Follow-up on the New Information About Hae’s Plans on January 13, 1999

Last Thursday, I posted an entry with new information about Hae’s plans on January 13, 1999, which tended to establish that:

1. Hae picking up her cousin was a daily, prearranged task, not something she only did occasionally or as needed;

2. On January 13th, after picking up her cousin, Hae was supposed to take her cousin to her uncle’s workplace, not home; and

3. On January 13th, after taking her cousin to her uncle’s workplace, Hae was supposed to babysit her cousin for some period of time.

The entry was posted on reddit, prompting the following response by Hae’s brother:

I believe Hae’s brother, which makes the information I received all the more confounding. I previously said that I would not name the source of my information, but the last thing that I want is Hae’s brother thinking that I might be making something up. I also don’t want misinformation to be out there.

The source of my information is the Director of The Enehey Group, who, among other things, consulted with Detective O’Shea on a daily basis during the Missing Persons Investigation. Here is a relevant excerpt from her:

“I knew Hae Min through her family, who were my friends at that time. I was asked by them to help find her the day she failed to show up to babysit her cousin after school. Her family was frantic and I am an investigative researcher, I knew PI’s and law enforcement professionals, and I occasionally worked on cold cases and missing person cases. Hae Min’s failure to show up was reported by her uncle (she lived with her uncle and mother) to the police in the county where she lived; as is the norm, the authorities did not take the matter seriously because she had not been missing for 36 hours. Her family contacted me to call the police and beg for immediate action and so I impressed upon the police that Hae Min was not a US Citizen, her Embassy would be contacted and this could look very very bad if they did not take this more seriously. It was unlike Hae Min to fail to be home at the right time, clearly something was wrong, she was a dutiful daughter, responsible family member, and daily picked up her cousin after school to take to her uncle’s business.” 

Given that some of this information seemed at odds with what had been reported, I of course confirmed with her the three pieces of information that formed the basis for my prior post. I know that the Director has received negative attention in the wake of Serial, and I hope that readers see that, at least in this instance, she was trying to be helpful, even if that helpfulness tends to establish that the investigation of this case might have been fundamentally flawed from day one.

[Edit: I just wanted to note that the information in my prior post (and the information in this post) was not given under the promise of anonymity. I left my source unnamed in the initial post because I thought that the information spoke for itself. Given today’s response, I decided that the source needed to be identified.].

-CM