Snapped: Women Who Murder - Misook Wang

Episode Date: September 19, 2021

While a community searches for a missing businesswoman, police uncover a shocking dispute with a money-hungry relative that they hope will lead them to a killer.Season 20, Episode 6Originally aired: June 18, 2017Watch full episodes of Snapped for FREE on the Oxygen app: https://oxygentv.app.link/WsLCJWqmIeb See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi, I'm Lindsay Graham, the host of Wonder East Podcast American Scandal. Our newest series looks at the story of OxyContin, a popular painkiller that helps spur an epidemic of addiction and drug abuse, in which prompted a broad campaign to hold the pharmaceutical industry accountable. Listen to American Scandal on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Miss Sook Wang lulls her mother when she was just a little girl. It's hard on anybody not having a mom to rely on. But when Miss Suq married, her mother-in-law filled the void.

She really looked to Linda as her mom. Linda thought of Miss Suq as her daughter. They were really close. But then Linda mysteriously disappeared. I had a bad feeling for something happened to her. It was unlike her not to answer her phone. Miss Su appeared as worried as anyone. Miss Su said that she had been trying to contact her all day as well.

I could tell that my mom was hurting. But would a stunning piece of evidence reveal a deadly betrayal. You can see the shocking surprise on Linda's face. Crest Hill, Illinois, September 5, 2011. It was around 8 o'clock that Monday evening when Larry Taita phoned the police in this quiet bedroom community of 20,000 an hour southwest of Chicago. It is very safe. I wouldn't think twice about raising a family here. Usually, but Larry was calling that night

to report that his wife Linda, a 70-year-old Chinese immigrant, was missing. She worked as an interpreter for a number of businesses up in Chicago. She also worked as an advocate, assisting new immigrants in almost any way she could. She would help Asian immigrants in securing loans and getting English classes, starting businesses, and generally realizing their dream of America. And according to her husband, she'd left home before dawn that morning

to drive a new client into Chicago's Chinatown. She would do this routinely for other Asian American immigrants. She gave me a kiss on the cheek and said, I'll see you in a little while. She was supposed to be home back with Larry later that morning. Linda was supposed to be back by 11 a.m. But as morning turned to afternoon and his wife hadn't returned, Larry began to worry. About every hour on the hour I was phone calling her and

leaving messages to call me. But she never returned any of his calls. He said it was unlike her not to answer her phone, not to get in contact with him and let him know why she was running late. And by eight that night with still no word from Linda, her husband had called the police. I just couldn't take them.

Our Leroy is going out of his mind at this point in time. Was he simply overreacting? The vast majority of time in this he purses report close back the purses say sound. Or had something happen to the 70 year old grandmother? I had a bad feeling. Linda's husband didn't appear to be alone in his fear either. In the days ahead, her son and her daughter-in-law, 45-year-old Misuk Wang,

would all join in the frantic search for the missing grandmother. Although she'd married into a Chinese American family, Misook's story started in South Korea. Born in 1965, Misook's mother died when she was just a baby. It's hard on anybody that would have to go through that, not having a mom to rely on. And with her father unable to take care of her, Misuk was sent to live with relatives. They didn't treat her very nicely. In fact, she was more as a servant. Her upbringing wasn't the best. The black sheep is what she really basically felt like. Luckily, Misuk's Cinderella story came complete with a prince charming. An American GI named Andy Nowlin, who met the 22-year-old in 1987, while serving in

Korea. She was a very kind person. She had a very good heart. That was, you know, one of the reasons why I fell in love with her. And in 1988, after Andy left the army and returned home to Illinois, Miss Sook followed. She was here a few months and then we got married. Soon after, Me Suk was pregnant and in 1989 the couple had a daughter. I stayed at home with my mom. Her main focus was to take care of me. Money was tight for the young family, at least in Me Suk's mind.

Money was always a key factor in their conversation. If somebody else has got this car, you know, why don't we have that car? And eventually, those conversations about money became arguments. I was working two full-time jobs, working 80 hours a week, and still wasn't enough. And by 1998, after 10 years of marriage,

the couple had divorce. She was just so many hungry. She wanted to give me the best of the best to give the life that she did not have. To support herself and her daughter after the divorce, Misook took a translating job at a local call center. My mom was bilingual. She would talk to the Korean customers.

And soon after starting work at the call center, Ms. Sook met a man who appeared to offer everything the struggling young mother wanted for her family. The son of Chinese immigrants, Don Wang was working at the call center to put himself through college. He was always going to school. Don was trying to get his PhD. And despite the fact that Don was Chinese and Missou Korean, they started dating. The two cultures don't always mingle, but in Don and Missou's case, they did.

Their marriage in 2003 was a celebration of both their cultures. It was different mixes of Chinese and Korean people. And it was a great time. It was a beautiful wedding. But when Miss Suq said, I do, she wasn't just marrying Don. She was joining his tight knit family, led by its matriarch, Linda. his tight-knit family led by its matriarch, Linda. Born in 1941, Linda had spent more than 20 years in the Chicago area.

And by 2003, the 62-year-old was a prominent member of Chicago's Chinese community. Linda was very well known in that community. She'd spent years working as an interpreter for various businesses in the greater Chicago area. She also worked as an interpreter with the federal government in the federal prison. And she also worked with individual immigrants helping them secure visas, housing, and jobs. Assisting individuals that came into this country in any way that she could. But as much as she enjoyed helping her fellow immigrants,

Linda's priority was her only son, Don. Don and his mother had a very, very, very close relationship. One that became even closer after Linda divorced Don's father. They called each other four or five times every day, seven days a week. Don provided moral support for his mother after the divorce. In return, she helped support him while he pursued his PhD. Don got a lot of his money from his mother. And once he married Miss Sook, Linda would gladly help support her too.

Linda thought of Miss Sook as her daughter. Miss Sook felt the same way too. Since my mom didn't have that mother figure growing up, she really looked to Linda as her mom. They were really close. And at times, they seemed more like BFFs than mother and daughter. They would go to Chicago and go to the spa together all the time. They would also go to Piori on the river boat. They would go to the casino.

In fact, thanks to her mother-in-law's generosity, Misook finally had the lifestyle that she had always wanted. She drove Mercedes-Benz. She always wanted to lay his fashion, lay his clothes, lay his designers. She was very attractive. She always made herself up. She always had to make a bono look nice. Linda even gave Miss Sook the money to open her own sewing and alterations business. My mom's always really good at you know putting things together, you know

sewing lines, you, fixing my shirts for me, growing up. So she decided to get a little shop in Bloomington, and she was really excited about it. And in 2006, Missook Repay, Linda's kindness with the gift her mother-in-law wanted most, a grandson. There's no doubt met deep into the relationship between Missouk and Linda. And four years later, Missouk's mother and law

had her own happy news. At the age of 69, and after years on her own, Linda had found love. We met on meds.com, and I met her at a restaurant and everything sort of looked real nice. Linda and Larry Taita married in January of 2011. Linda and Larry want to live out the rest of their lives with each other, the rest of their golden years with each other.

But it wasn't meant to be. On September 5, 2011, just eight months after their wedding, Linda mysteriously vanished. Coming up, just who was Linda taking to Chinatown? I think it was a cent of them. Was it possible she'd been abducted? Might have been one of the Chinese gangs. At around 8 p.m. on September 5, 2011, Larry Tidah called the Crest Hill Illinois Police Department and filed a missing persons report.

His wife Linda, a business consultant and interpreter who worked with the Chinese immigrant community, had left home before dawn that morning to pick up a client in Bloomington and drive them to Chicago. Which was unusual. She did this sort of things often. She was going to be backed by between eight and nine

for us to have breakfast. But the 70-year-old hadn't come home, and she hadn't returned any of her husbands increasingly worried calls, either. I started calling around the hour every hour, and I got no response, no answer, no phone call. So at a little before eight, Larry had made another call to the police.

I had this bad feeling something had happened. It was only a gut feeling, but it was enough to convince Larry. She didn't contact anybody, and all of a sudden she's just gone. Nobody can get a hold of her, so that's got to be very scary for the family. Hoping to find a lead on Linda's whereabouts, the investigators pulled her phone records. Our first thing is to look at phone records. Every, you know, this day and age,

everybody's tied to their cell phones. But when the investigators looked at Linda's phone records, they made a surprising discovery. The last bounce off of cell phone tower from Linda's cell phone came from a tower here in Bloomington. We literally contract from tower to tower all the way to Bloomington, Illinois. So as far as we knew, that was the last place she was.

An hour and a half south of Crust Hill, Bloomington had been Linda's first stop that morning. She had a client that she was supposed to come down here and pick up to take that client back to Chicago. Had the meetup occurred, could it have something to do with Linda's disappearance? This is not out of the realm of possibility. However, when the investigators tried to track down the mysterious client, they quickly ran into trouble. Larry could only provide the sketchiest details.

She was a Chinese immigrant who needed to arrive to Chinatown in Chicago. And Linda's phone records were little help, either. Although there was one number on her log of incoming calls that the investigators found suspicious, one from a New York area code. It had tried to contact it. It always went to voicemail. With the phone number a dead end, the missing persons investigators hit the streets.

The investigation of this face goes into talking to everyone she knows and bloomed in. Linda had friends here in the community that operated a number of the Chinese restaurants here in Bloomington. They went to several of the restaurants, but nobody had any contact with her. Nobody knew anything about where Linda had gone or who she might have met with. They also tried to contact Linda's son, Don and his wife, 45 year old Miss Suk Wang, who lived in Bloomington. They made contact with Miss Suk that evening. Miss Suk told the investigators that her husband was out of town on a trip to

California. She also said that she hadn't heard anything from Linda all day, which was strange. Misook said that she had been trying to contact her all day as well. And when the investigators asked what she thought had happened to her mother-in-law, Misook raised a chilly possibility. Misook made an indication that it might have been one of the Chinese gangs. According to Miss Su, her mother-in-law's work with the federal prison system

meant she'd occasionally translated for gang members. She worked as an interpreter for Chinese nationals that were in custody. Was it possible one of the inmates Linda worked with? Had criminal contacts on the outside? Contacts who might abduct the successful business woman. I didn't know what was going on. If somebody had her, if it was from money or whatever. And Larry's fear only deepened as two days passed

with no word or sign of Linda. You don't sleep too much. You don't know what's going on or what's happened. Linda's husband Larry and her daughter-in-law, Miss Soap, weren't the only ones that appeared to be worried sick over the 70-year-olds disappearance. There was also Linda's assistant in her interpreting and consulting business, a Chinese immigrant named Jenny. I actually reached out to Jenny when I got the cellphone records to see if she had any other information that she could provide. She was kind of Linda's right hand. Unfortunately, Linda's right hand told the investigator she had no idea what had become of her balls. Jenny seemed generally concerned about what had happened to Linda and where she was.

Jenny was hardly alone either. In the days following her disappearance, Crest Hills Chinese community and Bloomington's launched their own searches for the missing 70 year old. and Bloomington's launched their own searches for the missing 70-year-old. One that was pretty well respected in the Chinese community, the Chinese community was actively trying to pursue what could have happened to her. In Bloomington, where Linda's phone records placed her last, police continued the search, too.

I asked for patrol officers to go out and check the airport parking lot, check hotels parking lot. This is if we can find Linda tightest vehicle. And before long, the search expanded to the whole Chicago area and then some. Basically the entire state had the information to try and find her. But by September 6, with Linda missing for more than 36 hours, even the police were starting to fear the worst. My good instincts is something bad's going on here. This isn't just a missing person.

Her son, Dawn, appeared to agree. When he sat down with the detectives on the 7th after returning home from California. He told them he'd been unable to reach his mother for days. How many times? I have a step out of ten times. For those responses. No responses. Phone was off.

Okay. That's very odd. I could tell he was concerned. I could tell that he loved his mom. And he was convinced that the client who wanted Linda to take her to Chicago had been some sort of trap. More and more, I think it was a setup. And why would someone want to lure Linda

to an early morning meeting? There's some bad people. They should come on other towns. I think you look at me in a nice town like this, and they follow you, they know your rich. In fact, Don said that he'd been so worried that his mother had been abducted, that he'd left a message for the kidnappers

on her voice mail. I said, you know, if you take my mom, you know, please return to me, her to me, she works more than a million dollars to us and it's for money to be resolved. But if it was a kidnapping, why hadn't anyone contacted the family for ransom? Don didn't know for sure, but he agreed with the investigators that the mysterious New York number that showed up in Linda's phone records might be the key to finding out who had set her up. 90% of the clients, the most if I'm New York, their cell phone number, star with 917,

which is New York's number. After Don's interview, the investigators tried the New York number again, and this time, it didn't go to voicemail. It was disconnected. Was Don on to something? Was the New York number connected to his mother's disappearance? The investigators thought so. I had the FBI try and look it up.

But before the FBI was able to track down the number, a stunning break would lead the search for Miss Suf Wang's mother-in-law in a surprising new direction. Coming up, the investigators recover a crucial piece of video. You can see the shock and surprise on Linda's face. But the real shock is who else gets caught on tape. You can see Linda backing away from her. Hey, listener. It is me, Jason Bateman. I want to tell you that we've struck podcast gold in our new episode with David Letterman available four weeks early on one Dree Plus. It's like a late night talk show hangout, but with a smart list

twist. We are diving deep into David Letterman's incredible career in the moments that shaped him into the beloved icon he is today. Our interview with David Letterman was reported live in Brooklyn in front of thousands of our biggest fans from our smart list tour. This is the fourth of 10 interviews with new episodes releasing every Thursday. We're talking with celebrities and icons like the Great, Will Ferrell, Kevin Hart, Mark Cuban, Jimmy Campbell, so many more. Join us for an unforgettable conversation that will have you laughing, pondering,

and quite possibly contemplating, growing a beard like Letterman's. I know I have. You can listen to these episodes four weeks early and add free on Wundry Plus, find Wundry Plus in the Wundry app, or on Apple podcasts. By September 12, 2011, it had been a week since 70-year-old Linda Taita had disappeared in Bloomington, Illinois. The last known ping from a salt tower is here in Bloomington. And that's when the investigation in search for Linda begins.

Linda's daughter-in-law, 45-year-old Misook Wang, told investigators that she worried that her mother-in-law had been abducted or robbed. But on September 12th, a stunning new lead would turn the investigation into Linda Tidus' disappearance in a shocking, new direction. But on September 12th, a stunning new lead would turn the investigation into Linda Tidas' disappearance in a shocking new direction. The break came from Bloomington's Chinese community.

The cloaks in the Asian Mayor of Community here in Bloomington, it becomes aware that Linda's missing, that leaks throughout the entire community. And one of the people that heard the news was a waitress at a local Chinese restaurant, a waitress who had a strange story for the police. She comes forward about a weird thing that she had done on another person's behalf. According to the waitress, the weird thing

had started when a well-dressed woman she'd never seen before, approached her at work on September 4. The day before Linda disappeared. She went in there and asked the hostess specifically if they spoke Chinese. And when the waitress said that she spoke Chinese, the mystery woman had asked her for a favor. She'd asked her to make a phone call for her. A phone call to Linda. She told her to tell Linda that she had a ride to Chicago.

She would pay $500 for this ride. Linda accepted. She'd actually been set up in a ruse of sorts. And just who was this mystery woman who'd set Linda up? The waitress couldn't tell the police, but the restaurant's security cameras could. The officers pulled the surveillance video. You can clearly see the suit going into the restaurant.

But if Linda had been set up by her daughter-in-law, what had she set her up for? All the waitress knew was that Misuk wanted Linda to meet her at a local Bloomington grocery store. And when the investigators pulled the security footage from that store, they made another stunning discovery. Linda pulls into the parking lot, stops under one of the light poles, and further back in the parking lot, stops under one of the light poles, and further back

in the parking lot, you see a pair of headlights come on, and you see the headlights drive around the parking lot and come in and pull in next to Linda's vehicle. The car that pulled in next to Linda was Miss Suks, Mercedes. Miss Suks had laid in wait for Linda. On the video, both women got out of their cars, and Miss Sook started screaming at her mother-in-law. You can see the shock and surprise on Linda's face. You can see Linda backing away from her.

Linda was trying to leave, but Miss Sook would grab her by the arm, grab her by her purse, grab her by her shirt. And then, just as it appeared, the argument was on the verge of turning violent. It was suddenly over. It entered the two women going back into their respective vehicles and driving away. What was the confrontation about? And did it have anything to do with Linda's disappearance?

On the evening of September 12, the investigators brought Miss Su in for questioning. As we're talking, I said, so when was it exactly the last time you saw her? And she says, well, I went to their house and I want to say it was like September 1st. Which was four days before the parking lot confrontation. Why would she not be truthful about having a conversation with Linda Tide in the parking lot? She wanted to play the play dumb routine. Like, I don't know anything about anything.

Miss Sook could deny it all she wanted, but the police had her on tape. In fact, that wasn't all they had. While Miss Sook was talking to the detectives, crime scene investigators were busy searching her home in Bloomington and her alteration shot. The business her mother-in-law had helped finance. We have the search forms.

We want to make sure Miss Sook isn't around when we execute it. And in the dumpster behind Mizu's shop, the detectives found something. I've got a lot of ID cards and credit cards that were cut up into small pieces. But while the cards had all been cut up, the investigators were still able to read them. I was still able to make up the name of our missing person, Linda Taita.

And that wasn't all they found, either. A shirt was found and a downstairs in blood on it. Crime scene investigators immediately conveyed that information back to the detectives questioning Miss Sook and the result was a dramatic shift in Miss Sook's interrogation. Now my job is to get music coming what happened and whether I believe that's what happened it doesn't matter I just need her to start talking about it and once the investigators confronted her with what they knew, the video, the cut-up IDs, and the blood, missoc finally began to talk.

According to Missoc, she would never do anything to hurt her mother-in-law. Linda and Missoc's relationship was great in the beginning. Missoc thought of her as the mother she never had. mother-in-law. Linda and Mesoops relationship was great in the beginning. Mesoook thought of her as the mother she never had. In fact, she told the investigators that she truly loved Linda. She would even call her mom. And Mesoops said she'd done everything she could to make mom happy. In the Asian culture, you want to please your mom and your family and it's really important. However, according to Misook, something had eventually come between them.

Her marriage to Linda's son, Dawn. I could just see that their marriage was at the greatest. I could tell that my mom was hurting. And Misook said she was hurting because she suspected Don was cheating. Misuk believed that her husband was having an affair. And it wasn't just some casual hookup either. Misuk suspected that her husband was having an affair with Linda's assistant, Jenny. It was devastating on my mom. She had no idea that this was going on at all. Jenny and my mom had done each other for a really long time. And Miss Sook said that Linda's attitude about the alleged affair was just as devastating.

Asook believed that she knew about it and was almost happy about it. And the idea that her mother-in-law supported the alleged affair, hurt Miss Sook deeply. Miss Sook had been abandoned by both Don and Linda. I think this took a heavy, heavy toll on her. But she also said that she was determined to fight. My mom didn't want to give up on their marriage. She didn't want to have another divorce. And Misook said she had arranged the parking lot meeting,

as a last ditch attempt to enlist her mother-in-law support. She was actually trying to possibly talk to Linda and trying to get her to see her point of view. I need you to help me get my husband back. But Miss Suke said that the meeting had quickly turned angry. Miss Suke, she had a temper. Linda had a temper as well. She didn't want to talk to my mom. She didn't want anything to do with her.

But if the argument had ended with Meezuk and her mother-in-law, each driving away, how did Linda's ID and credit cards end up in the dumpster outside the sewing shong? Linda chose to follow Meezuk back to the sewing shop. Linda chose to follow me, so back to the sewing shop. Missook told the police that once they arrived at the shop, a second angry confrontation occurred on the sidewalk outside. And according to Missook,

her mother-in-law had turned violent. Linda started hitting my mom and just started hitting her in the temple and the head. Missook told the police that she and Linda had soon tumbled to the pavement. Missook sent Linda's honor back, reached up choking. Missook. And Missook, desperately trying to break free, had done what she could to fight back. Missook was on top of her choking Linda.

My mom at that point just felt like this lady is trying to kill me. But Mizuk said that in their struggle to the death, her 70-year-old mother-in-law had succumbed first. The next day she knew she was dead. I see she knew she was dead. Miss Sook said she tried to save Linda, a claim she repeated later that night when the investigators took her to the sewing shop and asked her to walk through what happened.

I tried to last a while. I tried it last a while. I just knew I got off something. And once she realized that, mouth-to-mouth. OK, my sister like us. And once she realized that her mother-in-law truly was dead, Miss Sook said she'd hidden the body in the sewing shop overnight. She puts her behind some clothing and furniture and stuff like that to keep her body hidden.

And the next night, according to Miss Sook, she buried Linda's body in a nature preserve on the outskirts of Chicago. She drove for hours. Hours all over to find a perfect spot to bury her. A spot that she led the

investigators to early on the morning of September 13. She didn't want to come very close to it. In fact, maybe 20, 25 feet is the closest she would get to it. She didn't want to come very close to it. In fact, maybe 20, 25 feet is the closest she would get to it. She didn't want to be confronted again with the Teowak she committed. But she would have to confront it again

in a court of law because despite her claims of self-defense, by the time the medical examiner's office had finished exhuming her mother-in-law's body, Miss Sook was back in Bloomington and under arrest for murder. I was shocked when I found out that Miss Suq was charged with murdering Linda. Very shocked. There's just no way my mom's not capable of doing that.

Coming up, will the trial reveal Miss Sook's sinister motive? Linda had a life insurance policy. Or will a shocking new twist suggest that she's telling the truth? Miss Sook would not just murder his grandmother in front of him. On December 10, 2012, Misuk Wang stood trial for murder in Bloomington, Illinois. Arrested in 2011, the 47-year-old mother of two was charged with the murder of her 70-year-old mother-in-law, Linda Taita, a translator and advocate for Chicago's Chinese community. The community was horrified I would happen to Linda. Although no one was more shocked than Larry Taita, who'd been Linda's husband for a mere eight months.

I never thought Mizzouk would ever do anything to Linda like that. I thought they were friends. But Mizook had done it. In fact, she had basically confessed to the police. After hours of talking, she admitted murdering her mother-in-law. Although in Mizook's version of events, it wasn't murder.

It was self-defense. In her opinion, there were mutual combatants. A fight that Misook said began as a violent argument over her husband's alleged affair. I think Misook was upset, extremists of the chewing angry, that Linda wouldn't take her side in this supposed industrial male affair.

But was that really what happened in their opening statement? The prosecution said it was true that a divorce had been in Don and missoaks future. Don was going to divorce Masou. Probably he was going to file for the divorce when he returned from his trip from California. And according to the prosecution, it wasn't over Don's so-called affair with his mother's

assistant, Jenny. When talking with Don and Jenny, it was just a friendship, a platonic friendship, no sort of physical aspect to it whatsoever or romantic aspect. But if Don wasn't leaving Misook for Jenny, why get divorced? To explain, the prosecutors put Don on the stand, and he told the jury that the marriage had initially been a good one. From the beginning, it seemed like they were a happy family. But Don testified that they became less happy with each passing year.

Musukes lust for material gain for wealth started to consume the marriage. She liked wealth. She liked nice clothes. She liked nice cars. She always wanted this. She always wanted that. She needed more of everything. The suit also wanted people to know that she had money.

Even if that wasn't technically true. She was just charging everything on her credit cards, so it created a lot of diet with opening new credit cards in maxing the amount. Dawn said that Miss Suks spending soon led to trouble. She had a more extravagant lifestyle than I think Dawn liked, and I think they did have quite a bit of disputes about money.

Her materialism, her wanting of wealth, and the fights they were having about money, put a strain on the relationship. In fact, Don claimed that Missouk's materialism eventually pushed the marriage to the breaking point. Missouk had a penchant to steal things. She got arrested for her shot lifting a month or two before the murder. Don testified that he and his mother had been embarrassed by the arrest.

They refused to postpone for her. Don said that Missouk had been furious, so mad that when she did get out, she'd gone to the bank and cleaned out the couple's joint checking account. She basically rated the checking account for thousands of dollars. Dawn testified that the theft had been the final push he needed to file for divorce. And the prosecution believed the missing money would also play a crucial role in his mother's murder.

According to the prosecution, the key pieces of evidence were a series of jailhouse letters miscilk wrote to her daughter and several Korean friends while she was awaiting trial. All of her correspondence was in Korean. And I think she felt that we would not be able to know what she was saying because she was saying it in Korean. But she was wrong. We had an assistant in our office who was Korean. And the prosecutors claimed that those letters,

translations of which were provided to the jury, revealed the true motive behind Linda's murder. In her letters, Misuk spoke about the fact that Linda had a life insurance policy that Don was the beneficiary of. If something happened to Linda, Don would get all this money. But not all of it. Misuk believed that if Linda died,

she would be entitled to at least half of that life insurance policy in a divorce settlement. And the result was a murder plot according to the prosecutors. It was not something that just happened spontaneously. It was not something that was an accident. She was willing to do whatever it took to make sure that she was financially set. And on September 4th, she'd asked the waitress to place the call that set up the ambush. Mizzouk had paid her $20. But according to the prosecutors,

the real bait was the money Mizzouk stole from Don's checking account. A lot of the money that was put into that checking account was from Linda. The prosecutors claimed that was how Mizzouk was able to lure Linda from the grocery store parking lot to the sewing shop where the murder occurred. Linda was following her because she promised to pay Linda

the money that she owed her that she had taken out of the checking account. And Misuk's claim of self-defense, the prosecution countered that by putting the medical examiner on the stand, who testified that in order to kill Linda, Miss Sook would have to keep strangling her mother-in-law long after the 70-year-old had gone unconscious. The threat would have been over with,

and yet Miss Sook continued to choke Linda Taita to her death. Self-defense ends when someone can't fight back anymore. But according to the prosecutors, the most chilling thing about the murder was the fact that Miss Soak didn't commit the crime alone. Her poor five-year-old son was with her a whole time. He's sitting in the car and I can't imagine what was going through his head. Would that seconding revelation turn the jury against her? I don't know how a person

allows their child to witness such a violent act against the child's grandmother. Or would it strengthen Misook's claim that the crime wasn't premeditated, that she'd killed Linda in self-defense? Misook would not just murder his grandmother in front of him. And to prove that Misook wasn't the monster, that the prosecutors made her out to be. The defense called her to the stand on December 17th.

If anybody was in her situation, they would want their voice to be heard. Through tears, Misook admitted to luring Linda to the parking lot, but she also claimed that murder wasn't what she'd had in mind. She said, I just wanted to talk to her in say I'm sorry. Miss Suq said that she'd been shocked by what happened next. When she got to the sewing shop according to Miss Suq, that's when Linda attacked her. It was just a fight that went wrong and resulted in Linda's death. It went wrong and resulted in Linda's death. And according to Misook, she'd had no choice. She felt like this was a life or death situation.

But if that was true, why not call the police after words? Misook claimed that she feared losing her five-year-old son. She didn't know what was going to happen with him. Why ever get to see him again. It was emotional and powerful testimony. Just sitting there, I felt so help was my mom. I felt so bad for her. But would the jury share her daughter's sympathy? Coming up, will me so go to prison?

Whatever she got, she deserved. Or will she go free? It really came down to just one thing, one thing only. On December 18, 2012, the jury in Miss Suk Wang's murder trial announced that it had reached a verdict. The 47-year-old mother of two was charged with first-degree murder, accused of strangling her mother-in-law. 70-year-old Linda Taita. The evidence really was overwhelming, and really came down to just one thing, the one thing

only. Do you believe that Mizuk was acting as self-defense or not? On the stand, Mizuk had tearfully made the case for self-defense. She didn't do it out of spite. She didn't do it out of hate. But the prosecutors claimed that Misok had been motivated by anger and greed. Don was the sole beneficiary of his mom's insurance policy,

NF. They're marriage ended up in divorce. She would learned to marriage, edit up into the force. She would be entitled to, in her opinion, 50%. She gets revenge on the mother. She gets revenge on Dom, and she gets the ability to be financially set and secure. And now, after just two and a half hours of deliberation, the jury had made its decision.

It didn't take the jury long based upon the evidence that we had to come back and return with a guilty verdict, the first degree murder. Misook broke down when the verdict was read. Misook seemed very beside herself. That's what I thought. Like she had been through hell. And her friends and family were just as surprised. I wasn't thinking that she was going to get, you know, first degree.

I think she should have been convicted of manslaughter. At her sentencing hearing on March 1st, Miss Sook received a total of 55 years in prison. Music was sentenced to 50 years for the murder and five years for buried about it. And the fact that the 47-year-old had essentially been put away for the rest of her life, suited Linda's grieving husband just fine. She never apologized to me or anything like that.

Or said anything to me about she's sorry that she did. I'd probably never forgive her for what she's done. Whatever she got, she deserved. Mesoop tore apart her family with this act. Although even after the conviction, Mesoop's daughter, who was 23 when her mother went to prison, continued to stand by her. I need to be strong for her and to keep her going and to help her out and just get her through

day-to-day. Because she remains convinced that her mother killed Linda in self-defense. The only side that people ever saw of her is that she hurt people that was closest to her. And I just hope that people can see her side and realize that, you know, she's a good person. She's got a caring heart. Ms. Uc Wang has appealed the court's decision. Don Wang has full custody of the couple's son.

Did you see that? I was in your eyes. I love this. Did you see that now? I was in the right place. I love this.