Transcript
Jenny Garth (0:00)
This is an iHeart podcast.
Amica Insurance (0:05)
@ Amica Insurance, we know it's more than just a house. It's your home. The place that's filled with memories. The early days of figuring it out to the later years of still figuring.
Howie Mandel (0:22)
It out.
Amica Insurance (0:26)
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Jenny Garth (0:34)
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Trey Farrow (1:06)
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Mary Kay McBrayer (1:32)
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Jenny Garth (2:11)
Diversion audio.
Mary Kay McBrayer (2:16)
A note this episode contains mature content and descriptions of violence that may be disturbing for some listeners. Please take care in listening. There's nothing like being on a college campus during the final week of classes. The relaxing exhale of summer is right around the corner, and the energy of what's next bubbles up in every conversation and social circle. For students of Harvard, there's an added pride in having completed another semester at an Ivy league on Saturday, May 27, 1995, two young women in Harvard's Dunster House dorm building were celebrating the end of a long, hard year. The women were juniors, both pre med and both immigrants to America with dreams of becoming doctors. Decades of dedication, sacrifice and faith had brought them here to the world's most prestigious institution, and they were a source of immense pride for both of their families. That the girls would meet in a science class their freshman year and end up roommates seemed like fate. Both had made journeys of many thousands of miles to end up in Massachusetts, and they must have felt like kindred spirits. But while from the outside their similarities were impossible to deny, the girls inner worlds couldn't have been more different. While one found purpose and thrived in her college environment, the other struggled to find a place. While one made strong friendships and found community, the other grew isolated and distant from her loved ones. What started as a faded friendship after a while became estranged. Admiration turned to jealousy, goodwill turned to resentment. And late on that Saturday night in May 1995, when the air was thick with anticipation of good things, one girl saw the end of her world. Other residents of Dunster House would wake up the next morning to screams coming from the girls dorm room. Harvard campus security and Cambridge police would be called, and the gruesome scene they would find on the other side of that door would would be like something out of a nightmare for the two women, for their families and for the university. Welcome to the greatest true crime stories ever told. MARY I'm Mary Kay McBrayer. Today's episode we're calling Harvard's Forgotten Murder Suicide. It's the story of a friendship gone wrong, the limits of human ambition and the dark underbelly of the American dream. Because the thing they don't tell you about having your greatest dream come true is what to do with yourself afterwards. We'll get into all of that right after this quick break. The college experience is so much less about academics than you think it's going to be when you're 18. It isn't until you're well out of school that you realize that the most important lessons you learned during those years or how to be a normal functioning adult in the world, one who knows how to make friends, form a community and take care of themselves. It's a time to figure out where you fit inside this much bigger pond. And it's something that doesn't come easy for a lot of kids. I know this from experience. I showed up to a liberal arts school from suburban Georgia and had to answer the question, where are you from? Twice. Once to name my hometown and again to say where I was from from. It highlights your experience, or at least other people's experience of you. Introducing yourself means explaining parts of you that you've never had to articulate before. But my experience was nothing compared to the task that immigrant and international students face when they come to college in America. Not only are they learning how to handle new levels of academic challenge, but many also carry the dreams of proud and expectant families. Being there, finding your place, making the most of the unparalleled opportunities in front of you after decades of sacrifice and single minded dedication is a big task for an 18 year old. Reconciling your past self with the person you're becoming is one of the greatest transformations any person can experience. The story I'm going to tell you today is about the limitations of the human psyche when those needs of community and social connection aren't met. Even in a place as picture perfect as Harvard, Sinadu Tedesa had big dreams for her life from the very beginning. She was born and raised in addis Ababa in 1975, the capital of the world's third poorest country at the time, Ethiopia. Walking those crowded streets of Addis Ababa, you'd see livestock, hungry mothers with outstretched hands, and malnourished children selling trinkets. In public schools, students sat on dirt floors, dozens and dozens to a class. Books and supplies were a luxury. But Sinadu Tedesa was fortunate. As a member of an elite class, her family had the resources to send her to one of Addis Ababa's coveted international schools. There, she was given opportunities few Ethiopians had. English instruction, rigorous courses, preparation for university in America. The gravity of this opportunity was not lost on Sinadu. While her country buckled under the weight of a political turmoil, warfare and famine, Sinadu studied. One of her English teachers remembered her as being, quote, quiet and demure, academically focused to the point of tunnel vision. And she was successful. In fact, Sinadu wasn't just good in school, she was exceptional. During her senior year of high school, she was named the number two student in all of Ethiopia. Her high school guidance counselor said you couldn't tell her that academics weren't everything, because they were. They were her ticket out. The day she received her acceptance letter and a full scholarship to Harvard was the happiest day of her life. She would go to America, get the best education money could buy from the world's most prestigious institution, and return home a doctor. But the way Harvard looked in Sinadu's dreams was a lot different than her reality. Accustomed to being exceptional, she found classes difficult. The reinforcement and praise she was used to receiving for her efforts didn't come far from standing out. She struggled to make bees. The cold Massachusetts weather depressed her and she felt deeply isolated. Visiting her family in Ethiopia was out of the question Financially, the only person she knew on campus was Neb, a smart and popular classmate of hers from the International School. But the two of them didn't run in the same social circles. Learning how to make friends wasn't something Sinadu had spent much time doing. Now she not only had to learn how, but do so among young adults who had grown up with entirely different customs, cultural references, and social etiquette. When she didn't have friends to confide in, Sinadu would divulge her feelings in her diary and journals. One of her spiral notebooks was labeled My Small Book of Social Rules. In it, Sinadu wrote pages and pages of numbered instructions for how to address the problems she was facing socially. Things like what to discuss with the other students in the cafeteria. Every morning when you wake up, you have to come up with three fat topics of conversation. This is always your greatest problem, so deal with it properly, one entry said. But as the diary goes on, her words take on a more paranoid tone. One said, do not show off what you really think. Put on a mask. These social exercises didn't seem to bring Sinadu much success, though. The summer after her freshman year, Sinadu reached a point of desperation. In a baffling move, she sent a letter to a stranger at Harvard's Law School, pleading for help making friends. The glimpse this letter gives into Sinadu's psyche is honestly fascinating and frankly, she writes beautifully. I'm going to take a minute to read a few paragraphs from it. Why am I writing this letter? Because I am desperate. As far as I can remember, my life has been hellish. Year after year, I became lonelier and lonelier. When I am with a group of people, I keep so quiet I have nothing to say that I send the chills through those who notice me. Then I cry when people forget about me or dislike being with me. When I am with one person, I shake with nervousness, fearing that we will run out of things to say or she or he will be bored. For math, I had a teacher. For painting, I had a teacher. For social life, I had no one. All you have to do is give me a hand and put into words what you already know. All it takes is a few hours from your week and some energy. Please do not close the door in my face. Even if you are not interested, please give this letter to a friend or relative who might be. We don't know much about who the recipient of this letter was, but what we do know is that they forwarded it to a Dean at Harvard, who then placed it in Sinadu's file and left it at that. No investigation, no follow up. To be fair, this was probably unlike anything the Dean's office or Student Health Services had ever seen before. But still, it's a literal cry for help. More on the Student Health Services later. Though there was one bright spot in Sinadu's freshman year. It came in the form of another student named Trang Ho, whom Sineadu met in her science class. The two had a lot in common. Both were polite, hard working biology majors who had moved to America from across the world. Both had risen from humble circumstances to become valedictorians of their high school graduating classes. And both dreamed of becoming doctors. Trang was born near Saigon in 1974, just five months before the culmination of the Vietnam War. Both of Trang's parents were sent to re education camps in the wake of the war. And in 1984, when Trang was 10, they made the difficult decision to attempt to escape Vietnam for a better life abroad. Trang, her older sister and their father went first. Under the COVID of night, they crammed inside a small boat along 265 other refugees. Their destination was Indonesia, where they'd stay in a refugee camp for a few months and hopefully continue on to America. The boat was so crowded that the passengers were forced to stand for seven days at the refugee camp. Mr. Ho gave the girls English words to learn, to prepare them for their life in America. At first it was 10 or 20 words, and later nearly 100 a day. Mr. Ho knew about the famous universities on the east coast, and in 1986 he settled his family in the Boston area, hoping to send his daughters to one of the Ivy Leagues one day. Like Sinadu, Trang took her studies very seriously. Once, as a young student, when she found herself stuck on a homework problem, she called 911 to ask for help. The dispatcher told her that someone would call her back, and when her father answered the phone a few minutes later, he heard a policeman on the other end asking for the little girl who needed help with her assignment. But unlike Sinadu, Trang didn't seem to have a problem forming friendships. Her teachers would later describe the joy and excitement she found in learning. All through high school, she tutored her classmates. By the beginning of her sophomore year at Harvard, Trang had established a solid group of friends and was thriving. Her grades were good and she seemed well on her way to the goal of medical school. A few weeks before meeting Trang, in that science class, Sinadu had been hurt to find that her then roommate wanted to live with someone else next year. Finding yourself without a roommate at the end of the spring semester is a tough blow for anyone, but it must have been especially tough for Sinadu, who was struggling so hard socially. Trang was kind and it's not difficult to imagine how the two must have formed a connection around their similar upbringings and dreams for the future. Sinadu decided to ask Trang to be her roommate, and Trang agreed. Sinadu was overjoyed. Perhaps this would finally be the chance for the kind of close friendship that had always been beyond her grasp. In her diary entry from that week, Sinadu wrote, the last four days were the highlight of my life thus far in Harvard. My roommate problem was solved in the best way possible with a girl I thought I would really enjoy to be with. With a girl I would make the queen of my life. Sinadu would later tell her father she had found a best friend. Unfortunately, Trang seems to have had no idea of the role she was playing in her new roommate's life.