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- [00:01]
A
Every month, my wireless bill used to arrive and I'd stare at it like it was evidence from an active investigation. Random fees, vague charges, free perks that somehow were not so free. The whole thing felt deeply suspicious. Eventually, I did what any rational person would do. I stopped the madness and switched to Mint Mobile. Mint Mobile has premium wireless plans starting at just $15 a month with high speed data and unlimited talk and text on the nation's largest 5G network. No long term contracts, no nonsense. You can bring your own phone, keep your number and activate with ESIM in minutes. Turns out the real crime scene was my monthly phone bill. Turns out the real crime scene was my monthly phone bill. Ditch overpriced wireless and get three months of premium wireless service from Mint Mobile for 15 bucks a month. If you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop plans@mintmobile.com crime scene that's mintmobile.com Crimescene. Upfront payment of $45 for 3 month 5 gigabyte plan required, equivalent to $15 a month new customer offer for the first 3 months only. Then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Imagine surviving a murder plot, an attempt on your life, only to find out that the person who wanted you dead was practically a mirror image of you. In 1996, police responded to a frantic 911 call about a home invasion in Irvine, California. When they arrived, they discovered two young women, bound and terrified inside an apartment, a gun on the scene, and a story that made no sense for this quiet complex. Very quickly, it stopped looking like a random break in. It started looking like something more personal. Welcome to Crime Scene, the show where we tell you the stories behind the world's most unforgettable crimes. And today, we're going to bring you a story about one of the most twisted, complex and calculated plots of attempted murder that I have ever seen. From Sony Podcasts and the Bench, this is the story of the evil twin. Hey, y'.
- [02:25]
B
All.
- [02:25]
A
Welcome to the Crime Scene Office. My name is Jonathan Hirsch.
- [02:28]
B
And I'm Cooper Maul.
- [02:29]
A
And together each week, we're going to bring you the most remarkable cases and crimes throughout history. We're going to dive into every aspect of it, the criminal, the legal, all the different angles. But most importantly, we are going to tell you the story beat by beat, line by line. This show is a part of the Binge, which is Sony's true crime podcast network of limited run shows. You might hear Cooper on it from time to time, and myself. But think of this as like all the things that you love about true crime, limited series stories in one episode. So this case is remarkable for a lot of reasons. It is a sad story, a fascinating story because it kind of like gets into this area between what we think we know about someone and what we can't ever know. The two main people in this story are closer to each other than anybody could possibly be, but in another way, and in a quite dramatic and tragic way, they end up being as far apart as two people on earth can be from one another.
- [03:40]
B
All right, let's get into it.
- [03:41]
A
So before we get started though, I just wanted to say that this episode does contain mentions of suicide. So please watch and listen with care. Okay, so our story begins on November 6, 1996 at about 3:00 o' clock in the afternoon in the San Marco apartment homes in Irvine in Southern California. And inside the bottom floor apartment of this complex, a 24 year old nursing student named Sunny Han is telling off from a shower. And she lives with her roommate who's 19, her name's Helen. And she's downstairs like playing Nintendo, playing video games. These are like college girls. College girls. And the doorbell rings and a young man is at the door with a stack of magazines for sale. And I guess, you know, people did that back in 1996 still.
- [04:42]
B
Yeah. Soliciting, voted or soliciting.
- [04:44]
A
Yeah. And Helen cracks the door open and just tells the person that she's not interested. But before it can shut, the magazine salesman is joined by somebody else and they force their way into the house. In a matter of seconds, a.22 caliber Derringer is at Helen's temple.
- [05:08]
B
Jeez, this escalated really fast.
- [05:10]
A
And the two men force her to sit down, bind her hands with plastic twine and they, you know, put duct tape over her mouth. Her roommate Sunny is upstairs, right? She's taking a shower and she hears people talking downstairs like, please don't hurt me. Like, you know, she grabs her cell phone at that point and dials 91 1.
- [05:30]
B
Yeah, I mean, she has no way out if she's upstairs, there's no exit for her. So she's like trapped up there.
- [05:35]
A
Yeah. So all she knows to do is to call 911 and when she calls, she sort of says there's like a burglary in progress, like maybe my roommate is being sexually assaulted or attacked. So she stays on the line and one of the men who's downstairs storms into the bathroom where she is and sees the phone and says, did you call the police? And Sunny lies. She says, no, no, I didn't call anybody. He throws her onto the bedroom floor next to the bathroom, binds her wrists and ankles and starts to wrap up her head. They. They leave her in the room, but she quickly finds a way to untie herself from the bind that they put her in.
- [06:12]
B
Dang tough chick.
- [06:13]
A
Yeah, I mean, I. I don't know what I would do in a situation like that, Helen. She did. She got out of the binds and she made a run for the door, but one of the attackers stops her and catches her, reties her, and drags both of the women into the bathroom, into the bathtub, and sort of like dumps them in there. This looking really bad.
- [06:34]
B
Yeah.
- [06:35]
A
90 seconds later, the Irvine PD show up because thankfully she had called 911 and alerted the police and they had heard some of this commotion on the phone. One of the attackers then exits and runs towards a blue Mustang that's in the carport. So officer Gregory McFarland arrives on the scene, and he's one of the. The police officers who shows up after the 911 call. And he sees the blue Mustang. So he walks over to it because it's there, and there's a woman behind the wheel. She rolls down.
- [07:09]
B
Female getaway driver.
- [07:11]
A
Yeah, potentially. Right. So he asks her what her name is, and she says, my name is Sunny Han.
- [07:18]
B
But wait, that's the girl inside the house?
- [07:21]
A
Yeah. I mean, she claims to be the person who's inside of the house.
- [07:26]
B
The cops, like, probably, like, what.
- [07:28]
A
What is going on?
- [07:29]
B
Yeah.
- [07:29]
A
And. And they're still one of the attackers that's inside of the house. So he's like, trying to get out, and he, you know, he unties Sunny and her roommate and just like, sort of says, like, no, this was a joke. Like, please don't make a big deal out of this. Like, oopsie. So this whole whatever plot was going on is starting to unravel really quickly. And there's somebody outside who's claiming to be the girl inside. Like, things are getting messy, you know. So the attacker peeks through the front door and he sees all this commotion outside, and he sort of says, like, shoot me now because I'm going to run.
- [08:02]
B
Dramatic.
- [08:03]
A
Yeah. Before anything else happens, the attacker who's inside of the house takes his gun and he, like, throws it underneath, you know, like the laundry hamper. And the detectives enter the apartment. They tackle him as he was, like, making his way towards the back door to try to escape. So the second they catch him, he immediately sort of confesses to what's going on. That he had been hired to murder people in that house by the woman who's in the Mustang. And that. That woman is not Sunny Han. Her name's Gina, and she's Sunny's identical twin sister.
- [08:42]
B
Shit. Okay. All right. Well, I mean.
- [08:47]
A
And that's the beginning of the story.
- [08:50]
B
I'm no stranger to sibling conflict. You know, I have a brother I'm really close with myself. But, like, this is beyond the pale.
- [08:58]
A
What compels a brother or a sister to take the life of.
- [09:04]
B
Yeah.
- [09:04]
A
And to hire somebody else to do it.
- [09:06]
B
So. So what's. What's the deal between these girls?
- [09:09]
A
Yeah, it goes really deep. So we're going to start all the way at the beginning. Jean and Sunny Han were both born on the same day, same time, 1974, in South Korea. They were identical twins. Their mother, Boojin Kim, relocates with her tw children from South Korea to Southern California. And in the United States, Kim floated sort of from job to job, boyfriend to boyfriend, struggling with, like, some pretty severe gambling addiction. She worked as a bar hostess and spent her nights at casinos. So she had had a pretty rough time and was raising these kids under those circumstances. The kids were actually in and out of group homes as. As young people, in part due to their mom sort of, like, kind of not being there for long stretches of time. It was not at all, like, a stable place for them to live.
- [10:03]
B
Yeah. And, I mean, if they're in group homes, I'm imagining, like, sometimes they're not always together. I know, like, for twins being separated or any young kids. Right. Being siblings, being separated is just, like, really messes with your sense of stability.
- [10:17]
A
Right. They all sort of reunited after the sort of group home situations when they were in high school. And it was pretty clear throughout that Sonny, who was the one who was assaulted in the apartment that day, was the favorite.
- [10:39]
B
Okay, so Sunny's being favorited almost, like, immediately after being reunited as a family with her mom and her sister. That's gonna probably feel really tough on Gina because they've been separated from their mom this whole time, and now they're all back together, probably really wanting to just feel like this family love.
- [11:00]
A
Right. And now they have this other dynamic to contend with. That's sad. So the twins eventually are sent to live with their aunt and uncle about 40 miles east of San Diego in a town called Campo. They go to a high school out there, the Mountain Empire High School. Teachers, like, couldn't tell them apart from each other. I think they were competitive when it came to academics and other Activities, all these competitive tensions really started to spill over. They were, you know, they would fight with each other both in, you know, yelling, but also physically. And then to add sort of insult to injury, slash commemorate their own complex relationship, they were both in their high school named co valedictorians.
- [11:56]
B
Yeah. I think that is a title I think nobody wants to share. Right.
- [12:01]
A
Yeah.
- [12:01]
B
But it is clear that they're super smart girls. I mean, and they valedictorian, and they've seemingly defied a lot of odds.
- [12:10]
A
Right. So you want to root for them at this point, you're sort of like, okay, well, they have some problems, but maybe they're, they're. They're pulling themselves up into adulthood.
- [12:18]
B
Yeah. And if, I mean, they're co valedictorians, I'm assuming their road ahead is probably paved with some opportunities. Yes.
- [12:26]
A
Yeah. So Sunny gets a full scholarship to the University of La Verne. She, you know, arrived at school. She, like, definitely seemed like somebody was trying to keep up appearances. She, she got. She leased a BMW when she got into her freshman year. She dressed in high end designer clothing. She had a boyfriend, she had a lot of friends. She was definitely, like, putting it on the Ritz. Yeah, exactly. And. But when the sort of backstory of all this continues to be for these two, that beneath the surface, there was a lot going on there.
- [13:02]
B
Yeah. Where's she getting the money to pay for all this stuff? It's like Colle.
- [13:06]
A
Yeah, exactly. I mean, and that's where, like, rumors started to swirl about her that she was actually working as an exotic dancer in Pomona. And, you know, as she starts to go through her early college quarters, her grades start to slip. She lost her scholarship, which she blamed on the breakup with the boyfriend that she was with at the time. But eventually she drops out of College. So in 1993, she's out of college. She's like, sort of just trying to make her way, and she ends up getting caught stealing a friend's credit card.
- [13:43]
B
Okay.
- [13:45]
A
And going on like a big shopping spree with it. So she spent $1300 on her friend's credit card and she was fined. She went on probation. So sort of, you know, early years of having something of a criminal record, too. She's questioned by the authorities about why she did it, and she sort of suggested that she thought her friend wouldn't miss it, which I thought was like, such an interesting point about this young woman, because clearly appearances and money is something that's very important to her, something that she hasn't had a lot of growing up and then to commit a crime like that and to sort of see money as something that's kind of, like, expendable for the people around her. It's just something about her frame of
- [14:29]
B
mind, you know, and it's like if she's saying that she wouldn't think her friend would notice this money is gone.
- [14:36]
A
Yeah.
- [14:37]
B
I mean, $1300. There are a few people who are going to not notice that that's gone.
- [14:42]
A
Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about Gene for a second here. She.
- [14:44]
B
The parallel tracks.
- [14:45]
A
Yes, exactly. On the other side of the tracks, we have Jean, the. The identical twin who chose not to go to college. She ended up joining the military. She enlisted in the air Force.
- [14:55]
B
Wow.
- [14:55]
A
And, yeah, went to Lackland Air Force Base in Texas for basic training. But when she got there, she lied about her enlistment paperwork.
- [15:06]
B
What'd she lie about?
- [15:07]
A
She had some kind of a juvenile legal record. Those records are sealed, so we don't know exactly what they were. But, you know, it. It was a minor offense, but enough for her to be worried that she wouldn't be able to actually join the military if they were. They were to find that. But of course they do. The Air Force lets her go without consequence because it is a federal offense to lie about something like that. But she, of course, is not permitted to stay in the military after they uncover her lie. So she leaves and she takes a job as a blackjack dealer at a resort and casino in Lakeside, California.
- [15:52]
B
Sonny and Gina are no longer doing the thing they plan to do. And what I find is really interesting is it's so clear that they're both desiring this other type of status.
- [16:02]
A
Right.
- [16:03]
B
And they're willing to lie and cheat to get there.
- [16:06]
A
Right.
- [16:07]
B
And then they've also both kind of taken up these. What maybe some people would understand as, like, seedy jobs to make ends meet. And these two girls aren't, like, sounding too different to me.
- [16:21]
A
Right. Yeah. And they also seem like they're just living this kind of precarious existence where they're trying to kind of make it work.
- [16:30]
B
Yeah. It's like a day by day element to it, rather than, like, playing the
- [16:33]
A
tape out on a very fateful night after, you know, she had been kicked out of the military, was working at this resort, she's working there at this casino, and she. She places a bet on her break and her lunch break or whatever, and she lost all of her tip earnings on that bet. So she goes in and continues to gamble.
- [17:04]
B
This is exactly why I've Never gambled. Like, this is. I just know this would be my mentality.
- [17:08]
A
You would just be right. Like, I gotta get it.
- [17:10]
B
I gotta. I gotta get it. If I'm up, I'm up. And like, just. Let's keep going. It's just like, I have a major role that I'm, like, not allowed to do this.
- [17:17]
A
Yeah. Well, good. Yeah, we want to keep you here in the office, you know, but it
- [17:23]
B
is interesting to me because, you know, she's kind of almost replay. Like, her mom struggled with family. No, no. And I mean, you see this a lot in just families with addiction where, you know, there's a. There is a hereditary element to this kind of obsessive compulsive behavior. Right.
- [17:41]
A
Or even just a learned element of, like, you see, this is how your parent copes with this kind of a stress. And then you repeat it, or you're exposed to it too young, and then it becomes, like, sort of normalized.
- [17:52]
B
So she spent all of her savings. She's. She's broke.
- [17:55]
A
Yeah. So she's in a bad way. And.
- [17:57]
C
Yeah.
- [17:58]
A
Back to this sort of, like, interrelated thing between these two sisters and their mom and their history. She starts writing bad checks, and she writes the checks on behalf of, you know, her family and friends and also is, like, stealing credit cards all the way up to. By 1996, there's $40,000 in fraudulent checks and stolen credit cards that had been listed to her. And this is where things, unfortunately, I think, start to really reach a breaking point for Jean. She does attempt to take her life at this point with sleeping pills and booze. She, of course, wasn't successful in doing that, but she's really kind of reached a rough point here.
- [18:43]
B
You know, I think it really does speak to this as somebody who is flailing, someone who is struggling to get by, kind of like living in this rat race on the hamster wheel. And I think we can all identify with, like, how oppressive that can feel. A lot of people attempt suicide because of debt or money woes, et cetera. I mean, it's. It's awful, right?
- [19:02]
A
Yeah. And she's trying to figure it out. And there's definitely people in her life that are trying to help her. Her uncle had, the one who had taken in the twins when they were in high school. He at one point realizes that she had stolen money from him, too. And he contacts the police. They arrest her. She spends 10 days in jail. She gets three years of probation, and she's ordered to sort of pay restitution. But I Think probably members of the family are also trying to place some boundaries around this behavior because it's getting out of hand. While what these two have done to each other and to others is criminal and reprehensible, they obviously are being propelled by some much more troubling emotional and psychological forces. So after her release from the probation, she really doesn't have anywhere to go. The families, like a lot of members of her family are.
- [19:52]
B
Bridges have been burned.
- [19:54]
A
Yeah. So Sunny agrees to let her move into her apartment. She lives in, like, northern Orange County, Southern California.
- [20:02]
B
I would. I would do the same thing for my brother, for sure.
- [20:04]
A
Yeah, exactly. It's your sibling. And I mean, obviously they had some. Some difficult moments together, but nothing too egregious yet. So the reunion is unfortunately sort of short lived. They're arguing all the time. Sonny would kick Jean out repeatedly for all different kinds of things that they were disagreeing on. And then In May of 1996, the police called to Sunny's apartment in Placentia after there was like a violent interaction between the two of them. And to Jean's shock, the police arrested Sunny instead of her because she had an outstanding warrant for this credit card theft stuff that she was doing, too. You found out that there was a warrant after your arrest.
- [20:54]
C
Right. And I didn't believe it.
- [20:56]
A
So you went down to the police station to check it out.
- [20:58]
C
Yes, I was angry and I go. And they say, yes, you do. So we do have to arrest you here. So I was in shock. So I was arrested.
- [21:07]
B
Oh, my God. I mean. Yeah. I mean. Yeah. And that's the thing is, like, I think people like warrants and stuff like that. It's like you can't just like wish that away or forget about it. Like, that kind of stuff's always going to come back. And I feel like people who have those, they're not out here. Like, there's an awareness of them and they're being very careful not to draw attention to themselves.
- [21:27]
A
Right. Even though probably the best thing they could have done is to actually just address the issue head on.
- [21:32]
B
Yeah.
- [21:32]
A
And you can sort of see, I mean, this sort of thing, two pieces of this story that are so unique. One of them being the fact that these twins are identical and everything that happens between them. But then also this other piece of just. You see two people in parallel on the forward momentum of bad decision making.
- [21:52]
B
Yeah. The avalanche and snowball of this.
- [21:55]
A
And they don't seem to be able to find a way out.
- [21:58]
B
Yeah.
- [21:58]
A
While Sunny is in jail, Jean steals Sunny's wallet, her credit cards, the keys to her Beamer.
- [22:06]
B
I mean, these two really are birds of a feather. It's almost as if, like, they're resisting.
- [22:11]
A
Yeah, Birds of a feather with the same color feathers, right?
- [22:14]
B
Yeah. Like, they're almost, like, resisting seeing each other and themselves. Almost as if, like, they teamed up. They'd be amazing. Like cons together.
- [22:23]
A
Yeah. They should have done this together. Why can't they just. Why can't you two just get along?
- [22:27]
B
Yeah.
- [22:30]
A
Oh. So. So anyway, Gene withdraws cash from Sunny's bank account, uses her telephone card, drives the BMW to her ex boyfriend's house in San Diego. And she also stole checks from the boyfriend, who then in turn calls the police. She's on some kind of.
- [22:50]
B
She's like on a spiral. Yeah.
- [22:52]
A
And then Sandy gets released, and so once she's released, she presses charges on Gene for fraud.
- [23:00]
B
So much for the twin loyalty.
- [23:01]
A
Yeah. This did not. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure she had a moment to stew too, you know, so.
- [23:06]
B
Yeah. In jail.
- [23:07]
A
Yeah. And so Jean is sentenced to jail and a work furlough.
- [23:13]
B
They were like ships in the night, right? Yeah.
- [23:15]
A
Just one after the other. It's like becoming the sort of dramatic way in which the siblings are fighting with each other. So. Yeah. So Jean is sentenced to jail and a work furlough. So she has to work. Worked, like five hours a day to leave the facility.
- [23:31]
B
Yeah, yeah. Typically on furlough, you get to, like, go somewhere during the day, right?
- [23:35]
A
Yeah. So during that five hour work furlough, Jean calls a friend, hitches a ride, and flees to an apartment in El Cajon, also in Southern California.
- [23:47]
B
These girls are brazen. I will give them that.
- [23:50]
A
It's. I. They just don't give up. You're absolutely right. So, yeah, she. She goes to this halfway house there that's run by these two local women, Nikki and Rit. And you'll see why. So she, on her second day as a fugitive, she calls Sunny under the pretext of, like, I need to get my things. And Sunny was, like, pissed. She says, you know, like, how did you find my number? I threw out all your stuff, and I don't care about you anymore. Don't ever call me again.
- [24:18]
B
I mean, yeah, the. Don't ever call me again. I think whether or not this was like, heat of the moment or how much they had between them, I'm sure hearing that from the only person you really have this closeness with, their connection to probably hit like a detonator.
- [24:38]
A
So now Jean hatches a new plan. In this new moment, which is to kill her identical twin. Coming up, how a broken bond turns into a deadly plan.
- [25:01]
B
Girl, Winter is so last season. And now spring's got you looking at pictures of tank tops with hungry eyes. Your algorithm is feeding you cutoffs. You're thirsty for the sun on your shoulders that perfect hang on the patio sundress, those sandals you can wear all day and all night. And you've had enough of shopping from your kitchen couch. Done. Hoping it looks anything like the picture when you tear open that envelope. It's time for a little in person spring treat. It's time for a trip to Ross. Work your magic. This episode is brought to you by
- [25:34]
A
Prime Obsession is in session.
- [25:36]
B
And this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories. And the book to screen favorites you've
- [25:45]
C
already read twice, often Campus L every year. After the Love Hypothesis, Sterling Point and
- [25:52]
B
more slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting.
- [25:59]
A
Watch only on Prime.
- [26:03]
B
Everybody following along. Up until now, we've dropped you right into the chaos of that day in Irvine with the home invasion, you know, Gina Han outside pretending to be sunny.
- [26:16]
A
Right.
- [26:16]
B
But none of that really made sense until we got into, like, how bad things got between these two girls. You know, these are identical twins who went from sharing a childhood, a high school, you know, and then even a roof as adults to stealing from each other, getting each other arrested, and finally saying, you know, I want nothing to do with you anymore. So for most of us, like, a nasty sibling fight doesn't end with somebody plotting murder. So, like, how the hell did we get here?
- [26:49]
A
So Jean tells Archie and his buddy Yoshi that she needed to retrieve her belongings from her sister's apartment in Irvine. She feels threatened by the potential that there's, like, gangsters that might be present there. So there's this whole aura that I think she's, like, building up around her
- [27:09]
B
sister, creating a whole universe around this that, from what I understand, doesn't even exist.
- [27:15]
A
Yeah, that she's in danger, that there might be people there that they need to come with guns just to get her things from the apartment. Even though, as far as we know, her sister got rid of her things and said, like, I don't want to see you anymore. But the boys agree to do it for the whopping price of $100.
- [27:37]
B
So they both take home 50 is like the, you know, cheapest criminals ever.
- [27:42]
A
Yeah, I mean, like, how she roped so many people in to this will continue to baffle Me, Yeah.
- [27:49]
B
She's like created so many witnesses, Right.
- [27:52]
A
You'd think like a murder plot was like a secret thing, but it's like become a community.
- [27:57]
B
Yeah.
- [27:57]
A
Thing for her. She's like crowdsourced it. So on the day of the crime, November 6, 1996, they begin to prepare. So Gene drives the two boys in a rented blue Ford Mustang, which we heard about before from El Cajon, where they're staying, to Irvine, where her sister is. They're at the Ralph's grocery store. They purchase duct tape, plastic twine gloves, and one potato that they were going to use as like an improvised silencer.
- [28:32]
B
That is a first for me.
- [28:34]
A
Also imagining the checkout guy being like.
- [28:36]
B
Yeah, well, I. Yeah, I think about. I was just thinking about that too. Is like as a shopper there, I see people putting this together. Maybe it's just because I've like watch. Listened to way too much to crime, but I feel like I would know what was going on there.
- [28:47]
A
Yeah, yeah. But that looks like something that I've
- [28:50]
B
seen before, but potato. As a silencer.
- [28:53]
A
Yeah.
- [28:53]
B
It's interesting that, that, that might throw me off.
- [28:56]
A
And so they go to this, this marsh reserve, the San Joaquin marsh, and they sort of put all of their. Their plan in action is sort of like a private place where they could kind of like test fire their potato silencer. The trio all get together and they go to the apartment where her sister is. It's about a half a mile from the Irvine police department, so centrally located.
- [29:20]
B
That makes sense because when at the top of this call, you're like, the police got there in seconds. Yeah, in seconds.
- [29:24]
A
Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. It's just down the street.
- [29:27]
B
Okay.
- [29:27]
A
Yeah, yeah. So she gets to the apartment. It's on the bottom floor in this complex. She lived there with her roommates. There was the one, but there was also two other roommates that lived with her in this house. And they waited for other roommates to exit and then they went to the leasing office. So this is at about three o'clock in the afternoon. Jean tells the boys to go in there and pretend to be a magazine salesman. They knock on the door. Helen, her roommate, answers. She's like in the middle of playing
- [30:02]
C
Nintendo, I saw African American male standing there holding magazines.
- [30:09]
B
Very mid-90s afternoon.
- [30:12]
A
Right, exactly. Just. Just a. Just an afternoon of video games at the apartment complex. So Archie comes back to the Mustang. He's like. It seems like she's home alone. And then Gene asks like, does she look like me? And Archie wasn't sure. So he goes back and checks these poor kids. I know. For 50 bucks.
- [30:36]
B
I know.
- [30:37]
A
So no one comes to the door the second time he goes. And they're like. The boys are complaining. They're like, we're hungry. And so Jean's like, fine, I'll take you to go get a burger. And then they come back after that, and before they make the second attempt, she says, you know, have you ever killed anybody before?
- [31:03]
B
They're teenagers. Like, I would. I would. I'm assuming the answer is no.
- [31:09]
A
Like, as far as I know, yeah. I mean, pretty doubtful that they would have done that before. But she's sort of like, that's her entry point into asking them if they would be willing to.
- [31:20]
B
Yeah. I mean, the way she jumps from like, hey, help me get my stuff, to like, what if you kill her? Is really a. Is really abrupt here.
- [31:29]
A
Right.
- [31:29]
B
This whole thing is really weird.
- [31:31]
A
And what was the incentive? Right. At this point, Archie realizes that there's, like, something that's not right about this. So he pulls the.22 caliber pistol that was in the glove box out of the glove compartment.
- [31:44]
B
And I'm sure she's thinking, this is him, like, you know, saying he's down to do this.
- [31:49]
A
Like, now we're gonna do this. But he's like, sort of like, no, I don't want to do this. I got my money. You go get your things. We're not going to hurt anybody.
- [31:59]
B
Famous last words.
- [32:00]
A
They're going to go try this again. Yeah. And this time they go back to the grocery store and pick up some more magazines. They pick up, you know, Cosmo and Vogue because they figured, like, maybe the girls would answer the door.
- [32:14]
B
Oh, they're so innocent.
- [32:16]
A
It's like they go back to the house. At about 3:20, they knock on the door. Helen, the roommate, opens the door. They offer these new magazines, which she also declines. And that's the point at which the two of them force their way into the house and, you know, pull out the gun and, you know, and what
- [32:39]
B
follows is this, you know, incredibly chaotic home invasion.
- [32:44]
A
Yeah.
- [32:45]
B
But the cops also, like, show up in record time.
- [32:48]
A
Yeah. They're there and they're starting to question the whole scene. And there's these two sisters who, claiming to be the other her, her behavior is what starts to immediately come into question, Right. So, like, instead of fleeing the scene, she gets out of the Mustang and she, like, walks towards the crime scene and sort of like, follows the officer around the building as though she hadn't been a part of it. They do catch the one boy, right, like who's trying to escape and arrest him.
- [33:13]
B
Archie. Yeah.
- [33:14]
A
Archie. Yeah. And then the other one, Yoshi, is not arrested at the time. He stays with Jean and the two of them leave the crime scene together without being arrested and start making their way towards the Mexican border.
- [33:28]
B
Yeah, the de facto fugitive destination coming
- [33:31]
A
up from a botched burglary story to a full blown murder conspiracy. Why Jean Han insists she's not the villain in this tale.
- [33:44]
B
Eczema is unpredictable, but you can flare less with Ebglis, a once monthly treatment for moderate for severe eczema. After an initial four month or longer dosing phase, about 4 in 10 people taking EPGLIS achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing.
- [34:03]
A
MGLIS Lebricizumab LBKZ a 250mg per 2ml injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema, also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. EBGLIS can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to Ebglis. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with Ebglis before starting Ebglis. Tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection.
- [34:37]
B
Ask your doctor about eglis and visit ebglis.lilly.com or call 1-800-lilyrx or 1-800-545-5979.
- [34:46]
A
Real value shows up in reliability.
- [34:48]
B
You don't have to second guess. Like a set of Firestone all season
- [34:52]
A
tires, they're designed to deliver confidence inspiring wet weather traction and a quieter ride. No matter the road.
- [34:59]
B
Season after season. Firestone all season tires for durability you can count on, just like people count on you. Firestone always dependable since 1900. So up until this point, we've watched Gina and Sunny's relationship go from complicated to outright toxic. Right, but that's something the cops don't know about yet. Yeah, so when they show up to this home invasion, it to them like could have been anybody.
- [35:32]
A
Right? And the sister's There, but, like, yeah,
- [35:35]
B
might be at your house, but she's taken off now. So how do they, like, start putting the pieces together to figure to connect her to this scene?
- [35:42]
A
Yeah, so now the investigation starts. Right. So a police officer at the scene realized that there was something that wasn't quite right. Like the. A person that matched the victim's description was sitting in this blue Mustang, and.
- [35:57]
B
Yeah. Match the description.
- [35:58]
A
Connection. Looks exactly like her.
- [36:00]
B
Maybe.
- [36:01]
A
The El Cajon Police Department notified Irvine counterparts that a confidential informant had overheard a recently escaped Korean American woman detail to another inmate how she wanted to kill her sister. So Archie, the boy who was arrested under interrogation, also confirms that, you know, Gina had broached the subject of murdering her sister.
- [36:28]
B
I mean, she made it incredibly public, almost as if she, like, mentioned it to anyone she talked to.
- [36:33]
A
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It wasn't. Didn't take them long to sort of put this together. And so, like, meanwhile, they're on the run, and Jean is still using her sister's information to sort of take money and, like, try to, you know, do whatever her next.
- [36:55]
B
Yeah, so she's using her sister's money to now, like, fund her life on the lam, right?
- [37:01]
A
Yeah, she uses her sister's driver's license, which she had acquired and withdrew $5,000 from her bank in Laguna beach on her way to the border. So several hours later, also using Sunny's id, she completes a credit card application at a Nissan dealership to buy a new car. So this. This really to the border was a little bit circuitous there for her. Probably not in her. The. The paperwork couldn't obviously be completed that night. So they go to a rental car agency in San Diego near the airport to return the Mustang. And the police department officials were waiting there when they arrived, so they caught them before they could make it. Okay, so they searched the car the next day, and they find $4,000 in cash. They find Sunny's IDs, they find receipts for all of the materials that they bought for this robbery murder plot.
- [38:08]
B
They've given them just a trove of evidence at this point.
- [38:12]
A
Yeah, and they also find, like, the casings from the.22 rifle, you know, when they had test drove their potato silencer. So the two were taken into custody at that time, and they searched the apartment the next day. They find the gun that had been, like, thrown under the laundry hamper. The safety was unengaged, so obviously they had come in preparing to shoot if they needed to. They find the magazines that have their fingerprints on it. They find, you know, the remnants of the duct tape, the twine that they had used to tie them up.
- [38:47]
B
So messy.
- [38:48]
A
A few days later, Jean is charged with criminal conspiracy, burglary, and false imprisonment. She has a $250,000 bail. A couple of weeks later, they upgraded that conspiracy to conspiracy to commit murder. So acknowledging now that they knew that she had attempted to take the life of her sister and probably going off
- [39:13]
B
the words of the accomplices, right.
- [39:16]
A
Pulling all of these stories together and going, okay, this was much worse than we thought. The deputy public defender, who was representing Gene at the time, sort of blasted the media at the, she's not an evil person. And the case is a lot more complex than that. And I think we're all gonna find out about that as we proceed. But if she's convicted, obviously the stakes are incredibly high here. She could face 25 years to life in prison. All right, so fast forward about a year to the trial. It's a four week trial. It's aired daily on Court tv. This definitely captured the public's attention at the time. There was international media attention, too. There must have been 50 Korean newspapers and magazines and other types of media present. So the prosecutor painted Gene as this, like, cool, calm manipulator that was driven by the oldest motives in the book, right, like hatred and greed. And then presented testimony from all of the accomplices that were in her motley crew
- [40:26]
B
cadre to choose from there.
- [40:28]
A
Yeah, it's an unfortunate combination there, but thankfully, they got out of it. So they said they, you know, they all could testify to the fact that Jane had openly asked multiple people in the days leading to the attack to help her kill her sister. So all of the defense attorneys involved in this case argued that there was no plot for murder. They're sort of saying that's not what was going on here. She is not guilty of what they're accusing her of. She did not intend to kill her sister, did not set up any scheme to kill her sister. There was no agreement to kill anyone on that date. There was no agreement, specific agreement to do really anything other than to find a way to get into the house so Gina Hahn could get her personal belongings back. They contended that this trio had went to the apartment only to retrieve Gene's belongings. That the loaded gun, the duct tape, the twine, that was protection against these, quote, Asian gang members who might be inside the apartment. This is what Gene was sort of like, building up for them. Gene did not testify in the trial. Probably good.
- [41:34]
B
Yeah, I was gonna say press probably for the best.
- [41:36]
A
Yeah. If she didn't. If she was trying to get off, I should say so. The defense argues that the criminal conspiracy charge didn't really have enough evidence to suggest that there was a murder plot associated with this, that it was all
- [41:51]
B
sort of anecdotal, yet they have multiple
- [41:54]
A
witnesses and all the materials necessary to commit the murder.
- [41:57]
B
Yeah, I don't see this defense sticking.
- [41:59]
A
Yeah, it doesn't feel like it's very compelling. So Sonny appears in court as a witness for the prosecution, but strangely, this is where the story takes this other turn.
- [42:12]
C
I don't believe that she tried to kill me. That's just totally nonsense. There's no. I don't see. There's no motive.
- [42:19]
A
How do you feel about your sister currently?
- [42:24]
C
I want to do everything I can to help her.
- [42:27]
B
I mean, that makes me think. I mean, we do know our families for the. A lot of us. At least I'll speak myself, like, better than most anyone. And maybe Sunny knew something about Gina that just, like, when she gets really
- [42:40]
A
worked up, this is what she says, this is what she does.
- [42:45]
B
And she might have seen as this impulsive, real spur of the moment reaction. But, I mean, I don't know how privy Sunny was to all the premeditation that went into this either.
- [43:01]
A
Right. Yeah. And it's obviously like, tearing both of them up to the extent that, you know, they can be wrapped up in this murderer trial and still have this
- [43:12]
B
care for one another. And it's. It's so interesting.
- [43:15]
A
Even sort of feel like that wasn't the point. But then, you know, here they are on this big stage, so, you know, Sunny has to testify, and then there's the cross examination, and on a day that she was supposed to resume testifying, attempts to take her own life with pills and beer.
- [43:31]
B
The trials obviously postponed or delayed a little bit for this, right? Yes.
- [43:35]
A
Yes, of course. Yeah. She's hospitalized. Yeah.
- [43:38]
B
And, you know, I've been thinking about a lot how, like, mental health narratives often get folded into a lot of these trials. I mean, how does this recent suicide attempt play into what happens next year?
- [43:51]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think these. Sometimes to an exploitative degree, you know, and it's hard to sort of hear about that. You know, in this case, for example, the defense attorneys accused Sonny after she had already, like, taken this attempt on her life of attempting to overdose to sort of drum up publicity.
- [44:11]
B
This is. This is an attempted murder trial, like.
- [44:15]
A
Right.
- [44:15]
B
That feels like a really cynical take.
- [44:18]
A
You're trying to make as much money off of this case as you possibly can, aren't you? I mean, that's why you have an agent, right?
- [44:27]
C
Well, if I were to make money. Yes, I would like to make money on this.
- [44:32]
A
Super dark. And this whole thing's on blast. Right. So it's on television. I think there's just, like, this awareness that, like, the case itself is getting a lot of eyes. And there were. To the point you were making earlier, there were people who were interested in this story as, like, something for film and television. At one point, you know, she acknowledges that, you know, like, producers had come to her or executives had come to her offering hundreds of thousands of dollars for her, you know, the rights to tell her story.
- [45:02]
B
Yeah. I mean, it's also, like, her life and her right to decide that if she wants to.
- [45:06]
A
Yeah. And all of this was just becoming too much for her. So later, you know, Sunny does return to the stand, and she says that it doesn't have to do with any of that stuff, that, you know, she was depressed. She had just gone through a breakup, and she was, like, arguing with her mom. She was just so overwhelmed by everything that was happening.
- [45:24]
B
Yeah. How could she not be? And it feels like there's, like, no version of this where she's allowed to just take care of herself.
- [45:32]
A
Yeah. And there's a ruthlessness to these cases. Right. So the defense is now being like, okay, well, you have to prove that. So they're asking for her medical records. The judge denied the defense access to her medical records, but there was, like, sort of a legal battle now over those medical records, which they felt were relevant. They appealed the judge's decision, but they also just refused to consider the matter in the circuit courts.
- [45:56]
B
This is already, like, messy enough to begin with.
- [45:59]
A
Yeah. So they continue on with the trial, and in the closing statements, you know, they emphasize the. The prosecution does that. You know, there's physical evidence here of a lot of. To commit a crime. A whole bunch of it. Not just anecdotal, but, like, a gun attempt to use the gun with a silencer. Right.
- [46:18]
B
Like, potato silencer.
- [46:19]
A
Potato, no less. What happened to the potato? Yeah, that's a mystery for another episode. But there's Pine Sol. Right. Like, there's all stuff that they had prepared to sort of, like, both commit the act and then clean up after themselves. The jury deliberated for 10 hours over the course of three days. So, you know, not. This wasn't an open and shut case, but it certainly wasn't the longest one.
- [46:45]
C
People of the State of California, plaintiff versus Jean Young Han, defendant, case number 96 HF1017 verdict. We the jury, in the above entitled
- [46:59]
A
action, finds the defendant Jean Young Han guilty of the crime of conspiracy to
- [47:06]
C
commit murder as charged in count one
- [47:08]
A
of the information Gene gets. Conspiracy to commit murder, first degree burglary, second degree false imprisonment, among other things. And the two boys as well are convicted of the conspiracy to commit murder and first degree burglary. So Jean broke down in tears as the verdict is read and found herself staring down a potential life sentence. They motioned for a new trial. That motion was denied. And then after the conviction, during the sentencing, Jean did come forward and she said, I am deeply sorry for everything that has happened. I had absolutely no intent to kill my twin sister. Sunny is my flesh and blood. She apologized to the Korean American community, and she told Sunny, I just want my sister to know that I love her very much. Yeah, I mean, how do you take that?
- [48:08]
B
Yeah. It's hard for me to reconcile that statement given, like, everything I know about the planning. But I also understand, like, this is a contradiction that shows up in a lot of family violence. Right?
- [48:20]
A
Like, and now the family's like, all wrapped into this, right? Like, so the mother is showing up at the sentencing. She's begging for leniency. She's saying that the twins are closer to each other than they are to their mother. You'd like her to have no time at all in jail or a little time? I want to be forget. What do you consider a fair sentence?
- [48:44]
C
5 years, 10 years? I can guess a lot.
- [48:48]
A
I can't tell you. What can I say at this point? You know, there's petitions that are going around to people both in Orange County, Louisiana county, and in South Korea that are presented to the judge begging for leniency in this case. And the judge did not provide that.
- [49:09]
C
It is obvious that Ms. Han is
- [49:11]
A
a danger to society, particularly to her own family.
- [49:15]
B
She has repeatedly committed crimes against her family.
- [49:19]
A
Jean gets 26 to life maximum. Archie gets 18 years, and Yoshi gets supervised release. After a 90 day assessment period, he did face a larger term, which he didn't ultimately end up serving. And then three days after the verdict, while waiting to be transferred to a state prison, Gene started hiding stashes of Tylenol pills that she had collected from the jail commissary. And then she took them all at once, and she was rushed to the hospital in Anaheim where they had to pump her stomach. She did survive. It's. It's just clear that this whole mess is tearing these two and their whole family apart. It's a really sad story at the end of the day. But before the trial, Sonny had actually tried to recant her allegations despite all of this evidence.
- [50:22]
C
Right now, I just feel. I just want this whole thing to be just over. I'm having very hard time dealing with my life. I want to move on with my life.
- [50:40]
A
Have you spoken to your sister recently?
- [50:41]
C
No, I have not.
- [50:42]
A
Have you spoken to her since her incarceration?
- [50:45]
C
She has called me twice. A few days later when she was caught.
- [50:53]
A
What did she say? Did she apologize?
- [50:56]
C
No, the first time I spoke to her, she called collect, of course, from jail. And she said to me, crying, why did you put my in jail? And I didn't put her in jail. I had no idea it was her, you know, behind all this. I'm not sure if it is, too. And I told her it's. I didn't do that, you know, and of course, you know, she's telling me, you know, I didn't do anything wrong to you, and why are you doing this to me?
- [51:26]
A
And. But Sonny, you know that Gene did hire these people to kill you.
- [51:34]
C
Well, I rather say I don't want to believe it. I don't want to believe it, because if I do believe it, gosh, I
- [51:44]
B
mean, this twin bond, man, I mean, really speaks volumes to it, Right. Like, strained to a breaking point by attempted murder, but, like, still almost. It's like unseverable.
- [51:59]
A
Right? Yeah. They. They continue to both watch out for each other and go after each other.
- [52:05]
B
Yeah.
- [52:06]
A
During her incarceration, though, she earns an associate degree from Feather River College and social and behavioral sciences. I'm interested in anything to do with behavior and social pattern, she says, because I recognize that my old behaviors and how it ties into my personality at the time. So she seems to be building some self awareness about what had happened.
- [52:30]
B
Yeah.
- [52:30]
A
Interesting. She eventually acknowledges responsibility, too. She says, at one point, I wanted to kill my sister. I hated her. But I felt a lot of guilt and shame for my sister's life because I know she's been struggling. I was feeling very, very, very guilty and shameful for what I've done to my sister.
- [52:51]
B
So, yeah, that's fascinating to me because she was. Sounds like almost like she was feeling guilty because she couldn't help her sister out.
- [53:01]
A
Right.
- [53:01]
B
Or get her out of her funk or whatever. And that was making her, like, resent her in a way.
- [53:08]
A
Yeah, that seems to be what she's saying.
- [53:11]
B
Fascinating.
- [53:12]
A
So she spends 19 years in prison after her sentence, and then she's up for parole and The California Board of Parole does recommend that she's let out on parole after her initial hearing. So this is basically 20 years since the. Since the event.
- [53:30]
B
It also sounds like she. She made really good use of her time.
- [53:33]
A
Yeah. And seemed to be repentant. Sunny had submitted a letter supporting Gene's release and, you know, sort of felt that she had, like, done her time. The prosecuting district attorney did not like this decision. He petitioned the governor to keep her in. In jail. He cited a parole board psychological diagnosis that she had borderline personality disorder and antisocial traits, and argued that she posed a threat and a danger to society by being let. Let out.
- [54:12]
B
I mean, she could also just continue to receive psychological treatment while outside of prison, But.
- [54:17]
A
Yes, but given the. The stakes of the. Of murder here, this was the argument that the d. Governor does not find the DA's appeal strong enough reason to take action. The parole stands. So in May of 2018. Gina Hahn is released from prison in May of 2018 at the age of 44, having served nearly half of her life in prison. So after the release, there's like, a dynamic shift in the family, which is sort of interesting. So their mother, who keeps in touch with Jean, is not in contact with Sunny.
- [54:56]
B
But I thought Sunny was the favorite.
- [54:58]
A
Yeah, exactly. But Jean's now the new golden child. After she received an engineering degree and started to work in the San Francisco Bay area, Sunny's life still continues to have its ups and downs. She's arrested for prostitution at one point after the trial. And In February of 2020, she's arrested in Buena park by the police, like, outside of a donut shop on Beach Boulevard.
- [55:29]
B
It's almost as if, like, there's some parties here that have really failed her from recovering from a lot of these adverse experiences that she's had.
- [55:39]
A
Yeah. And there's clearly some elements to this story that are unique to their personal cultural history, to the family history, some of which we'll never know for sure unless they decide to come forward and kind of tell their story together. But it doesn't seem from where things kind of left the public understanding of this case, that we're anywhere near understanding how they view this bizarre ride that they've been on.
- [56:15]
B
And it's so interesting. There's, like this. There's this pattern where, like, one's, like, they can never just fully be in sync. Right. There's almost like this vampiric quality to their dynamic where it's like, one shining, the other's decaying. You know, one has power, the Other one is powerless. And it's like. It's as if they were, like, destined to not be able to coexist harmoniously.
- [56:41]
A
Yeah. And also destined to in some way, constantly be bouncing off of each other. It's a wild story.
- [56:49]
B
Yeah. Okay, before we go. Yes, Jonathan.
- [56:52]
A
Yes.
- [56:52]
B
You're the voice of the May binge.
- [56:54]
A
I am.
- [56:55]
B
So tell us a little bit about it.
- [56:56]
A
This is an incredible story, and I'm very pleased that I get to share it with everybody now that it is about to be released. The story is called Cut Color, Kill.
- [57:09]
B
Love it.
- [57:09]
A
And it's a series about the murder of Fabio Sementilli, who was a Hollywood hairdresser who was brutally stabbed to death in his backyard of his home in Woodland Hills. And what initially appears to be a senseless burglary gone wrong becomes something far more complicated and devastating as investigators start to peel back the layers. It's the kind of story, I guess you could say only would happen in Hollywood.
- [57:43]
B
Yeah. And is absolutely fitting for the binge.
- [57:46]
A
Yes. And I wanted to play a little sneak peek of the show for you here. Of course, if you sign up for the binge, you can hear the whole thing right now. Go to getthebinge.com and you get all kinds of behind the scenes features from us. But you also can hear the whole series now. But here's a little sneak peek of Cut Color Kill. There's a little lie we like to tell ourselves that people like you and me, nice people, never find ourselves in the crosshairs of a murderous plot. Truth is, even nice guys cross paths with people who want them out of the picture. Nice guys like Fabio Sementilli.
- [58:37]
B
Big men and big hearts, big voice, big laugh.
- [58:43]
A
A rock star hairstylist who drove a Porsche.
- [58:46]
B
He was like a wizard behind the chair.
- [58:50]
A
The killers came for Fabio in his
- [58:52]
C
own backyard, sitting on his back patio, minding his own business, completely ambushed, taken
- [59:01]
A
by surprise, horrifically killed. Who could have done this?
- [59:08]
B
You can't rationalize it. You can't figure it out. This just doesn't happen in Woodland Hills.
- [59:13]
A
There was rampant speculation about everything, but every wild theory was wrong. We were dumbfounded.
- [59:22]
B
I would have never in a million years imagine this.
- [59:25]
A
We were played the entire time. Because the truth was even more unbelievable. Did he just say he stabbed him? What? Is anyone hearing what I'm hearing? And even more heartbreaking, the uncertainty of
- [59:41]
B
not knowing is a form of agony in itself.
- [59:47]
A
From Sony Music Entertainment and novel, this is Cut, Color Kill. I'm Jonathan Hirsch. Coming May 1st to the Binge search for Cut, Color, Kill wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribers to the Binge can listen to all episodes all at once ad free. Hey y', all, thank you so much for joining us on Crime Scene. Just a reminder here, you can watch or listen to us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. This show is a production of Sony Podcasts and the Binge. Thank you to everybody who makes this happen week in and week out. Also, we're journalists. We love journalism. These stories have been deeply reported, the ones that you hear on the show and you can find an extensive bibliography by going to the show notes of this episode and to every episode to learn more about the reporting that informed all of the great stories you hear on Crime Scene. And just one last note, you can get exclusive content from us and the binge over 60 jaw dropping true crime stories bingeable and ad free right now by signing up for our patreon@getthebinge.com so go to getthebinge.com to get access to our entire catalog of stories, but also also to get behind the scenes access to all of the stories that Cooper and I are working on. To join us in the conversation about these cases, go to getthebinge.com to learn more.
- [61:22]
B
Your next chapter in healthcare starts at Carrington College's School of Nursing in Portland. Join us for our open house on Tuesday, January 13th from 4 to 7pm you'll tour our campus, see live demos, meet instructors, and learn about our Associate Degree in Nursing program that prepares you to become a registered nurse. Take the first step toward your nursing career. Save your spot now@carrington.edu events. For information on program outcomes, visit carrington.edu sci.