Evidence grew that Ethiopian honors student Sinedu Tadesse had planned the murder-suicide involving her estranged roommate, Trang Ho, at the Cambridge, Mass. John Towle, spokesman for the Middlesex County district attorney's office, said a photo sent to the Harvard school newspaper last week "does appear to be Sinedu Tadesse. The Harvard Crimson newspaper received a photo of a woman with a note that said, "Keep this picture.
There will soon be a very juicy story involving the person in this picture. Ho's bloodcurdling screams at 8 a. Harvard President Neil Rubenstine has yet to make a statement on the killings, which followed two suicides over the past two years.
An autopsy performed by Dr. George Kury determined that in her rage, Tadesse stabbed Ho 45 times in the face, neck, chest, arms, legs and hands. She tried vainly to fend off the rain of steel as Tadesse stabbed and slashed furiously with a knife that folded into a wooden handle.
A friend of Ho's who was staying overnight in another room of the two-room suite in the Dunster Hall dormitory was wounded when she tried to rescue her friend. She was treated at a hospital and released. Assistant District Attorney Martin Murphy ruled out any suspicion that they were sexually involved. Both women were 20 and juniors at the high-pressure school. Officials said they were doing well in an honors program. The women had been friends and roommates for two years, but recently Ho said she intended to live with someone else next semester.
The Boston Globe reported that Tadesse had sent a letter to Ho last month that indicated she felt abandoned. Towle said Tadesse has relatives in the Boston area but refused to discuss possible motives for the assault. Students at a Harvard University dormitory awoke to screams, sirens and a blood-splattered courtyard today after a year-old pre-med student stabbed her roommate to death, wounded an overnight guest and then barricaded herself in a bathroom where she hanged herself.
The attacker was identified by the authorities as Sinedu Tadesse, a year-old junior from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The police said that an overnight guest of Ms. Tadesse's roommate, Trang Ho, was awakened about 8 A. Tadesse stabbing Ms. The guest, Thao Nguyen, 26, of Lowell, Mass. Tadesse stabbed her, too, and Ms.
Nguyen fled into the courtyard of the dormitory, Dunster House. Students said they found Ms. Nguyen in the courtyard, screaming and bleeding. Timothy Cullen, a junior from Philadelphia, said he heard Ms.
Ngyuyen scream repeatedly, "Someone killed my friend. After Ms. Nguyen fled, Ms. Tadesse, barricaded herself in her bathroom and hanged herself from the rod in the shower stall, Martin Murphy, an assistant district attorney for Middlesex County, told reporters at a news conference outside Dunster House. In a bizarre development in the case this evening, the student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, announced that it had received an envelope on May 23 containing a picture of a woman believed to be Ms.
Tadesse along with a typed note stating: "Keep this picture. Wright, president of The Crimson, said the envelope did not have a stamp or postmark. The statement said that the newspaper contacted the campus police today about the envelope, which had been thrown out.
The paper said the the envelope and photo were recovered from a dumpster and were being checked for fingerprints. Ho, a year-old junior from Medford, Mass. Nguyen was treated for multiple stab wounds and released, Mr. Murphy said. Murphy said the police knew of no motive for the killing. But a Cambridge police officer who asked not to be identified said there had been personal problems between Ms.
Tadesse and Ms. Ho that "had built up over time. Ho, who had been roommates last year, had been fighting with each other. Both Ms. Ho were biology majors in a course that leads to medical school.
The incident occurred the day after exams ended at Harvard, as underclass students prepared to move out for the summer, and many parents were visiting the campus. Harvard's president, Neil L. Rudenstine, visited the dorm this morning, and later this afternoon he spoke with students upset by the incident. Christine Karnakis, a senior from Medfield, Mass. Another student, who also asked not to be identified, said he awoke to the sound of screams and ran to the courtyard when he heard Ms.
Nguyen shout: "Help me! I'm hurt! Mark Baskin, a senior from Seattle, said he heard Ms. Nguyen scream "hysterically. One student who asked not to be identified said she knew Ms. Ho had been trying to find a different roommate next year because Ms. Tadesse "would play music too loud and was inconsiderate of her privacy. The same student described Ms. Ho as a "quiet, very shy" student who liked to keep her room neat and spent many weekends at home with her family in Medford.
Other students said they did not know Ms. Ho and Ms. Tadesse very well and described them as quiet. Amy Retzinger, a senior from Lincolnshire, Ill. Tadesse last year, said both complained when the dormitory was noisy. In April, a graduate of Harvard who had lived at Dunster House committed suicide, and a week later, a student who lived off campus but was affliated with the dormitory also committed suicide.
On the last day of final exams at Harvard University a week ago Saturday, Sinedu Tadesse did what she had never done in a lifetime of unblemished achievement: she missed a test and was marked absent.
It was one of several little-noticed signs that something was terribly wrong with Ms. Tadesse, a gentle, brilliant year-old junior from Ethiopia. But because of the weekend, Harvard officials would not learn about her absence for days. Nor did they, or anyone else for that matter, know that Ms. Tadesse had grown lonely and isolated at Harvard; that although she maintained a B average in her pre-med studies, she felt pressured by the intense academic competition on campus.
To all who asked -- and several did ask -- she insisted that she was happy and well. No one, it seems, not even her family, fellow students or advisers in her Dunster House dormitory, knew that she was despondent over a decision by her roommate, Trang Phuong Ho, to move out and live with another student in the fall -- a woman with whom, by one account, Ms. Tadesse had wanted to room herself. In retaliation, Ms.
Tadesse had stopped taking phone messages for her roommate, and for the last two months had refused to speak to her. But even knowing these fragments now, family members, friends and university officials are at a loss to explain why last Sunday morning, while Ms.
Ho slept, Ms. Tadesse thrust a five-inch folding hunting knife into her 45 times, then hanged herself from the bathroom shower stall with a rope that the police said she used to tie her bathrobe. Tadesse's past, to explain such a gruesome murder-suicide, said Dr. Douglas G. Jacobs, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
Interviews with students and faculty members who knew the two women and with Ms. Tadesse's father in Ethiopia indicate that the key to last weekend's events has thus far eluded everyone. Zelleke Tadesse, a retired school principal in Addis Ababa, said his daughter had never indicated that she was unhappy at Harvard or angry with her roommate.
Tadesse, a dignified, soft-spoken man. The coroner's report on Ms. Tadesse is not expected for several weeks, but her father insisted that neither she nor any of his four other children abused alcohol or drugs. As a child, his daughter never got angry, never lost her temper, was never depressed and always won the highest grades at the highly competitive schools she attended on full scholarship, Mr.
Tadesse said. Tadesse recalled, she was cheerful and visited him regularly with her mother, a nurse. A younger brother, Seiffe Tadesse, a sophomore at Dartmouth College, found it difficult to accept that anything was amiss with his sister. She called him at midnight on that final Saturday, a few hours before the murder, and he was possibly the last person she spoke to before she died. Epps 3d, the dean of students at Harvard. Tension and Tears In the Days Before.
That Ms. Tadesse was not fine emerges only in retrospect, and only by drawing on fragmented recollections from an array of sources. For example, Mohammed Khan, a friend and fellow student in her physics course, saw her in the library on the Tuesday before Saturday's physics exam. Her face seemed very worried. That same Tuesday, The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper, received an unidentified photograph with a letter that said: "Keep this picture.
Tadesse; they are still trying to confirm that she wrote the letter. Then there was the note that Ms. Ho's older sister, Thao Ho, said Ms. Tadesse sent to Trang Phuong Ho after learning that the roommate was leaving her.
Ho's practice of taking the bus home to Medford, Mass. Although Ms. Tadesse had relatives living nearby, she was able to see her parents in Ethiopia only once in three years at Harvard -- and only because the university paid for the trip, her father said.
On that Saturday when Ms. Tadesse should have been taking her physics exam, she was sitting in her room "crying the whole time," said Thao Nguyen, who was helping Ms. Ho move out for the summer. It was Ms. Nguyen who said that Ms. Ho both wanted Jennifer Tracy of Hartford as a roommate in the fall. Officials in Dunster House said they had no reason to believe that there had been a dispute over Ms. Tracy and that Ms. Ho had simply asked to have her as a roommate next year.
The officials said Ms. Tadesse had also applied for a new roommate but had not asked for anyone in particular. About a third of the students in Dunster House change roommates in any one year, officials said, adding that they did not question the changes unless students volunteered information.
Nguyen, a recent refugee from Vietnam, was sleeping next to Ms. Ho and awakened, she said, at 8 A. Tadesse looking "crazy" as she wordlessly stabbed her friend. Though wounded when she tried to stop the attack, Ms. Nguyen escaped. Ho's older sister said the roommates began bickering last fall over the commonplace issues of neatness and noise. Ho worked, said Ms. Ho was "too nice" to tell Ms.
Tadesse that she planned to switch roommates. Milne said. Karel Liem, the master of Dunster House and a biology professor who served as academic adviser to both women, and Suzi Naiburg, the senior tutor of Dunster House, said that they knew the roommates were splitting up but that neither had come to them with reports of rancor.
It was chance that brought the two women together in the first place. Both were admitted to Harvard on full scholarships. They were assigned to be roommates at the start of their sophomore year.
Other dorm residents considered the two to be hard workers who devoted considerable time to studying in the library. Several students from Dunster House described Ms. Tadesse as reserved and shy. Humphrey Wattanga, a junior from Nairobi, Kenya, who described himself as her "good friend," said that her shyness had made it difficult for her to make close friends at Harvard and that she was "totally isolated, always by herself.
Others saw a different picture. Nan Zheng, a junior from Missoula, Mont. Whenever I saw her, she'd always be smiling. Ho, who was 20, was also reserved and studious, but Vietnamese students who knew her said that with them, she was amiable and outgoing. When Ms. Tadesse started rooming together, they certainly seemed well matched. Both had risen from humble circumstances, Ms. Tadesse in Ethiopia and Ms.
Ho in Vietnam. Tadesse's father had been a political prisoner. At age 10 Ms. Ho had escaped from Vietnam on a fishing boat with her father and a sister.
According to interviews with friends and family members, both women dreamed of becoming doctors so they could help others. Both hewed to the family-centered traditions of their homelands, and both were valedictorians of their high school classes. Tadesse was one of a handful of students on full scholarship, a former teacher, Telahoun Hbebe, described her as "the pearl of the school.
She was doing well at Harvard, Professor Liem said, receiving an A in a biology course in which she worked with prominent researchers at Beth Israel Hospital investigating the human immunodeficiency virus in monkeys. Professor Liem said that Ms. Tadesse, like Ms. Ho and many other students, had discovered that at Harvard she was no longer an academic star.
But she was maintaining a B average with no difficulty, he said. Two weeks before the murder-suicide, Professor Liem said, he met Ms. Tadesse in his office. She said she was looking forward to the summer, doing further research and living with nearby cousins, he recalled. He said he had cautioned Ms.
Tadesse that with a B average she would not be admitted to Harvard Medical School. You will be notified in advance of any changes in rate or terms. You may cancel your subscription at anytime by calling Customer Service. Skip to Main Content Skip to Search.
News Corp is a global, diversified media and information services company focused on creating and distributing authoritative and engaging content and other products and services. Dow Jones.
By By Sally L. To Read the Full Story. Evidence grew that Ethiopian honors student Sinedu Tadesse had planned the murder-suicide involving her estranged roommate, Trang Ho, at the Cambridge, Mass.
There will soon be a very juicy story involving the person in this picture. Harvard President Neil Rubenstine has yet to make a statement on the killings, which followed two suicides over the past two years. An autopsy performed by Dr. George Kury determined that in her rage, Tadesse stabbed Ho 45 times in the face, neck, chest, arms, legs and hands. Towle said Ho was sleeping when the savage assault began.
0コメント