Latest / The Path Went Chilly / Cindy Song Pt. One

Transcript

Cindy Song Pt. One · The Path Went Chilly

0:28
Welcome back to the Path Went Chili. I'm Robin, I'm Jules, and
0:32
I'm Ashley. Let's dive right into this week's case. November one, two
0:38
thousand and one, State College, Pennsylvania. After spending Halloween night partying at
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a club, twenty one year old penn State student Cindy Song is dropped off
0:49
at her apartment complex at four am. She's never heard from again, but
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some of her personal items and a piece of her Halloween costume are found inside
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her apartment. Years later, and informant tells police that Cindy was abducted and
1:03
murdered by a pair of suspects named Hugo Soelenski and Michael Kurkowski. The search
1:10
of Celenski's property uncovers the remains of Kurkowski and several other victims, but no
1:15
trace of Cindy is ever found. After that, the Path went Chilly.
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So today we'll be covering a case which is considered to be one of the
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most famous unsold mysteries to take place on Halloween, the two thousand and one
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Disappearance of Cindy's Song. It involves a young woman from Korea who was living
1:34
in the United States on a student visa and entering her final year at Penn
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State University. Cindy was planning on graduating in the spring and had a bright
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future out of her but before this could take place, she went out partying
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with some friends on Halloween night, and after being dropped off at her apartment
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complex during the early morning hours, she vanished without a trace and has not
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been seen since. This case would be featured on one of the final episodes
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of Unsolved Mysteries, and if you perform any research online, you'll likely come
2:01
across a photograph of Cindy's song with Bunny Ears, which was part of her
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Halloween costume. This photo is particularly haunting to look at, knowing that Cindy
2:12
would vanish within hours of it being taken, and the picture would often be
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featured on her missing posters. However, a piece of Cindy's Halloween costume was
2:20
found inside her apartment after she disappeared, which indicated that she did make it
2:23
home safely before she inexplicably vanished. A convicted serial killer named Hugo Selensky was
2:30
eventually implicated in Cindy's disappearance, as the remains of multiple victims were found buried
2:36
on his property. But since none of these remains belonging to Cindy, investigators
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have been unable to find any definitive evidence that Selenski killed her. So this
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lead is going to be one of the focal points on her series of episodes.
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So this case is interesting because if you think about Halloween and someone who's
2:53
going out to a party, I mean that has the ability to be dangerous,
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right. People can be drinking, people can be doing drugs. There
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can be people you're not familiar with, and there can be people who you're
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familiar with who might have a reason to harm you. But this really scary
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part about Cindy's case is that they're pretty sure she actually did get back to
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her residence, which means she's in the place she should have been the most
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safe and should have been able to go to sleep after she was dropped off,
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and come to find out, she's probably abducted and murdered. And so
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I'm assuming they never found her body. Is that correct? That is correct?
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I mean I mentioned that they looked on a property of a guy named
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Hugo Selenski and found a bunch of human remains, but none of them belonged
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to her. And another weird detail is that there was no sign of any
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struggle or violence in Cindy's apartments, so it doesn't seem like she was abducted
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from there. So it's possible that after she was dropped off at home,
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she stepped outside for a brief period and that's when she was abducted. Oh
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yeah, absolutely, she could have gone out to go to the car,
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to get a smoke, to do something, or maybe she was even lured
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out of the house with someone saying, hey, come meet me here or
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something to that effect. Very scary, very scary. To add on to
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the top of it, that it's Halloween night adds to the eeriness. But
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to me, it's the fact that she did get home that evening and somehow
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she still ended up missing and most likely harmed by somebody. It's so creepy
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too, like, what are the chances that an opportunistic predator would at that
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very moment when she decides to go out, be there and snatch her off
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the street. But clearly it does happen. I believe it happened in the
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case of Mara Murray. It just it seems like, what are the chances?
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But these things do happen particularly here since she was last seen to be
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alive at four am, So that could mean that a predator was just roaming
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around that area during the wee hours of the morning and Cindy was just in
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the wrong place at the wrong time. Is it also possible that someone who
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knew her, or someone who dropped her off or something was involved. Because
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I used to tell my students, you're more likely to get hurt by the
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person walking you home to protect you from the person in the bushes, then
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you are the person in the bushes. So is it possible that it could
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have been someone who knew her and might have known her timeline. They looked
5:06
into that angle, but they couldn't find anyone who stood out as a potential
5:10
suspect, So they are thinking that if she was harmed, ivo was by
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a complete stranger. Our story begins in State College, Pennsylvania, in two
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thousand and one. Our central figure is twenty one year old Hyun John Song,
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who goes by her nickname Cindy. Cindy was originally born in Seoul,
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South Korea, who moved to the United States on a tourist visa in nineteen
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ninety five after living with her aunt and uncle in Virginia and graduating high school,
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Cindy elected to attend Penn State University in order to major and integrate of
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arts, so her tourist visa evolved into a student visa. She got consistently
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good grades and was hoping to graduate in the spring of two thousand and two.
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As she entered her final year at Penn State, was living off campus
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at the State College Park apartments with a mat and working two jobs. Shortly
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after the fall semester began, Cindy's roommate had to return home to Philadelphia for
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an extended period of time because of family issues, so for the last half
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of October, Cindy was living alone. On Halloween Night, Cindy and two
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of her friends decided to go out and party at the Player's nightclub. For
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her Halloween costume, she decided to dress up as a playboy bunny, and
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her costume consisted of a pink sleeveless shirt with a bunny design imprinted on the
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front, bunny ears, false eyelashes, and a white tennis skirt with a
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cotton bunny tail on the back. At around two a m. On the
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morning of November first, Cindy and her two friends left the club after it
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closed and spent the next two hours traveling through the downtown area and hanging out
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at a friend's apartment to play video games. One of Cindy's friends, Stacy
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Pake, drove her back to her apartment complex. Cindy had spent much of
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the night drinking and was mildly intoxic by this point, but not so much
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so that she couldn't handle herself. At around four am, Stacy dropped Cindy
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off, and while she watched her walk towards her apartment, Stacy could not
7:11
confirm that Cindy actually went inside before she drove off, and unfortunately, this
7:15
would turn out to be the last time that Cindy was confirmed to be alive.
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Okay, here's what's rule said, poor Stacy, imagine what kind of
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grief she's going through where she's in some ways responsible for Cindy in that moment.
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I'm sure she feels that way. Right she drove her home, she
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watches her walk to her apartment. I mean, apartment complexes can be set
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up all kinds of ways where possibly it's not that she didn't even wait to
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watch her walk into the apartment. She might not have even visibly been able
7:45
to see her front door, right, It could have been in a little
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hallway, it could have been around the corner. But she gets her home
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safely after a night of having fun, and you know, no part of
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her thought anything other than the fact that her friend is about to go in
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and go to sleep. And then i'm sure later that next day or you
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know, several hours later, she realizes something could have happened to Cindy.
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And so my heart breaks for Stacy as well, who is in this position
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of a friend taking care of another friend and at the end of the day
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has no idea what happened when she dropped her friend off. So there's got
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to be a very complicated grief going on there for Stacy too. Yeah,
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as we're going to talk about, they do find evidence to indicate that Cindy
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did make it inside her apartment. So even if Stacy hung around for another
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minute longer and confirmed that she actually saw Cindy go inside, it may not
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have made much difference because it's possible that whatever happened to Cindy did not happen
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until a long time later, So it probably happened after Stacy was already gone,
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so later that day, Cindy's roommate returned from Philadelphia and was surprised to
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discover that Cindy was not at their apartment. For the next two days,
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none of Cindy's friends heard from her, has she missed her classes and a
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shift at one of her so they finally contacted the Ferguson Township Police Department and
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reported her missing. As far as I can tell, the door to the
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apartment was locked when Cindy's roommate returned on November the first, and there were
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no signs of forced entry or struggle. When police checked inside, they found
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some of Cindy's personal belongings, including her backpack and cellular phone, and the
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false eyelashes she had worn as part of her costume were on the counter.
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This seemed to suggest that Cindy had entered the apartment after she was dropped off
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by Stacy Pake, but some of her other items, including her keys and
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her purse, were missing, and the rest of her bunny costume could not
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be found. A check of Cydey's bank account and credit cards showed no activity
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since she was last seen. Upon learning of Cindy's disappearance. Members of her
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family, including her mother, band sun Song, and her older brother Keiho,
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made the trip from South Korea to Pennsylvania. Within days, they were
9:56
granted access to Cindy's apartment, but to the surprise the police, the Songs
10:01
wound up cleaning the place and they have inadvertently destroyed potential physical evidence. Oh
10:07
goodness. Okay, So when you look at what's missing from her apartment,
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she has her keys and her purse when she goes outside, but she doesn't
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have her cell phone, which is really bizarre because it's like she's taking critical
10:20
items but not the phone. You would think even back what was this two
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thousand and one? Yeah, okay, so even back in two thousand and
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one, if you had a cell phone, that's something that is almost as
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necessary as your car keys, right, it was something that you would likely
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take with you, especially in the early morning hours or late late at night.
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If you were a young girl, you would probably take your phone too.
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So the combination or the lack of combination of the person the keys with
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her, and the cell phone left at the house is really really interesting,
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Like could she have possibly been running up to the convenience store to get a
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snack or could she have been going to just meet someone that she knew around
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the corner. It doesn't really line up like take it all or don't take
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any of it, but having those items separated to me causes a little bit
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of concern. And then you have her poor family who makes this trip from
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South Korea to Pennsylvania to find their baby and their sister, and they're not
11:20
doing anything other than trying to make sure Cindy's okay, and in the act
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of cleaning her apartment really could have damaged the investigation. Again, an added
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layer of grief and trauma for the family thinking we're helping, We're here to
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help and look for her, and then you know, finding out, oh
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my gosh, something we did could have compromised the investigation as well. Really
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really sad, Robin. Do you know if Cindy had a cell phone,
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Like this is at the time when not everyone had a cell phone, but
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a lot of people did. Well, Yeah, they just confirmed that that
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she left her cell phone behind. Oh okay, sorry I missed that part.
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Yeah. So, but like you said, it is very unusual.
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This is two thousand and one. They're not as common, but people generally
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took them when they left the apartment. But that's what makes me think that
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she decided to step out for what she thought was going to be a very
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brief time period, and before she had a chance to make it back,
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something happened to her. And I think the fact that the rest of her
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bunny costume was not found is a very important clue, because you think that
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if she's returning home for the night and planning to go to bed, she
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would have taken the costume off and changed but the fact that it was not
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found that indicates that she still had it on her when she stepped out of
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her apartment and was likely abducted. I think it's important to note as well,
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that our relationship to our cell phones has evolved so much a lot of
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people wouldn't remember what it would be like. You wouldn't be as attached to
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it as you are today, So there could be a strong likelihood that you
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might, if you were running to a convenience store, leave your cell phone
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behind. Because they weren't like little computers like they are today, where our
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whole lives are at our fingertips when we have our phone. They were a
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lot different back then. Don't you guys think, Oh, definitely, And
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as far as I can tell, texting still wasn't a thing yet in two
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thousand and one, right, So it's not like she would be texting her
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friend Stacy or something like that and saying, oh, I'm just running up
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to the market, because these were very low tech phones compared to today.
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If there were, if there was texting at the time, it was one
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of those where you had to push the button three times to get to the
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letter C and move over and hit it again. Do you know what I
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mean to that's what I remember. Yeah. Yeah. Investigators did explore the
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possibility that Cindy may have disappeared voluntarily in order to complete suicide. Three months
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earlier, Cindy had been sharing the apartment with her boyfriend until he broke up
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with her and moved out. However, Cindy's friends insisted that she was not
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depressed and that thanks to the aid of counseling and medication, she was able
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to get over the breakup and was in very good spirits when she went out
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partying on Halloween night, in fact for a Britney Spears concert, which Cindy
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was looking forward to attending. The following week were left behind in the apartment,
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and there was also a receipt to show that she had recently ordered a
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computer, which was set to be delivered days after she went missing. The
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consensus seemed to be that Cindy had been the victim of an abduction, and
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while police did look into Cindy's ex boyfriend, they did not consider him to
14:22
be a suspect. Since there were no records of any calls on Cindy's phone
14:28
around the time she went missing, there didn't seem to be any reason for
14:31
her to leave the apartment after she arrived home, but it was theorized that
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she may have stepped out to visit a nearby twenty four hour supermarket that she
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often frequented. The market was only located two hundred yards away, and it
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was not uncommon for Cindy to walk there at odd hours, But when police
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attempted to check the surveillance footage from the market, they discovered that their footage
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from the early morning hours of November first had already been taped over. It
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wasn't long before a woman and came forward with an eyewitness sighting of Cindy nearly
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two hundred miles away in the Chinatown district of Philadelphia. According to the witness,
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she had walked past a car which contained an Asian woman resembling Cindy,
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who was crying and yelling out for help. A man described as having an
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olive or light brown complexion suddenly intervened and told the witness to get lost because
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this was none of her business. When the police did release a composite sketch
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of the unidentified man, they expressed their skepticism that the witness actually saw Cindy,
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as she wound up changing her story several times. Okay, I won't
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go down the rabbit hole of our conversation when we talk about the problems with
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eyewitness identification. But as likely as it is that this woman was trying to
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be incredibly helpful and probably did see a domestic dispute, it's two hundred miles
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away, and it's more likely she saw Cindy's picture and thought, oh my
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gosh, that looks like the lady who I saw getting hurt by this guy.
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I'm going to call the police and try to help. So probably well
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intended, but less likely to be accurate. Then let's say if someone was
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seeing her at the convenience store the evening she went missing. That is exactly
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what I was thinking. Remember going as a college kid, like I just
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remember being hungry after your drinking, and if it was only a couple of
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hundreds of yards away, she could have easily walked that direction and taken her
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keys in her purse, the keys to get back into her apartment, and
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then her purse to pay for the goods she was going to get. If
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she was intoxicated, it's not too far away. She can go get that,
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she can get a little late night snack, and then she can go
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back home and rest again. Like you guys said, all they found in
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the apartment were the accessories to her costume. She hadn't changed, so she
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could have very easily walked in, taken her bunny ears off, kind of
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dehalloween to herself a little bit, and then said I'm going to go get
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a snack, and that's when she met fate with somebody who was out for
16:57
something devious. That's what I think is the most logical explanation for what happened,
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That she just decided to go to the market to get a quick snack,
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like you said. But if so, then that's just rotten luck that
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she just happened to cross paths with the wrong person at that time in the
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morning, So it just is kind of an example of her being in the
17:15
wrong place at the wrong time, that some predator may have been in that
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neighborhood at four am. Well. On January the thirty first, two thousand
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and two, the Coalition for the Search for Cindy Song, a group consisting
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of Cindy's family, Penn State students, and community members, held a press
17:32
conference to criticize law enforcement and university officials for the lack of progress of the
17:37
investigation. They made a comparison between Cindy's case and the recent disappearance Alicia Koza
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Kiwitch, a thirteen year old white girl who went missing on New Year's Day
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after being lured out of her home by an older man she met on the
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internet. Alicia immediately had over fifty FBI agents assigned you her case, and
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they managed to find her alive within three days. Some minority grew from Penn
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State campus also expressed their dissatisfaction with the investigation and wondered why Cindy's disappearance did
18:06
not get the same treatment as Alicia's. For their part, investigators insisted that
18:11
they were doing everything in their power to find Cindy, but were simply hampered
18:15
by the lack of evidence and solid leads. This press conference prompted the Ferguson
18:19
Township PD and the Song family to cut off all direct communication with each other.
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Both sides conceded that some friction was caused by the cultural gap between the
18:30
way police investigations were conducted in the United States and South Korea. By his
18:34
own admission, Cindy's brother Keiho said he was baffled by the quote unquote constitutional
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restraints on police investigations, such as the length peak granjury subpoena procedures required to
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access Cindy's phone and internet records, and he wanted the police to act more
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quickly and forcefully. Kiel With quit school and remained in the US to help
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out in the search for his sister, while their mother, ban Soon,
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was eventually forced to return to Korea in order to care for her sick husband.
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Here's the interesting thing, right, They're comparing her case a college girl
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who goes missing after a Halloween party to a thirteen year old child who's lured
19:14
out by some adult predator and there's a known kind of idea here that an
19:21
older man reaches out to her. So there's this known perpetrator or known idea
19:26
of a perpetrator. There's an underage child, right, and so I think
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it's a different dynamic in the case. That's horrifying an media grabbing that some
19:37
child could have been lured out by a predator online. And this was very
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new back then. Remember we were in chat rooms and things like that,
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so it wasn't necessarily as common and known as human trafficking is now and stuff
19:51
like that. It doesn't make it any more valuable than the disappearance of Cindy.
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But when you're looking at attention given and the dynamics of the case,
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those are two very very different cases. And it is possible that there was
20:06
some bias saying, well, Cindy was out at a party. She could
20:08
have gone missing on her own. She's an adult, right, But it
20:11
does seem like the police were taking this case seriously, that they were responding.
20:17
I do think there's a possibility that there's a conflict of saying this is
20:22
how much we can involve the family, and this is how much we have
20:25
to keep private, and police have the mentality. We are not your counselors,
20:30
right, we are investigating this case and cannot get caught up in the
20:33
grief and emotional trauma that the family's experiencing. There's definitely leeway and there's definitely
20:40
a need for law enforcement to be compassionate and empathetic. But there is a
20:45
conflict usually between families and unsolved cases and the police because of the unsolved nature.
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And if you haven't solved my case, then you're not giving it enough
20:53
attention. That is human nature one oh one. So I feel bad for
20:59
both parties. I do think very very interesting to make the comparison between Alicia's
21:03
case and Cindy's case. But at the end of the day, it just
21:07
comes down to every single person who goes missing or is murdered is equally valuable.
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It's just you don't see that in society play out the same way.
21:15
Right. There's all kinds of factors that play into that. Some of it
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just comes down to which case had more evidence in it. And for Alicia's
21:22
case, with regards to the FBI involvement, was there an abduction that crossed
21:27
state lines or was it something to do with the online communication that led to
21:33
the FBI being involved, because they aren't usually just involved in a straight up
21:37
child abduction case, are they. Yeah, I think I might have had
21:40
to do with the internet angle. I can't remember if Alicia did cross state
21:44
lines, but I can understand why they devoted so much attention to her case,
21:48
not only because she was thirteen years old, but because there's a strong
21:52
lead to work with, because she was lured by someone she meant on the
21:55
Internet. And on a side note, I'm currently Facebook friends with Alicia Kosek
22:00
as she's now a motivational speaker and doing quite well. So I'm glad to
22:03
see that she recovered from this trauma quite well. That's amazing. That's absolutely
22:07
incredible. It's nicey or happy ending to one of those stories, because so
22:11
often we hear the opposite. The case would be featured on a number of
22:17
TV shows, including Unsolved Mysteries, who featured Cindy's story in one of their
22:22
final episodes, which aired in September of two thousand and two. This failed
22:26
to bring about any substantial leads, but within a year a surprising connection will
22:30
be made to a career criminal named Hugo Soolensky. Now the entire saga of
22:36
Hugo Soolensky is one hell of a crazy story and you could probably produce an
22:41
entire podcast series about him. But here's how he fits into this case.
22:45
In June of two thousand and three, an associate of Selenski's name, Paul
22:49
Weekley, was facing a felony burglary charge and decided to inform on Selensky by
22:56
leading the authorities to his property in Louser And County. To everyone's shock,
23:00
the remains of no less than five victims were found buried in Selensky's backyard,
23:06
and Weekly claimed that Selensky was responsible for the murders of up to sixteen people,
23:11
including Cindy's song. According to Weekly, Selensky told him that he and
23:15
an accomplice named Michael Kurkowski had been in State College during the early morning hours
23:22
of November one, two thousand and one, and saw Cindy walking down the
23:26
street. They assumed she was a sex worker and proceeded to abduct her and
23:30
take her to Krekowski's home in Hunlock Creek. Cindy was kept in prison inside
23:34
a walk in safe and sexually assaulted until she died before both men buried her
23:41
body absolutely horrifying, in heartbreaking. It's insane that this person would be telling
23:48
them about these murders, right, And there is proof that he did murder
23:53
at least five people, and Weekly saying, listen, it was up to
23:59
sixteen people, including and he specifies Cindy Song. And so when you look
24:03
at Weekly's story, we know there is some credence to it because eventually police
24:08
will go and find the remains of five individuals. But if Weekly's accurate,
24:14
right, and he knows that Michael Kurkowski helped helped with the murder of her,
24:21
of Cindy Song, don't you think that eventually they'd be able to find
24:25
the remains if they have Michael and Hugo in custody. But then again,
24:30
if they don't talk, they don't talk. But this is insane to me
24:33
that he is able to accurately describe that Hugo is a murderer. You need
24:38
to be looking at his home. They find five people, So who's to
24:42
say that Kurkowski and Hugo didn't kill Cindy Song Because it's horrifying to think that
24:51
she could have just been walking up to the convenience store. They see her
24:55
make an assumption about who she is because of the costume she's wearing. She's
24:59
walked out late at night on the street, and they say, oh,
25:03
well, because she's this vulnerable person, more so than just a college kid,
25:07
she's a sex worker, they decide they're going to target her, kidnap
25:11
her, abuse her, and then kill her. Absolutely heartbreaking if that's true.
25:18
Well, as I'm sure you know, none of the remains found on
25:21
the property did belong to Cindy, so they couldn't corroborate this story. But
25:25
right now, I haven't revealed it yet, But now I'm going to tell
25:27
you what happened to the alleged accomplice, Michael Kurkowski. Now, like I
25:33
said, it was established that none of the remains found on Selensky's property belonged
25:37
to Cindy, as Selensky did not actually live there until several months after she
25:41
went missing. But do you know who was buried there? Michael Kurkowski.
25:47
Kurkowski had previously worked as a pharmacist until he was arrested in June of two
25:51
thousand and one for running an illegal prescription drug ring, and had shown up
25:55
on the authorities radar after one of his clients died of an overdose. Krekowski
26:00
would be convicted of multiple felonies and was awaiting sentencing when both he and his
26:04
girlfriend, Tammy Fassett vanished in May of two thousand and two. It was
26:10
initially believed that Kirkowski had gone on the run as a fugitive, but it
26:14
turned out that Selensky had used flex ties to strangle both Kurkowski and Facet to
26:18
death, and the couple's remains were found buried together on his property. Weekly
26:23
told investigators that one of the reasons that Selensky decided to kill Kirkowski was because
26:29
he had kept Cindy's bunny ears as a souvenir. In actuality, the primary
26:33
motive was robbery, as Selensky entered Kurkowski's home and killed him because he had
26:40
sixty thousand dollars in cash stashed there. The only reason Facet was murdered was
26:45
because she happened to be in the house at that time. Weekly said that
26:48
Selensky committed the crime with an accomplice named Patrick Rusen, and that they initially
26:52
buried the couple at another location until Selensky asked Weekly to help move the bodies
26:59
onto his proper so bizarre. It's interesting because Kurkowski was already in trouble with
27:06
law enforcement, and there could have been a fear also that he was going
27:11
to talk. But shoot, if you have sixty thousand dollars in cash stash
27:15
in your home and you're working with some pretty dark people, it makes sense
27:19
that money would be the motivator there. Do you have any kind of weight
27:26
on Weekly's honesty here, because I mean, I know he's also in trouble
27:30
with law enforcement, but he says he actually helped move bodies, so he's
27:33
implicating himself in these crimes as well. So what did the police think about
27:38
him and his stories? Well, as we're going to talk about later on,
27:42
there are credibility issues with Weekly, and other than his story, there
27:47
really isn't any corroborating evidence that Hugo Soelenski and Michael Kurkowski murdered Cindy. And
27:52
we're going to go into more detail about Kurkowski's background later on as well.
27:56
But even though he was undeniably Aminol who was running this illegal prescription drug ring,
28:03
he didn't really have any history of violence, Like, he wasn't known
28:06
for being the type of guy who would just kidnap someone who he thought was
28:10
a sex worker and hold her in captivity to sexually assault and torture her before
28:14
he committed murder. So some people are finding this convenient that what Weekly is
28:18
deciding to pin this crime on a dead guy who was no longer around to
28:22
refute any of his allegations. I'm wondering if Kurkowski had a substance use disorder
28:29
and that's why he got into the illegal prescription drug ring, because to invest
28:33
all of the time and energy into becoming a pharmacist and to risk it all
28:37
when it seems like the probability is so high that you could get caught.
28:41
I could see if he had addiction issues, then that could be a catalyst
28:48
for maybe making these kind of risky choices that seem like they're not very smart,
28:52
and somebody who's going to go through all that education, it just seems
28:56
so preposterous you would be kind of fraternizing with these criminals that are really dangerous.
29:02
So I really wonder if he was just this predator that saw an opportunity
29:06
and decided to engage in selling illegal prescription drugs, or if it was something
29:11
that he did to kind of support his own habit. I think it might
29:15
be the latter. Like I don't know if he had any addiction issues,
29:18
but it would not surprise me because from what I've read, he didn't sound
29:22
like a bad guy. He was a guy who had an ordinary life,
29:26
who, like you said, became a pharmacist but then got himself embroiled in
29:30
criminal activity. But he also had a girlfriend, he had a close relationship
29:33
with his own family, and as we're going to talk about, he pretty
29:37
much got conned by Hugo Selenski when he crossed paths with him. So he
29:41
just doesn't seem to fit the profile of someone who had just ducked, sexually,
29:45
insalt and murder a random woman. But in addition to the bodies of
29:49
Krakowski and facet bone, fragments for at least three other victims were found in
29:55
a burn pit on Selenski's property. Two of them belonged to Frank James and
30:00
to Day Keeler, a pair of drug dealers who allegedly belonged to a gang.
30:04
The third victim has never been publicly identified, though it's unclear if investigators
30:10
have deliberately chosen not to release that information or if they still have no idea
30:15
who the victim is. It would turn out that Selenski and Patrick Rusen had
30:19
lured James and Keeler to the property in order to steal their money in drugs
30:25
before they were both shot to death and their bodies burned down into bone fragments.
30:30
Ruston wound up pleading guilty to two counts of third degree murder, and
30:33
both he and Paul Weekley testified against Selenski when he went on trial for the
30:37
two murders in two thousand and six. Selenski's defense was that weekly had framed
30:44
him by planting the victim's remains in the burn pit and leading the police there,
30:48
and believe it or not, they were able to generate some reasonable doubt
30:52
for the jury. They ultimately acquitted Selenski of Keeler's murder and deadlocked on James's
30:57
murder. They did find him guilty on two counts of abusing a corpse.
31:03
The jury seemed to believe that Selensky was involved in the crime and at the
31:07
very least helped dispose of the bodies, but did not feel there was enough
31:11
evidence to prove he personally pulled the trigger and committed the murders. Himself.
31:18
However, the state wasted no time charging Selensky with the murders of Michael Kurkowski
31:22
and Tammy Facett, though due to a number of delays and legal wrangling,
31:27
he would not actually go on trial for this crime until twenty fifteen. It
31:33
also turned out that, rather than simply helping Selenski move the victim's bodies,
31:37
Paul Weakley actually participated in the murders, so he agreed to testify against Selensky
31:42
in order to avoid the death penalty. This time, Selensky was convicted on
31:48
two counts of first degree murder and received a life sentence. Yeah, it's
31:52
really difficult here because Weekly obviously knows information. He's in fact, part of
31:59
the idea that these people were murdered and placed on Hugo's properties. So we
32:04
know that Weekly is a problematic character, right because he himself is involved in
32:09
criminal activity. But to know these details could indicate that he is telling the
32:15
truth, right, even though he's a questionable figure. He's clearly giving information
32:21
to try to get himself off the hook. But that information could be true.
32:25
So what's sad here is that he has this horrific account of what happened
32:30
to Cindy Song, and there's no way to prove that it did or didn't
32:37
happen given the evidence that they have right now, So her family is left
32:40
with that being the only information and the only story that they play in their
32:45
head right is, well, if that's what this guy said happened to her,
32:50
then that's what we have to assume happened to her. And it's one
32:52
of the most just horrific thoughts for a mother and a brother and a dad
32:57
to be thinking Cindy went to a convenienced and was abducted and sexually abused and
33:04
murdered and then just buried, thrown away like trash. And that's the thing.
33:08
How cruel would Paul Weekly be if he's just completely making up this story
33:13
and making Cindy's family believe that she was abducted, tortured and held in captivity
33:19
before she was sexually assaulted and murdered, if he just completely made that story
33:22
up. But we're going to talk about this in a few moments. How
33:25
Weekly is kind of a problematic figure with credibility issues. But even though they
33:30
didn't find the remains of Cindy on Selenski's property, when they found the other
33:35
victims. It is important to reiterate that he did not move there until two
33:39
thousand and two, so if he committed this murder in November of two thousand
33:44
and one, it's likely that he would have disposed of Cindy's remains at another
33:47
location. Anyway, due to Weekly's credibility issues, there are doubts about his
33:52
story that he heard Selensky confess to being involved in Cindy Song's disappearance. When
33:58
he was initially arrested. Selenski's attorney stated that several people could place his client
34:02
over one hundred and thirty miles away in wilkes Bury at the time Cindy went
34:07
missing. A search of Weekly's computer also showed that he had downloaded several articles
34:13
about Cindy's case, so he theoretically could have learned enough details about her disappearance
34:17
online in order to fabricate a story. It's also worth noting that in January
34:22
of twenty fourteen, a grand jury indictment was filed against Selenski, his current
34:28
attorney, and a private investigator on allegations of bribing and intimidating witnesses, and
34:34
the indictment stated, quote Luzerne County authorities believed that Selensky was directly involved in
34:38
the murder of approximately twelve human beings found burned and buried in a pit in
34:44
his backyard. End quote. At the time, there was a gag order
34:49
which prevented anyone involved in this case from discussing it publicly, so it's unclear
34:52
if additional victims were found on Selenski's property who have yet to be identified.
34:59
Regardless, the authorities have obtained a DNA sample from Cindy's parents and added it
35:04
to the national databases for Missing Persons and unidentified remains, but that's far.
35:08
They have yet to make any matches. Officially, no conclusive evidence has ever
35:14
linked Hugo Selenski to Cindy's song, and her disappearance continues to remain unsolved.
35:20
So I guess you could say the path went chilly. This whole case has
35:25
that just heartbreaking element of you would think when you send your kiddo away to
35:30
college. She's a good student, she's being a typical college kid. She
35:34
went to a Halloween party. You think your kids are safe, right,
35:37
This is innocent. It's what every kiddo does. It goes to college,
35:42
and she went to a Halloween party. Her friend is responsible and brings her
35:45
home, and it's likely Cindy had this thought, Hey, I'm hungry or
35:51
I want somebody to drink. I'm going to run grab something at the convenience
35:53
store that I go to all the time, and come home, get ready
35:58
for bed, and hit the sack. Recover from my fun evening at a
36:01
Halloween party, and that night of innocent fun turns into the likelihood that her
36:07
life was stolen away from her, and it's possible that it's at the hands
36:12
of someone who is a sadistic serial killer. And the only thing left is
36:17
this story that we have from Weekly, And so my heart just simply breaks
36:22
because, at least give me some evidence in concrete facts that that's what happened
36:30
to my baby. Right, let me know that's what happened to her.
36:32
Let's hold this person responsible and have that sort of resolution to But this family
36:37
doesn't have that, and it's likely they won't ever have that unless that DNA
36:44
sample happens to hit on some kind of remains that are found one day.
36:47
It's profound that you said he didn't buy that house till twenty oh two,
36:53
because at that point she had been dead for what at least two two months,
37:00
possibly up to fourteen months by the time he settles in that house.
37:04
So of course she wouldn't be buried there unless he had said, oh,
37:08
move her body back to my property too, like Weekly said, he helped
37:12
her do with some other bodies. But to me, that's profound. He
37:15
supposedly, according to Weekly, killed her at the other man's house, and
37:22
then they went and buried her together, and so who knows where she could
37:27
be. Heartbreaking, absolutely horrific, And it just gives you chills to think
37:31
that you sent your baby away to school, she went to a party,
37:36
and her life was stolen from her. I have a special place in my
37:39
heart for families who send their kids off to another country and they hope that
37:45
they're going to have all the opportunities in the world. And that's what the
37:47
Song family did with Cindy. And to think, Okay, she does her
37:52
high school there, and she's now having this experience at Penn State, and
37:57
she's got all of these friends. Her whole life is a head of her.
38:00
And then to have to find out that your daughter is missing and presumed
38:07
to be murdered, have to come here from Korea, and it's a completely
38:12
different culture. I'm trying to understand how investigations are conducted in the US and
38:17
being sorely disappointed at the way that the investigators are going about it. It's
38:22
just my heart really breaks for the family here because it makes it so much
38:28
more difficult when it's a culture that you don't necessarily understand and a language that
38:31
you don't necessarily understand. So there's just so many layers and so much nuance
38:37
to this case. Yeah, we're going to discuss this and more in depth
38:39
on our next episode. But even though Hugo Soelenski is undoubtedly an awful human
38:45
being who has murdered at least five people, which technically makes them a serial
38:49
killer, but the more you look into his background, the more you wonder
38:52
would Cindy's disappearance really fit his profile, Because from what I can tell,
38:57
the people he did murder he did in order to rob them. It was
39:00
for financial gain. He has never done any known crimes in which he has
39:04
revealed himself to be a sexual predator who targets innocent young women at random.
39:08
So it does make you wonder is Paul Weekly's story true. Could he have
39:14
actually abducted Cindy and held her in captivity before killing her. Or is he
39:17
just fabricating this story in order to help his own legal problems. So I
39:23
think this would be a good time to bring it into part one. But
39:25
joy us next week as if we present part two of our series about the
39:30
disappearance of Cindy. Song Robin, do you want to tell us a little
39:34
bit about the Trail Went Cold Patreon? Yes. The Trail Cold Patreon has
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been around for three years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like
39:43
early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers and signed thank you
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cards to anyone who signs up with us on Patreon. If you join our
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five dollars tier tier two, we also offer monthly bonus episodes in which I
39:57
talk about cases which are not featured on the Trail Wind Cold's original feed,
40:00
so they're exclusive to Patreon, and if you join our highest tier tier three,
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the ten dollars tier. One of the features we offer is a audio
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commentary track over classic episodes of UNSAWD Mysteries, where you can download an audio
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file and then boot up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or YouTube
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and play it with my audio commentary playing in the background, where I just
40:22
provide trivia and factoids about the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally,
40:28
the very first episode that I did a commentary track over was the episode featuring
40:32
this case. So if you want to download a commentary track in which I
40:37
make more smart ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join Tier
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three. So I want to let you know a little bit about the Jeweles
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We've got our Path Went Chili mini's, which are always over an hour,
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so they're not very mini, but they're just too short to turn into
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a series, and we're really enjoying doing those, so we hope you'll check
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out those patreons. We'll link in the show notes. So I want to
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Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy