Welcome back to the Path Went Chili. I'm Robin, I'm Jules, and
I'm Ashley. Let's dive right into this week's case. November one, two
thousand and one, State College, Pennsylvania. After spending Halloween night partying at
a club, twenty one year old penn State student Cindy Song is dropped off
at her apartment complex at four am. She's never heard from again, but
some of her personal items and a piece of her Halloween costume are found inside
her apartment. Years later, and informant tells police that Cindy was abducted and
murdered by a pair of suspects named Hugo Soelenski and Michael Kurkowski. The search
of Celenski's property uncovers the remains of Kurkowski and several other victims, but no
trace of Cindy is ever found. After that, the Path went Chilly.
So today we'll be covering a case which is considered to be one of the
most famous unsold mysteries to take place on Halloween, the two thousand and one
Disappearance of Cindy's Song. It involves a young woman from Korea who was living
in the United States on a student visa and entering her final year at Penn
State University. Cindy was planning on graduating in the spring and had a bright
future out of her but before this could take place, she went out partying
with some friends on Halloween night, and after being dropped off at her apartment
complex during the early morning hours, she vanished without a trace and has not
been seen since. This case would be featured on one of the final episodes
of Unsolved Mysteries, and if you perform any research online, you'll likely come
across a photograph of Cindy's song with Bunny Ears, which was part of her
Halloween costume. This photo is particularly haunting to look at, knowing that Cindy
would vanish within hours of it being taken, and the picture would often be
featured on her missing posters. However, a piece of Cindy's Halloween costume was
found inside her apartment after she disappeared, which indicated that she did make it
home safely before she inexplicably vanished. A convicted serial killer named Hugo Selensky was
eventually implicated in Cindy's disappearance, as the remains of multiple victims were found buried
on his property. But since none of these remains belonging to Cindy, investigators
have been unable to find any definitive evidence that Selenski killed her. So this
lead is going to be one of the focal points on her series of episodes.
So this case is interesting because if you think about Halloween and someone who's
going out to a party, I mean that has the ability to be dangerous,
right. People can be drinking, people can be doing drugs. There
can be people you're not familiar with, and there can be people who you're
familiar with who might have a reason to harm you. But this really scary
part about Cindy's case is that they're pretty sure she actually did get back to
her residence, which means she's in the place she should have been the most
safe and should have been able to go to sleep after she was dropped off,
and come to find out, she's probably abducted and murdered. And so
I'm assuming they never found her body. Is that correct? That is correct?
I mean I mentioned that they looked on a property of a guy named
Hugo Selenski and found a bunch of human remains, but none of them belonged
to her. And another weird detail is that there was no sign of any
struggle or violence in Cindy's apartments, so it doesn't seem like she was abducted
from there. So it's possible that after she was dropped off at home,
she stepped outside for a brief period and that's when she was abducted. Oh
yeah, absolutely, she could have gone out to go to the car,
to get a smoke, to do something, or maybe she was even lured
out of the house with someone saying, hey, come meet me here or
something to that effect. Very scary, very scary. To add on to
the top of it, that it's Halloween night adds to the eeriness. But
to me, it's the fact that she did get home that evening and somehow
she still ended up missing and most likely harmed by somebody. It's so creepy
too, like, what are the chances that an opportunistic predator would at that
very moment when she decides to go out, be there and snatch her off
the street. But clearly it does happen. I believe it happened in the
case of Mara Murray. It just it seems like, what are the chances?
But these things do happen particularly here since she was last seen to be
alive at four am, So that could mean that a predator was just roaming
around that area during the wee hours of the morning and Cindy was just in
the wrong place at the wrong time. Is it also possible that someone who
knew her, or someone who dropped her off or something was involved. Because
I used to tell my students, you're more likely to get hurt by the
person walking you home to protect you from the person in the bushes, then
you are the person in the bushes. So is it possible that it could
have been someone who knew her and might have known her timeline. They looked
into that angle, but they couldn't find anyone who stood out as a potential
suspect, So they are thinking that if she was harmed, ivo was by
a complete stranger. Our story begins in State College, Pennsylvania, in two
thousand and one. Our central figure is twenty one year old Hyun John Song,
who goes by her nickname Cindy. Cindy was originally born in Seoul,
South Korea, who moved to the United States on a tourist visa in nineteen
ninety five after living with her aunt and uncle in Virginia and graduating high school,
Cindy elected to attend Penn State University in order to major and integrate of
arts, so her tourist visa evolved into a student visa. She got consistently
good grades and was hoping to graduate in the spring of two thousand and two.
As she entered her final year at Penn State, was living off campus
at the State College Park apartments with a mat and working two jobs. Shortly
after the fall semester began, Cindy's roommate had to return home to Philadelphia for
an extended period of time because of family issues, so for the last half
of October, Cindy was living alone. On Halloween Night, Cindy and two
of her friends decided to go out and party at the Player's nightclub. For
her Halloween costume, she decided to dress up as a playboy bunny, and
her costume consisted of a pink sleeveless shirt with a bunny design imprinted on the
front, bunny ears, false eyelashes, and a white tennis skirt with a
cotton bunny tail on the back. At around two a m. On the
morning of November first, Cindy and her two friends left the club after it
closed and spent the next two hours traveling through the downtown area and hanging out
at a friend's apartment to play video games. One of Cindy's friends, Stacy
Pake, drove her back to her apartment complex. Cindy had spent much of
the night drinking and was mildly intoxic by this point, but not so much
so that she couldn't handle herself. At around four am, Stacy dropped Cindy
off, and while she watched her walk towards her apartment, Stacy could not
confirm that Cindy actually went inside before she drove off, and unfortunately, this
would turn out to be the last time that Cindy was confirmed to be alive.
Okay, here's what's rule said, poor Stacy, imagine what kind of
grief she's going through where she's in some ways responsible for Cindy in that moment.
I'm sure she feels that way. Right she drove her home, she
watches her walk to her apartment. I mean, apartment complexes can be set
up all kinds of ways where possibly it's not that she didn't even wait to
watch her walk into the apartment. She might not have even visibly been able
to see her front door, right, It could have been in a little
hallway, it could have been around the corner. But she gets her home
safely after a night of having fun, and you know, no part of
her thought anything other than the fact that her friend is about to go in
and go to sleep. And then i'm sure later that next day or you
know, several hours later, she realizes something could have happened to Cindy.
And so my heart breaks for Stacy as well, who is in this position
of a friend taking care of another friend and at the end of the day
has no idea what happened when she dropped her friend off. So there's got
to be a very complicated grief going on there for Stacy too. Yeah,
as we're going to talk about, they do find evidence to indicate that Cindy
did make it inside her apartment. So even if Stacy hung around for another
minute longer and confirmed that she actually saw Cindy go inside, it may not
have made much difference because it's possible that whatever happened to Cindy did not happen
until a long time later, So it probably happened after Stacy was already gone,
so later that day, Cindy's roommate returned from Philadelphia and was surprised to
discover that Cindy was not at their apartment. For the next two days,
none of Cindy's friends heard from her, has she missed her classes and a
shift at one of her so they finally contacted the Ferguson Township Police Department and
reported her missing. As far as I can tell, the door to the
apartment was locked when Cindy's roommate returned on November the first, and there were
no signs of forced entry or struggle. When police checked inside, they found
some of Cindy's personal belongings, including her backpack and cellular phone, and the
false eyelashes she had worn as part of her costume were on the counter.
This seemed to suggest that Cindy had entered the apartment after she was dropped off
by Stacy Pake, but some of her other items, including her keys and
her purse, were missing, and the rest of her bunny costume could not
be found. A check of Cydey's bank account and credit cards showed no activity
since she was last seen. Upon learning of Cindy's disappearance. Members of her
family, including her mother, band sun Song, and her older brother Keiho,
made the trip from South Korea to Pennsylvania. Within days, they were
granted access to Cindy's apartment, but to the surprise the police, the Songs
wound up cleaning the place and they have inadvertently destroyed potential physical evidence. Oh
goodness. Okay, So when you look at what's missing from her apartment,
she has her keys and her purse when she goes outside, but she doesn't
have her cell phone, which is really bizarre because it's like she's taking critical
items but not the phone. You would think even back what was this two
thousand and one? Yeah, okay, so even back in two thousand and
one, if you had a cell phone, that's something that is almost as
necessary as your car keys, right, it was something that you would likely
take with you, especially in the early morning hours or late late at night.
If you were a young girl, you would probably take your phone too.
So the combination or the lack of combination of the person the keys with
her, and the cell phone left at the house is really really interesting,
Like could she have possibly been running up to the convenience store to get a
snack or could she have been going to just meet someone that she knew around
the corner. It doesn't really line up like take it all or don't take
any of it, but having those items separated to me causes a little bit
of concern. And then you have her poor family who makes this trip from
South Korea to Pennsylvania to find their baby and their sister, and they're not
doing anything other than trying to make sure Cindy's okay, and in the act
of cleaning her apartment really could have damaged the investigation. Again, an added
layer of grief and trauma for the family thinking we're helping, We're here to
help and look for her, and then you know, finding out, oh
my gosh, something we did could have compromised the investigation as well. Really
really sad, Robin. Do you know if Cindy had a cell phone,
Like this is at the time when not everyone had a cell phone, but
a lot of people did. Well, Yeah, they just confirmed that that
she left her cell phone behind. Oh okay, sorry I missed that part.
Yeah. So, but like you said, it is very unusual.
This is two thousand and one. They're not as common, but people generally
took them when they left the apartment. But that's what makes me think that
she decided to step out for what she thought was going to be a very
brief time period, and before she had a chance to make it back,
something happened to her. And I think the fact that the rest of her
bunny costume was not found is a very important clue, because you think that
if she's returning home for the night and planning to go to bed, she
would have taken the costume off and changed but the fact that it was not
found that indicates that she still had it on her when she stepped out of
her apartment and was likely abducted. I think it's important to note as well,
that our relationship to our cell phones has evolved so much a lot of
people wouldn't remember what it would be like. You wouldn't be as attached to
it as you are today, So there could be a strong likelihood that you
might, if you were running to a convenience store, leave your cell phone
behind. Because they weren't like little computers like they are today, where our
whole lives are at our fingertips when we have our phone. They were a
lot different back then. Don't you guys think, Oh, definitely, And
as far as I can tell, texting still wasn't a thing yet in two
thousand and one, right, So it's not like she would be texting her
friend Stacy or something like that and saying, oh, I'm just running up
to the market, because these were very low tech phones compared to today.
If there were, if there was texting at the time, it was one
of those where you had to push the button three times to get to the
letter C and move over and hit it again. Do you know what I
mean to that's what I remember. Yeah. Yeah. Investigators did explore the
possibility that Cindy may have disappeared voluntarily in order to complete suicide. Three months
earlier, Cindy had been sharing the apartment with her boyfriend until he broke up
with her and moved out. However, Cindy's friends insisted that she was not
depressed and that thanks to the aid of counseling and medication, she was able
to get over the breakup and was in very good spirits when she went out
partying on Halloween night, in fact for a Britney Spears concert, which Cindy
was looking forward to attending. The following week were left behind in the apartment,
and there was also a receipt to show that she had recently ordered a
computer, which was set to be delivered days after she went missing. The
consensus seemed to be that Cindy had been the victim of an abduction, and
while police did look into Cindy's ex boyfriend, they did not consider him to
be a suspect. Since there were no records of any calls on Cindy's phone
around the time she went missing, there didn't seem to be any reason for
her to leave the apartment after she arrived home, but it was theorized that
she may have stepped out to visit a nearby twenty four hour supermarket that she
often frequented. The market was only located two hundred yards away, and it
was not uncommon for Cindy to walk there at odd hours, But when police
attempted to check the surveillance footage from the market, they discovered that their footage
from the early morning hours of November first had already been taped over. It
wasn't long before a woman and came forward with an eyewitness sighting of Cindy nearly
two hundred miles away in the Chinatown district of Philadelphia. According to the witness,
she had walked past a car which contained an Asian woman resembling Cindy,
who was crying and yelling out for help. A man described as having an
olive or light brown complexion suddenly intervened and told the witness to get lost because
this was none of her business. When the police did release a composite sketch
of the unidentified man, they expressed their skepticism that the witness actually saw Cindy,
as she wound up changing her story several times. Okay, I won't
go down the rabbit hole of our conversation when we talk about the problems with
eyewitness identification. But as likely as it is that this woman was trying to
be incredibly helpful and probably did see a domestic dispute, it's two hundred miles
away, and it's more likely she saw Cindy's picture and thought, oh my
gosh, that looks like the lady who I saw getting hurt by this guy.
I'm going to call the police and try to help. So probably well
intended, but less likely to be accurate. Then let's say if someone was
seeing her at the convenience store the evening she went missing. That is exactly
what I was thinking. Remember going as a college kid, like I just
remember being hungry after your drinking, and if it was only a couple of
hundreds of yards away, she could have easily walked that direction and taken her
keys in her purse, the keys to get back into her apartment, and
then her purse to pay for the goods she was going to get. If
she was intoxicated, it's not too far away. She can go get that,
she can get a little late night snack, and then she can go
back home and rest again. Like you guys said, all they found in
the apartment were the accessories to her costume. She hadn't changed, so she
could have very easily walked in, taken her bunny ears off, kind of
dehalloween to herself a little bit, and then said I'm going to go get
a snack, and that's when she met fate with somebody who was out for
something devious. That's what I think is the most logical explanation for what happened,
That she just decided to go to the market to get a quick snack,
like you said. But if so, then that's just rotten luck that
she just happened to cross paths with the wrong person at that time in the
morning, So it just is kind of an example of her being in the
wrong place at the wrong time, that some predator may have been in that
neighborhood at four am. Well. On January the thirty first, two thousand
and two, the Coalition for the Search for Cindy Song, a group consisting
of Cindy's family, Penn State students, and community members, held a press
conference to criticize law enforcement and university officials for the lack of progress of the
investigation. They made a comparison between Cindy's case and the recent disappearance Alicia Koza
Kiwitch, a thirteen year old white girl who went missing on New Year's Day
after being lured out of her home by an older man she met on the
internet. Alicia immediately had over fifty FBI agents assigned you her case, and
they managed to find her alive within three days. Some minority grew from Penn
State campus also expressed their dissatisfaction with the investigation and wondered why Cindy's disappearance did
not get the same treatment as Alicia's. For their part, investigators insisted that
they were doing everything in their power to find Cindy, but were simply hampered
by the lack of evidence and solid leads. This press conference prompted the Ferguson
Township PD and the Song family to cut off all direct communication with each other.
Both sides conceded that some friction was caused by the cultural gap between the
way police investigations were conducted in the United States and South Korea. By his
own admission, Cindy's brother Keiho said he was baffled by the quote unquote constitutional
restraints on police investigations, such as the length peak granjury subpoena procedures required to
access Cindy's phone and internet records, and he wanted the police to act more
quickly and forcefully. Kiel With quit school and remained in the US to help
out in the search for his sister, while their mother, ban Soon,
was eventually forced to return to Korea in order to care for her sick husband.
Here's the interesting thing, right, They're comparing her case a college girl
who goes missing after a Halloween party to a thirteen year old child who's lured
out by some adult predator and there's a known kind of idea here that an
older man reaches out to her. So there's this known perpetrator or known idea
of a perpetrator. There's an underage child, right, and so I think
it's a different dynamic in the case. That's horrifying an media grabbing that some
child could have been lured out by a predator online. And this was very
new back then. Remember we were in chat rooms and things like that,
so it wasn't necessarily as common and known as human trafficking is now and stuff
like that. It doesn't make it any more valuable than the disappearance of Cindy.
But when you're looking at attention given and the dynamics of the case,
those are two very very different cases. And it is possible that there was
some bias saying, well, Cindy was out at a party. She could
have gone missing on her own. She's an adult, right, But it
does seem like the police were taking this case seriously, that they were responding.
I do think there's a possibility that there's a conflict of saying this is
how much we can involve the family, and this is how much we have
to keep private, and police have the mentality. We are not your counselors,
right, we are investigating this case and cannot get caught up in the
grief and emotional trauma that the family's experiencing. There's definitely leeway and there's definitely
a need for law enforcement to be compassionate and empathetic. But there is a
conflict usually between families and unsolved cases and the police because of the unsolved nature.
And if you haven't solved my case, then you're not giving it enough
attention. That is human nature one oh one. So I feel bad for
both parties. I do think very very interesting to make the comparison between Alicia's
case and Cindy's case. But at the end of the day, it just
comes down to every single person who goes missing or is murdered is equally valuable.
It's just you don't see that in society play out the same way.
Right. There's all kinds of factors that play into that. Some of it
just comes down to which case had more evidence in it. And for Alicia's
case, with regards to the FBI involvement, was there an abduction that crossed
state lines or was it something to do with the online communication that led to
the FBI being involved, because they aren't usually just involved in a straight up
child abduction case, are they. Yeah, I think I might have had
to do with the internet angle. I can't remember if Alicia did cross state
lines, but I can understand why they devoted so much attention to her case,
not only because she was thirteen years old, but because there's a strong
lead to work with, because she was lured by someone she meant on the
Internet. And on a side note, I'm currently Facebook friends with Alicia Kosek
as she's now a motivational speaker and doing quite well. So I'm glad to
see that she recovered from this trauma quite well. That's amazing. That's absolutely
incredible. It's nicey or happy ending to one of those stories, because so
often we hear the opposite. The case would be featured on a number of
TV shows, including Unsolved Mysteries, who featured Cindy's story in one of their
final episodes, which aired in September of two thousand and two. This failed
to bring about any substantial leads, but within a year a surprising connection will
be made to a career criminal named Hugo Soolensky. Now the entire saga of
Hugo Soolensky is one hell of a crazy story and you could probably produce an
entire podcast series about him. But here's how he fits into this case.
In June of two thousand and three, an associate of Selenski's name, Paul
Weekley, was facing a felony burglary charge and decided to inform on Selensky by
leading the authorities to his property in Louser And County. To everyone's shock,
the remains of no less than five victims were found buried in Selensky's backyard,
and Weekly claimed that Selensky was responsible for the murders of up to sixteen people,
including Cindy's song. According to Weekly, Selensky told him that he and
an accomplice named Michael Kurkowski had been in State College during the early morning hours
of November one, two thousand and one, and saw Cindy walking down the
street. They assumed she was a sex worker and proceeded to abduct her and
take her to Krekowski's home in Hunlock Creek. Cindy was kept in prison inside
a walk in safe and sexually assaulted until she died before both men buried her
body absolutely horrifying, in heartbreaking. It's insane that this person would be telling
them about these murders, right, And there is proof that he did murder
at least five people, and Weekly saying, listen, it was up to
sixteen people, including and he specifies Cindy Song. And so when you look
at Weekly's story, we know there is some credence to it because eventually police
will go and find the remains of five individuals. But if Weekly's accurate,
right, and he knows that Michael Kurkowski helped helped with the murder of her,
of Cindy Song, don't you think that eventually they'd be able to find
the remains if they have Michael and Hugo in custody. But then again,
if they don't talk, they don't talk. But this is insane to me
that he is able to accurately describe that Hugo is a murderer. You need
to be looking at his home. They find five people, So who's to
say that Kurkowski and Hugo didn't kill Cindy Song Because it's horrifying to think that
she could have just been walking up to the convenience store. They see her
make an assumption about who she is because of the costume she's wearing. She's
walked out late at night on the street, and they say, oh,
well, because she's this vulnerable person, more so than just a college kid,
she's a sex worker, they decide they're going to target her, kidnap
her, abuse her, and then kill her. Absolutely heartbreaking if that's true.
Well, as I'm sure you know, none of the remains found on
the property did belong to Cindy, so they couldn't corroborate this story. But
right now, I haven't revealed it yet, But now I'm going to tell
you what happened to the alleged accomplice, Michael Kurkowski. Now, like I
said, it was established that none of the remains found on Selensky's property belonged
to Cindy, as Selensky did not actually live there until several months after she
went missing. But do you know who was buried there? Michael Kurkowski.
Kurkowski had previously worked as a pharmacist until he was arrested in June of two
thousand and one for running an illegal prescription drug ring, and had shown up
on the authorities radar after one of his clients died of an overdose. Krekowski
would be convicted of multiple felonies and was awaiting sentencing when both he and his
girlfriend, Tammy Fassett vanished in May of two thousand and two. It was
initially believed that Kirkowski had gone on the run as a fugitive, but it
turned out that Selensky had used flex ties to strangle both Kurkowski and Facet to
death, and the couple's remains were found buried together on his property. Weekly
told investigators that one of the reasons that Selensky decided to kill Kirkowski was because
he had kept Cindy's bunny ears as a souvenir. In actuality, the primary
motive was robbery, as Selensky entered Kurkowski's home and killed him because he had
sixty thousand dollars in cash stashed there. The only reason Facet was murdered was
because she happened to be in the house at that time. Weekly said that
Selensky committed the crime with an accomplice named Patrick Rusen, and that they initially
buried the couple at another location until Selensky asked Weekly to help move the bodies
onto his proper so bizarre. It's interesting because Kurkowski was already in trouble with
law enforcement, and there could have been a fear also that he was going
to talk. But shoot, if you have sixty thousand dollars in cash stash
in your home and you're working with some pretty dark people, it makes sense
that money would be the motivator there. Do you have any kind of weight
on Weekly's honesty here, because I mean, I know he's also in trouble
with law enforcement, but he says he actually helped move bodies, so he's
implicating himself in these crimes as well. So what did the police think about
him and his stories? Well, as we're going to talk about later on,
there are credibility issues with Weekly, and other than his story, there
really isn't any corroborating evidence that Hugo Soelenski and Michael Kurkowski murdered Cindy. And
we're going to go into more detail about Kurkowski's background later on as well.
But even though he was undeniably Aminol who was running this illegal prescription drug ring,
he didn't really have any history of violence, Like, he wasn't known
for being the type of guy who would just kidnap someone who he thought was
a sex worker and hold her in captivity to sexually assault and torture her before
he committed murder. So some people are finding this convenient that what Weekly is
deciding to pin this crime on a dead guy who was no longer around to
refute any of his allegations. I'm wondering if Kurkowski had a substance use disorder
and that's why he got into the illegal prescription drug ring, because to invest
all of the time and energy into becoming a pharmacist and to risk it all
when it seems like the probability is so high that you could get caught.
I could see if he had addiction issues, then that could be a catalyst
for maybe making these kind of risky choices that seem like they're not very smart,
and somebody who's going to go through all that education, it just seems
so preposterous you would be kind of fraternizing with these criminals that are really dangerous.
So I really wonder if he was just this predator that saw an opportunity
and decided to engage in selling illegal prescription drugs, or if it was something
that he did to kind of support his own habit. I think it might
be the latter. Like I don't know if he had any addiction issues,
but it would not surprise me because from what I've read, he didn't sound
like a bad guy. He was a guy who had an ordinary life,
who, like you said, became a pharmacist but then got himself embroiled in
criminal activity. But he also had a girlfriend, he had a close relationship
with his own family, and as we're going to talk about, he pretty
much got conned by Hugo Selenski when he crossed paths with him. So he
just doesn't seem to fit the profile of someone who had just ducked, sexually,
insalt and murder a random woman. But in addition to the bodies of
Krakowski and facet bone, fragments for at least three other victims were found in
a burn pit on Selenski's property. Two of them belonged to Frank James and
to Day Keeler, a pair of drug dealers who allegedly belonged to a gang.
The third victim has never been publicly identified, though it's unclear if investigators
have deliberately chosen not to release that information or if they still have no idea
who the victim is. It would turn out that Selenski and Patrick Rusen had
lured James and Keeler to the property in order to steal their money in drugs
before they were both shot to death and their bodies burned down into bone fragments.
Ruston wound up pleading guilty to two counts of third degree murder, and
both he and Paul Weekley testified against Selenski when he went on trial for the
two murders in two thousand and six. Selenski's defense was that weekly had framed
him by planting the victim's remains in the burn pit and leading the police there,
and believe it or not, they were able to generate some reasonable doubt
for the jury. They ultimately acquitted Selenski of Keeler's murder and deadlocked on James's
murder. They did find him guilty on two counts of abusing a corpse.
The jury seemed to believe that Selensky was involved in the crime and at the
very least helped dispose of the bodies, but did not feel there was enough
evidence to prove he personally pulled the trigger and committed the murders. Himself.
However, the state wasted no time charging Selensky with the murders of Michael Kurkowski
and Tammy Facett, though due to a number of delays and legal wrangling,
he would not actually go on trial for this crime until twenty fifteen. It
also turned out that, rather than simply helping Selenski move the victim's bodies,
Paul Weakley actually participated in the murders, so he agreed to testify against Selensky
in order to avoid the death penalty. This time, Selensky was convicted on
two counts of first degree murder and received a life sentence. Yeah, it's
really difficult here because Weekly obviously knows information. He's in fact, part of
the idea that these people were murdered and placed on Hugo's properties. So we
know that Weekly is a problematic character, right because he himself is involved in
criminal activity. But to know these details could indicate that he is telling the
truth, right, even though he's a questionable figure. He's clearly giving information
to try to get himself off the hook. But that information could be true.
So what's sad here is that he has this horrific account of what happened
to Cindy Song, and there's no way to prove that it did or didn't
happen given the evidence that they have right now, So her family is left
with that being the only information and the only story that they play in their
head right is, well, if that's what this guy said happened to her,
then that's what we have to assume happened to her. And it's one
of the most just horrific thoughts for a mother and a brother and a dad
to be thinking Cindy went to a convenienced and was abducted and sexually abused and
murdered and then just buried, thrown away like trash. And that's the thing.
How cruel would Paul Weekly be if he's just completely making up this story
and making Cindy's family believe that she was abducted, tortured and held in captivity
before she was sexually assaulted and murdered, if he just completely made that story
up. But we're going to talk about this in a few moments. How
Weekly is kind of a problematic figure with credibility issues. But even though they
didn't find the remains of Cindy on Selenski's property, when they found the other
victims. It is important to reiterate that he did not move there until two
thousand and two, so if he committed this murder in November of two thousand
and one, it's likely that he would have disposed of Cindy's remains at another
location. Anyway, due to Weekly's credibility issues, there are doubts about his
story that he heard Selensky confess to being involved in Cindy Song's disappearance. When
he was initially arrested. Selenski's attorney stated that several people could place his client
over one hundred and thirty miles away in wilkes Bury at the time Cindy went
missing. A search of Weekly's computer also showed that he had downloaded several articles
about Cindy's case, so he theoretically could have learned enough details about her disappearance
online in order to fabricate a story. It's also worth noting that in January
of twenty fourteen, a grand jury indictment was filed against Selenski, his current
attorney, and a private investigator on allegations of bribing and intimidating witnesses, and
the indictment stated, quote Luzerne County authorities believed that Selensky was directly involved in
the murder of approximately twelve human beings found burned and buried in a pit in
his backyard. End quote. At the time, there was a gag order
which prevented anyone involved in this case from discussing it publicly, so it's unclear
if additional victims were found on Selenski's property who have yet to be identified.
Regardless, the authorities have obtained a DNA sample from Cindy's parents and added it
to the national databases for Missing Persons and unidentified remains, but that's far.
They have yet to make any matches. Officially, no conclusive evidence has ever
linked Hugo Selenski to Cindy's song, and her disappearance continues to remain unsolved.
So I guess you could say the path went chilly. This whole case has
that just heartbreaking element of you would think when you send your kiddo away to
college. She's a good student, she's being a typical college kid. She
went to a Halloween party. You think your kids are safe, right,
This is innocent. It's what every kiddo does. It goes to college,
and she went to a Halloween party. Her friend is responsible and brings her
home, and it's likely Cindy had this thought, Hey, I'm hungry or
I want somebody to drink. I'm going to run grab something at the convenience
store that I go to all the time, and come home, get ready
for bed, and hit the sack. Recover from my fun evening at a
Halloween party, and that night of innocent fun turns into the likelihood that her
life was stolen away from her, and it's possible that it's at the hands
of someone who is a sadistic serial killer. And the only thing left is
this story that we have from Weekly, And so my heart just simply breaks
because, at least give me some evidence in concrete facts that that's what happened
to my baby. Right, let me know that's what happened to her.
Let's hold this person responsible and have that sort of resolution to But this family
doesn't have that, and it's likely they won't ever have that unless that DNA
sample happens to hit on some kind of remains that are found one day.
It's profound that you said he didn't buy that house till twenty oh two,
because at that point she had been dead for what at least two two months,
possibly up to fourteen months by the time he settles in that house.
So of course she wouldn't be buried there unless he had said, oh,
move her body back to my property too, like Weekly said, he helped
her do with some other bodies. But to me, that's profound. He
supposedly, according to Weekly, killed her at the other man's house, and
then they went and buried her together, and so who knows where she could
be. Heartbreaking, absolutely horrific, And it just gives you chills to think
that you sent your baby away to school, she went to a party,
and her life was stolen from her. I have a special place in my
heart for families who send their kids off to another country and they hope that
they're going to have all the opportunities in the world. And that's what the
Song family did with Cindy. And to think, Okay, she does her
high school there, and she's now having this experience at Penn State, and
she's got all of these friends. Her whole life is a head of her.
And then to have to find out that your daughter is missing and presumed
to be murdered, have to come here from Korea, and it's a completely
different culture. I'm trying to understand how investigations are conducted in the US and
being sorely disappointed at the way that the investigators are going about it. It's
just my heart really breaks for the family here because it makes it so much
more difficult when it's a culture that you don't necessarily understand and a language that
you don't necessarily understand. So there's just so many layers and so much nuance
to this case. Yeah, we're going to discuss this and more in depth
on our next episode. But even though Hugo Soelenski is undoubtedly an awful human
being who has murdered at least five people, which technically makes them a serial
killer, but the more you look into his background, the more you wonder
would Cindy's disappearance really fit his profile, Because from what I can tell,
the people he did murder he did in order to rob them. It was
for financial gain. He has never done any known crimes in which he has
revealed himself to be a sexual predator who targets innocent young women at random.
So it does make you wonder is Paul Weekly's story true. Could he have
actually abducted Cindy and held her in captivity before killing her. Or is he
just fabricating this story in order to help his own legal problems. So I
think this would be a good time to bring it into part one. But
joy us next week as if we present part two of our series about the
disappearance of Cindy. Song Robin, do you want to tell us a little
bit about the Trail Went Cold Patreon? Yes. The Trail Cold Patreon has
been around for three years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like
early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers and signed thank you
cards to anyone who signs up with us on Patreon. If you join our
five dollars tier tier two, we also offer monthly bonus episodes in which I
talk about cases which are not featured on the Trail Wind Cold's original feed,
so they're exclusive to Patreon, and if you join our highest tier tier three,
the ten dollars tier. One of the features we offer is a audio
commentary track over classic episodes of UNSAWD Mysteries, where you can download an audio
file and then boot up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or YouTube
and play it with my audio commentary playing in the background, where I just
provide trivia and factoids about the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally,
the very first episode that I did a commentary track over was the episode featuring
this case. So if you want to download a commentary track in which I
make more smart ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join Tier
three. So I want to let you know a little bit about the Jeweles
and Nashty patreons. So there's early ad free episodes of The Path Went Chili.
We've got our Path Went Chili mini's, which are always over an hour,
so they're not very mini, but they're just too short to turn into
a series, and we're really enjoying doing those, so we hope you'll check
out those patreons. We'll link in the show notes. So I want to
thank you all for listening, and any chance you have to share us on
social media with a friend or to rate and review is greatly appreciated. You
can email us at The Pathwentchili at gmail dot com. You can reach us
on Twitter at the Pathwink. So until next time, be sure to bundle
up because cold trails and chili pass, call for warm clothing music by Paul
Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy