Over a decade after the conviction of Jerry Sandusky on charges of sexually abusing young boys, Penn State University is still trying to separate itself from the criminal acts of its former assistant football coach. Prior to 2011, the university was most recognized as a perennial college football power. Although still great on the gridiron, Penn State remains entwined with what was, prior to the gymnastics ignominies at Michigan State University, the worst sex abuse scandal in collegiate sports history.

Penn State, often referred to as “Happy Valley,” is also associated with another sad case that occurred a decade before the Sandusky scandal came to light, and which may also involve a sexual crime.

Following a Halloween party in the early morning hours of November 1, 2001, twenty-one-year-old Penn State student Cindy Song disappeared. She attended the Halloween party dressed as a bunny; she has been a ghost ever since.

Cindy Song

Hyun Jong Song, nicknamed Cindy, was born in Seoul, South Korea. She moved to the United States in 1995 to live with her aunt and uncle while attending high school in Springfield, Virginia. After graduating, she attended college at Penn State University in University Park, Pennsylvania, where she was a good student with a wide circle of friends.

Cindy was scheduled to graduate college with a degree in Integrative Arts in May 2002.

Korean Born;

American Educated

Halloween, October 31, fell on a Wednesday in 2001. That evening, Cindy and two friends, Stacy Paik and Lisa Kim, partied at the Players Nite Club near the Penn State campus.

Even though it was a school night, the young women were at the club until 2:00 on the morning of November 1. From there, they went to another friend’s house where they played video games until between 3:30-4:00 a.m.

After eating at a Uni-Mart, Stacy dropped the mildly intoxicated Cindy at her off-campus State College Parks apartment shortly thereafter. As she drove away, Stacy saw Cindy walking toward her apartment but did not see her enter it.

At the Halloween Party in Her Bunny Costume  

After partying all evening, it was not a surprise that Cindy did not attend her classes the following day. It was, however, unusual that she also missed Friday’s classes, and it was concerning that no one had heard from her by the weekend.

On Saturday, November 3, Stacy and Lisa searched Cindy’s apartment. Stacy had not seen Cindy enter her apartment after giving her a ride home, but it appeared her friend had done so. On her bathroom counter, they found the fake eyelashes she had worn as part of her bunny costume. Her backpack, which she had with her at the nightclub, was also in her apartment. Among the items inside it was her cell phone.

After Cindy failed to arrive for work at the Seoul Korean Garden Restaurant the following day, Stacy and Lisa reported their friend as missing.

No Word from Miss Song

Police found no signs of a forced entry into Cindy’s apartment, nor did they find any signs of a struggle. Her cell phone records showed no incoming or outgoing calls since she was last seen, and a check of her email produced nothing relating to her disappearance.

With the exception of the fake eyelashes, the bunny costume Cindy wore to the party was not found. Her keys, purse, and pocketbook, which contained her driver’s license and credit cards, were also missing. Her credit cards showed no activity since her disappearance.

Police and volunteers searched a wooded area near the Penn State campus but found nothing indicating what may have happened to Cindy. Bloodhounds also failed to pick up scent.

No Trace Either

Authorities initially believed a despondent Cindy may have disappeared of her own accord. Several weeks prior to her disappearance, her boyfriend, Richard Chae, had moved out of her apartment and ended the relationship. Cindy’s friends say she was depressed for a few days but was over the breakup by the time of the Halloween party at which, all attendees confirm, she was in great spirits.

Richard was cleared of any involvement in Cindy’s disappearance, as were all of her family members and friends.

Richard and Cindy

Police also considered the possibility that Cindy’s disappearance was drug related after finding entries in her diary describing experimentation with marijuana and ecstasy. They found no evidence, however, that she had used any drugs on the night of her disappearance and have now discarded the theory.

In searching her apartment, police found two tickets Cindy had recently purchased for an upcoming Britney Spears concert. Also found were several printouts for a computer she had recently ordered from a company in Burbank, California. The computer was scheduled to be shipped to her on November 6, five days after she disappeared.  In addition, Cindy had registered for classes for the following semester and had also recently submitted an application for a spring graphic design internship.

Ordering concert tickets, purchasing a new computer, and taking steps to further her education were not the actions of a person intent on disappearing. Investigators determined Cindy Song’s vanishing was not of her own volition.

Disappearance Not Likely Voluntary  

Cindy’s friends say she often shopped at a nearby twenty-four-hour Giant supermarket.  Her apartment door had been locked and authorities theorize she began walking to the store shortly after she was brought home by Stacy and was abducted en route. The store had twenty-four-hour videotape surveillance; the tapes did not show Cindy in the store at any time after her disappearance.

Because bloodhounds also failed to pick up Cindy’s scent along her likely path to the market, authorities theorize she was abducted shortly after exiting her apartment.

Probable Abduction

One week after Cindy disappeared, a sighting was reported of a woman resembling her inside a car in Philadelphia’s Chinatown district, approximately two-hundred miles from University Park. A young female was yelling for help and trying to get out of the car but was forced back into the vehicle by a man. Another woman says she attempted to intervene, but the man yelled at her and threatened her, which frightened her into leaving the area. She believed the woman to be Cindy Song, and she believed the man was also Asian, with a light-brown to olive complexion and medium length hair. Police sought to question the man regarding Cindy’s disappearance, but they never learned his identity.

In recent years, investigators have stated the woman’s story has changed several times and they are unable to confirm any of her statements. They now no longer believe Cindy Song was the screaming woman seen in Philadelphia’s Chinatown.

Composite of a Man Sought for Questioning

But No Longer Believed Involved in Cindy’s Disappearance

In 2014, thirteen years after Cindy Song’s disappearance, several sets of human remains were retrieved from the backyard of a Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, home, approximately one-hundred miles north of University Park.

The remains were believed to be those of between five to twelve people.

The Burial Home

The home with the backyard graveyard was that of convicted bank robber and suspected serial killer Hugo Selenski. Police had been told of the burials by recently convicted murderer Paul Weakley.

Weakley had admitted he plotted with Selenski in a double murder from a dozen years earlier and helped him bury the bodies.

                           Paul Weakley                       Hugo Selenski

The remains of local pharmacist Michael Kerkowski and his girlfriend, Tammy Fassett, were among those discovered in Selenski’s backyard in June 2003. Autopsies determined they had both been beaten with a rolling pin and strangled to death with flex ties.

Kerkowski had pleaded guilty to running a prescription drug ring that amassed over $800,000. He was about to be sentenced when he and Fassett were reported missing in May 2002.

Weakley told authorities he and Selenski beat Kerkowski to compel him to reveal the location of upwards of $60,000 he kept in his house. Fassett was at her boyfriend’s house when they arrived; she was killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Michael Kerkowski and Tammy Fassett

Hugo Selenski was convicted of two counts of abuse of Michael Kerkowski’s corpse in March 2006 but was acquitted of murder charges. Investigators, however, determined Selenski’s attorney, Shelley Cantini, and Private Investigator James Sulima, were involved in jury tampering and witness intimidation.

In 2015, prosecutors were allowed to retry Selenski as appeals judges ruled the Fifth Amendment’s Double Jeopardy provision did not apply due to the corruption. This time, he was convicted of the murders of Michael Kerkowski and Tammy Fasset and sentenced to life in prison.

Selenski Convicted

Weakley had also told investigators that Selenski and Kerkowski had a liking for Asian women and that Selenski boasted that after seeing Cindy Song in her semi-risque bunny costume, they mistook her for a prostitute and kidnapped her. The college student, Weakley says he was told, was beaten, raped, and imprisoned in a walk-in safe in Selenski’s home until she died and that her remains were among those buried in the backyard.

Paul Wheatley stresses he did not participate in and does not have any first-hand knowledge of Cindy Song’s alleged murder. The account is what he was told by Selenksi.

One of Selenski’s fiends also says he boasted of murdering Cindy Song. Selenski denies making the claims. Investigators state he is a person of interest, but they have not been able to link him to her disappearance.

Was Selenski Involved in Cindy’s Disappearance?

Authorities found no evidence Michael Kerkowski was involved in Cindy Song’s disappearance and believe, if Paul Weakley’s claims of what Selenski told him are true, Selenski fabricated the story because of his anger toward Kerkowski.

Weakley initially told police that Selenski had murdered Kerkowski because he had kept Cindy’s bunny ears as a trophy but later said he had been murdered for drug money. Despite these conflicting accounts, authorities believe Weakley is being truthful regarding what Selenski conveyed to him because Weakley’s claims to the identities of several other victims on Selelski’s property have been verified.

In exchange for leading police to the remains of Michael Kerkowski and Tammy Fassett, Paul Weakley was sentenced to life in prison instead of a possible death sentence.

Weakley Sentenced

Investigators say initial and subsequent DNA testing has shown none of the identified remains found in Hugo Selenski’s backyard are Cindy Song’s.

Many of the bones, however, remain unidentified. As the DNA technology continues to advance, further and more sophisticated testing of the remains may be conducted.

 

Awful End?

The murder of a woman and the disappearance of another in northeastern Pennsylvania, approximately one-hundred-thirty miles from Penn State, were investigated for a possible connection to Cindy Song’s disappearance.

Eighteen-year-old Jennifer Barziloski was last seen at an Edwardsville, Pennsylvania, bar on the evening of June 23, 2001, just over four months before Cindy vanished. In April 2010, her skull was found approximately ten miles away in Hunlock Township. Her cause of death could not be determined.

Shortly after Jennifer vanished, twenty-two-year-old Phylicia Thomas had told her mother she believed she knew who was responsible for her friend’s disappearance.  Three years later, Phylicia disappeared from her Lake Township, Pennsylvania, apartment, approximately twelve miles from the bar where Jennifer was last seen. She has not been found.

                                Jennifer Barziloski        Phylicia Thomas

At the time of Jennifer Barziloski’s disappearance in 2001, Steve Martin, a known associate of Hugo Selenski, was dating her sister and was friends with Ed Rudaski, Phylicia Thomas’s boyfriend.

Martin committed suicide in jail while awaiting trial on unrelated vehicular homicide charges in 2005. Though still called a person of interest, he was never charged in connection with Jennifer’s murder or Phylicia’s disappearance and nothing has been found connecting him to either case or to Cindy Song’s disappearance.

Steve Martin

Korean born Hyun Jong “Cindy” Song has been missing since November 1, 2001. She was five-feet-one-inches tall and at the time of her disappearance and weighed between one-hundred-ten and one-hundred-twenty pounds. She had black hair and brown eyes. Both of her ears and naval were pierced. Cindy had a tattoo of an elongated Pisces sign below her back waistline.

Cindy was last seen wearing a bunny costume comprised of a pink sleeveless shirt with a rabbit design imprinted on the front, rabbit ears, a white tennis skirt with a cotton bunny tail attached to the back, brown suede leather knee-high boots and a red knee-length hooded parka. The outfit has never been found.

If you have any information on the whereabouts of Cindy Song, please contact the Ferguson Township, Pennsylvania, Police Department at 814-237-1172 or 1-800-479-0050.

Sad Song

SOURCES:

• Centre Daily Times
• Charley Project
• Doe Network
• NamUs
• Penn Live
• Philadelphia Inquirer
• Pocono Record
• StateCollege. com
• Unsolved Mysteries