tv The House of Suh MSNBC December 3, 2011 2:00pm-3:00pm PST
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i was terrified. it was probably the longest day of my life. each moment, when i was in that garage, i rehashed everything. my mother, my father, my sister. i looked up, there was a mirror there. it was broken, a glass shard in the bottle. i saw my reflection there. i'm dressed in black, i was going to do something crazy, i'm
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like, what am i doing here? this isn't you. i wanted to run so bad. i wanted to have nothing to do with my life at that point. but i had to stay. i just lifted the gun up and i pulled the trigger and it was over with. me, i don't know. for me to describe who i am, i don't know. i am a product of my environment because my choices led me here.
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my childhood was focused on the family unit. nothing really mattered. it wasn't a standard child. but, to me, it was what i thought was right. i'd wake up in the morning, go to school. after school, take an hour bus ride, start work at my parents station, working the counters, cleaning up, stacking the shelves until 8:00 at night. drive with my mother all the way home, eat dinner, do homework, go to sleep and start the cycle all over again. it was my duty, obligation to family because that is what a son does. >> translator: in korea, jokbo is an interesting and much talked about topic and regarded as very important.
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>> translator: in the andrews case, he's the only son. he has to carry on the suh's family name so he's very important. when a woman gets married, she becomes part of another family. so sometimes the daughter can be removed from her birth family lineag lineage. >> katherine was more-or-less ostracized because she was the girl and they focused most of their attention on to me. i think katherine always resented that because she always chose to rebel. if mom and dad wanted something done, i did it without question. katherine said, well, i'm going to question it, i'm going to ask why. katherine is my father reincarnate. that's why i think katherine and my father bit their heads off because that's what he wanted to do. he made it abundantly clear he did not like her, no, you're not my daughter, beat her
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consistently. very old school korean, said you know what, this is how it will be done and this is my house, you abide by my rules. katherine being the rebellious teenager said, no, i'm not. my father came home one day, picked up the phone, a latino guy, saying where's your daughter. my father lost it, what are you doing? you come to america and become a whore, arguing with my sister and slapping her around a little bit. katherine had a moment, i guess, of bravery and reached across to my father and scratched his chest like this. my father had his t-shirt ripped, bleeding across his chest. my father saw the blood and he lost it. he grabbed her, grabbed the jug of gasoline and doused both of them. he reached into his pocket, grabbing a lighter and trying to flick the lighter, get the flint going, couldn't get it started, said let's die together.
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my mom, she heard all the commotion and ran back. she grabbed him, pulled the lighter out of his hand. you know, what have we done? li. my father and my mother basically had given up on her, said we can't control her. let her do what she wants to do. once she hits 18, she will be married off, she will be fine. she's not going to be part of the house. she's not a suh. >> in a loving family, i wonder if katherine would have become what she is now?
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but i think catherine still has conflicts inside of her. she hadn't resolved them yet. she needed to project them somehow. i think she projected it towards her younger brother. her younger brother or maybe odubay. >> catherine suh faces a life sentence for murdering her former fiance. >> murder charges were filed against catherine suh and her brother, andrew. >> the details in this case seem to get worth. suh's brother, andrew said suh hired him to kill her chicago boyfriend after claiming the boyfriend was beating her up. >> you're looking at a woman who killed her own boyfriend. she was convicted of the crime last september but got away. >> she was able to convince her brother to do pretty much anything she told him to do. >> catherine suh's fiance was
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shot to death outside his garage in chicago shmt she had set him up, calling to say she needed help with her car. >> he was shot by suh's brother, andrew. a jury believed catherine suh made him do it. >> deep down inside, i wondered how other people would respond, how other people would react. am i alone in this? am i wrong? completely unjustified? i want to know what you would have done, because that's been my question for so long. what would you do? [ drew ] what's the latest in eye couture? new intense shadowblast from covergirl. the news? it's eye shadow with primer built-in
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amongst our family members there was never any suspicion of my brother's murder. she was a victim just like my brother meaning she had lost somebody she loved, somebody she planned on spending her life with. >> andrew's written confession was at least a 10 page written statement that included many of the details of the crime that only andrew suh, only the killer would know. it was a critical piece of evidence. >> when you kill someone spontaneously out of maybe a burst of rage or anger or
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passion of some sort, there is at least in this country, some sort of -- some sort of belief that makes the crime less heinous than if you had time to contemplate what you were doing and did it anyway. in our case, unfortunately, andrew flew home and sat in a cold dark garage for over four hours, waiting for robert, so andrew could then kill him. >> my father got a phone call from the grand avenue detectives that they're starting to think cathy had some sort of involvement in my brother's murder. i had never been so surprised. i had no idea. i had no idea that this -- cathy is involved in rob's death? it was baffling, it was a shock to us as a family.
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>> at the time, the media reported catherine was kind of not so obedient, that's what they'd say. i'm not sure about that. i wasn't there so i don't know. but the media would report andrew was the son. when his father was sick, andrew would tend to him for a long time and was obedient and good. >> the doctor said the cancer spread everywhere. covered his entire stomach. it was only a matter of time and it was not a good thing. catherine was nowhere to be found. catherine was at home doing her own thing. my mom focused everything on my father and i focused everything on him, too. that's where the, like close to a month vigil happened at the hospital.
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i remember sleeping there over and over again after that. it was something i needed to do. like said, you don't ask questions about stuff like that, you just do them because you know, it's your father. you don't ask, you just do it. >> my sister was nowhere to be seen that day. i believe she came towards the end of the day, around 7:00 or 8:00, my father passed away around 10:00 that night. she came in, she looked at him, said, okay, she left. in retrospect, i look at it, i say, was she happy that he died? possibly. i think more with his death, the one factorheld my sister down was over with. she was freed from her captor, i guess. >> after my father died, my mom
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was unemployed. she needed employment. >> in america she has to take the pharmacy test again, right? but because she wasn't able to pass the pharmacy test, she ran the dry-cleaners. >> mom worked there six days a week. i was there with her six days a week. on sunday, what do you do? we went shopping for house groceries and after that, we'd go visit my father at the cemetery. it was a dark time for her. as my father passed away, she relied on me so much. >> andrew's mom was under a lot of stress at the time. with cathy, that was probably when the troubles were starting up, i think. >> she came home when she wanted to, barely graduated from high school. she was literally going out four to five nights a week and somehow she met robert along this process.
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>> cathy and rob met at the chicago health club. rob was the manager, cathy was a trainer. they started dating. they had a very normal relationshi relationship. >> he was charismatic, fun, everybody looked up to him. >> we just all wanted to be around him, you know. we never felt like we had enough time. i always thought that later on, when things were settled down, when we had families or life wasn't traveling so fast, i really would relish when i can settle down and spend more time with rob when it wasn't such a rush rush world. unfortunately, that didn't happen. slip-on's the way to go. more people do that, security would be like -- there's no charge for the bag. thanks. i know a quiet little place where we can get some work done. there's a three-prong plug. i have club passes. [ male announcer ] now there's a mileage card that offers special perks on united, like a free checked bag,
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of the vcr crying. i was kneeling down, mom, stop crying, stop crying. i'm trying to console her. for some odd reason, she asked me this hypothetical situation, like, one day, many years from now, you are on a mountainside and you have your wife, your newborn son and me, the mountainside is on fire, you have to cross and can only take one person with you, either your wife or son or me, your mother. i'm 11 years old, thinking, thinking, trying to rationalize this. my initial response was, take my life, i'll go and everybody can leave. she's like, no, you have to choose. so i said, mom, i rationalized it to myself, i said, she led a long life, because we have no male heirs to the family name, i said, mom, i'm sorry, i'm going take my wife and my son. she's like, no matter what, because you are a man, throughout the course of your life, you will have the opportunity to have as many women as you want, you can have
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as many kids as you want, but throughout your entire life, you're only going have one mother. >> police say around mid-morning they received a tip something was wrong at campus cleaners. >> entered the store and discovered the body in the back of the store. >> it was the first day of eighth grade. i saw police cars in front of the house walk in. my sister is sobbing and robert is holding her. i was like, what's going on? robert was -- he had just started dating my sister. he was still an outsider to the family and i saw him come in, stood in the stairwell, i have to talk to you. he said, oh, something happened. your mom was in an accident. she won't be coming back. it didn't register upon me. it was anger, it's anger and almost a disbelief. i remember i pulled away from him, said, let go of me and i
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ran outside. i couldn't comprehend what had just happened, to see her go like that, without saying good-by good-bye. >> police say elizabeth suh had been repeatedly stabbed. the 55-year-old woman was found in the back portion of their dry-cleaning shop. detectives are collecting and bagging clues. they suspect robbery is a motive. her wallet is missing. police say during rush hours, tonight and tomorrow morning, they will question passerbies and ask them if they saw or heard anything along the street that could help them solve the murder. >> i went into shock, numbness, then, as the days progressed, i went into anger. after the investigation started with my mom's death, i said, why haven't we done anything about this? robert said the cops are idiots, you will never find out who did this. you have to move on and my
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sister chimed in, that's true, they will never figure this out. i'm 13 years old. my father abandoned me, my mother had left me. i hated my life. i hated god. i hated my sister. my opinions no longer mattered in how the house was run because catherine was in charge now. catherine was my guardian. there was one drawnout physical fight i had with my sister where it escalated into an explosion. i said, you're nobody to me. i told her that, you know, i'm still here, the head of the household, she's like, no, you're not, i'm the head of the house, you're a kid. he started hitting me. i grabbed her and holding her and she bit into my ribs and i let her go. i said, what's wrong with you? i want ed ed to hit her but i couldn't, my sister. first and foremost a woman so i wouldn't lay a hand on her.
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i punched my hand through a glass window and it started bleeding. she said get out of my house and i remember running away that night. somehow i made it to peterson park. i remember, snowflakes were falling down. what do you do? either accept her as my guardian or go to foster care, guess. that was my other choice. i came home and i walked in -- or she opened the door. we had a talk. she's like -- she had calmed down, too. she's like, i love you. you're all i have left, too. i told her, i said, what are we going to do about this? at that time, she told me, be a kid. it was a mixture of two things, it was a level of apprehension to let go of what i knew to be what my parents wanted me to do, but it was also cathartic, because i let everything out. didn't have to worry where the next rent payment was going to
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be, i didn't have to worry about who was going to cook dinner, who was taking care of the house, i could go and have fun with friends and actually live a life as a child again. for moments like that, i really loved my sister. i guess it was almost transf transference because at one time always my father, i focus on my father making him happy. after my father passed away, it moved over to my mother, do everything to make my mother happy. after her passing, there was a void there and catherine was there to fill it. all because so many people came to louisiana... they came to see us in florida... make that alabama... make that mississippi. the best part of the gulf is wherever you choose... and now is a great time to discover it. this year millions of people did. we set all kinds of records. next year we're out to do even better. so come on down to louisiana... florida... alabama... mississippi. we can't wait to see you. brought to you by bp and all of us who call the gulf home.
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msnbc now, i'm page hopkins, gop candidate, herman cain suspended his presidential campaign this afternoon, five days after a woman claimed to have an affair with him. cain continues to deny all allegations of sexual misconduct. billy graham still in the hospital but doctors say he is responsive and recovering well
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from pneumonia, no date set for his discharge yet. we'll take you back to our programming. >> my mother was murdered. that night, robert came and stayed with catherine. and then he never left. everything in my mother's room was evacuated. my mother's body wasn't even cold yet before they went through everything and moved it out. in the beginning, i was angry with him for taking control of things like that, but as time passed, what i saw him doing for my sister, supporting her when she needed it most. he was there for us. he was there for my sister, after my mom's death. >> my warm eest memory of andre
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was early on when he was 14, 15 years old, coming over for christmas morning and opening up presents with us. it was definitely not your normal dynamics of a family you would see. they were doing pretty well with that. >> as the years went on, he was family. because he was part of the inner circle. we shared meals together. he taught me how to drive a stick shift, you know. he was my male role model. >> rob went through phases in his life. rob would recreate himself during his early years, all the way through when he met cathy. >> catherine had a very specific idea of what robert should be or who he should be. and she clean ed him up. she bought him thousand dollar suits. >> she wanted the riches other people had but he didn't really know how to -- he didn't have a college degree. >> put him in a mercedes, to
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make him fit the part that she wanted him to be. >> he was a hard worker, but with the death of cathy's mother, some money started coming in through her mother's estate. they bought what became the club metropolis and success happened rather quickly. that was his business suit era, the last era in his life. >> he said, you know what, i'm going to be a new person and catherine reinvented him and he took it and ran with it. same for me. she molded me into who i had become. my identity was the one catherine developed for me. i didn't want go to loyola. you will go to loyola academy and do football and become popular and go to college and graduate and get a good job. this is the american dream. >> at loyola, there weren't that many koreans. in my class, there were five of us. just to give you an example, out
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of those five, i think four of us were in the math club. andy was playing football. he was like them, basically. he looked like me. i mean, he didn't look exactly like me, but he was korean, came from an immigrant family. yet he was a leader in this school that i felt like i was such an outsider in. he was really a star at that high school. and he was a very striking person. he was the type of person that you would remember if you met him back then. and something so tragic happe d happened. i think people with a lot of painful things that are going on in their lives sometimes really come up with a good front. i think he channeled a lot of
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his energy, a lot of his pain into becoming that person. i think he was very good at it. >> no. you don't talk about stuff like that. and i had a facade i had to maintain at school. i guess i was the lonely popular kid. everybody said i had the perfect life. but i had nobody to talk to. how do you bring up a topic with somebody you barely know. by the way, my mom was murdered and i have issues. you don't talk about stuff like that. you harbor them inside, drink a beer, you shut-up, you let the time pass. that's how you deal with it or that's how i was taught to deal with things. >> translator: the older sister was, we could say, different from a relationship with your
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average older sister. she played the roles of both the mother and father. >> there weren't parents in the household, so rob would be a little more mature than cathy, he became a little more of a father figure. rob and cathy's relationship changed a bit when they started getting into all these different business ventures. at one point, they were engaged. but you had the sense it was more a business relationship. they both wanted to be successful. they both strived to get the most out of life, and their house showed that. >> katherine was pouring money like hand over fist. she imported cabinets from europe. she bought all high end fixtures, everything new. >> but it lacked the warmth, the family feeling that the mother's house had. so you can almost feel the change in their relationship. >> my brother, rob, was my best man at my wedding.
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cathy wasn't there at my wedding, and she would have been, so i knew something was wrong, i knew there was some fight that they had. my brother seemed affected by it. but he put up a good front, he put up a good show and gave me a toast, he was my best man, watched everybody dance. you know, we got some good times in. but i had no idea july 16th was the last time i'd see my brother aliv alive. >> the story began with the relationship between catherine suh and her boyfriend, robert. that relationship broke down. there was an argument that the two had and there was a business relationship between them that gradually deteriorated over time. she thought that the victim was taking money from the business and using that money to gamble.
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catherine enlisted the aid of her brother, andrew suh, a student at providence college in rhode island, to fly into chicago, in order to commit this murder. catherine later on that evening, made a phone call to robert and told him that her car had broken down in lincoln park and she needed him to come and pick her up. this was all a fabrication, but it was a ruse to get him to come into the garage. he did so. and when he walked into the garage, andrew suh shot robert two times, once in the back of the neck, and then a second time, in his face, to make sure that he was dead. >> later on, we find out that possible motive she had was to cash in my brother's $250,000 life insurance policy. all of a sudden, it wasn't rob, the victim in the garage, it was a planned murder.
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when cathy was charged with the murder of my brother, she was out on bond, but she had to go to all the hearings they had. i'm sitting in the courtroom and from behind, in the aisle, i feel this hand on me, i look around and it's cathy suh, the person who had my brother murdered. she pleads with me, kevin, you know it, you know i couldn't do this. you know i'm innocent. i look back at her and the only things i can think of to say, what about andrew? your brother confessed to the crime already. it was already -- it was -- to me, it was a done subject. so after the hearings took place, it was time for the trial and k cathy's lawyers were stirring around and they looked upset. the problem was they didn't know where cathy was. the trial has to go on no matter what.
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an if you the jury members actually came up to us and i wa wanted to ask, what was it in your mind made her guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, because a lot of the evidence was circumstantial against cathy. so the jury members said, well, the one thing we really had going for us, we looked out and saw that that chair was empty and we don't believe that an innocent person would flee, would not want to represent themselves in the trial. >> she has been on the run since last fall, perhaps living on an island paradise thousands of miles from a murder conviction here in chicago. >> the crime suh fled was the murder of fiance robert odubaine? she was convicted in abstentia. >> she thought if she left and took off and changed her name and escaped she would th then -- that would be the way she would survive. >> katherine suh fled to hawaii, thinking it was a place where she would blend in.
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and she did, spending more than six months in honolulu as a fugitive. today, she turned herself in. >> i turned myself in because i'm not guilty. >> it was a petite catherine suh in casual clothing and no makeup arrested in honolulu last friday. that's how catherine suh boarded a plane last night, finally extradited to chicago where she faces a life sentence for murdering her boyfriend robert od uru baine. doesn't have to suffer. i would recommend biotene. the enzymes in biotene products help supplement enzymes that are naturally in saliva. biotene helps moisten those areas that have become dry. those that are suffering can certainly benefit from biotene.
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the summer before my sophomore year of college, i remember i pulled into the same garage and walked out there and saw robert out there drinking, one of his whole tirade, you don't know anything about my life. i made all these mistakes and maybe i won't be as bad when i get there. i said, okay, relax, you're drunk, go inside. he said, it's your sister's fault. after everything i've done for her, she goes out, she's cheating on me. your sister is a [ bleep ], a whore, the only reason why she deals with me, she knows all my secrets and i know all her secrets. i said, you're part of the family, relax. he said, you don't know anything about the family. you and i are nothing more than a meal ticket to her. i was getting -- and i said, screw you, and i left. about week later i get a call. i ripped the door open, i run
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in, everything was dark, i see catherine pop her head out, i said where this is the [ bleep ] guy. out of the corner of my eye, i see robert, a shadow coming up. i'm going towards him. i see robert hold his gun, had a .44 magnum gun, this is my house, i can do what i want. you want tough, i'll show you tough. what's wrong with this guy? my sister came flying down the stairwell, she jumps in between, says leave it alone, leave it alone. i said, you're nobody. all this that you think is yours belongs to me. this is my house. i made a decision -- i had a disconnect, i didn't care, it was over with. i got off the airplane, i landed in chicago and catherine picked me up. we pulled into the house at
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hermitage. everything was dark. it was pouring rain that day. she shoved a brown paper bag into my hand. she left me. inside the bag was a gun. it was like a couple hours there. i'm constantly going through all these memories of catherine. the last memory i have is catherine telling me the story about my mom. we were at a restaurant, a japanese restaurant. i was leaving for college in matter of weeks. and at that point, she looked at me, she's quiet and you see almost a calm in her face, where she's -- she wasn't herself. she's like, i have to tell you somethin something. >> here's an interesting fact. all of andrew's parents' money. it was a significant amount of money back then, goes to the son. catherine really didn't get anything. but what she got was control of andrew. >> before mom died, after robert got fired, we had a long
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conversation about money, she said. robert and i -- i was talking to robert, halfheartedly about how everything will be fine once my mom passed away. shortly there after, my mother came up dead. she said, i didn't ask him to do it but he did it. >> they knew andrew would then become -- basically inherit everything, catherine would become the administrator of his trust and in fact, it proved true. she could then manipulate the money and spend it as if it was her own, which is what she did. >> i got up and i ran out. i'm sitting on a concrete barrier in the middle of the restaurant parking lot. at that point, i was a little kid again. i was 13 years old, sitting there, finding out my mom just got murdered for the first time. it was just an overwhelming sensation, where i hated my sister. i hated robert, i hated everybody again, all this built-up anger and frustration came pouring over me again. >> she worked and worked on how
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can you let this man walk the streets, knowing he murdered our mother. her mother was brutally murdered. someone sat on her chest and stabbed her repeatedly with a knife. this was not somebody walked in and shot her, this was, you want to talk about brutal and heinous murders. imagine your sister telling you that she had figured out who had done this most horrible thing to your mother. andrew said to her, let's call the police. catherine said, oh, no, if cool the police, they'll call me an accomplice and then we'll both go to jail. catherine was robert's alibi and robert was my sister's alibi. if he goes, i go. her words. she looks at me, you have to get rid of him. you have to do it for mom. >> cathy's mother was stabbed 37 times in the face and neck. that's not a crime for $100 in
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the cash register, that's a crime of passion. andrew has been with her through all this. you will believe your sister when she starts talking about all this stuff. we need family first, we need to protect our family. >> then there is a plethora of questions that went through my sister, how much of involvement did she have in this crime? >> could cathy suh do this? yes. i think she could have done thi this. >> on my father's death bed, i promised him i wouldn't let nothing happen to my mother. i even promised my mother before she passed away, i'll never let anything wrong happen. i'll always be there for you. for me to fail, it was unacceptable. i couldn't accept that. it was my duty as a son to right this wrong. i didn't have anybody to confide in. who do you tell this to?
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i found out who killed my mother. what do i do next? it's just -- there's nobody i could turn to. it was my sister, and that was it. >> it was as ifit. >> it was as if kathy was the mafia. nobody walks away from me. nobody leaves me. you can't leave me. >> but she couldn't really just break up with him if he was blackmailing her or saying, i'll tell what you did. you know, when somebody knows something like that, you're sort of bound to them for as long as they're alive. a week after my mother was murdered, i went to the back of the cleanings with robert and i cleaned up my mother's congealed puddle of blood on the tile floor. for me that was a moment, in my life, that i really don't want to remember. but it's -- that is part of my life that i remember the most on that night.
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i cleaned it up. and to think of robert standing behind me telling me, oh, just clean it up, this is just how you to do it. what kind of monster does that. oh, this is what i did. just go clean it up. up until that point wbt identity of the man responsible for my mother's murder, he was always a blank face. my failures, what dido wrong? now i saw saw robert's face there. i wanted to leave. but my sister's voice held me there. my vision of my mother laying in a puddle of her own blood kept me there. my responsibility as a son to my father kept me there. a moment later, the light flicked on from the backyard.
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cy just. i just wanted to know what you would have done. because that's been my question for so long. what would you do? >> i don't think andrew deserves the death penalty. i think that the court handed down the just verdict, a just sentence, and i think he's -- he's paying for his crime right now. >> it's in the bible. and eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life. i can handle it. his father was murdered by husband ink el.
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what did he do? he said, i have to contain vengeance for that. however, in our actual civilized society, we are considered vigilantes. we then become the cold-blooded killer. we try to destroy the monster. in turn, we become that monster. >> andrew was certainly, he was a young adult, incapable making his own decisions. and his participation in this murder, although he was certainly urged to do so by his sister, again he was a willing participant, and went along with this. >> i'm not saying i would have done what andrew did, or that anybody would. but somehow, a 19-year-old man, with an incredible sense of loyalty with his family was convinced that only way to avenge his mother's death and to
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protect his sister, the only living relative he had, was to kill this man. >> kathy suh is in prison serving a sentence for a crime they were able to prove she committed. this crime evidenced at the dry cleaners will be an unsolved case. >> i believe with all my heart and with all sincerity he was responsible for this. he was the man responsible for slashing my mom 33 times. he was the man responsible for shattering my life. he was the man responsible for putting me in this place. but in the same breath, i say, who am i to decide that. on certain days i wake up and say, oh, my god, what have you done. what you have done. you took another person's life. and i will always be a murderer. >> andrew was the last person to see my brother alive. it's hard to get over.
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but in the other sense, i remember that 14-year-old boy that i knew and how he was manipulated by his sister. he has to go on and live his life knowing that his only family member left is the one that sent him there. >> i had a friend contact her, passed a message along to her. i said, i'm your brother, i'm always here for you. we can do this together. and a message came back to me that says, don't ever contact me again. i don't know who you are. i don't have a brother. and just leave me alone. i'm always conflicted because she has my dna. we are brother and sister. it's never going to change.
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and despite whatever she's done in my life, there's always a good with the bad. when i was hurting, she was the one i looked to as my mother. i have no choice but to love her because she is my family. and that's all i have live in this world. as a 13-year-old boy and 19-year-old man, yes. everything made sense. oh, i screwed this up. he deserved that. but as an older man, i say, was i right in that decision? was i wrong?
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