Crime Junkie - MISSING: Hang Lee

Episode Date: September 26, 2022

When 17-year-old Hang Lee leaves for a job interview and never comes home, police are quick to dismiss her as a troubled runaway. But when they finally take a deeper look into her case, they discover that the last man she was seen with has a violent criminal history, and no explanation for what happened to her.  If you know something about Hang’s disappearance, and can help bring her family closure, you can call Crime Stoppers of Minnesota’s hotline at 800-222-8477, or visit crimestoppersmn.org and click ‘submit a tip. For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/.Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit: https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/missing-hang-lee/

Hi Crime Junkies, I'm your host Ashley Flowers, and the story I have for you today is about a young woman who left her family's apartment in St. Paul, Minnesota and never came home. Despite feeling like they're on the right track, her disappearance has frustrated investigators for decades, and her family has been left wondering if they'll ever learn the truth of what happened to her. This is the story of Heng Lee. It's about one in the morning on January 13, 1993, and a teenage boy named Koo Lee has just woken up from a deep sleep.

He checks the time and realizes that he hasn't heard his older sister, Heng, come home. See, 17-year-old Heng told her brother the day before that she had this job interview that evening, and since she doesn't have a key to the apartment they share with their parents, she would need him to let her back in when she got home. I don't know if she told him when that would be exactly, but Kooah letting her back into the apartment is kind of part of their normal routine so he didn't have any reason to worry. He remembers her leaving at around 6 or 7, and then he fell asleep at maybe 10 that night thinking that Heng's knock on the front door would wake him up.

But now that it's one o'clock and he didn't hear her, he gets worried that she'd been left out in the cold Minnesota winter, so he gets up and goes to look out the window. It's snowing pretty heavily that night. And Kooah thinks that if Heng tried to come in, there would have been footprints leading from the parking lot to their door, but he doesn't see any. According to reporting by Conrad DeFiebre for Star Tribune, Kooah starts to get a bad feeling. There's something wrong here.

He just doesn't know what, and he can't help but think back to something Heng said as she was leaving for the interview. She was supposed to meet up with her friend, Kia, who goes by Nikki so they could go over together. But Nikki was actually the one who got her the interview in the first place. But before she left, Heng turned to her brother and said, quote, if I don't come back, please come looking for me. I don't trust Nikki.

End quote. Despite those ominous words and that bad feeling growing in his gut, he's not really sure what to do. I mean, he's in high school too. And while I couldn't find anything in my source material about whether their parents were home at the time, he's had a loss for how to handle this situation. So he lets time slip by minute after minute, an hour after hour, hoping that she'll come home so she doesn't get into any trouble.

However, mourning rolls around and she's still not back. She hasn't even called. So he hopes that he's going to see her at school. When he gets there, he immediately starts looking for his sister. And while he doesn't find her, he does find Nikki. So Kua walks up to her and asks her if she knows where his sister is. But right away, she gets really defensive, like almost angry, and tells him that she has no idea where Heng is.

Nikki's answer sets him on edge. And so he keeps an eye out for Heng all day. But by the time he gets out of school, there's still no sign of her. So he goes home and tells his parents everything, all about the interview, how he hasn't seen her since the night before, everything. Now, unfortunately, I don't know much about what their parents' response was or what they did over those first few days. But I do know that Heng doesn't get reported missing to the St. Paul police until the 15th.

And before anyone starts questioning her family or judging her parents for not going to the police sooner, there are a few factors that I think are important to note here. One, their parents, Chong Vang and Chong Pao, don't speak English. They speak Hmong. They're originally from Laos, and they moved to the US from a refugee camp when Heng was really young. The other thing to note is that Kua would later say in an article by Marr Gottfried that they just didn't know the right channels to go through.

I mean, I can't even imagine the stress of not only having a missing child, but also being in a country where the only people who speak the primary language are your teenage kids. Like, I would have no idea what to do if Joe went missing in another country. So while it's definitely not ideal that she wasn't reported missing right away, I also don't think there was any ill intent behind waiting. And honestly, I don't know if reporting her missing earlier would have made much of a difference because once that report is finally filed, the St. Paul police don't do much

to find her. In fact, at first, they write her off as a troubled runaway. And listen, Heng did have her struggles. According to more reporting by Marr Gottfried for the Pioneer Press, her parents said that she'd been hanging out with a quote unquote bad crowd over the last few years. And while they don't really elaborate on this, they do say that she had recently gotten back on track over the last few months. She had a job at a local restaurant.

She wasn't hanging out with that group anymore. So even though police initially write her disappearance off, her family continues to insist that she would not have run away. And thankfully, the missing person's unit eventually takes a more serious look at her case. And when they do, they notice a lot of red flags right away that makes them rethink their initial assumption. First, they find that Heng left all of her clothing behind and her purse, which her family

insists she would not leave long term without. She also didn't pick up her most recent paycheck at the restaurant that she worked at and the savings that she planned on putting towards her college tuition that fall had been untouched. They also started paying a lot of attention to Kuah's story about what Heng told him before she left to look at Nikki if she didn't come home. But when the police go talk to Nikki, she tells them the same thing she told Kuah. She has no idea where Heng is. She does elaborate a bit though and says that on the night of the 12th, she saw Heng leave

her home with a few young men that she didn't recognize and then she just never showed up to that interview she helped her set up. And it seems like the police kind of take this at face value because after talking to Nikki, the investigators go back to that same conclusion they had come to before. Heng probably ran away from home. From the way Nikki described it, Heng left with those guys willingly. And so even though she didn't take any of her personal belongings, they are sure that she's going to be back in a few days.

But then a few days go by and then a month and then two and three and there is still no sign of Heng anywhere. She doesn't show back up. She doesn't even call. Without the police actively looking for her, her devastated family is at a loss for what to do. They don't have the money to be able to offer a reward for information and they don't have the connections to get Heng's name on the news.

So really, they're just stuck in this terrible holding pattern of waiting and hoping. But finally, six months after Heng went missing, things change. For some reason, the police decide to re-interview Nikki just in case she has any more information. And sure enough, this time when they talk to her, her story completely changes. Nikki admits that the last time she saw Heng, she wasn't with some unknown men. She was actually with the guy Heng was supposed to have an interview with. The same man Nikki worked for, a local businessman named Mark Steven Wallace. 30-year-old Mark owns a small painting and decorating business where Nikki was the receptionist.

But even she was fairly new, like she'd only been there a month or so. And it was kind of weird to her when he asked if any of her friends needed a job since there was barely enough for her to do much less another employee. But she knew her friend Heng needed work and he was offering to pay more than Heng was making at the restaurant. So she says that on the night of January 12th, she met up with Heng and then Mark picked the two of them up in a white pickup truck. He took the two back to his office where he conducted the interview.

And afterwards, he offered to drive each of them home, which they both accepted. But before they left, he actually switched vehicles to either a tan or silver 1988 Chevrolet Cavalier. Even though Nikki remembers thinking it was weird that they were switching cars, she didn't question it. Her home was closest, so he dropped her off first. And the last she saw of Heng, she was moving from the back and getting into the passenger seat of this guy's car.

Once investigators hear this new story, the first thing they want to know, and I'm sure the first thing all of you want to know is why she told them such a different version of events back in January. She has a few different responses for this. First at the time, she really did think it was possible that Heng had run away. And second, she says Mark had told her not to tell anyone about his business, which is sketchy as hell. And listen, I'm about to drop a life role that is good for little kids, big kids and

adults of all ages. Secrets are bad news. Steer f*** clear. Like for kids, if an adult is asking you to keep a secret, I don't care if you're a little kid, I don't care if you're a teenager, when I was a teenager, I thought I was 15 going on 25. If 30 year old Mark is asking you to keep a secret, there can be no good reasons for this.

And honestly, even into adulthood, like, you know, little secrets with your best friend, whatever. But these deep dark secrets, these are what episodes are made of. If it doesn't feel on the up and up, turn it down. Do you guys hear me? Anyway, Nikki says now she's coming clean and not keeping Mark's secret because she doesn't work for him anymore. And since Heng still hasn't been seen in six months, now she seriously doubts her original

theory that she had run away. So police obviously want to learn more about this Mark guy and his business, but when they ask Nikki about it, she says she doesn't really know any details about what he does. She knows that he runs a painting and decorating business, at least that's what it seems like. But according to reporting by Conrad DeFeebre for the Star Tribune, Nikki never saw any clients or customers come in. And keep in mind, she was the receptionist, so she would have had a good idea of who was

coming and going. The only people that she says ever came into the building were young teen boys who would go straight into Mark's office. Mark would lock the door behind them, but he never told her about what would happen behind that closed door, which I don't know about anyone else, but to me that sends up all the red flags. Now Nikki also describes an incident from back in December or January that solidifies for police that Mark is a questionable guy to say the least.

She tells them that one morning after she got into work, she says Mark gave her a drink and told her that it would help her not get nauseous due to all of the paint fumes. Now, I don't know if nausea was something that she'd actually been struggling with, but she starts to drink it. And after a few minutes, she starts to lose feeling in her hands. But Mark told her that's totally normal and insisted that she drink more. But this only made things worse, because she says that she got sick, passed out, and then woke up on the floor wrapped in a blanket hours later.

This is so clearly terrible, and I don't know what happened while she was unconscious, but if she ever gave any more details to the police about this experience, it's never been reported on. After the investigators finish talking to Nikki, they take a look at Mark's criminal history and buckle up because this man has a violent past. They learn that back in 1987, Mark was arrested and charged with two really violent sexual assaults. The story goes that a woman in St. Paul called police and told them that she was offered

a job at a radio station by this guy named Mark Wallace. But something about the whole situation felt off to her. She didn't know him, and he said he wanted to meet her before she started working. Some people trust your gut, because instead of the woman going, a police officer was sent to meet him. And they actually arrest him, though none of the source material clarify what the cause of the arrest was, but it might have had something to do with the shoe strings they found in his pocket, which he admitted to wanting to use to tie up the woman and sexually assault

her. And if that wasn't bad enough, after his arrest, two more women come forward and claim that he sexually assaulted them. The first one he attacked after offering a ride to a bus stop, and the second he lured after offering her a job, just like Hang and just like the woman who called the police. Other women ended up coming forward, too. I'm not sure how many, but unfortunately, the man who attacked them was masked, and so even though they have their suspicions that it was all the work of one man, they

aren't able to positively ID him. Ultimately, Mark was convicted on two counts of rape, but only served four years before he got out in 1991. Since Mark was the last person Nikki saw with Hang, and considering he offered jobs to several women that he targeted, the investigators decide to bring him in for questioning. They also get a warrant to search his home, his office, car, and his pickup truck, but they don't find anything to help link him to Hang in those searches. Mark is also entirely uncooperative.

He lawyers up almost immediately and refuses to say anything, and since the police don't have anything they can hold him on, they have no choice but to just keep him on their radar and try to pursue other avenues. But they don't really have any other avenues they can pursue. They do get a few tips here and there, and they follow up on every single one, including when the body of a young woman is discovered in November on a farm in Polk County, Wisconsin. That's just like a little over an hour away from St. Paul. Her remains were pretty decomposed, but at first there was this glimmer of hope that

the woman they found might have been Hang, because her description vaguely matched. However, they ended up determining that it was not her, and so they're still at square one. But just a side note, because I can never leave these possible connections be, I looked into this case too, and the woman on that farm wasn't identified until 2013 through DNA. Her name is Pearlene Walton, and she went missing over the summer of 1993 when she was 22.

And as far as I can tell, her case has still never been solved, but her family was able to put her to rest after two decades of not knowing what happened to her. Now, unfortunately, there is hardly any media coverage from the first year of Hang's disappearance, and so the few tips that investigators were getting towards the beginning honestly completely stopped coming in. The one year anniversary comes and goes, and then the two year and so on. Mark ends up moving to Maplewood, which is like a town over from St. Paul, and while he's still on police's radar, there's really nothing they can do.

But even though the investigation is stalled, things are happening behind the scenes at the St. Paul Police Department that end up being game-changing. Because in 2004, they add an additional investigator to their missing persons unit, and again, this one investigator makes a huge difference in the number of cases that they're able to take on and close. In a year alone, so by 2005, they've closed all of their active missing persons cases, so they were able to take another, more in-depth look at their cold cases, which includes Hang's. So the missing persons unit reviews her case alongside an investigator from the homicide

unit, and together, they determine that this thing is totally solvable. So 12 years after Hang disappeared in January 2005, they officially reopen her case. This catches the attention of the Carroll-Sund Carrington Memorial Reward Foundation, which steps in and offers a $5,000 reward for information. This organization was started by the families of three women, Carroll and Julie Sund, and Sylvina Paloso. They went missing while on a trip in Yosemite National Park back in 1999, and were later found to have been murdered.

So all of this, the reopening of the case, the announcement of the reward, it all seems like a huge step forward. But more time continues to pass, and Hang's disappearance still stays unsolved. More reporting by Mara Gottfried states that the investigators plan to re-interview Mark as well as other witnesses and people involved in the case. But I'm not sure if those interviews ever happened, or if nothing meaningful came from them because there's no follow-up ever reported on those. But in 2009, they finally get news that could lead to their first big break.

In February of that year, investigators learned that the house that Mark had been living in, in Maplewood, had been foreclosed on. This house had originally belonged to his mother, and he grew up there, but when she died, she left it to him and his brother in her will. And according to reporting by Emily Gernan for the Pioneer Press, he had been living there on and off his whole life. As far as I know, the investigators hadn't yet gotten the chance to search this particular house before, because remember, he was living in St. Paul when Hang first went missing.

There'd be no reason at the time to get a search warrant for his mother's home. But now that it's no longer Mark's, they think there might be something there that could conclusively link him to Hang. The Gold Case Unit in St. Paul gets permission from the real estate agent and the mortgage company to search the property. And to help them in their search, they bring out three dogs. So the first dog goes out, and it sniffs around the whole property. And when it gets to the back corner of this detached garage, it alerts to the presence

of human remains. So they bring out the second dog, and it alerts in the exact same corner. But just to be 100% sure, they bring out the third dog. And just like the first two, as soon as it gets to that back corner, it alerts as well. Now it's worth noting that this garage where the dogs are signaling wasn't around at the time that Hang went missing. It wasn't built until 2004. But the fact that the dogs alerted in the exact same spot sounds really promising, right?

The investigators sure think so. And they are itching to get in there and dig it up to see what they can find. But before they go destroying the whole garage, they get a warrant to drill some holes through the concrete floor. They basically want to give the dogs better access so they can smell the ground underneath directly. Because even though working dogs are incredible, they can sometimes give false alerts. And here's the thing.

When they bring in that first dog, it fails to give the same alert. And the same thing happens with the second and the third. None of them alert on anything, which means they got nothing again. But despite the setback, they're refusing to give up, not when they were so close. So they try re-interviewing everyone they talk to back when Hang first went missing, just in case they've missed something. Specifically, they really want to talk to Mark and Nikki again. But Mark maintains his silence and refuses to speak with them.

And when they go to Nikki, you know, really hoping that she'll remember something or that enough time has passed that she'll feel more comfortable giving them information. But she shuts them down because she's gotten a lawyer too. She refuses to say anything. And listen, girl has every right to get a lawyer. I mean, we say it all the time, lawyer up. But Nikki has already been talking to them and the fact that your story has changed and now you won't say anything at all, that is what comes off pretty sketchy.

And I mean, to be clear, that's not to say she had anything to do with Hang's disappearance or even that she knows anything that she hasn't already told police. She could just want to put this whole thing behind her. But I can't help but wonder why she would completely shut them out, even though it's been 16 years. Like worst case, get your lawyer, have him sit down with you, but then give them the same story you gave them before. Why not talk to them?

But because no one will talk to them, the investigation stalls out again. Occasionally, the police check on Hang's social security number just in case it's being used anywhere, but it never is. It's not until August of 2016, 23 years after Hang went missing, that the investigators get an unexpected call they hope will finally lead to some answers. It's from police in Washington County, Minnesota, which is about 20 minutes away from St. Paul. And they say that they have Mark Wallace in custody. Richard Chin reported for the Pioneer Press that two officers ran the place of a suspicious

vehicle parked in a motel parking lot, and when they did, they got an alert that told them to check on the well-being of a 20-year-old woman who owns the vehicle. The woman had a domestic abuse no contact order against a man who she briefly lived with, and that man is none other than Mark Wallace, who is 54 at this point. So they headed to the hotel and asked management what room she was staying in. Staff gave them the room number, but when the officers knocked on the door, they didn't hear anything. They tried again, and finally, they heard a woman inside say that she had just gotten

out of the shower and she needed to put some clothes on. So they waited and waited, but they stopped hearing from her. When she stopped responding, the officers got a really bad feeling, like something was telling them that they needed to get inside and make sure that that woman was safe at that very moment. So they got the manager of the motel to unlock the door, but they could only get it opened part way because of that swing lock. From where one of the officers was standing, they could see inside the room, and they saw

that the mattress was moving, meaning that there was someone else inside that room with the woman. They told her again to open the door, but she just stood there, completely frozen, not even speaking. Eventually, the officers decided they couldn't wait for her to open it, and they kicked the door down. And what they found inside confirmed to them that following their gut was the right move, because before they could try to offer the woman help or calm her down, a man jumped

out from under the bed and tried to make a run for it. But being inside a motel room, there wasn't really anywhere to run, and he was arrested on the spot. It was only after the man was out of the room and locked safely in the back of the patrol car that the woman started to talk. She told police that the man with her was Mark Wallace. He was the father of a high school friend, and she'd lived with him briefly because she didn't have a permanent place to stay.

But he very quickly became manipulative and controlling, even physically abusive towards her. This same article from Richard Chin states that he had control over every aspect of her life, from her phone to her bank account. He even forced her to smoke methamphetamine with him as a way to keep her under his control. She detailed times when he threatened her with a shotgun, and once he even said that he had killed before and would do it again. This statement piqued their interest, especially when they looked him up and realized that

he is a person of interest in the disappearance of a young woman from Saint Paul. So they obviously gave Saint Paul a call, and when those officers hear all of this, they immediately head out to try and talk to both Mark and the woman he was found with. Unsurprisingly, Mark refuses to tell them anything, but the woman is another story. She tells the investigators that at some point while she was living with him, she'd actually learned about Heng's disappearance, and that Mark was a person of interest. So she asked him about it, and according to an article for 12 News by Lover Goose, he told her quote, she entered my business and never came out.

She also says that he made comments about knowing how to get rid of blood evidence and what tools can cut through bone. And when things got really bad, and he would threaten her life, he would say that he would do to her what he did to that girl from Saint Paul. Now, these are damning statements, but none of this is concrete enough for a prosecutor. They still don't have a body or any physical evidence for that matter, and even though it sounds like he confessed to this woman, they can't charge him with murder based solely on her word.

But Mark is charged with kidnapping, stalking, and possession of methamphetamine in relation to the woman who was found at the motel. The stalking and drug possession charges end up being dropped, but in 2017, he's convicted of kidnapping and sentenced to four years in prison. Now, when I first learned that he got yet another four years after his criminal history clearly showing that he's dangerous, I was shocked. But here's this weird thing, okay, even though he's only sentenced to four years, he is actually committed as a sexually dangerous person or an SDP and a sexual psychopathic

personality or SPP. And basically what this means is that the court has ruled that he's a clear danger to those around him. And so he actually won't be released until he proves that he's been rehabilitated, which could end up being a life sentence. And this was wild to me. I'm not kidding you guys. Every day I learned something new because I did not know that Minnesota had sentencing

options like this. I don't even know if it's around in other states as well. Now, Mark appealed this ruling, but his appeal was denied. And as of the release of this episode, he is still behind bars. But even though he's likely going to be in prison for a long, long time, things haven't gotten any easier for Heng's family. They never lose hope that she'll be found, but as each anniversary of her disappearance comes and goes, it just never gets easier to cope with the loss.

And tragically, Heng's father, Xiong Pao, died in 2013, never knowing what happened to his daughter. Though I like to believe that there are answers after this life. In more reporting by Mara Gottfried, Kua talks about how hard it is watching families of other missing people learn what happened to their loved ones, and in some cases get justice. While he's happy that other investigations get flooded with tips and that other families don't have to go through the agonizing decades of not knowing what happened, he can't help but feel a pang of jealousy that the same didn't happen for his sister.

Maybe if police had taken her disappearance seriously from the beginning, or if they had publicized Heng's name, held a press conference, anything, her family might not have spent the last few decades wondering if they would ever know what happened to her. Despite desperately hoping that she would come home, the Lee family made the difficult decision to hold a spirit release ceremony for Heng in 2017, which is part of a traditional Hmong funeral. William Lee, Heng's niece, wrote in a Facebook post, quote, the spiritual release acknowledges that Heng may no longer be alive in this world, but she will live in our hearts forever.

We as her family would like to honor her by releasing her spirit to the other world. Even though the 30th anniversary of Heng's disappearance is approaching, the investigation hasn't stopped. As recently as October of 2021, Lou Regoose reported for CARE 11 that they took some 3D images of that garage that they searched back in 2009, but even then they didn't find anything. Heng would be 46 years old today, and despite her case being cold, all the investigators need is that one tip, that one piece of evidence that will give them the answers her family has been desperately hoping for.

So if you know something, anything, about Heng's disappearance and can help bring her family closure, you can call Crime Stoppers of Minnesota. Their hotline is 800-222-8477, or you can visit CrimeStoppersMN.org and click Submit a Tip. Crime Junkie is an audio chuck production. So what do you think Chuck, do you approve?