Harvard Student Kills Roommate, Then Hangs Herself

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - A Harvard premed student fatally stabbed her roommate, injured another woman and then killed herself yesterday in a rampage that occurred just days after a mystifying letter about the woman was mailed to the college newspaper.

After stabbing the two women, Sinedu Tadesse, 20, a junior from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, barricaded herself in a bathroom the students shared at Harvard's Dunster House residence hall and hanged herself.

Tadesse's roommate, junior Trang Phuong Ho, 20, of Medford, Mass., died at the dormitory of multiple stab wounds. The other victim, Thao Nguyen, 26, of Lowell, was a friend of Ho's who had stayed overnight in the room.

Nguyen, bleeding heavily from the hand and wrist, ran screaming from the second-floor room.

"I woke up at 8:30 to hear a girl out in Dunster Courtyard shrieking, `Someone's killed my friend! Someone's killed my friend!' " said Harvard junior Timothy Cullen, quoted in a special edition of the Harvard Crimson published yesterday afternoon. "It went on for three or four minutes."

Last week the Crimson received an envelope, note and wallet-size photo of Tadesse. The note stated: "Keep this picture. There will soon be a very juicy story involving the person in this picture."

Crimson editors discarded the items, but police recovered them yesterday after a search through the newspaper's trash.

Police said they were trying to reconstruct the events of Saturday night and investigating whether drugs or alcohol were involved in the incident. Nguyen told police that Tadesse and Ho had not fought during her stay.

Other dorm residents said they did not know of any history of enmity between the two, who lived together last year and chose to be roommates again. "They were the quietest people in the house. They never gave anyone a bit of trouble," said one student at the dorm, who asked that his name not be used.

Friends said Tadesse had seemed anxious and unhappy as the academic year came to an close, although she apparently she was in good standing academically.

"I saw her last week and she seemed quite frustrated in the library studying and sort of had a glazed look on her face," said a fellow premed student who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Student-on-student homicides, rare at any college, are almost unheard of at Harvard.

Harvard Police Chief Paul Johnson, who has been with the university for 12 years, said, "I can't be exact, but I believe the last murder of a Harvard student by another Harvard student occurred about 15 years ago."