It’s been 16 years since police found the remains of the woman near High Bridge Road, but the police are still looking for clues.
Sun Nyo “Julie” Lee, 36, went missing from Bothell in 1990, and parts of her body were found eight months later.
Her killer was never found.
Now Lee’s face and story appear on a playing card, part of a deck of cards including details of Washington State’s most puzzling cold cases.
Those cards, financed by the Stillaguamish Tribes as a public service, have been placed in jails and prisons, in hopes that people with information may yet come forward.
The case of Lee is more puzzling than most. The Korean immigrant, then 36, had struggled since arriving in the United States. She had been arrested several times for prostitution and other street crimes, but on June 25, 1990, when she left her home in Bothell, she told others she was going to look for a job. She never returned.
Eight months passed. When she was finally found, it was because police were looking for someone else.
March 26, 1991, a county road worker found a scalp and an ear near High Bridge Road in the Tualco Valley of Monroe. They appeared to be about a month old. A month earlier, someone had found a human leg on the banks of the Skykomish River near Startup.
Police determined that the body parts belonged to the same person, a man. They searched the area where the ear had been found. When they did, they found more than they’d bargained for. Down a steep embankment form the edge of the road, 150 yards from the location of the ear, they found another skull. It had been there for at least six months.
It belonged to Julie Lee. Nearby, they found her handbag.
They never learned more.
“We haven’t been able to show how (the murders) are related,” said sheriff’s detective Jim Scharf.
Police even interviewed Gary Ridgway, the convicted Green River Killer who murdered a large number of prostitutes, about the crime, but he claimed no knowledge of it.
Now Lee’s face and story appear on the five of clubs in the deck of playing cards. Police hope someone out there still knows something, and will help them solve the crime.
“We are still investigating,” said Scharf.
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