Speaker 1: Diversion audio. A note this episode contains mature content and
Speaker 1: descriptions of violence that may be disturbing for some listeners.
Speaker 1: Please take care in listening. There's nothing like being on
Speaker 1: a college campus during the final week of classes. The
Speaker 1: relaxing exhale of summer is right around the corner, and
Speaker 1: the energy of what's next bubbles up in every conversation
Speaker 1: and social circle. For students of Harvard, there's an added
Speaker 1: pride in having completed another semester. At an ivy league.
Speaker 1: On Saturday, May twenty seventh, nineteen ninety five, two young
Speaker 1: women in Harvard's Dunster House dorm building were celebrating the
Speaker 1: end of a long, hard year. The women were juniors,
Speaker 1: both pre med and both immigrants to America with dreams
Speaker 1: of becoming doctors. Decades of dedication, sacrifice, and faith had
Speaker 1: brought them here to the world's most prestigious institution, and
Speaker 1: they were a source of immense pride for both of
Speaker 1: their families. That the girls would meet in a science
Speaker 1: class their freshman year and end up roommates seemed like fate.
Speaker 1: Both had made journeys of many thousands of miles to
Speaker 1: end up in Massachusetts and they must have felt like
Speaker 1: kindred spirits. But while from the outside their similarities were
Speaker 1: impossible to deny, the girls' inner worlds couldn't have been
Speaker 1: more different. While one found purpose and thrived in her
Speaker 1: college environment, the other struggled to find a place. While
Speaker 1: one made strong friendships and found community, the other grew
Speaker 1: isolated and distant from her loved ones. What started as
Speaker 1: a fated friendship after a while became estranged. Admiration turned
Speaker 1: to jealousy, good will turned to resentment, and late on
Speaker 1: that Saturday night in May nineteen ninety five, when the
Speaker 1: air was thick with anticipation of good things, one girl
Speaker 1: saw the end of her world. Other residents of Dunster
Speaker 1: House would wake up the next morning to screams coming
Speaker 1: from the girl's dorm room. Harvard campus security in Cambridge
Speaker 1: police would be called in. The gruesome scene they would
Speaker 1: find on the other side of that door would be
Speaker 1: like something out of a nightmare. But the two women,
Speaker 1: for their families and for the university, Welcome to the
Speaker 1: greatest true crime stories ever told. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer.
Speaker 1: Today's episode we're calling Harvard's Forgotten Murder Suicide. It's the
Speaker 1: story of a friendship gone wrong, the limits of human ambition,
Speaker 1: and the dark underbelly of the American dream. Because the
Speaker 1: thing they don't tell you about having your greatest dream
Speaker 1: come true is what to do with yourself afterwards. We'll
Speaker 1: get into all of that right after this quick break.
Speaker 1: The college experience is so much less about academics than
Speaker 1: you think it's going to be when you're eighteen. It
Speaker 1: isn't until you're well out of school that you realize
Speaker 1: that the most important lessons you learned during those years
Speaker 1: were how to be a normal, functioning adult in the world,
Speaker 1: one who knows how to make friends, form a community,
Speaker 1: and take care of themselves. It's a time to figure
Speaker 1: out where you fit inside this much bigger pond, and
Speaker 1: it's something that doesn't come easy for a lot of kids.
Speaker 1: I know this from experience. I showed up to a
Speaker 1: liberal arts school from suburban Georgia and had to answer
Speaker 1: the question where are you from? Twice, once to name
Speaker 1: my hometown and again to say where I was from from.
Speaker 1: It highlights your experience, or at least other people's experience,
Speaker 1: of you. Introducing yourself means explaining parts of you that
Speaker 1: you've never had to earn articulate before. But my experience
Speaker 1: was nothing compared to the task that immigrant and international
Speaker 1: students face when they come to college in America. Not
Speaker 1: only are they learning how to handle new levels of
Speaker 1: academic challenge, but many also carry the dreams of proud
Speaker 1: and expectant families being there, finding your place, making the
Speaker 1: most of the unparalleled opportunities in front of you after
Speaker 1: decades of sacrifice in single minded dedication is a big
Speaker 1: task for an eighteen year old. Reconciling your past self
Speaker 1: with the person you're becoming is one of the greatest
Speaker 1: transformations any person can experience. The story I'm going to
Speaker 1: tell you today is about the limitations of the human
Speaker 1: psyche when those needs of community and social connection aren't met,
Speaker 1: even in a place as picture perfect as Harvard. Sinnadu
Speaker 1: Taedessa had big dreams for her life from the very beginning.
Speaker 1: She was born and raised in Addis Ababa in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five, the capital of the world's third poorest country
Speaker 1: at the time, Ethiopia. Walking those crowded streets of Addis Ababa,
Speaker 1: you'd see livestock, hungry mothers with outstretched hands, and malnourished
Speaker 1: children selling trinkets. In public schools, students sat on dirt floors,
Speaker 1: dozens and dozens to a class. Books and supplies were
Speaker 1: a luxury, but Sinnadu Taedessa was fortunate. As a member
Speaker 1: of an elite class, her family had the resources to
Speaker 1: send her to one of Oddis Ababa's coveted Internet schools. There,
Speaker 1: she was given opportunities. Few Ethiopians had English instruction, rigorous
Speaker 1: courses preparation for university in America. The gravity of this
Speaker 1: opportunity was not lost on Sinadu. While her country buckled
Speaker 1: under the weight of a political turmoil, warfare, and famine,
Speaker 1: Sinnadu studied. One of her English teachers remembered her as
Speaker 1: being quote quiet and demure, academically focused to the point
Speaker 1: of tunnel vision, and she was successful. In fact, Sinnadu
Speaker 1: wasn't just good in school, she was exceptional. During her
Speaker 1: senior year of high school, she was named the number
Speaker 1: two student in all of Ethiopia. Her high school guidance
Speaker 1: counselor said, you couldn't tell her that academics weren't everything,
Speaker 1: because they were. They were her ticket out. The day
Speaker 1: she received her acceptance letter and a full scholarship to
Speaker 1: Harvard was the happiest day of her life. She would
Speaker 1: go to America, get the best education money could buy
Speaker 1: from the world's most prestigious institution, and return home a doctor.
Speaker 1: But the way Harvard looked in Sinnadu's dreams was a
Speaker 1: lot different than her reality. Accustomed to being exceptional, she
Speaker 1: found classes difficult. The reinforcement and praise she was used
Speaker 1: to receiving for her efforts didn't come. Far from standing out.
Speaker 1: She struggled to make bees. The cold Massachusetts weather depressed her,
Speaker 1: and she felt deeply isolated. Visiting her family in Ethiopia
Speaker 1: was out of the question financially. The only person she
Speaker 1: knew on campus was neb, a smart and popular classmate
Speaker 1: of hers from the International School, but the two of
Speaker 1: them didn't run in the same social circles. Learning how
Speaker 1: to make friends wasn't something Sinna Dou had spent much
Speaker 1: time doing. Now she not only had to learn how,
Speaker 1: but do so among young adults who had grown up
Speaker 1: with entirely different customs, cultural references, and social etiquette. When
Speaker 1: she didn't have friends to confide in, Sinadu would divulge
Speaker 1: her feelings in her diary and journals. One of her
Speaker 1: spiral notebooks was labeled My Small Book of Social Rules.
Speaker 1: In it, Senadu wrote pages and pages of numbered instructions
Speaker 1: for how to address the problems she was facing socially,
Speaker 1: things like what to discuss with the other students in
Speaker 1: the cafeteria Every morning when you wake up, you have
Speaker 1: to come up with three fat topics of conversation. This
Speaker 1: is always your greatest problem, so deal with it properly,
Speaker 1: one entry said. But as the diary goes on, her
Speaker 1: words take on a more paranoid tone. One said, do
Speaker 1: not show off what you really think. Put on a mask.
Speaker 1: These social exercises didn't seem to bring sinnad much success, though.
Speaker 1: The summer after her freshman year, Sinadu reached a point
Speaker 1: of desperation. In a baffling move, she sent a letter
Speaker 1: to a stranger at Harvard's law school pleading for help
Speaker 1: making friends. The glimpse this letter gives into sinad psyche
Speaker 1: is honestly fascinating and frankly, she writes, beautifully, I'm going
Speaker 1: to take a minute to read a few paragraphs from it.
Speaker 1: Why am I writing this letter because I am desperate.
Speaker 1: As far as I can remember, my life has been hellish.
Speaker 1: Year after year, I became lonelier and lonelier. When I'm
Speaker 1: with a group of people, I keep so quiet. I
Speaker 1: have nothing to say that I send the chills through
Speaker 1: those who notice me. Then I cry when people forget
Speaker 1: about me or dislike being with me. When I'm with
Speaker 1: one person, I shake with nervousness, fearing that we will
Speaker 1: run out of things to say, or she or he
Speaker 1: will be bored. For math, I had a teacher for painting.
Speaker 1: I had a teacher for social life. I had no one.
Speaker 1: All you have to do is give me a hand
Speaker 1: and put into words what you already know. All it
Speaker 1: takes is a few hours from your week and some energy.
Speaker 1: Please do not close the door in my face. Even
Speaker 1: if you are not interested. Please give this letter to
Speaker 1: a friend or relative who might be We don't know
Speaker 1: much about who the recipient of this letter was, but
Speaker 1: what we do know is that they forwarded it to
Speaker 1: a dean at Harvard, who then placed it in Sinedu's
Speaker 1: file and left it at that, no investigation, no follow up.
Speaker 1: To be fair, this was probably unlike anything the dean's
Speaker 1: office or student health services had ever seen before, but
Speaker 1: still it's a literal cry for help. More on the
Speaker 1: student health services later, though. There was one bright spot
Speaker 1: in Sinnidu's freshman year. It came in the form of
Speaker 1: another student named Trang Ho, whom Sinnadou met in her
Speaker 1: science class. The two had a lot in common. Both
Speaker 1: were polite, hard working biology majors who had moved to
Speaker 1: America from across the world. Both had risen from humble
Speaker 1: circumstances to become valedictorians of their high school graduating classes,
Speaker 1: and both dreamed of becoming doctors. Trang was born near
Speaker 1: Saigon in nineteen seventy four, just five months before the
Speaker 1: culmination of the Vietnam War. Both of Treng's parents were
Speaker 1: sent to re education camps in the wake of the war,
Speaker 1: and in nineteen eighty four, when Treng was ten, they
Speaker 1: made the difficult decision to attempt to escape Vietnam for
Speaker 1: a better life abroad. Treng, her older sister, and their
Speaker 1: father went first Under the cover of night, they crammed
Speaker 1: inside a small boat along two hundred and sixty five
Speaker 1: other refugees. Their destination was Indonesia, where they'd stay in
Speaker 1: a refugee camp for a few months and hopefully continue
Speaker 1: on to America. The boat was so crowded that the
Speaker 1: passengers were forced to stand for seven days. At the
Speaker 1: refugee camp, mister ho gave the girls English words to
Speaker 1: learn to prepare them for their life in America. At
Speaker 1: first it was ten or twin words, and later nearly
Speaker 1: one hundred a day. Mister Hoe knew about the famous
Speaker 1: universities on the East Coast, and in nineteen eighty six
Speaker 1: he settled his family in the Boston area, hoping to
Speaker 1: send his daughters to one of the IVY leagues one day.
Speaker 1: Like Sinadu, Train took her studies very seriously. Once as
Speaker 1: a young student, when she found herself stuck on a
Speaker 1: homework problem, she called nine one one to ask her help.
Speaker 1: The dispatcher told her that someone would call her back,
Speaker 1: and when her father answered the phone a few minutes later,
Speaker 1: he heard a policeman on the other end asking for
Speaker 1: the little girl who needed help with her assignment. But
Speaker 1: unlike Sinadou, Train didn't seem to have a problem forming friendships.
Speaker 1: Her teachers would later describe the joy and excitement she
Speaker 1: found in learning. All through high school, she tutored her classmates.
Speaker 1: By the beginning of her sophomore year at Harvard, Trang
Speaker 1: had established a solid group of friends and was thriving.
Speaker 1: Her grades were good, and she seemed well on her
Speaker 1: way to the goal of medical school. A few weeks
Speaker 1: before meeting Trayng in that science class, Sinadu had been
Speaker 1: hurt to find that her then roommate wanted to live
Speaker 1: with someone else next year. Finding yourself without a roommate
Speaker 1: at the end of the spring semester is a tough
Speaker 1: blow for anyone, but it must have been especially tough
Speaker 1: for Sinadu, who was struggling so hard socially. Treng was kind,
Speaker 1: and it's not difficult to imagine how the two must
Speaker 1: have formed a connection around their similar upbringings and dreams
Speaker 1: for the future. Sinadou decided to ask Trang to be
Speaker 1: her roommate, and Trang agreed. Sinadu was overjoyed. Perhaps this
Speaker 1: would finally be the chance for the kind of close
Speaker 1: friendship that had always been beyond her grasp. In her
Speaker 1: diary entry from that week, Sinnadu wrote, the last four
Speaker 1: days were the highlight of my life thus far in Harvard.
Speaker 1: My roommate problem was solved in the best way possible
Speaker 1: with a girl I thought I would really enjoy to
Speaker 1: be with with a girl I would make the queen
Speaker 1: of my life. Sinadu would later tell her father she
Speaker 1: had found a best friend. Unfortunately, Trang seems to have
Speaker 1: had no idea of the role she was playing in
Speaker 1: her new roommate's life. The high hopes Sinnadu had for
Speaker 1: her friendship with Treyng would never come to be. Far
Speaker 1: from being Sinnidu's new confidant, Treng was away from campus
Speaker 1: nearly every weekend, visiting her family who lived close by.
Speaker 1: Even more of a blow was the fact that Trang
Speaker 1: already had a best friend, her name was Tao. When
Speaker 1: Tao was twenty nine years old and working as a
Speaker 1: teacher in a nearby town, she too had emigrated to America,
Speaker 1: but only recently Trang had become her first friend. Here.
Speaker 1: The two would go shopping, and Trang would insist that
Speaker 1: they spoke English to help Tao learn. Tao would even
Speaker 1: stay over in Trang in Sinadu's dorm from time to time.
Speaker 1: Before long, this friendship became a source of jealousy for Sinadu.
Speaker 1: Sometimes she would even neglect to tell Trang about Tao's
Speaker 1: telephone messages to Senadou. Tao and Trang's friendship felt like
Speaker 1: another rejection, and little by little this feeling of rejection
Speaker 1: was hardening into something else else, something closer to anger.
Speaker 1: Sinadu's diary entry from a month into their living arrangement
Speaker 1: shows a sharp and alarming turn taking place in her
Speaker 1: mental space, on the way to depression and battered with
Speaker 1: pessimistic thoughts. Tray told me I am boring. I felt
Speaker 1: like I'm boring her. If I ever grow desperate enough
Speaker 1: to seek power and a fearful respect through killing, she
Speaker 1: would be the first one I would blow off. Reading
Speaker 1: words like this in someone else's diary, it's hard to
Speaker 1: know what to think of them. Was this a serious consideration?
Speaker 1: Was it sarcasm? How does a person shift from frustration
Speaker 1: and loneliness to murderous anger. Are these the kind of
Speaker 1: words that only become significant in retrospect, or are they
Speaker 1: a clear marker of a break from reality? These are
Speaker 1: questions I, unfortunately can't answer her. But what is clear
Speaker 1: is that Sinadu was having a hard time reconciling the
Speaker 1: dreams she had for her friendship with Tray and the
Speaker 1: reality that Treng was her own person with a busy
Speaker 1: routine and a well established social circle. Sinadu's anger grew,
Speaker 1: and as it did, so did the tension in the
Speaker 1: dorm room. By the middle of their junior year, Treng's
Speaker 1: patience with Sinadu was coming to an end. This was
Speaker 1: their fourth semester as roommates, and according to accounts from
Speaker 1: people who knew treg Sinnadu had become uncharacteristically and aggressively messy.
Speaker 1: She leave fruit peels out around the room to rot.
Speaker 1: Trein complained about Sinadu to her mother and sister, who
Speaker 1: asked if there was anything they could do to intervene,
Speaker 1: but Treng assured them she would handle it. She made
Speaker 1: up her mind to tell Sinadu that for their senior
Speaker 1: year she be rooming with someone else. She knew it
Speaker 1: would be a difficult conversation, but in the spring, when
Speaker 1: the deadline for next year's rooming decisions was approaching, Train
Speaker 1: got up the courage to break the news to Sinadu.
Speaker 1: Treng was right to be worried. Sinnadu was beside herself
Speaker 1: after their conversation. According to an article in The New Yorker,
Speaker 1: Sinadu followed Trang onto the street and into the subway
Speaker 1: after their conversation, pleading with her to reconsider. Sinadu even
Speaker 1: wrote Treng a letter saying that Trang would always have
Speaker 1: a family to go to, but Sinnadu had no one.
Speaker 1: Couldn't they just please finish out their time at Harvard together. Trang,
Speaker 1: whose impulse was always to be kind and accommodating, felt terrible.
Speaker 1: She asked her friend tal whether she was making a mistake,
Speaker 1: but Tao assured her that everything she was doing was
Speaker 1: completely reasonable. So she wrote Sinadu a note in response,
Speaker 1: I respect you, so you should respect my decision despite
Speaker 1: what happened. I hope that we can still be friends,
Speaker 1: it said. For Senadu, a boundary like this just wasn't acceptable.
Speaker 1: She retaliated by giving Tray the cold shoulder, a powerful
Speaker 1: gesture in their tiny shared space once. Senadu even refused
Speaker 1: to unlock the door when Treng was accidentally locked out,
Speaker 1: forcing her to call building security. Now, on some level,
Speaker 1: all of this feels like a serious overreaction, but I
Speaker 1: think it's worth taking a minute to consider this from
Speaker 1: Sinadu's perspective. Here, she was weeks before the start of
Speaker 1: her senior year, a time when most students had well
Speaker 1: established friend groups and were solidifying next year's living arrangements
Speaker 1: with people they really loved. Instead, Senadu would be added
Speaker 1: to the general roommate pool as a floater to be
Speaker 1: matched with someone else. She didn't know. She was probably
Speaker 1: feeling supremely lonely and maybe even embarrassed. These social failings
Speaker 1: of hers were now on display. For someone with so
Speaker 1: few emotional resources and so little community, this must have
Speaker 1: been really difficult. Of course, circumstances like this are no
Speaker 1: excuse for emotional warfare, but they may help give context
Speaker 1: to her behavior. According to doctor Randolph Catlan, chief of
Speaker 1: Harvard's Mental Health services during traying and Sinidu's time at
Speaker 1: the university, in cases of mental distress, where a person's
Speaker 1: quote self esteem is narrowly based, it becomes terribly important
Speaker 1: to feel there is one person who cares about you.
Speaker 1: If you take that person's rejection and as clear evidence
Speaker 1: that you as a person are not valuable, that might
Speaker 1: make you enormously angry. A primitive response to this is
Speaker 1: that you might want to destroy that person or yourself,
Speaker 1: or both. According to Sinideu's diaries, traying appears to be
Speaker 1: Sinnidhu's only source of emotional support at this time. Her
Speaker 1: name shows up again and again in the pages of
Speaker 1: her notebooks, but the truth was Sinnadu had others she
Speaker 1: could have turned to. Neb Sinnidhu's classmate from Ethiopia, who
Speaker 1: also went to Harvard, was in her same year. Her
Speaker 1: brother was also studying in the US by now, and
Speaker 1: she had cousins in the Boston area. Sinnidou told none
Speaker 1: of them about the loneliness she was facing or her
Speaker 1: sadness over losing traying as a roommate. Two weeks before
Speaker 1: the end of the semester, Sennadou methodically packed her computer
Speaker 1: into its original packaging and sent it to one of
Speaker 1: her cousins to use. She acquired two knives and a
Speaker 1: nylon rope. She sent her school photo to the staff
Speaker 1: at Harvard's student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, along with an
Speaker 1: anonymous note that read, keep this picture. There will soon
Speaker 1: be a very juicy story involving the person in this picture.
Speaker 1: Editors at the newspaper looked at the photo, unsure what
Speaker 1: to do before throwing it in the trash, only to
Speaker 1: phish it out a few days later, when its significance
Speaker 1: became very clear, Sinadu did one other thing that was
Speaker 1: totally out of character. During that last week of school.
Speaker 1: She called her friend Neb, whom she hadn't spoken to
Speaker 1: a unps. Sinadu invited him to brunch on Sunday, May
Speaker 1: twenty first, a week before the end of classes. According
Speaker 1: to Neb, when he sat down across from Sinadu at
Speaker 1: the restaurant, she was practically unrecognizable. She was brighter, lighter,
Speaker 1: wearing makeup, high heels and shorts, something she never did.
Speaker 1: In fact, in Ethiopia, shorts were considered disrespectful. Sinnadu was
Speaker 1: usually a modest dresser, and Neb was later quoted as
Speaker 1: saying that there was a profound change in the way
Speaker 1: she looked, and moved and carried herself. It was the
Speaker 1: happiest Neb had ever seen her. It was only after
Speaker 1: what happened in Dunster House a week later that the
Speaker 1: memory became a disturbing one for Neb. That week, Senedu
Speaker 1: turned in the final work for one class, on which
Speaker 1: she got an A, but didn't study for her next
Speaker 1: few classes. Students who saw her in the library said
Speaker 1: she looked distracted and distant. She would end up requesting
Speaker 1: medical forbearance for the rest of her exams and spend
Speaker 1: much of the next few days in bed. On Friday
Speaker 1: May twenty sixth, just a few days before the official
Speaker 1: end of the year, Trang invited her best friend Tao
Speaker 1: to stay the weekend at their dorm. Tao would offer
Speaker 1: moral support as Trang finished her exams and would help
Speaker 1: Trang move out once she was done. On Saturday, May
Speaker 1: twenty seventh, Trang left the dorm around ten am to
Speaker 1: study for the physics exam she'd be taking that evening.
Speaker 1: Was taking the same physics course, so Treng found it
Speaker 1: odd that Sinadu wasn't also studying that day. Instead, Sinnadu
Speaker 1: had been laying in her bed all day, knees to
Speaker 1: her chest, quietly crying. At this point, the two women
Speaker 1: hadn't spoken in months, but Treng hesitantly broke the silence
Speaker 1: to ask if Sinnadu was okay. Sinnadu waved her off
Speaker 1: without saying a word, so Treg left to focus on
Speaker 1: her exam. Once she was finished, Trang met Tao back
Speaker 1: at the dorm before heading out to celebrate together. They
Speaker 1: watched a movie in another friend's room until about two am,
Speaker 1: when they returned to tray in Sinadu's room to sleep.
Speaker 1: This time, they found Cinnadu lying face down on her
Speaker 1: bed with the light on. The two friends talked for
Speaker 1: a while in Trang's bed about how far each of
Speaker 1: them had come, the summer ahead, and their big dreams
Speaker 1: for the future. Sometime before eight am, the girls woke
Speaker 1: to an alarm. After realizing it was Sinnadou's, the two
Speaker 1: closed their eyes again. Tal heard the sound of running
Speaker 1: water coming from the bathroom before drifting back to sleep.
Speaker 1: Some time later, Tao awoke to see Sinnadu standing above
Speaker 1: Trayng's small bed, silently stabbing Trang with a five inch
Speaker 1: hunting knife. There was a glazed, determined expression on Sinnadu's face.
Speaker 1: Tal watched as Traying held up her hands to block
Speaker 1: the knife and cry out, but no sound escaped her lips.
Speaker 1: Tal sat up and tried to grab the knife from Sinnadu,
Speaker 1: but Sinnadu pulled it away, slicing through Too's hand in
Speaker 1: the process. That's when instinct took over. Tal rolled out
Speaker 1: of bed and stumbled toward the dorm room door. Her
Speaker 1: life was in danger. She had to escape. Blood from
Speaker 1: her hand smeared on the handle as she pulled open
Speaker 1: the door and dragged her body into the quiet hallway.
Speaker 1: Then she heard the sound she'd never forget, the heavy,
Speaker 1: self locking door clicking shut behind her. Towel was safe
Speaker 1: in the hall, but now only someone with a key
Speaker 1: would be able to get into that room, and the
Speaker 1: only two people who had a key were inside. Training
Speaker 1: was trapped in a panic. Towel ran down the hall,
Speaker 1: banging on doors, trying desperately to get someone's attention, but
Speaker 1: it was early in the morning on a Saturday, few
Speaker 1: students were awake. Finally, she got the attention of a
Speaker 1: student in the quad, who called the police. When officers
Speaker 1: entered the room, the first thing they saw was Traying
Speaker 1: lying lifeless on the floor with forty five stab wounds
Speaker 1: to her face, chest and legs. Sinnadu appe apeared to
Speaker 1: be missing until they checked the bathroom. There, hanging from
Speaker 1: the ceiling by the rope she'd purchased a week earlier.
Speaker 1: With Sinnadu's body, officers attempted to resuscitate her, but pronounced
Speaker 1: her dead just moments later. The initial story about the
Speaker 1: murder suicide that circulated in the media was one of
Speaker 1: confusion and disbelief. A Harvard official was quoted in The
Speaker 1: Boston Globe saying that there is no conventional motive. It
Speaker 1: is not about sex or revenge. There is no apparent reason.
Speaker 1: A New York Times piece ran with the headline Harvard
Speaker 1: deaths leave a puzzle whose central piece may never be found.
Speaker 1: People magazine wrote that quote, the sense of mystery is
Speaker 1: unlikely to lift any time soon. But how much of
Speaker 1: a mystery was it really? As we already know, there
Speaker 1: were plenty of signs that things were unraveling for Sinadu.
Speaker 1: She was withdrawing socially. She sent that pleading letter to
Speaker 1: the law school student asking for help making friends, and,
Speaker 1: as investigators would soon discover, Sinnadu was in fact receiving
Speaker 1: counseling from a therapist through Harvard's student health services, and
Speaker 1: had been for months prior to the stabbing. As more
Speaker 1: and more reporting came to light, the central question shifted
Speaker 1: from how could this have happened? To how much was
Speaker 1: Harvard to blame? Harvard was reluctant to comment, much to
Speaker 1: reporters in the weeks and months that followed, but not
Speaker 1: for the reason you might expect. Yes, Harvard is an
Speaker 1: elite institution that relies heavily on its reputation. But as
Speaker 1: it happened, the murder suicide occurred just a month after
Speaker 1: another murder scandal that had put the school in a
Speaker 1: very tough position. An applicant, Gina Grant, had been accepted
Speaker 1: into the newest freshman class when it was later discovered
Speaker 1: that she had bludgeoned her mother to death with a
Speaker 1: candlestick five years before. A great deal of debate ensued
Speaker 1: about whether a murderer should be admitted to Harvard. The
Speaker 1: answer turned out to be no, and Gina's acceptance was withdrawn,
Speaker 1: But having the school appear in headlines next to the
Speaker 1: word murderer had done enough pr damage. The last thing
Speaker 1: they needed was to figure out how to deal with
Speaker 1: another killing, this time on their own campus. Members of
Speaker 1: the Harvard community who were willing to speak to reporters
Speaker 1: revealed some stunning information. According to them, appointments with mental
Speaker 1: health professionals through Harvard Student Medical Services were few and
Speaker 1: far between in nineteen ninety five. According to an editorial
Speaker 1: piece from the Harvard Crimson, Making an appointment to see
Speaker 1: a mental health professional often took ten to fifteen days,
Speaker 1: far too long of a wait for someone going through
Speaker 1: a mental health crisis. On top of that, the most
Speaker 1: any student could get was one appointment a month. Students
Speaker 1: who were in need of long term therapy were referred
Speaker 1: off campus, as the school's health plan didn't cover treatments
Speaker 1: like this. In the year before Senadu's suicide, three other
Speaker 1: Harvard students had taken their lives, two of whom had
Speaker 1: lived in the same building. These rates were quote very
Speaker 1: unusual for the university, said Randolph Catlan Junior, who was
Speaker 1: chief of Harvard's mental health services at the time. All
Speaker 1: of this information led to a growing mistrust in Harvard's
Speaker 1: ability to support its students' mental health and raised questions
Speaker 1: about how much the school was to blame for what
Speaker 1: happened to train. But while in America, Sinadu's attack and
Speaker 1: suicide were spoken about in the context of mental illness,
Speaker 1: the story was much different in Ethiopia. This, as you'll remember,
Speaker 1: is where Sinnadu grew up and where her family still lived.
Speaker 1: When news of the stabbing reached Sinnidu's community, there were
Speaker 1: two common explanations for her actions. One was the belief
Speaker 1: that Sinnadu was a lesbian, perhaps in love with Traying,
Speaker 1: and so she did the right thing by killing herself
Speaker 1: and the object of her affection. I am not an
Speaker 1: expert on Ethiopian culture, but in the research we did
Speaker 1: for this story, I learned that the culture in Ethiopia
Speaker 1: is modest, predominantly Christian, and very conservative when it comes
Speaker 1: to LGBTQ issues. Mental health is also not commonly discussed,
Speaker 1: at least it wasn't in the nineties. Big life altering
Speaker 1: incidents like this one at Harvard were understood within the
Speaker 1: context of the traditional Ethiopian Orthodox framework that the Tedessa
Speaker 1: family and their community were brought up in. Sinadou was
Speaker 1: plagued by improper thoughts and feelings, and her decision to
Speaker 1: end things could be seen as a noble one. Whether
Speaker 1: or not her feelings toward Traying were indeed romantic isn't
Speaker 1: totally clear. Most seemed to think it was a platonic relationship,
Speaker 1: based on her diary writings, which mentioned dreams of a
Speaker 1: husband and children. The other potential explanation whispered about an
Speaker 1: Ethiopia was that Sinadou was possessed by spirits. According to
Speaker 1: an article about the murder in The New Yorker, spirit
Speaker 1: possession is regarded as a kind of consequence of leaving
Speaker 1: Ethiopia and living in the West Sinada. It was a
Speaker 1: good girl from a good family. It was plausible that
Speaker 1: the devil had taken hold of her and influenced her behavior.
Speaker 1: If she had stayed in Ethiopia, none of this would
Speaker 1: have happened, because the moment she started feeling unwell, her
Speaker 1: parents would have taken her to holy waters to be cleansed.
Speaker 1: In Ethiopia, possession is perfectly curable. In America, there are psychologists,
Speaker 1: but they can't address the possession of spirits, can they.
Speaker 1: Regardless of the explanation, Sinnidu's death was a tragedy for
Speaker 1: the whole culture. Two thousand people attended her funeral. Funerals
Speaker 1: are usually a major expense to an Ethiopian family, and
Speaker 1: church burials are normally not permitted for suicides because it
Speaker 1: is believed that the devil has claimed that soul forever,
Speaker 1: but Sinidu's family insisted on both, in large part because
Speaker 1: they believe that no no one really knows what happened
Speaker 1: to her. In an interview for the New Yorker article
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier, Sinadu's father explained to a reporter that
Speaker 1: I don't care what a hundred psychologists or one thousand
Speaker 1: police detectives tell me. I know my daughter did not
Speaker 1: commit these crimes. The stories we read, we do not
Speaker 1: believe something no one yet knows must have happened. One day,
Speaker 1: the truth will come to light. Who would know if
Speaker 1: not her parents, Her mother and I. We have been
Speaker 1: with her all her life. We ate from the same
Speaker 1: table every week. For the first forty nine days after
Speaker 1: training death, there was a service at the Vietnamese Buddhist
Speaker 1: temple in Boston. Relatives and friends came to pray that
Speaker 1: Treng's consciousness would be accepted for salvation and not reborn
Speaker 1: again on earth. Treng's mother was in a deep depression
Speaker 1: for months after Treng's death. She feared she did something
Speaker 1: gravely wrong in this life or a past one to
Speaker 1: have a daughter die this way. Treng's younger sister took
Speaker 1: a leave of absence from Tufts, where she was studying biopsychology,
Speaker 1: so she could better care for her broken mother. But
Speaker 1: she had plenty of healing to do herself. There is
Speaker 1: no one I talk to now, she said in the
Speaker 1: New Yorker article, I have lost my best friend, my
Speaker 1: life companion, my sister. Treng's father was also left broken
Speaker 1: in the aftermath of her stabbing. But while so many
Speaker 1: were quick to villainize Harvard for their lack of preparedness
Speaker 1: and failure to take responsibility for the incident, Treng's father's
Speaker 1: feelings about the school were complicated. Having train go to
Speaker 1: Harvard was everything the whole family had dreamed of and
Speaker 1: worked for. It is the future they envisioned when they
Speaker 1: left everything they knew in Vietnam and boarded that crowded
Speaker 1: boat twenty years earlier. Harvard will always be in my heart,
Speaker 1: her father said in an interview. For me, it is
Speaker 1: the best place and the worst place. There is one more,
Speaker 1: less talked about, but equally compelling explanation for Senadutdesay's fate.
Speaker 1: It's a theory that Mena de Messi, a PhD in
Speaker 1: political science and public policy, lays out in her paper
Speaker 1: titled Rethinking the American Dream The Cost of Coming to America.
Speaker 1: Doctor de Messi attributes Synadou's social and mental health challenges
Speaker 1: to a state she calls assimilation unaccomplished. Essentially, her argument
Speaker 1: is that the traditional rags to riches American immigrant narrative
Speaker 1: is incomplete and in some ways even harmful. It doesn't
Speaker 1: make space for the darker, less favorable aspects of making
Speaker 1: life work in America. In her words, there's a price
Speaker 1: one must pay to become an American quote, a price
Speaker 1: that tests the strength of one's mental stability and in
Speaker 1: some cases can lead to severe forms of depression that
Speaker 1: go unannounced or misconstrued. It's a fascinating concept because in America,
Speaker 1: if we look far enough into our own past, almost
Speaker 1: everyone's family is an immigration story. So why is this
Speaker 1: theory such a new one? Are we descendants just the
Speaker 1: product of accomplished assimilation? I have to think sort of
Speaker 1: decades of sacrifice, single minded focus, dreaming, fantasizing even about
Speaker 1: what life would be like in the United States must
Speaker 1: have left Sinadu's expectations for her time at Harvard impossibly high.
Speaker 1: Sinadu's success meant so much, not just to her, not
Speaker 1: just to her family, but to her whole country. Imagine
Speaker 1: the weight of that, the fear that by not fitting in,
Speaker 1: not thriving at the best college in the world. She
Speaker 1: was squandering a fantastic opportunity. Expanding the immigrant narrative to
Speaker 1: encompass these challenges could do a lot to prevent the
Speaker 1: kind of heavy self criticism and unhappiness that Sinadu experienced.
Speaker 1: It may have even saved Tranghoe's life. I'd like to
Speaker 1: shout out a few of the excellent sources I relied
Speaker 1: on for this episode. The first is a New Yorker
Speaker 1: article called The Harvard Student Who Killed Her Roommate, written
Speaker 1: by Melanie Thornstrom. It's a fascinating telling of the incident
Speaker 1: and a look at some of the angles of the
Speaker 1: story that other news outlets overlooked. The author of that article,
Speaker 1: Melanie Thornstrom, eventually expanded the piece into a book called
Speaker 1: Halfway Heaven Diary of a Harvard Murder, which is by
Speaker 1: far the most comprehensive and immersive exploration of this story.
Speaker 1: I highly recommend it. The rest of our sources can
Speaker 1: be found in our show notes. For information about this
Speaker 1: case and others we cover on the show, visit Diversionaudio
Speaker 1: dot com. The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told is
Speaker 1: a production of Diversion audio. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer and
Speaker 1: I hosted this episode. This episode was written by Grace Herman.
Speaker 1: Our show is produced by Emma Dmouth, edited by Antonio Enriquez,
Speaker 1: Theme music by Tyler Cash. Executive produced by Scott Waxman.