SEOUL — A young couple in custody in Colorado for allegedly plotting to kill the boyfriend’s mother so they could buy the girlfriend breast implants attended Seoul American High School on the U.S. Army’s Yongsan Garrison, according to school yearbooks.
Nikita Weis, 18, and Sophia Alsept, 21, were arrested Sept. 26 after Weis’ mother chased off the attackers and called police, said Sgt. Jess Freeman, spokesman for the Fountain, Colo., Police Department.
Weis and Alsept — along with Juan Antonio Velez Gonzalez, 18, and Brandon Soroka, 19, two men the couple allegedly hired to kill Weis’ mother — were arrested several hours after the botched attack, Freeman said.
Stars and Stripes was alerted to the case by school alumni.
Department of Defense Dependents Schools officials, citing privacy concerns, refused to confirm whether Weis or Alsept ever attended Seoul American.
According to Seoul American High School yearbooks, Alsept was a senior in 2005 and was a member of the string ensemble. Her senior entry lists no clubs and her senior quote is: "Guess what I did last Friday?"
Nikita Weis appears only in the 2007 yearbook, when he was a junior.
According to Freeman, Weis came home around 11 p.m. on Sept. 25 and left the garage door open. His mother, Hyun Sook Weis, said he was acting strangely.
She was alone in the kitchen, she told police, when two men wearing black clothes and ski masks came inside and began beating her with a small, souvenir-sized baseball bat. She began hitting them with a teapot and then set off her car alarm when they wrestled her to the floor, police said.
The attackers then fled.
Police said all four were caught early the next morning and confessed to their roles in the assault.
Freeman said the accused attackers planned to dump Hyun Sook Weis’ body in the New Mexico desert.
Weis and Alsept, who lived together, planned to sell Hyun Sook Weis’ car after she was killed, because they needed money to pay bills and get breast-enlargement surgery for Alsept, Freeman said.
They had promised to pay the men $7,000, according to local media reports.
A Korean-speaking police officer interviewed Hyun Sook Weis because her English was weak. She told police her son began having behavioral problems after his parents divorced, Freeman said.
The four suspects have been charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and conspiracy to kidnap and are being held at the El Paso County Criminal Justice center.
The district attorney assigned to the case could not be reached for comment.
