylvania, raised the ire of Song’s family and community members who charged police with compromising the investigation. In late May, led by a group of Cindy’s family and friends, more than 16,000 people signed a petition that asked the governor to take charge and to reassign the case to the state police. The Song family delivered the petition during a meeting with Governor Schweiker’s representatives and the Pennsylvania State Police. The officials refused to undercut Sprinkle, but promised assistance. The Pennsylvania State Police were ordered to join the investigation and a taskforce was established. Finally, on October 30, days before the one-year anniversary of Song’s disappearance, police agencies and the Song family held a joint press conference to announce that they still had no viable leads and to appeal for public assistance. watching the detectives It is early afternoon, one year to the day of Cindy’s disappearance, when Detective Sprinkle’s phone rings. Despite today’s symbolic anniversary, he has yet to spend any time searching for Cindy. He has a full caseload and limited hours. Behind him, on the floor, a large cardboard box contains all of the information related to the Song case that the FTPD has compiled in the past year. Sprinkle doesn’t offer to open the box but as lead detective, it is his duty to announce that the investigation has yet to yield any solid evidence, leads or suspects. In other words, Detective Sprinkle’s box may as well be empty. The lack of progress is not a new development. In the past year the detective’s management of the Song investigation has been the focus of most of the controversy surrounding the case. This interview in his office is an opportunity for him to go on record with his side of the story. Leaning back as far as his chair will allow, he props his feet up on the desk, pinning the phone between his ear and shoulder. He launches into a flirtatious, off-color conversation with Carla Baron, the psychic he enlisted to aid the investigation. A dry erase board positioned across from his desk lists the 11 open cases the detective is currently working. “SONG” is inscribed in big black letters across the top. Detective Sprinkle laughs again. From the wall behind him, presiding over the scene, a grinning Barney Fife looks as if he might blush. The black and white framed poster has been altered; Fife’s nametag reads “Sprinkle.” Episodes like this seem to reinforce the criticism aimed at Detective Sprinkle and the FTPD. In the past year many fingers have been pointed in their direction, most notably those of the more than 16,000 petitioners calling for the case to be reassigned, creating publicity in a case that has had few other newsworthy developments. Bungling, foot dragging, incompetence and insensitivity have topped the list, but some, including leaders of Penn State’s Black Caucus, have gone so far as to imply that investigators may be acting with racial bias. “Her race had nothing to do with how the investigation was handled,” Detective Sprinkle says with resignation. “We handled the investigation the same as we would for any other resident of Ferguson Township. It didn’t matter that she was Asian and it didn’t matter that she was a student.” It has been a tough year for the detective. With special training in missing persons cases, Sprinkle has worked other investigations of this nature but none of this magnitude. Of course, no one ever claimed this case was a slam-dunk. After all, Cindy was last seen six days before the case landed on his desk. “It was a cold case from the start,” he says. The detective worked the case full-time for the first five months but was forced to waste a lot of valuable time chasing down bogus leads. On two separate occasions, taunting phone calls and AOL Instant Messages to local residents turned out to be hoaxes. A couple hundred well-meaning citizens did call in with tips. Two of them claimed to have spotted Cindy in the television audience of “Live with Regis and Kelly.” Then there was an elderly man from a Nanty Glo, Pa., convenience store, who claimed he saw Cindy exit and drive away alone in a black car. “What am I supposed to do with these things?” he asks, shaking his head. And there are hundreds of other leads, not all of them so far fetched, which Detective Sprinkle says he pursued until their eventual ends. On several occasions, various circumstances appeared to link the disappearances of otherwise unrelated individuals, like another Asian college student who disappeared in Oklahoma. Other similar cases made headlines, most notably the four Midwestern college students who disappeared separately under suspicious circumstances one year after Cindy was last seen. All four of the missing students disappeared from parties or bars within six days of Halloween, two just hours before Song’s one-year anniversary. But Detective Sprinkle and his Midwestern counterparts quickly discounted the possibility that the cases were connected. Eventually the bodies of two of the four missing students were recovered and their deaths ruled accidental drownings. The two other students remain missing but appear to be unrelated to Cindy’s case. The detective says he chased down any and all possibilities, no matter how remote, but they all came up short. The process has been professionally frustrating but it’s nothing he admits losing sleep over. It’s all part of the job. Throughout his investigation, Detective Sprinkle has stuck to his theory that Cindy left her apartment of her own free will. After finding he backpack, cell phone and pieces of her costume in her apartment, but with no sign of her wallet or keys, he believes she ran out to a nearby 24-hour Giant supermarket. “ You don’t know if she needed some personal hygiene things right away or if they were out of toilet paper,” he says. “I personally don’t see her going over there to get something to eat. I see it as being more of a necessity.” By the time Detective Sprinkle got to the supermarket—more than six days after Cindy would have visited—the surveillance tapes had been erased. With no evidence to back up his hunch he can only speculate; but he firmly believes Cindy was abducted on her way to or from the store – the victim of a random act. But wild goose chases and hypothetical scenarios are just the beginning of the detective’s problems. His relationship with the Song family deteriorated quickly. First they charged him with failing to handle Cindy’s case with a sense of urgency, citing the weeks it took him to obtain Cindy’s cell phone, bank and e-mail records. In turn, the detective claimed the family was simply frustrated by the workings of the law, chalking their complaints up to cultural differences. He later accused Song family members of giving important information to the media. Saying they could no longer be trusted, he cut the family out of the inner circle. “You would expect that we would give them information and they would share with us,” he says. “We are dealing with a family from another country who doesn’t understand our rules.” After publicly questioning Detective Sprinkle’s competence and dedication, the Song family, with the help of their attorney, appealed to the governor’s office to have the case reassigned. Without consulting the FTPD, the governor ordered the Pennsylvania State Police to take up the investigation, but stopped short of removing Sprinkle. The move initially ruffled feathers, but today the detective and his superior, Chief Edward Connor, choose to view it as “an allocation of unlimited resources,” rather than a slap in the face. Detective Sprinkle also had trouble with some of Cindy’s friends. In the first days of his investigation several sketchbooks, containing personal writings were found in Cindy’s bedroom, but her actual diary was never recovered. According to the detective, one of Cindy’s closest friends, Lisa Kim, took the diary just days after Song disappeared. Lisa showed the book to a few people and then hid the diary from police, eventually destroying it. Sprinkle says he believes Lisa was attempting to protect both Cindy and herself, since the diary contained information that could have gotten them into trouble with their families. While Sprinkle says he doesn’t think the diary is critical to the case, one source, who claims to have read pages of the diary, says it contained derogatory information about Lisa, including pages filled entirely with the phrase “I hate Lisa,” written in Cindy’s hand. According to the source, Lisa may have been upset near the time of Cindy’s disappearance because Cindy had been trading flirtatious messages with her ex-boyfriend, whom Lisa was dating at the time. Detective Sprinkle, unable to offer any further information on the subject, says simply that the diary would have been nice to have. Someday, hindsight may condemn the detective. Already, it is easy to point out the things that should have been done—acting sooner, sealing off the apartment, recovering potential evidence and taking leads more seriously. But good detectives don’t spend a lot of time worrying about what could have been. As Chief Connor says, “We make our own luck.” That’s why just hours before the one-year anniversary, Detective Sprinkle is heading home early for a nap. He needs his rest. Tonight is Halloween, and he is on duty. He plans to stake out Cindy’s old apartment, the place where she was last seen. “ It wouldn’t be the first time that a criminal returned to the scene of a crime on an anniversary,” he explains. Despite his best efforts after one year, it is all he has to go on. Keeping her legend alive Her anguish is immediately apparent. A petite Asian woman who has cried more than her weight in tears, she is a mother whose heart is broken and child lost. Despite her unyielding faith in God and in her daughter’s eventual return, Bansoon Song’s grief has taken its toll. After a solemn vigil that lasted more than one year, Cindy’s mother, in ailing health, returned to South Korea, indefinitely. Her departure created a demoralizing vacancy in State College. As the figurehead of the Coalition to Find Cindy Song, a group of family members, student organizations and community groups organized to assist the search, Bansoon pleaded for public assistance, petitioned government officials and pestered the media for coverage. In her absence, who will lead the effort to bring Cindy home? For now, the responsibility lies on the shoulders of Jin Han, the Song family’s attorney. Based in New York City, Han is watching over things from afar. Since the early days of the investigation Han has been one of Detective Sprinkle’s most outspoken critics. Much of this contention, focusing primarily on leads Han feels were not fully explored, was aired publicly via the media. And although relations have mellowed considerably since the Pennsylvania State Police joined the investigation, Han is still not ready to let Detective Sprinkle off the hook. Han believes the detective missed a key opportunity when he discounted the Philadelphia lead. Han says the witness, a middle-aged Korean businesswoman, told a very convincing story, which was later upheld by a neighbor. According to Han, after the woman was confronted by the apparent kidnapper, she jumped in her car and followed the suspect vehicle for more than a dozen blocks before losing it in traffic. She then stopped and flagged down two Philadelphia police officers and told them about the incident she had witnessed. The officers disregarded her story and neglected to make a police report. “They just dismissed it,” Han says. Disturbed, the witness went to her neighbor for advice. Han says the neighbor told her there was no point in visiting the police station if the officers wouldn’t take a complaint earlier. She came forward, more than a month later, after seeing a news report about Cindy’s case. Today authorities involved with the investigation maintain their original stance that the woman’s story is full of discrepancies, but according to Han, the informant, who speaks broken English, was initially questioned without a Korean interpreter. He maintains that many of the apparent discrepancies were due to miscommunication. Additionally, although the woman was unable to recall the exact date of the incident, estimating it occurred in late October or early November, her neighbor was able to remember the event more clearly. “The neighbor believed it was a couple of days after Halloween,” Han says. “Maybe November second or third. As far as the time frame, he pinpointed it.” Trying to elicit more information, Han questioned the informant under hypnosis and tried unsuccessfully to identify the officers she approached. Regardless, he still believes the neighbor’s testimony should have been enough reason for investigators to take the lead more seriously. “In two ways he corroborated her story,” Han says. “First, he confirmed that she came to his apartment to ask his opinion about whether she should go to the police, and secondly, his recollection of the dates matches up.” While Han is hesitant to speculate, he has offered one theory that may explain Cindy’s disappearance if it was indeed Cindy Song in the car in Philadelphia. “I think it is possible that it could have been connected to some sort of international crime ring,” he says, pointing out that many of the young women and girls who go missing every year end up in the hands of organized crime. From the Philadelphia area, Han believes Cindy could have been taken across international borders. He says that if this scenario were true, it probably would have been a random abduction, since he is not aware that Cindy or any of her family members had any connections to organized crime. Besides the dismissal of the Philadelphia tip, Han believes Detective Sprinkle made several other grievous errors. He says that just days after Cindy vanished, an elderly patron of a Nanty Glo, Pa., convenience store called the FTPD to report a possible sighting. He called again later to inform police that the store had video surveillance, which they could review, and offered to meet them for an interview. But no one followed up. Weeks later, he approached Han with his information. With prodding from the attorney, Detective Sprinkle finally looked into the lead but it was too late. “ Unfortunately, by the time the police got to him, the convenience store had already taped over the tapes,” Han remembers. “Whether it was Cindy or not …they could have obtained the videos,” Han says. “Because Ferguson Township police didn’t move quickly enough, we will never know.” Han also points to other similar cases that were treated with more urgency, like the 2002 New Year’s Day disappearance of 13-year-old Alicia Kozakiewicz in Pittsburgh. Han says 50 FBI agents were assigned to the case and the girl was found three days later in Washington, D.C., in the company of a man she met on the Internet. While the victim’s age and evidence that she was taken across state lines gave the FBI jurisdiction, Han believes race may have also factored into the way the cases were handled. Finally, there was a call to police last January from a woman claiming to have information regarding Cindy’s fate. The caller, who wished to remain anonymous, was told she would have to call the Centre County Crime Stoppers hotline, but never called. Despite pleas issued via the media asking her to call back, police were unable to track her down. But Han takes greatest offense to Detective Sprinkle’s notion that most of his problems with the Song family have sprung from cultural differences and their inability to grasp the finer points of American law. “ I don’t think it is a function of the family not understanding the American justice system,” Han says. “I wouldn’t generalize it and say that this case is typical of the American justice system at all; it was just the way that this case was particularly handled by the Ferguson Township Police.” Although Han is quick to level serious charges against Detective Sprinkle and his department, he has only praise for the Pennsylvania State Police, even though they joined the investigation late in the game. “The family has been dealing directly with the state police, so they have had very limited, if any, contact with Sprinkle,” Han says. “They have handled the investigation in a very professional manner.” While Han has plenty to complain about, his options are less numerous. It appears he can do little else but wait. Han refused to comment when asked if the Song family had considered filing suit against the FTPD. He also declined to comment regarding Penn State University’s role in the case. Instead, he says the Song family members are still focused on Cindy’s safe return. “Despite the tragic nature of her disappearance and the tragic nature of the initial investigation, the family has continuously drawn strength and hope from the people they encountered in State College and the many, many people who have been so supportive of them,” he says. “For that, they are eternally grateful.” It has been more than two years and while new developments come in fits and starts, there is still no sign of Cindy. The efforts of the FBI, state and local police, a private investigator and a psychic have provided little insight as to her whereabouts. Half world away Cindy’s family is waiting for word, news of their little girl’s fate. While new leads have suddenly emerged, everyone involved is holding their breath and keeping their hopes in check. It has become painfully obvious that the search for Cindy is far from over. For now, simply keeping her memory alive is tough enough. – SCM |
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©Copyright
2007 King Publishing, LLC
1305 W. College Avenue • State College, PA 16801
814.867.2222
1305 W. College Avenue • State College, PA 16801
814.867.2222