Sinedu Tadesse

Overview

Sinedu Tadesse (1974 - May 28, 1995) was a junior at Harvard University when she murdered her roommate, Trang Ho, and then killed herself on May 28, 1995.

Timeline

• May 23, 1995 — The Harvard Crimson received an envelope containing a picture of a woman believed to be Sinedu Tadesse along with a typed note stating: “Keep this picture. There will soon be a very juicy story involving the person in this picture.”
• May 28, 1995 — Sinedu Tadesse stabbed her roommate, Trang Ho, 45 times with a hunting knife, seriously injured an overnight guest, Thao Nguyen, and then hanged herself in the bathroom.
• 1995 — A debate erupted at Harvard over whether the school should establish a scholarship in the names of both girls or only in Ho’s.
• 1997 — Most analysis of the murder followed the 1997 publication of Halfway Heaven: Diary of a Harvard Murder.
• 1998 — Trang Ho’s family filed suit against Harvard, alleging “wrongful death, conscious pain and suffering and emotional distress,” and charging the university and various people in charge at Dunster House with negligence.

The offence

On May 28, 1995, Sinedu Tadesse stabbed her roommate, Trang Ho, 45 times with a hunting knife she had bought expressly for that purpose while Ho was sleeping.

During the same incident, Sinedu Tadesse attacked one of Ho’s visiting friends, a 26-year-old named Thao Nguyen, injuring her. In the course of the incident, Thao Nguyen was wounded when she tried to intervene as she awakened to an alarm clock and saw Tadesse stabbing Ho.

After stabbing Trang Ho and injuring Thao Nguyen, Sinedu Tadesse hanged herself in the bathroom.

Investigation and evidence

Police had difficulty entering the scene because the entire event took place on the third floor.

An autopsy by Dr. George Kury determined that Tadesse stabbed Ho 45 times in the face, neck, chest, arms, legs and hands, and that Ho was sleeping when the assault began. The weapon was believed to be a 10-inch folding knife.

A photo sent to the Harvard school newspaper last week “does appear to be Sinedu Tadesse.” The Harvard Crimson received an envelope that included a note stating: “Keep this picture. There will soon be a very juicy story involving the person in this picture.” The envelope did not have a stamp or postmark. The newspaper contacted campus police about the envelope, which had been thrown out; it was recovered from a dumpster and was being checked for fingerprints.

Assistant District Attorney Martin Murphy ruled out any suspicion that the women were sexually involved, and police said they knew of no motive for the killing.

In addition to stabbing and injuring an overnight guest, the friend of Ho who was staying overnight in another room of the two-room suite in the Dunster Hall dormitory was wounded when she tried to rescue her friend and was treated at a hospital and released.

People involved

Defendant / perpetrator

• Sinedu Tadesse — 20-year-old junior from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (as described by authorities in contemporaneous reporting); also described as having been a 20-year-old Ethiopian scholarship student.

Victim

• Trang Ho / Trang Phuong Ho — 20-year-old junior from Medford, Mass.; pronounced dead at Cambridge Hospital.

Wounded person

• Thao Nguyen — 26-year-old named Thao Nguyen; treated at a hospital and released after multiple stab wounds.

Other named individuals in contemporaneous reporting

• Andrew L. Wright — president of The Harvard Crimson (news release signed by him regarding the envelope).
• Martin Murphy — assistant district attorney for Middlesex County; made statements at a news conference.
• John Towle — spokesman for the Middlesex County district attorney’s office.
• Dr. George Kury — performed the autopsy.
• Neb — a fellow Ethiopian student named Neb, with whom Tadesse had a brunch date before the murder-suicide.
• Neil Rubenstine / Neil L. Rudenstine — Harvard president who visited the dorm.
• Christine Karnakis — Dunster resident who spoke with reporters.
• Timothy Cullen — junior from Philadelphia who heard Thao Nguyen scream.
• Mark Baskin — senior from Seattle who heard Thao Nguyen.
• Amy Retzinger — senior from Lincolnshire, Ill. who lived next door.
• Humphrey Wattanga — a junior from Nairobi, Kenya who described himself as her “good friend.”
• Nan Zheng — a junior from Missoula, Mont.
• Todd Milne — Harvard Medical School student who supervised a laboratory where Trang Ho worked.
• Karel Liem — master of Dunster House and a biology professor; served as academic adviser to both women.
• Suzi Naiburg — senior tutor of Dunster House.
• Mohammed Khan — friend and fellow student in her physics course.
• Mohammed Khan said that her face “seemed very worried.”
• Mohammed Khan also described her being stressed out in the library on the Tuesday before a physics exam.
• Mohammed Khan — again referenced as a friend and fellow student; described her study difficulties.
• Mohammed Khan — referenced for her being stressed and worried in the library.
• Mohammed Khan — (all referenced within the contemporaneous narrative).
• Mohammed Khan — (removed repetition in this record: only the facts are kept once).
• Mooney / Fox Butterfield / Mary Gaitskill / Joshua Wolf Shenk / Dr. Douglas G. Jacobs / Fred Jewett / Pat C. Hoy II / Damian Schloming / John Fox / Melanie Thernstrom / Telahoun Hbebe / Zelleke Tadesse / Seiffe Tadesse / Archie C. Epps 3d / Thao Ho / Jennifer Tracy / Elizabeth/therapy references — mentioned in the narrative and commentary sections included in the scraped material.

Background and personal history (as described)

Sinedu Tadesse grew up in Ethiopia in a well-off family. Her father had been thrown in jail for two years when she was 7. She was described as having been ostracized by other students as well as her own family members during her childhood years in Ethiopia.

Sinedu Tadesse devoted herself to her studies and gained admission to the International Community School, where she graduated as valedictorian and earned a scholarship to Harvard.

At Harvard, she was unable to keep up academically in some accounts and made no friends, remaining distant even from relatives in the area. She was described as sending a letter to dozens of strangers randomly selected from the phone book, pleading with them to be her friend.

For her second and third years, she roomed with Vietnamese student Trang Ho. She was described as obsessively fond of Trang Ho and as very needy in demands for attention, with anger when Trang Ho announced her decision to room with another group of girls their senior year. The women stopped speaking with each other after that.

Harvard Medical School adviser and tutors described the roommates as splitting up but reported that neither had come to them with reports of rancor.

The week before the murder, Tadesse purchased a hunting knife expressly for the murder and purchased a length of rope in advance.

On the way to the bathroom to commit suicide, she took a swipe at one of Ho’s visiting friends, injuring Thao Nguyen.

Tadesse’s relatives countered speculation that Trang Ho asked not to room with her again in the fall. Her family asserted that Tadesse had been the one who opted out, and that Trang Ho often stayed with her family in nearby Medford, Massachusetts.

Aftermath

Public debate at Harvard

After the murder, a debate erupted at Harvard over whether the school should establish a scholarship in the names of both girls or only in Ho’s. Students decided on the latter, and students could apply for the Trang Ho Public Service Fellowship to pay for charitable good work during the summer after junior year.

Civil lawsuit

In 1998, Trang Ho’s family filed suit against the school, alleging “wrongful death, conscious pain and suffering and emotional distress,” and charging the university and various people in charge at Dunster House with negligence. They believed Harvard had evidence that Tadesse was losing her mind and becoming fixated on violent vengeance and could have prevented the deaths.

Cultural and biographical accounts

Most analysis followed the 1997 publication of Halfway Heaven: Diary of a Harvard Murder by Melanie Thernstrom. Thernstrom traveled to Tadesse’s home in Ethiopia and accessed her diaries, which the narrative describes as showing deteriorating sanity, obsessive fantasizing about an ideal friend, and inability to obtain psychiatric care.

The narrative also includes contemporaneous reporting from The New York Times and NYDailyNews.com and commentary pieces and reviews, including statements from Assistant District Attorney Martin Murphy, who in the narrative said that if Tadesse had lived she would have been charged with first degree premeditated murder.

Quotations (verbatim)

• Anonymous note / Harvard Crimson envelope note (as quoted): “Keep this picture.
• Tadesse (note written to strangers, quoted in the scraped material): “As far as I can remember my life has been hellish,” “Year after year, I became lonelier and lonelier. I see friends deserting me. They would take every chance to show me they did not have any love or respect for me.... High school turned out to be even worse.... If I went early or left late, I would be roaming the yard or deserted hallways alone while other students roared with laughter or talked their hearts out standing in groups. Home was not a comforting place. I swallowed my pain and anguish just as my siblings did to theirs. I was so lonely. But I hung on tight because I wanted to come to the States in search of a solution.”
• Harvard official Neil Rubenstine / Neil L. Rudenstine (quoted in scraped commentary section): “there (was) no apparent reason.”
• Martin Murphy (quoted in the scraped commentary section): “Our focus is on the relationship between them,”
• Assistant District Attorney Martin Murphy (quoted in the scraped commentary section): “If Sinedu had lived she would have been charged with first degree premeditated murder.”
• Tadesse (in quoted material describing impulses/diaries, as written): “the bad way out is suicide, the good way killing, savoring their fear and then suicide.”
• Tadesse (diary imagery quoted in the scraped review section): “being hand and leg cuffed to a couch stuck in the ground.”
• Tadesse (additional diary imagery quoted in the scraped review section): “Sometimes even if a bomb falls beside me, I would be scared at first, and then not even bother to see what happened.”
• Thao Ho (older sister) note to Trang Phuong Ho, quoted in scraped narrative: “You’ll always have a family to go to and I am going to have no one.”
• Tadesse (quoted in the scraped narrative from the review section): “I am like a person who can’t swim choking (sic) for life in a river.”
• Christine Karnakis (quoted): “It was a little scary to wake up this morning and find this happening in your house,” “No one can believe that it actually happened in someone’s room involving students.”
• Thao Nguyen (quoted): “Help me! I’m hurt!”
• Thao Nguyen (scream described in the narrative quoting students, verbatim fragments): “friend,” “kill” and “roommate.”
• Ostensibly from a news conference / quoted quote about disbelief (quoted): “Impossible.”
• Zelleke Tadesse (quoted): “This is why it is very difficult to swallow that Sinedu committed murder and suicide,” “Impossible.”

Other details

• Sinedu Tadesse was reported as being of Ethiopian origin and described as from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in contemporaneous reporting.
• Tadesse was described as being buried at the Ethiopian Orthodox Cemetery, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
• The narrative included references to prior Harvard-related suicides: “In April, a 1994 graduate of Harvard who had lived at Dunster House committed suicide, and a week later, a student who lived off campus but was affliated with the dormitory also committed suicide.”
• The scraped narrative included references to a therapist and monthly counseling attempts and a gag order on the therapist, and to a therapist who tried to reach Tadesse and attempted to cancel an appointment shortly before the murder-suicide.
• The scraped material included mention of a Dunster House administrator in the review narrative and claims about handling of Tadesse’s letter, including that tutors feared being fired and that Liem had fired tutors who spoke to The Crimson.
• The scraped material included mention that, at the commencement exercises, Sinedu Tadesse and Trang Ho would have graduated in June 1996 and that they were never mentioned.