Witnesses, soldiers recall incidents
the night of student's death in Korea
By Jeremy Kirk, Seoul bureau
chief
SEOUL — Witnesses and former suspects say March 17 was a dizzy trail of
socializing, drinking and dancing that ended with a 21-year-old coed being stomped to
death in a cheap hotel room here.
Ten weeks later, the Korean National Police has said it has no conclusive physical
evidence and must start the investigation over from scratch. Agents from the U.S. Army
Criminal Investigation Command (known as CID) are assisting because the victim, Jamie Lynn
Penich, was seen socializing with U.S. servicemen the night she died.
Stars and Stripes spoke with the six exchange students who traveled with Penich to
Seoul from their university in Taegu, and talked with two of at least five U.S. soldiers
investigated in connection with the murder. The soldiers and students agreed to speak to
Stripes in hopes of shedding light on the brutal murder.
Students speak out
Penich and four friends went to Nickleby’s, an expatriate bar in the Itaewon party
district, to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. Three of the students made the five-minute
walk to the hotel at 2 a.m. Penich, and Kenzi Snider, a 19-year-old American student,
stayed at the bar. Snider said one soldier tried to kiss her after shepherding her to a
booth and talking briefly with her. He suggested they travel to a vacation island off the
southern coast of South Korea, Snider said.
"He was very strong and forward and very fast, and I didn’t feel right with
him," she said.
Snider said she had to climb over the table of the booth when the soldier tried to
block her way.
Snider said she had the feeling the soldier was not pleased.
Snider described Penich as drunk, and remembered her kissing a soldier that night. But
the pair left Nickleby’s alone, taking a wrong turn and walking down a crowded food
alley. Snider recalled passing the soldier who had tried to pick her up. They waved to
each other, Snider said, and she continued on her way.
When they got to the hotel, Snider said, Penich’s room was unlocked. Penich’s
roommate for the weekend, a student from the Netherlands, was asleep. Snider helped Penich
into the shower, checked on her five minutes later, and went to her own room, leaving the
door to Penich’s room unlocked.
Penich’s roommate, who requested anonymity, told Stars and Stripes that she slept
through Penich’s beating death and remembers "nothing."
"I just fall asleep and I don’t wake up," she said in a phone interview
from the Netherlands. She returned home 10 days after the murder.
But she said she recalls waking that night when someone opened the motel room door
open.
"The only thing I remember is the door opened and closed in the middle of the
night," she said. "Normally I would go and check … but maybe I just thought
Jamie was coming in. Normally I would just go up and close the door again, but then I was
just really tired, more than I normally am.
"There was so much noise in the hotel, so maybe I thought maybe someone opened the
wrong door," she said.
She also remembers someone pushing her shoulder while she slept. She doesn’t
recall the brutal beating, she said.
"You can’t rule out the possibility that I know it, but I don’t want to
remember," she said. "I also went back to the room to see if I could remember
something but I really can’t. I have no clue about this."
She has not been contacted by CID or South Korean police since returning home on March
27, she said. Hwang Woon-ha, chief of detectives at Yongsan police station, said police
would like to question her again and may use Interpol to locate her.
Kati Peltomaa and her boyfriend, Tuomas Heikkinen, both of Oulu, Finland, were sleeping
in Room 102, next to Penich’s room the murder night. Peltomaa thought she woke
sometime between 3:30 and 4:15 a.m. after hearing voices in the hallway.
"I heard some male was yelling, angry. ‘But you are here now!’ I was
wondering why anyone was saying that," said Peltomaa, 22. "After 10 or 15
minutes, I heard beating."
Peltomaa thought the noise came from upstairs. The motel was noisy the night before,
she said.
"Before I woke up Tuomas, I heard steps passing by my door, and some male voice
was saying, ‘Let’s go,’" she said.
Peltomaa said she believes the person was a native English speaker and had an American
accent. She said she heard a second person make an affirming noise, responding to the
first person.
Peltomaa believes the two males then left the hallway. By this time, Heikkinen, 21, was
awake. They said they listened to a woman’s feeble moaning.
Four hours later at 8 a.m., the woman from the Netherlands knocked on the motel room
doors to awaken her friends. She found a body in her room, she said, but she couldn’t
find Penich. Within an hour, police identified the body as Penich from the tattoo on her
back.
The soldiers
Park Jong-soon, manager of the Kum Sung Motel where Penich was killed, said she saw a
white, clean-cut man come from Penich’s room around the time of the murder. She said
he wore a checkered shirt, beige pants and had splatter stains near the right-leg pants
cuff.
At least five U.S. soldiers gave blood samples for testing, said a South Korean
policeman.
One was placed in a police lineup and given a polygraph, and one suspect was brought to
Park face-to-face in a CID parking lot.
Because of the language barriers, the Korean police let CID interview the U.S.
soldiers.
A soldier stationed at Yongsan Garrison, who has been a suspect in the case, said his
friends were more interested in the "girl from Holland" than Penich that night.
He said he danced with Snider, and Jamie’s roommate, but only "spoke maybe
three words to Jamie."
The Netherlands girl, he said, "was the real cute one."
He said he thinks he left the bar before Snider and Penich, but Snider disagreed,
saying they left the bar before the soldier.
He said after leaving Nickleby’s he headed to Stompers, a nearby bar. He said he
went to his barracks alone at 8 a.m.
About 10 days after the murder, he was told by a CID agent to put on jeans and a brown
shirt and was taken to a U.S. compound close to Yongsan Garrison’s south post.
He says he was placed in a lineup with Thai and Filipino soldiers from Yongsan
Garrison. The tanned and smooth-skinned young man said he listened to the other soldiers
and concluded they came from the U.N. Honor Guard unit at Yongsan.
"I knew right there they were shooting for me," he said.
The lineup stood behind a one-way mirror, he said. He was told that the witness
didn’t "identify him."
He later was given a polygraph test. A CID agent asked him general questions about if
he had violent impulses or had hit anyone. He said anyone would have given "yes"
answers to many of the questions.
Korean police told Stripes the Yongsan soldier passed his polygraph, and clothes
analysis didn’t link him to the crime scene. The last contact he had with
investigators was when they returned his clothes, he said.
"It would be hard for me to believe any one of us would resort to something like
that," the soldier said of his soldier friends. "The whole thing is just
mind-boggling."
Another soldier who was questioned is stationed at a northern 2nd Infantry Division
camp. He said his friend is the soldier who tried to kiss Snider.
He agreed to talk to Stripes but his friend has not. He said he and his buddy spent the
entire evening together, going from Nickelby’s, to other bars, and back to their room
at the Dragon Hill Lodge on Yongsan Garrison the next morning.
He said he didn’t recall Snider or Penich. He said he was investigated only
because his friend was seen talking to Snider.
He said he was never in a lineup but he did meet Park face-to-face in a CID parking lot
on May 7.
On the way to the meeting, his escort told him, "they have the lady who may have
possibly seen who did it," he said.
"If she identifies you, you realize we are going to have to do a polygraph on
you," the soldier said he was told. "I stopped her right there and said
‘What are you talking about?’"
He was wearing his uniform when he met Park, and was asked to remove his hat. Park
stood about 4 feet away, looking at him for a minute, the soldier said. He was then told
Park did not recognize him.
Two other soldiers who had been considered as suspects in the case have not returned
phone calls to Stripes. Another one has been on leave, outside of South Korea.
The Netherlands roommate, a 22-year-old who said she and Jamie were always together,
wrote a letter to Penich’s parents, expressing how badly she feels about what
happened to their daughter. Still she has trouble sleeping and plans on seeing a
counselor.
"It’s just not as it was before," she said. "My life completely
changed because of this. I’m just scared all of the time."
RELATED STORY:
Parents of murdered girl still
searching for answers
PREVIOUS STORIES:
May 24: Evidence lacking, so probe
starts anew
May 24: U.S. forensic expert says
investigation was flawed
May 7: Family frustrated by lack of
progress in investigation
May 6: Information sought in murder of
American student
May 6: Long-awaited trip to Korea
turned to tragedy
Back to May stories
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