Nagging Clues Keep Mystery Case Open -- Bellevue Woman Missing For 5 Years

BELLEVUE - Five years ago, Juddy Rang Oh vanished from a motel room at Harrison Hot Springs in British Columbia.

The circumstances surrounding the disappearance of the 52-year-old Bellevue woman are still unclear. But information added to the court files over the years sheds a little more light on the mystery, a case described by one investigator as the most frustrating of his career.

On Sept. 17, 1990, Juddy Oh and her husband, John, checked into the South Shores Motel at Harrison Lake for a church retreat. John Oh told police he returned to Bellevue the next day, then went back to the motel two days later and found his wife gone.

At first, the case received little publicity. But as Royal Canadian Mounted Police began probing, the search ballooned from a missing-person case into a suspected homicide.

Police learned that John Oh, also known as Yong Nam Oh, had been acquitted by a jury of a triple murder charge in Houston in 1979, had been a suspect (but never was charged) in the 1983 shooting death of his first wife, Dal Soon Oh, near Houston, and was questioned in the 1985 shooting death of his second wife, Hye Yun Oh, near Texarkana, Ark.

Charges were not filed in the Juddy Oh case, which remains open.

"In over 25 years of police work, without a doubt, this was the most interesting, self-satisfying, yet frustrating case I ever worked on," said RCMP Cpl. Dave Wright, who headed the investigation into the Oh disappearance until he retired in 1992.

Three years ago, John Oh left the Pacific Northwest and now lives in California, according to his local attorney, Clay Terry. Although the two no longer are in touch, Terry said he learned that Oh married again in 1993.

John and Juddy Oh had moved to Bellevue in 1988 and were active in the Bellevue Lions Club and the Korean Phillipi Presbyterian Church of Seattle, where she was a group preacher and he was an elder. John Oh ran a time-share-condominium business.

After John Oh reported his wife missing in British Columbia, Bellevue police assisted RCMP detectives in serving search warrants on the Ohs' home, boat and phone records.

On both sides of the border, police could not verify Oh's account of his wife's disappearance.

Oh told Canadian authorities his wife had talked of going fishing with a "Rosa" and said his wife's purse and fishing gear were gone from their hotel room.

Police canvassed businesses and private homes during their search but never found a woman named Rosa. They used a helicopter and dog teams to search the shores of Harrison Lake, and probed the cold waters around places where people would fish.

In search-warrant affidavits, Wright noted that Oh gave investigators conflicting information:

-- He said his wife had been wearing a 2.5-carat diamond ring when he last saw her, but police discovered he had a 2.5-carat ring appraised by a Seattle jeweler a month after she disappeared.

-- He said his wife had no close friends or relatives in North America, other than friends from church. But police found and interviewed her sister in Georgia, who said they spoke weekly by telephone.

-- Oh said he left Harrison Lake before dark the day after checking into the motel. Witnesses told police they saw his van, boat and trailer at the motel long after dark. One said the boat and trailer were dripping water.

-- He said his wife was wearing a blue jogging suit the last time he saw her. Police found a suit of the same description at their home.

Although they found no body, the Mounties believed they had sufficient reason to believe a homicide had been committed.

"There was all sorts of no-body evidence," Wright said. "We had everything laid out . . . reams of case law and evidence."

In January 1992, John Oh's teenage daughter from a previous marriage was placed in a foster home. Court papers say state Child Protective Services officials became convinced she was in "immediate personal danger." She eventually moved to a relative's home in California.

In May 1992, Oh the RCMP in U.S. District Court in Seattle alleging the Mounties caused him to lose contact with his daughter by making her fear that he would try to kill her. The suit is pending.

The search for Juddy Oh hasn't ended. Tim MacFarlane, who heads the Canadian Amphibious Search Team, a 15-member professional search-and-recovery volunteer group, resumed looking for her body last spring.

"Once everyone gives up, we take over," MacFarlane said. "We're not in a hurry anymore, and we can be more meticulous."

MacFarlane, a rescue specialist with the Canadian coast guard's hovercraft unit in Abbotsford, B.C., said his group has searched to a depth of 60 feet around Echo Island on the south end of the lake. And they looked again in late July while also searching for man who had fallen into the lake.

Next they hope to use an underwater video system, carried by a sled, which can work at a depth of up to 150 feet.

"The water is almost at glacial temperatures, and a body could probably still be preserved," MacFarlane said.