Police continue to be
tight-lipped about murder
By The Associated Press
The murders of two
women on the Purdue campus has left neighbors on edge as police continue
to be tight-lipped about details of the killings.
Other than identifying the
victims, Purdue University officials have released few other details
about Thursday night's double homicide of the two Korean sisters in
a campus housing complex.
Tippecanoe County Coroner
Martin Avolt said autopsies were performed Saturday at Indiana University
Medical Center on Yeunkyung Woo, 31, a doctoral student in biology at
Purdue, and Huo Kwung Woo, 29, of Chicago, who was visiting her sister.
Avolt declined to discuss
the autopsies' findings, but Joseph Bennett,
Purdue's vice president for
university relations, said those results might be released Monday. In
the meantime, the lack of information about the crime is keeping
neighbors on edge.
"I don't think I feel totally
safe, truthfully," said Tanya Shorts, a St. Elizabeth Medical Center
emergency nurse who lives with her husband, Chris, in the Purdue Village
campus building where the slayings occurred.
In a flier posted on residents'
doors Friday, Purdue Village Manager Carolyn Newlin urged people to
remain calm.
University administrators
announced Sunday that they would meet privately with residents of the
1,200-unit complex during two sessions on Monday.
"The goal is to share any
more information we might have and to provide references and resources
for residents," Newlin said. Those at Purdue's summer commencement ceremony
on Sunday observed a moment of silence in memory of the victims.
Investigators found no sign
of forced entry into the one-bedroom apartment. One of the victims was
found in the bedroom, the other in the living room. Both were fully
clothed. Police declined to say whether any witnesses heard the crime
occur.
Both women were from South
Korea and the husbands of both women were in Korea at the time of their
deaths, the university said.
Alex Lee, a mechanical engineering
doctoral student who also is from Korea, said police told him they arrived
at the sisters' apartment to find the burners to the natural gas stove
turned on.
"My theory was maybe the
murderer wanted to blow up the building to get rid of the evidence,"
Lee said.
Lee said he sometimes exchanged
greetings with Yeunkyung Woo, but she largely kept to herself.
Lee, president of the Korean
Catholic Student Association at Purdue, said the murders are big news
in Korea. He said he helped a reporter for a Korean television network,
who flew in to West Lafayette from New York, arrange an interview Saturday
with Bennett.
"In Korea there are not too
many murders. This involved not one but two Korean women and it happened
overseas," Lee said.
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