Catherine and Andrew Suh, and the murder of Robert O’Dubaine

0:00 Hi. I am Rich and I'm Tina. And if there's one thing we've learned in over twenty years of marriage, some days you'll feel like killing your husband, and some days you'll feel like killing your wife. Welcome to love, Mary Kill, Hey Tina, Hey Rich, Oh how are you? Oh? I'm good. How are you? It's a beautiful day here in Michigan. It's a beautiful day, so beautiful in fact, that two days ago in March we put our duck furniture out. We did which we normally don't do till I don't know when, but not in March March. No beautiful. Yeah. Hey, By the way, I'm going on strike you are. Yeah, Oh okay, striking for better snacks. I see the snack that you brought today, and I'm a little salty about it. It's a really good snack. I know I didn't. We've done it before.

0:58 A think we've done it, almost positive we've done it before. I'm not so sure. Yeah, I'm going on straying. You need to step up your game. This is a I know I didn't. It's a great snack. I know I didn't put a lot of efforts. This snack has been in our house for about four months, and I'm making sure it doesn't go to waste, right, but it's still some of it is, I don't think so. The one variety is still I'm not going to just steal your thunder and let you Well, we should probably just tell our listeners what the snack is. They're probably all curious. It's probably all going to be mad too. The one isn't even available anymore. Oh really? Yeah, oh well, the case today that I'm going to talk about, or we're going to talk about, is based in Chicago's my hometown. Yeah, your hometown.

1:47 So so I was, yeah, trying to think what snack could we do, and you said and you said, hey, we've got this Garretts in the cupboard, Garrett, but you shouldn't use it because we've had it since Christian It's stale. I've been busy. It's been well. The last time we did Chicago case, to be honest, I was lame. And ah, the listener was like, well, why didn't you do garrets? And I was like, oh, yeah, we should have done garrets because then it wasn't four months old, right, But anyway, go ahead. I tasted the garrets and it still tastes perfectly good to me. Well, the chocolate one is still good because it's coated in chocolate. But the caramel, the Chicago I think it's called the Chicago blend, right it is not?

2:28 Yeah, it is stale. Well, I'm sorry. I'll try to do better. You could have driven to them all again some fresh. I know it's okay. I think our listeners think that I am mean to you, and I want you to wonder what I would like you to talk about that for a minute. Am I am I mean to you? I feel there's no pressure. I feel like I really put it on the spot here now. No, you're not mean to me. You're a lovely, lovely woman, a lovely wife. Yes, yes, sure, well, and you are. I mean, you are the I mean, I don't get a big haga, but you're pretty much the absolute best. So of course I look mean in comparison to you, well, you are. You are very tolerant and patient, like to a fault, almost You're so patient with me. I would say that we're different. You are more outspoken and opinionated maybe than I am, And people might think that comes across that you're mean, but I don't. I'm a little snarky, but but I think I'm pretty I think i'm pretty nice to you. And Jeah, you're very good to me. You sound like you haven't gotten to your You are good to me. If you could see me, I'm blinking s o s oh right away. The other day you sent me someone thank you listeners for your comments from Spotify. Someone said, oh, I like the outtakes, and I was like, what outtakes? Yeah, people, A lot of people don't

3:59 know that. You don't. You didn't know that either. But every once in a while we have a blooper and if it's a good bloopers while well, I should let me rephrase that, every one in a while I save one of our bloopers. I don't actually do it that often, but once in a while I do, And when I do, I sometimes put it at the very very end of the episode, after the music. I didn't know that existed, and no one's ever mentioned it. It's kind of like a little easter egg. I think it's kind of fun. That was very timely of you. I didn't even think about it. But my point is like, I don't even know what you're putting in there, and I'm going to be honest, sometimes I burn, but I know sometimes you record them, so I apologize listeners for whatever he's putting. I don't put anything anything that would be embarrassing or uncomfortable for you. Okay, are we going to try this stale snack? Yes? We should. Well, do you want to talk about the different varieties really quick? Yeah? I don't really know what they are, but one is the Chicago blend that you mentioned, So that's like cheese, popcorn and caramel. And then the other one is I think it's mostly like chocolate, like dark chocolate and chocolate coated popcorn with some caramel corn in there. And I think that's called like hot cocoa blend.

5:05 And that's the one anymore. Yeah, that's the one that's just available at Christmas time. We've talked about this before, but it is. It's a great gift. This is actually a gift that someone bought for us and we love it. It's great. Normally it would be gone by now. I'm not sure why it still is around our cover, but we've had a lot of treats at our house. I think, yeah, no surprise, I like to make treats. Let's take a quick break and have some Why have we not eaten that in four months? We've eaten some of it, like when we have a game night. I've put it out before. Yeah, yeah, it's good. Yeah, it wasn't as still as I thought. And the chocolate, it's really it's really quite tasty. Back in the day, like when you would go to Chicago for a weekend, you could only get Garrett Actually, I think we've said Garretts. It's actually Garrett without the s popcorn, and you would just load up when you went into the city.

5:56 But now you can get it a lot of places. I think they're in a few airports, and there is a store in the mall that's not too far from our house. Yeah you say it like in Chicago you would have to wait, like the line would be around the block. Yeah right, yeah, yeah, good stuff, good stuff. Right, thank you. I'm sorry. I was. I'm still my go on strike. Though. I think you could do it. I don't blame me. Think you could do it a little better. I could. I could too, though I think we haven't been baking quite as much. Yeah, I've got I've got something in mind for my next episode. That's what you've been saying. Tell us about your case today. All right, Well, today's case is about the murder of Robert O du Bain in Chicago in nineteen ninety three, in the Bucktown neighborhood of Chicago, which I had never heard of before. But do you know buck House where our friends lived? Is it? It could be? It's it's near Wrigley, which I know is where our friends lived, but I never knew the name of the area. So our friends, who aren't married anymore and who don't live in Chicago anymore, they're the friends that we met through. Yeah, we met at their wedding. That's right. We owe them. We owe them a lot. This case was recommended by our friend Kelly, so shout out to Kelly. Thanksanks for introducing us to this case. On Saturday evening, September twenty fifth of nineteen ninety three, in the trendy Bucktown neighborhood of Chicago, thirty one year old Robert Odubain stepped from his house into the garage. Walking toward his car. He didn't see the figure dressed all in black, come out from a hiding place in the garage and raise a gun at him. The first shot hit Robert in the neck, the second one to the head. As Robert lay on the floor, neighbors heard the two gun shots, followed quickly by the sound

7:29 of a car speeding away. Someone called nine to one one and the police arrived to find the garage door open and Robert Odubain lying dead in a pool of blood. Robert's jeep Wrangler was gone, along with his wallet and keys, so the first thought was a carjacking, But when the car was found parked on the street just a few blocks from the crime scene, the carjacking theory no longer added up. A carjacker wouldn't have left it so nearby. It seemed like a targeted hit. Was it someone wanting revenge a disscrunold employee. Police would need to delve into Robert's life and relationships to figure out who had a motive to kill him in cold blood. Robert was born Robert Koran in nineteen sixty two in Chicago, the oldest of five kids. There isn't a lot of information about Robert's background, but he was described by friends and family as highly independent, a hard worker, if perhaps a little unfocused, but overall a good dude, fun and charismatic. He was always searching and always reinventing himself. Perhaps that's why he changed his name at some point from Robert Koran to Robert o'dubain odu bain, being a Gaelic derivative of Devane, which was his mother's maiden name. Interesting one story I heard about him is that he decided at age twenty to sell all of his possessions and walk to Alaska. There was no word on whether he actually followed through or not.

8:52 I would guess not because I did the math and it would take about one hundred and fifty days walking eight hours a day to get from Chicago to Alaska, So guessing he didn't actually do that. But still he seemed like he was always up for adventure and looking for something to do that would be different, and you know, kind of reinventing himself all the time. He was described as a casual, cheenes and flannel kind of guy like you, exactly like me, but he reinvented that aspect of himself as well. After he met eighteen year old Katherine Saw at the health club where they worked in nineteen eighty seven, they started dating and he began dressing in three piece suits to be who Catherine wanted him to be. Oh. Catherine Saw was born in May of nineteen sixty nine and sold South Korea. Her father, Ronald, was a banker and her mother, Elizabeth, was a pharmacist. She had an older brother, but when Catherine was three and her brother was eight, he had a tragic accident where he fell from the railing at a friend's house and died. Catherine's father was very traditional in the sense that the man of the house was the bos us and the children and his wife were subservient to him. He was desperate to have another boy and gave Catherine's mom an ultimatum, you either give me another son or I'm divorcing you. On January twelfth, nineteen seventy four, Andrew Saw was born January twelve, Are born on my birthday? It's weird. Great day. In nineteen seventy six, when Catherine was seven and Andrew was two, the family emigrated to the United States,

10:26 settling in the northwest side of Chicago, where Ronald opened a convenience store. Is the only boy. Andrew was the golden child of the family while Catherine was now secondary. Here's Andrew talking about that. Catherine was more or less ostracized because she was the girl, and they focused most of their touch on to me. I think Catherine Almo always resented that because she always chose to rebel. So if mom and dad wanted something done, I did it without a without question. But Catherine said, well, I'm going to question, and I'm going to ask why. I want to go back just a second to where Ronald told his wife you give me his son or else. Yeah, I mean, how seems a little extreme. She didn't have a lot of control over that. Yeah, I kind of wonder where that came from, to be honest with you, like, who would have told that story? So I question it a little bit. But yeah, as you'll learn more about Ronald as we go forward, he was not the nicest man in the world. As a child, Andrew lived up to the high expectations of his parents as the golden child. He studied hard, did well in school, and loved his mother and father. After school, he would go to his dad's convenience store to help out and act as a translator for his father, then go home and do his homework. Catherine rebelled against her father's strict nature and traditional Korean values. She was happy to be an American and wanted to do American things like go hang out at the mall with her friends and date American boys. While her schoolwork suffered, she and her father would

11:58 get into terrible fights, and Ronald would beat her. Here's Andrew talking about that, and one particularly frightening fight, he made it abundantly clear that he did not like her. He said, no, you're not my daughter. You know. He beat her consistently. He's very old school Korean. He said, you know what, this is how it's going to be done, and this is my house. You will abide by my rules. And Catherine, and the rebellious teenager said no, I'm not. My father came home one day. He picked up the phone. It was some Latino guy and he's talking to where's your daughter? And my father lost it. He's like, what are you doing? You know, come to you, come to America, you become a ward. He was arguing my sister and he was slapping around her a little bit, and then Catherine had a moment, I get yourself bravery, and she reached across my father and scratched his chest like this, and my father had a T shirt ripped and he was bleeding across his chest. My father saw the blood and he just lost it. He lost it. He grabbed her, He grabbed the jug of gasoline, and he just doused both of them. And he reached into his pockets, grabbed the lighters, trying to flick the lighter, get the flint going. He couldn't get it started. Gotcha your job, Let's die together. And my mom, she heard all the commotion, ran back. She grabbed them.

13:18 She pulled the light out of his hand, and she's say, oh, you know, what have we done? This is not our daughter. Oh my goodness, I know. Isn't that a terrifying story? That's horrible. I'm so glad the lighter didn't light. Oh my goodness. In nineteen eighty five, when Catherine was sixteen and Andrew was eleven, their dad, Ronald, was diagnosed with stomach cancer. Andrew was devastated and was a NonStop fixture at his father's bedside in the hospital. There was even an article published in a Korean newspaper with a picture of Andrew the good Son sitting by his father's bed with a string tied from his hand to his father's so he would know if his dad needed anything, even if he was too weak to speak.

14:01 After Ronald passed away, Elizabeth needed a source of income to support the family. She tried but failed to pass the test she would need to practice as a pharmacist in the US, so instead she opened a dry cleaning business in Evanston, Illinois, where she worked long hours, six days a week. Just like he did with his father at the convenience store, Andrew would spend whatever time he could at the dry cleaning business, helping out his mother. Elizabeth wasn't quite as strict with Catherine as Ronald had been, but the two still had their run ins, mostly about Catherine dating boys who weren't Korean. Catherine pretty much did her own thing, coming and going as she pleased and going out four to five nights a week. She barely graduated from high school, so she's like sixteen when her dad died. I think right around that.

14:48 A couple of months after she turned eighteen, Catherine met and started dating Robert o'dubain, who was twenty five at the time. He was the manager of a health club and she had a job there as a personal trainer. And then about two months after that, tragedy again struck the Saw family. On the morning of October sixth, nineteen eighty seven, a customer came into the dry cleaning business and discovered Elizabeth's body in the back under a pile of clothes. The autopsy determined that she had been stabbed thirty seven times sometime between seven am when she opened the shop at nine am when her body was found. So a really really brutal attack thirty seven times. That's a lie.

15:30 Yeah, it's really really horrible. Would that be a crime of passion? You would think Elizabeth's wallet was missing and the cash drawer was opened with no money in it, so it at first appeared to be a robbery. But as you so astutely pointed out, because of the thirty seven stab wounds, Evanston police evolved their theory over time to believe that this was a crime of passion. Someone coming in to rob an establishment wants to get in and out as quickly as possible, not spend that much time stabbing someone and then cover up the body. Katherine and Andrew were both looked on as possible suspects at the time. Andrew was ruled out quickly, and as for Katherine, her boyfriend Robert o'dubain said that she was with him. The investigation stalled and the case remained unsolved. Catherine became the legal guardian of Andrew, who was now thirteen. His older sister was now the only family that Andrew had left.

16:25 Elizabeth's estate, which included a life insurance policy, was worth eight hundred thousand dollars, but it was all left to Andrew as the man of the family, with none actually going to Catherine. Isn't that crazy thirteen? Yeah, but as the guardian, she had full access to the money, so she really did get the money. But I think as the only son, that was just the way it was done, as you leave your money to the son, which is not at all fair. Soon after Elizabeth died, Robert moved in with Catherine and Andrew, with the three forming a makeshift family unit. Robert and Andrew formed a strong bond, with Robert becoming Andrew's male role model. When Andrew was old enough to start driving, he and Robert fixed up an old VW. Robert taught him how to drive a stick shift and how to change the oil. Robert and Katherine not only shacked up together, they also went into business together. Shacked up together? Is that a quaint?

17:21 Is that an old fashioned term? If you ever listened to doctor Laura, that's what she used to I don't know why I used to listen to doctor Laura. Well, Andrew, Robert and Catherine did shack up together, but they also went into business together. They used the money from Elizabeth's estate to buy houses, rehab them, and then flip them for a profit, and they did pretty well. That's great. In nineteen ninety one, with some of the money they earned, Robert and Catherine bought a two flat on North Hermitage Avenue in the fashionable Bucktown neighborhood for one hundred and seventeen thousand dollars. Do you know what a too flat is? Like a duplex? Yeah? I wasn't familiar with that. I guess it's such a I didn't realize that. But it's basically what you would call a duplex in other parts of the country. But they call it two flat in Chicago. Basically a two story building with legal apartment on each floor. Gotcha. They remodeled the two flat. They added sunken floors and an impressive thirty five foot living room atrium, and then the three of them moved in. The dwelling is now estimated by Zillo to be worth about one point three million dollars nice. In nineteen ninety two, Catherine and Robert opened a night club together called Club Metropolis in one of Chicago's northern suburbs. They ran the club together and it was very successful in the beginning. So they were very industrious. Yeah, they were, for sure. Andrew struggled with the losses of both his mother and father in such a short time. His sister was now his guardian, but they had their battles. Here's Andrew. I'm thirteen years old. My father abandoned

18:56 me, my mother had left me. I hated my life, I hated God, hated my sister. My opinions no longer mattered, and how the house was run because Catherine was in charge. Now Catherine was my guardian. There was one drawn out physical fight I had with my sister where it just escalated into an explosion. I said, you're nobody to me, you know. I told her that. You know I'm still here. I'm at the head of the house. So she's like, no, you're not. This is my house. You know you're as a kid. She started hitting me. I grabbed her. I remember that, grabbing her and holding her, and she bit into my ribs. She bit into my ribs and I let her go. I said, what's wrong with you? I wanted to hit her, but I couldn't imaged to my sister, and first and foremost, she's a woman, so I wouldn't lay a hand in her. I punched my hand through the glass window, and I remember my hands started bleeding, and she said, got out of my house. And I remember running away that night some I made it to Peterson Park. I remember it was like snowflakes. Her fore down and I'm like, what do you do? Either accept her as my guardian or go to foster care. I guess that was my other choice. I came home and I walked in or she opened the door, and we had a talk. She's like and she had calmed down to she's like, she's like, I love you, You're all I have love too. And I told her, I said, what are we going to do about She's like, I think at that time she told me be

20:30 a kid. It was a mixture of two things. It was a bit. 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 altho cathartic because I let everything out. I didn't have to worry about where the next rent payment was going to be. I didn't have to worry about who was going to cook dinner. I didn't have to worry about taking care of the house. It was just I could go to school and have some fun with friends. I could actually live a life as a child again. And for a moment like that, I really love my sister. I think it's really interesting because I think, you know, up until that point, he had been you know, he had so much pressure on him to be the perfect child, and you know, you could say that his parents put him ahead of his sister. But at the same time, with that came all this pressure, and I think all of a sudden he felt that, like, oh, I can actually be a kid and do things that kids do rather than just you know, work to support my parents all the time, to be the perfect child all the time. It's it's tough. That's a lot of pressure to put on someone and to be raising, you know, as Catherine raising her little brother, that must have been really challenging too, because I mean, she's still, you know, a very young adult with all the pressures of raising her brother, and it sounds like a tough situation. Yeah.

21:48 After that talk, Andrew realized he could be a kid instead of taking the weight of all the duties and obligations he felt towards his parents. As he got older and started high school, he seemed to be thriving with the additional free he had. He attended an exclusive private school, the Loyola Academy in Wilmet. He played football and got involved in student politics, getting elected student body president in consecutive years, but he never opened up to anyone at school. He never shared the tragedy of losing both of his parents at a young age, and he didn't tell people about his difficult home life. He later described himself as a lonely popular kid. He was awarded a full rite academic scholarship from Providence College in Rhode Island, which is currently ranked number one out of one hundred and seventy eight regional universities in the North Region by US News and World Report. He planned to study economics in the Japanese language.

22:42 It was right near the beginning of Andrew's sophomore year at Providence that Robert was shot and killed. That is a poortant kid. I mean he really went through a lot he did. Once the police ruled out a random carjacking in Robert's murder, they started learning as much as they could about his personal life and his business. They started by talking to his live in girlfriend, Catherine Suh. She came in for an interview and seemed very upset. At the time of Robert's killing, she had been out on a date with another guy. As she explained to investigators, she and Robert had an understanding that they could see other people. The guy she was out with was named Pete Ellis, and he confirmed that he was with Catherine at a restaurant bar called Glen View House, about seventeen miles away from the crime scene. Detectives asked Catherine if she had any theories about who would want Robert dead. She said that he had dated a lot of women. Maybe it was one of them, or it could have been related to his gambling. She said he gambled a lot and he had lost a lot of money. Maybe someone was after him to collect because of the money he had lost. She said that they were planning to sell their business and go their separate ways. After the interview ended and Catherine left, the detectives realized she never asked them how how Robert had been killed, which was a red flag. She was immediately a person of interest, but at the same time, her background was completely clean. She had no priors, and they'd never been called out for any domestic disputes between her and Robert. A couple of other interesting things the police learned early in

24:18 the investigation that made them want to take a closer look at Catherine. First, they discovered that Robert had life insurance, a two hundred and fifty thousand dollars policy with Catherine as the beneficiary. They also learned about the unsolved murder of Catherine's mother six years earlier. That certainly piqued their interest, especially the fact that Catherine had been a suspect but Robert had been her alibi. The next step for police was to interview employees at Club Metropolis to learn what they could about that aspect of Robert's life. There was some talk about drugs being used and sold in the bar, and some possible gambling activity, but mostly they learned more about Catherine and the nature of her and road Robert's relationship.

25:02 All of the employees they spoke to loved Robert. He was a good guy. He got along with everyone. Katherine, on the other hand, people said that she was just plain mean. An example, one time, a customer ordered a wine spritzer, but they asked for it to be served in a rocks glass, basically a short tumbler or an old fashioned glass. Normally, a wine spritzer would be served in a wineglass, but if the customer asks for it in a different type of glass, you do what you're asked. Customer is always right right. As the bartender was pouring the spritzer for the customer, Catherine came up and started screaming at him, telling him he was fired for serving the drink that way. She stomped off, and then Robert stepped in, telling the bartender don't worry about it. You're fine, You're not fired. Catherine would also try to get the staff to gossip about each other, which eventually caused employees to lose trust in her and avoid her as much as possible. On the plus side, they said Catherine had style.

25:57 She was always dressed to the nine, wearing all black with red lipstick, high heels and a fur coat, and she was an excellent negotiator. She would meet with liquor salesmen and she would pour them all shots of vodka all the way around, but she would have her bartender pour water into her glass to remain sober while the liquor salesman would get drunk, and she would get them down to the price that she wanted. Pretty smart, really. The police also learned that Catherine and Robert's relationship had evolved over the year or so since they had opened the bar. In the beginning, they were more lovey dovey, but over time it became all business and they started fighting more. It seems like things were getting tighter financially as well. For example, they closed the kitchen at a certain point and they stopped serving food to reduce their expenses. They also learned from employees that Robert had a recent girlfriend who came into the bar sometimes named Maria La Boy. They called her up and asked her to come in for an interview, and what she told them would break the case wide open. Hmm. Did Robert and Catherine have an open relationship the whole time or just towards the end. I'm not even sure they had an open relationship. Toward the end, I think they were in the process of splitting up and they were both seeing other people because of that.

27:14 But I think when she told them they had an open relationship, she may have been making that up as like some sort of alibi for herself. Well, I think to make it sound like she and Robert we were fine, Like they weren't, you know, splitting apart. They were together, but they just had an open relationship, which is why she was dating someone else and why he might have seen other people as well. Okay, we'll be right back after a break. Before the break, I left you on a cliffhanger, and I talked about the fact that there was a girl that Robert was dating named Maria La Boy who came into the bar sometimes, and that the police interviewed her, which helped break the case open. Maria had been on the phone with Robert just minutes before he was shot and killed. While they were talking, his call waiting clicked and he asked her to hold on.

28:08 When he came back a minute later, he told Maria that it was Catherine calling, saying her car had broken down in Lincoln Park and asked if he would come pick her up. Fun fact, I was born in Lincoln Park. Wow, that is a fun fact. Sorry, it's not all about me. Catherine hadn't told the police anything about this call or about her car breaking down. In fact, she said the last time she had spoken with Robert was earlier that afternoon. They checked phone records and found there was a call to Robert's phone from the Glen View House tavern, where Catherine had been with Pete Ellis, and the Glen View House tavern was nowhere near Lincoln Park. The call was at six fifty five PM, just a minute or two before Robert was shot and killed. Had Catherine called to lure him out to the garage where someone was waiting to kill him. Catherine was now the main suspect, but someone else must have pulled the trigger. Looking through phone records, they saw a number coming up a lot in the two weeks leading up to Robert's death. It was Andrew SU's number at Providence College. Catherine had called her brother sixty six times over the course of those two weeks.

29:18 When they tried to reach Andrew at college, he wasn't there. They learned that Andrew had signed out and left campus the morning of Robert's murder and signed back the next day. His roommate said that Andrew told him he had to go home to take care of some family business. As the police were narrowing in on Catherine and Andrew, he took off and never returned. To Providence College, investigators brought Catherine in for another interview. When confronted with the evidence of the phone call to Robert minutes before he was shot, she said, in fact, she did call him, It must have slipped her mind during the first interview. She called to warn him that his life was in danger because a colle Lumbian guy named Wan, who was tied to organize crime, was coming after him. She didn't have any evidence to back up this claim.

30:07 It's quite a story, huh. There's this guy named Wan who's coming to kill you. But did they have any organized crime ties? Not that I know of. I mean, like I mentioned earlier, there was some gambling activity in the bar that was going on, and I think he did probably gamble, But I never read anything about any organized crime. I think she was just making stuff up. Did he have a gambling addiction or was it just kind of a I don't I never read anything that led me to believe he had a gambling addiction. I think she was just trying to make up stories to make it, you know, to give some plausible reason why someone might have killed him. Yeah. Sensing that things weren't going well, Catherine asked the detective interviewing her how much money it would cost to just make this whole thing go away. Oh boy, surely there was some amount she could pay the detective to sweep this under the rug. Right, The officer wasn't buying it. Instead, he arrested Catherine for the murder of Robert O de Bain. Can you imagine? I can't imagine. Let's just be reasonable here, Like, I mean, there's some people you can bribe, like a waiter, but not a police officer. Maybe for a speeding ticket, but probably not for a murder. It was now November tenth, nineteen ninety three, six weeks after Robert's murder. Catherine was in custody and Andrew's whereabouts were unknown. On that day, November tenth, Andrew bought a plane ticket from la to Dallas. Because he paid for the one way ticket in cash and was traveling alone with no luggage, it triggered an alert with the Drug

31:41 Enforcement Agency. Really yeah, I didn't realize that was a thing that you would get flagged by the DEA if you were traveling alone or paying with cash or things like that. So pretty interesting. Two DEA agents were waiting to question Andrew when he got off the plane in Dallas. They didn't know that police in Chicago were looking for him related to a murder. They just thought the guy might be a drug smuggler. He told the agents that he was actually on his way to Chicago to bail his sister out of jail. They asked if they could look in his bag. He said yes, and they found sixty five thousand dollars in cash, along with a wallet containing Robert Odu Bain's ID. The DEA agents contacted the Chicago police and found that they had been looking for Andrew, so they put him on a flight back to Chicago.

32:29 When he landed in Chicago, the police were waiting for him. One of the officers said that Andrew seemed like a broken man when he got off the plane, crying and hugging the officers who met him. He was tired of running and lying and was ready to tell the truth. So I mentioned he was flying from la to Dallas. I don't know why he was in LA. I think he was just on the run, going wherever he could. So I don't really know what brought him on the journey that he went on. But they had him now back in Chicago. Andrews about, Yes, he was a sophomore at college, so I think he was twenty. So, even though he broke down at the airport and was hugging the officers and said he wanted to tell the truth, when they took him back to the station and sat him down in the interview room, he clammed up.

33:14 The cops said, Andrew, we know exactly what happened. Catherine wanted Robert dead, and she made you feel like it was your duty to help her. Andrew still wouldn't talk, and so the police brought out photos of his mother's body at the crime scene, which she had been stabbed thirty seven times, and said, look, this is what your sister did to your mother. Are you sure you want to cover for her? This ended up breaking Andrew. He started sobbing uncontrollably, and when he calmed down, he told them everything He said that in the weeks leading up to Robert's murder. Catherine called him over and over. She told him that Robert was physically abusing her and that he was gambling away all of their money. She told Andrew that the only way out of it was to kill him, and that he had to be the man of the family and protect his sister. Later, he also said that Catherine told him Robert was the one who killed their mother.

34:06 Here's Andrew talking about that conversation with his sister. I was leaving for college in a matter of weeks, and at that point she looked at me. She's quiet, and there you see almost a calm in her face where she's she wasn't herself, and she's like, I had to tell you something before mom died. After Robert got fired. We had a long conversation about money, she said, Robert and I. I was talking to Robert half heartedly about how much, how everything will be final once my mom passed away. Shortly thereafter, my mother came up dead. She said, I didn't ask him to it, but he did it. So basically, she was telling Andrew that Robert killed their mother and that she was actually Robert's alibi, which is why she said they couldn't go to the police about this because she would be in trouble as well, and so that's how she convinced Andrew to kill Robert. Catherine was the only family that Andrew had left. She told him, you have to do this, you have to do this for our family, and eventually he became convinced that it was his duty to kill Robert.

35:12 Catherine bought Andrew a plane ticket under an assumed name, and he flew to Chicago on September twenty fifth, nineteen ninety three. Catherine picked him up at O'Hare and had him changed into all black clothing. She took him to the house and gave him a paper bag that contained a gun and his plane ticket back to Providence. He hid in the garage for over four hours until Catherine's phone call lured Robert out of the house to the garage. Then he shot Robert in cold blood, firing the second bullet to be certain he was dead, just as his sister had instructed him. Andrew then took off in Robert's cheap drove a few blocks parked on the street, and hailed a taxi to take him back to O'Hare and back to Providence. Before he was arrested.

35:55 Andrew was able to bail his sister out of jail. Her bond had been set at one hundred and fifty thousand dollars and to get released, she only had to post ten percent of that, which to me seems really low for someone accused of first degree murder that you only need fifteen thousand dollars to get out of jail. This might be a controversial take, but I think if you're in prison for a first degree murder that maybe you don't get out on bail. Yeah. I don't think that shouldn't be controversial to me either, because if you're facing a life sentence without parole, there's such an incentive for you to run and flee. Absolutely. So Andrew was able to speak to Catherine, and he told her that he had confessed to the police. She was not happy about this, and so she actually refused to bail Andrew out of jail. She said it was because her money was tied up in other things. But Andrew sat in jail for two months until a judge lowered his bond from five hundred thousand dollars to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars and some friends raised the money for him out on bail. Catherine she reinvented herself and started a brand new life while she was awaiting trial. She started calling herself Kasha Kane and moved into a luxury condo on Chicago's Lakefront, near Navy Pier.

37:10 She told people she was a consultant and she also worked in real estate. She drove a Jaguar and started dating a wealthy guy named Dave Nor. The two broke up after seven months, but they remained friends and spoke regularly after the breakup. In the months leading up to her trial, Catherine showed up faithfully to every hearing, but the day her murder trial was to begin in September of nineteen ninety five, her lawyer was sitting at the defense table all by himself. A few days earlier, Catherine had gotten a book on how to Change Your Identity, sold her Jaguar for eight thousand dollars, and then vanished. The judge declared a bond forfeiture and issued a warrant for her arrest. Catherine's absence did not stop the trial from going forward, however.

37:59 She was tried absse cenia, and the jury only needed two hours to come back with a guilty verdict. The judge sentenced her to life in prison with no possibility of parole. It turns out, if you don't show up for your trial, the jury is more likely to think that you're guilty. If the seat is empty, judge is probably going to give you a harsher sentence as well. Andrew was tried separately right around the same time he opted for a bench trial. Should we talk about what a bench trials? I think everyone probably knows. But that's when you don't have a jury, The judge decides your fate. The judge found him guilty and sentenced him to one hundred years in prison, although that was reduced to eighty years on appeal. With good behavior, that could potentially be forty years. So the earliest Andrew would be eligible for parole would be in twenty thirty four, when he is sixty years old. Meanwhile, Catherine once again started a new life for herself.

38:54 A friend of hers had a condo in Hawaii and was looking for a renter for the summer, about as far away as from Chicago as she could get. Catherine adopted a new name based on two of her favorite luxury retail stores on Chicago's Magnificent Mile. She became Tiffany Escatta. Tiffany from Tiffany and Company Jewelry and Escata. I don't know that brand. It was a high end women's clothing store. Apparently it's no closed. He closed a couple of years back. Maybe COVID got it. Within a week or so of arriving in Hawaii, Catherine or Tiffany met a new man. Kelly Beck, was one of Hawaii's best and most well known triathletes. On September fifteenth, Kelly had just completed a ten mile training run and was cooling off in an outdoor shower near the beach. Tiffany was checking him out, and the two started flirting and then began dating. Tiffany avoided talking too much about her background. Of course, she shared with Kelly that she ran her family's business, that she lived in Miami's South Beach area and also had homes in New York and Kansas City. She also told him that she had a wealthy boyfriend back home named Robert, but she didn't want to marry him because he was too dedicated to his job. She could really spin a yarn couldn't she. After dating for just over a month, she convinced Kelly to move with her to a high rise apartment in Honolulu, something that would be more in keeping with her high end taste as opposed to the condo she was renting outside of the city.

40:28 Shortly after they moved into the new apartment, she paid cash for a gold BMW three twenty five. I she was back to living the high life. Where is she getting all this money? I think she had some saved up from the nightclub and all the houses that they flipped. What does a gold BMW three twenty five, iye, retail for. I'm not sure what it retails for, but I believe that I read she paid eight thousand dollars. It might have been used. Yeah. Well, and this was way back then too. It wasn't that long ago. Yeah, but yeah, it definitely was used for that price right back. Later described Tiffany as quote flirty, charming, bubbly, funny, and giggly. He called her his goddess, while she referred to him as Tarzan. Hearing people's pet names is very so cringy to me. But he also saw her temper. One time, she wanted a piece of jewelry. It cost only thirty dollars, but Kelly refused to buy it for her, and, as he later described it, she quote went totally mental on me. You know how women are, said nothing. After a few months of being unable to locate Catherine, investigators turned to America's Most Wanted, which aired a segment on her in January nineteen ninety six. When the episode aired in Hawaii, Kelly was out picking up a pizza while Tiffany slash Catherine turned on the TV and saw herself featured on the on America's Most Wanted. She must have freaked out. When Kelly returned to

41:58 the apartment with a pizza, he notice she seemed agitated. The next morning, she packed a bag stole a sock containing three thousand dollars from Kelly's chour. She took a eem to go to get why that's a funny deal. Who doesn't keep three thousand dollars in a sock in their sock drawer? That's so funny. We're not sure where she spent the next six weeks, but she resurfaced on March eighth, when she walked into the Honolulu YWCA at five am. She looked like she may have been homeless. She was barefoot, with dirty clothes on, no makeup, and her hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail. She used the payphone in the YWCA lobby to make a collect call to her ex boyfriend, Dave Norr. This is the guy that she had dated when she was out on bail and using the identity Kasha Caine.

42:45 She rambled on to Dave for two hours and exhibited signs of being paranoid and delusional. She told him that her phone was tapped and the police were trying to kill her, and that she had been poisoned. On a separate phone line, Dave had a cowork her contact the Honolulu police and convinced Catherine to speak with the officer. He conferenced them together, but then Catherine got nervous and threatened to hang up, so Dave ended the call with the police. He kept Catherine on the line, though, and his colleague made some more calls, finally reaching the Cook County prosecutor, who was familiar with Catherine's case. He got on the line with Catherine and seemed to calm her down. He persuaded her to turn herself into the FBI, and separately, his staff reached out to the FBI field office in Hawaii. Catherine told them she was at the YWCA, and that was where FBI agents finally took her into custody, this time for good. She appeared in a Cook County court in April of nineteen ninety six. Prosecutors notified Robert Odubain's family so they could be present at the hearing and have some closure since Catherine hadn't been at her trial.

43:54 The judge asked Katherine if there was anything she'd like to say to Robert's family. She just looked that The judge tight lipped and refused to even look at Robert's family members. There was no remorse. After learning of Catherine's involvement in Robert's death. They took a fresh look at Elizabeth SU's murder in their dry cleaning shop. As recently as twenty seventeen, investigators retested crime scene evidence, hoping that new forensic testing techniques would be able to show that Catherine was responsible, but to this day, the case remains officially unsolved. Ah, that's horrible. Andrew at first refused to believe that his sister killed their mother, but eventually he came to the conclusion that she was most likely guilty.

44:39 While Catherine's motive for killing Robert may have been financial, it's more likely that she and Robert were going their separate ways and Robert knew her deepest secret that she had killed her mother. She couldn't have him out there with that information out of her control, and so she decided that he had to be killed. She then manipulated her brother into committing the act by taking advantage of his strong sense of duty to family. Andrew has shown remorse for his role in Robert o'dubain's murder. In an interview, he said, quote words cannot convey the level of remorse I have. I fully empathize with the odubain family for their loss. I understand their pain because I grappled with the agony of my mother's murder each and every day unquote. He wrote a formal apology letter to Robert o'dubain's family. Robert's brother, Kevin Kuran, has said that he believes Andrew is sincere, and he views Catherine as the clear ringleader in his brother's murder. Andrew has said he still loves his sister because she's family, but he now knows what she's capable of. He sent her a note after they were both in prison, saying quote, I'm still your brother. I'll always be here for you unquote. In response, he received an envelope containing his note torn to pieces and a note from Catherine that read quote, I don't know who you are. I don't have a brother. Don't ever contact me again. Andrew has been a model prisoner. He's worked several different jobs in prison, including volunteering in the hospice unit to care for dying inmates. He's

46:10 worked as a cook, groundskeeper, recycling manager, and in the healthcare unit. He's also completed various rehabilitative programs and college level courses. He's applied for clemency several times, citing his remorse, his exemplary record in prison, his upbringing, and his belief at the time of the murder that Robert was beating his sister and that he was responsible for their mother's death. Andrew has had strong support from the Korean American community in his efforts to get released early. People in the community have assured the courts that Andrew will have a job and a place to live if he was paroled. Additionally, Robert's brother has chosen not to oppose these clemency requests, although other family members have written letters in opposition. Those requests were all denied, but in twenty nineteen a new law was passed called the Illinois Youthful Parole Law. The law guarantees that most people who commit crimes when they're under twenty one will be eligible for parole at some point. Most people convicted for youthful crimes can ask for hearings after ten years.

47:17 If they're denied, they can ask again at fifteen years and twenty years. The law is an acknowledgment that the brains of young people under twenty one are not yet fully developed, and they lack the decision making abilities of more mature adults. The law wasn't retroactive for people who committed crimes before it was passed, but it gave Andrew a stronger argument for his early release, and sure enough, Andrew was granted early release on January twenty sixth, twenty twenty four, just a couple months ago after serving just over thirty years in prison. He's now fifty years old. He said he wants to continue his college education and work with troubled youth in the community. He said, quote, I'll do well, I promise. Besides the obvious goal of sharing quality time with my loved ones, I have the goal of making a difference. Unquote.

48:09 Not everyone is happy about Andrew's early release. Robert Berlin, who prosecuted Andrew back in nineteen ninety five, said, quote the fact that Andrew was released after serving just over thirty years when he was required to serve forty for a cold, calculated, premeditated murder is, in my opinion, an affront to justice and the memory of Robert Odubain. I actually reached out to Andrew through his attorneys to see if he would be willing to be interviewed for our podcast, but he declined. I didn't know you did that. I thought I would spring it on you as a surprise that I had interviewed this guy, but it didn't work out. So a few things to talk about. First, do you think that Catherine killed her mother? And do you think that Robert was also involved or that he knew that she did it? I don't know. You research this case, not me. Let me ask you.

49:00 Yeah, do you think that Catherine killed her mother? I think she definitely killed her mother. Who else would have had a motive, right, And the fact that it was a crime of passion, that she was stabbed thirty seven times seven times. Yeah, that's you know, really, that's overkilled. Yeah, exactly. The question that maybe is more interesting to me is whether Robert knew about it or not. He was her alibi, so he must have known that he was lying for her to the police. But whether he did that innocently, whether he thought, yeah, you know, I'm just helping her out here, or whether he really believed she did or not. I don't know. Robert seemed like a good guy, right, Yes, everything I read seemed like he was a very good guy. And if he had known that Catherine killed her mom, I don't know if he would have stayed with her unless she had some sort of reason. She wasn't abused in her childhood, right I yeah, I don't know. She might have told Robert a story like that she did it because her mom was abusive.

49:58 I don't. I don't know, but it seems like he must have known deep in his heart of hearts. I think I remember reading There was a documentary made a few years ago called The House of suh, and they interviewed a lot. All the clips I played were from that documentary because they Andrew interviewed Andrew, and one that I didn't play. He talked about a time when Robert came to him really upset and said something about about Catherine and he knew each other's secrets or something like that that made it sound like he did know that she did it. Wow. Another thing I think is interesting to think about is what was Catherine's real motive for killing Robert. Was it just purely money why or was it because of the fact that she was trying to keep him from, you know, talking to the police after they broke up. And I don't think we'll ever know the answer to that, but yeah, it's interesting to think about both. Yeah, it could be she was. She seemed like very greedy, and I guess the fact she had a life insurance policy on Robert with her as the beneficiary, you know, maybe that was a big part of it. Did he know about the insurance policy? I don't know. Good question. Do you think that thirty years in prison was sufficient punishment for Andrew? When you mentioned the Illinois youthful Parole law, I thought that's a great law. I think that thirty years in this case probably was enough. I think so too. I have sympathy for

51:30 Andrew. It was horrible what he did, right he should He definitely knew right from wrong. He was old enough to know that that was not the right way to handle the situation. But yeah, I agree, like thirty years seems about right. Well, this case reminds me a little bit of the Charlie Tan case, which we covered a few weeks ago. And again, he was nineteen and I can't remember his sentence, but it's really long. Yeah, and it was similar where his mom. You know, remember that his mom was abused by the dad and then he killed his father, and yeah, your brain is not fully developed, you should obviously you shouldn't murder anyone. But yeah, I think he really believed that his sister was being abused, and he had a strong sense of family duty and obligation, and I think that was just built into who he was innately. So I think he felt like he had to do it. Well, we've talked about this before, but it's like, once you turn eighteen, it's not like your brain magically changes and you're thinking and you know you're you're still a kid, You're still not able to make great decisions. Feel free to disagree with us. This is just our take on right on that, and I truly believe that Andrew is not someone who is at risk of committing another crime like that. Again, I really do believe him when he says he wants to do good in the world and actually give back. So yeah, I feel like it sounds like he did a lot of great things in prison. Yeah, we need to. I hope that we can look at our prisons more.

53:01 Is a rehabilitative rather than punitive, for sure, and in a lot of situations, maybe not every situationally not the situation. There's a lot of horrible, horrible people that need to stay there forever. But I think it needs to be looked at on a case by case basis. Ye. My last question for you is whether you have any sympathy at all for Catherine given that her upbringing. You know, she was definitely abused at the hand of her father. She had a tough upbringing as well, But I don't know, do you do you feel any sympathy for her? No, because she evaded the law, she didn't want to take responsibility for anything. She did. She was trying to, you know, live the high life, and I don't think I feel any sympathy for her. Yeah, I think she's a pretty horrible person. Yeah, she sounds like she's pretty narcissistic. When you look at so many of these cases, you can break it down into like people's psychological traumas in their pasts, and you know, you can find reason that they committed these crimes that they have you know, a person disorders or psychological deficits or whatever it is. But yeah, at the end of the day, there's not really an excuse for what she did. No, how do you think Catherine is fairing in prison? Like how her brother did, you know, so many good things and he worked in the hospice and he you know, took college classes and he helped his inmates. Catherine's just I think she is just doing her time and not saying a word to anybody.

54:25 She just seems like, Yeah, she doesn't seem like she has any feels any obligation to try to help people or be nice. The fact that she went to the hearing with Robert's family and just refused to even look at them, didn't show any remorse at all. I think she's probably like in denial and probably still claims that she didn't do it when you said she wrapped up her brother's laughter, Like, why is she so angry at him? Yeah, I don't know. It seems really unfair, but typical narcissistic behavior. I guess, Yeah, what do you think that he will do that Andrew will do? Now that you know that's a good question. That's actually why I wanted to talk to him, because I really wanted to find out what his plans were. I mean, he's talked about that he wants to help people, but I don't really know exactly how he intends to help people or what he's going to do. And his family's gone, he's on his own. I hope he has friends, and it sounds like he has a lot of friends. You know, the Korean American community I think has been very supportive in him. I did read somewhere that he said he wants to finish college, because you know, he basically got through a couple or a year and a half of college and then that was it. But other than that, I don't know what his plans are. Rest in peace, Robert o'dubain and Elizabeth Saw What was the name of the documentary where you got the clips? It was called The House of Saw. And where did you find it? That's a good question. I know you had a hard time finding it. I was searching everywhere for it. I couldn't find even there was a Facebook page for the filmmakers who made the documentary that looked like it had

55:58 been dead. And I even posted like question on the Facebook page and like, where can I find this? I looked on Amazon, Netflix, everywhere, couldn't find it. I eventually if I found it on the Internet archive, which is a great resource. Okay, so it was there. I thought it was a date a Dateline episode because it was on MSNBC, but it turned out it was the documentary, which was actually very good. But good luck finding I was just going to say, like, I don't know how I have a hard time working that. Yeah, Internet, it's hard. It is a little bit confusing, and you have to watch it in one minute segments, like oh my god, you have to hit play watch for one minute, then hit play on the next one for one minute, and do that for a whole hour. And if any dateline people are listening, I'm sure, I'm sure. Keith is just listening to this. We would really like to be able to access all Dateline episodes, and we would pay for that in a monthly subscription. I think a lot of people would.

56:54 I think a lot of people would. I really wish that they would do that, because you and I talk about this all the time. We love Dateline. Yeah, if there's a Dateline, and especially if I mean I don't want to play favorites, but especially if it's a Keith episode and I can't access it for a case I'm working on. It just makes me so sad. And we don't steal their the way they present the case, but they have a great information in it, and it's yeah, it's good to see the people in the anyway. Anyway, I know no one's from Dayline is probably listening, but we wish that that was something that they had because we would love it totally. Why, I am off to make you some cookies. Oh goodie, we're going to record a Patreon episode tomorrow. I thought you were going on strike. Oh yeah, see, I know it's well anyway, every Patreon episode we make cookies. We make cookies to go along with the episode, and so I'm going to make you some special cookies for tomorrow. I'm looking forward to that. I say special cookies.

57:45 I think it makes it so there's drugs in the cookies, but it's just it's just filled with my love. Okay, I'll look forward to it. Well, thanks everybody for listening. We appreciate each and every one of you. If you haven't already, please rate, review and follow. Means a lot to us. You can find us on social media or send us an email to Lovemarykill at gmail dot com. If you'd like to send us a snack, you can mail it to po box one one one Dexter, Michigan for a one three zero And please consider supporting us on Patreon dot com slash Lovemrykill five dollars a month one tier early ad free access and a monthly bonus episode. And thanks for listening. Cosmo and Clover are little kiddies. Until next time, don't kill your husband, don't kill your wife. The bank, the