Even with the Bayshore Freeway a few steps away this place is calm. You'll see ducks in a man-made lake, squirrels scampering around the trees, and buildings fairly well kept even though many are now vacant. Not the spot you'd imagine for a high-profile, at least for Sunnyvale, murder case.
Back in August 1993 Silicon Valley was flying high and high tech around the world was following. The sky was the limit and nobody checked resumes too closely. The middle-aged Korean operations director of a major firm was in town for meetings with management.
There weren't the number of four-star full service hotels as there are now so he was booked into a room at the Residence Inn, just a few blocks from headquarters. As you'll see, the Sunnyvale Residence Inn is a spread of two-story buildings looking like small suburban apartments. Not the sort of place for many intrigues. But boys will be boys; our director was often away from home with a respectable expense account for entertainment. On a previous visit he'd been introduced to a 21-year old Korean-American woman in San Francisco, and he gave her a call on Thursday when he arrived on this trip.
His friend had a history of problems with drinking and bad checks and may have relished her role of her family's black sheep. She came down from San Francisco to meet with the director Thursday night and spent the day Friday in the Residence Inn while he attended company meetings. He returned Friday night after a late dinner with business (real business, not monkey business!)associates.
The sequence of events after that isn't exactly known, but its been pieced together that other guests complained about a ruckus or two in the room late Friday or in the wee hours of Saturday. Sometime after midnight the young woman left the room and spent Saturday running up large charges on the director's credit cards in San Francisco stores and hotels, followed up with a plane ticket to the East Coast. Back at the hotel, the front desk received calls from a woman requesting the staff not to clean the room because of sensitive documents about; which makes sense when you consider the secrecy craziness that envelops high-tech marketing.
By Monday morning, suspicions arose since nobody had seen the director since late Friday, and he did not check out as scheduled. Police were called and found him dead from multiple stab wounds and the lady's bloody fingerprints in the room.
She was tracked across the country with extravagant credit card bills as far as Philadelphia, where the trail ended when the cards hit their limit. That stalled the case until February 1994 when the Bedford, N.Y police were called to investigate a nanny suspected of stealing money from a previous employer. A quick check showed the suspect was the same woman wanted for the Sunnyvale murder.
Extradition was quick but not the trial. Grand jury indictment on robbery and first-degree murder charges took place in September 1994 but proceedings kept being postponed. Meanwhile, the country was enthralled with another murder case involving some guy named O.J. Finally in June 1996 the former nanny agreed to plea guilty to second-degree murder and received a sentence of 16 years-to-life. She was up for parole in May 2009, I donít know how that went.
For more info on the case, check out: http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/09.05.96/cover/murder-9636.html and http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EKF/is_n2001_v40/ai_15031903/
The cache is a small lock and lock container with space for some swag. Be careful reaching around crevices here, yellowjackets like to build nests in structures and they are very active between March and November. Parking is restricted at the Residence Inn and the nearby Lakeside Plaza office park, but you can walk a block from the Oakmead Terrace complex at the end of Lakeway.
congratulations to xmts for FTF