Woman's remains identified, unclaimed
By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer
Moon Ja Kim can finally rest in peace, and that is a bittersweet milestone for her last best friend, Susan Siu, chief investigator for the Honolulu Medical Examiner.
Advertiser library photo
For nearly a year, since she first discovered the woman's remains stored in the city morgue, Siu has been troubled by Kim's case.
Moon Ja Kim vanished in 1994. Her remains were identified last week.
Then, as now, the remains of the former bar hostess sit unclaimed.
And until last week, they were not even officially identified as Kim, although Siu never thought they were anyone else. They were in limbo, without final words or funeral.
On Thursday, Siu received the results of a sophisticated identification test by the U.S. Army's Central Identification Laboratory-Hawai'i, clearing the way for cremation and disposal.
After comparing a photograph of Kim to measurements of her skull, a technique called "super imposition," forensic experts provided a "presumptive identification."
Siu wasn't sure how to feel about it.
"I really tried to find her family," she said. "I worked and worked. It is bittersweet. We finally have her identified and she has no home to go to."
Kim vanished in 1994.
A hostess at Club Tube-rose, Kim left a suicide note, written in Korean, on the kitchen table and $5,000 in cash under the mattress of her Kane'ohe home. She was 40.
On Nov. 2, 1994, four days after she vanished, police found her car at the end of the road near Ka'ena Point.
In March 1994, when hikers found a skeleton along a Ka'ena Point trail, they also found a dirty, weathered purse nearby that contained Kim's wallet and ID.
But there was no next-of-kin to contact, so no one could claim the remains. And without medical or dental records, no way to positively identify them.
The file was placed with other similar cases, the bones carefully packed away in a box until Siu found them last spring.
Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8012.
