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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2016 09-13 Sex offender's case might bring answers in St. Paul girl's 1993 disappearance PIONEER PRESS Sex offender’s case might bring answers in St. Paul girl’s 1993 disappearance More than 23 years since a St. Paul teenager vanished, police have received new information in the case. Hang Lee, 17, was last seen in 1993 with Mark Steven Wallace, a convicted sex offender. Police have said he is a person of interest in the case. Mark Steven Wallace in August 2016. (Courtesy Washington County Sheriff’s Office) Last month, when Washington County prosecutors charged Wallace in an unrelated kidnapping case, police heard from a woman whom the 54-year-old Wallace had confided in. The 20-year-old woman, whom Wallace is accused of terrorizing, said she became aware of a murder in St. Paul and asked Wallace about it. “Wallace stated, ‘She entered my business and never came out,’ ” according to the criminal complaint. And the 20-year-old woman told police that Wallace had said he would do to her what he had done to the girl in St. Paul, the complaint said. St. Paul police said their investigation into Hang Lee’s disappearance remains open. They didn’t comment Tuesday on the new information in the complaint. WHAT HAPPENED TO HANG LEE? Those who knew and loved Hang Lee continue to search for answers. Eileen Lee, who worked with Hang Lee at Wong Cafe, said she thinks of Lee often, but particularly when there are cases in the news about missing people, as with the recent discovery of Jacob Wetterling’s remains. “Hang always comes up in your mind right away and you go, ‘What happened?,’ ” Eileen Lee said. Hang Lee last left her family’s St. Paul apartment in January 1993. The Highland Park High School senior told her brother she was going to a job interview with a friend’s boss, who turned out to be Wallace. Wallace had a small painting business. Jan 7, 2014 screenshot from the website of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, showing Hang Lee in a photo circa 1993 and in an age-progressed image that shows what she might look like now, at age 36. (Courtesy image) Hang Lee never came home, and police soon looked at Wallace as a suspect. He has never been arrested or charged in connection with Hang Lee’s case. When Hang Lee disappeared, Wallace had been out of prison for about a year and a half after being convicted in two criminal sexual conduct cases. In one case, Wallace raped a 16-year-old girl in Cottage Grove who had gone with him on the promise of a job interview. He held a knife to her, tied her up and covered her eyes and mouth with duct tape, according to the criminal complaint. Wallace told the teen he would kill her and her family if she said anything about what happened, the complaint said. UNRELATED ACCUSATIONS In August, the Washington County attorney’s office charged Wallace, of Andover, with kidnapping, stalking and possession of methamphetamine. Police said they kicked open the door to a room at the Key Inn Motel in Woodbury on Aug. 13 and found a 20-year-old woman with Wallace. The woman said Wallace is the father of a high school friend and she’d stayed with him when she didn’t have a permanent home, but she said Wallace had become verbally and physically abusive, according to the complaint. The court document does not mention Hang Lee by name, but says a Woodbury police officer learned from an Anoka County sheriff’s deputy that “Wallace is the primary suspect in an unsolved homicide in Maplewood.” The victim in the Washington County case told police that Wallace had told her “how one can get rid of blood and what can cut through bone,” according the complaint. Police have said Wallace is a person of interest in the Hang Lee case, who remains classified as a missing person because there’s no proof of what happened to her. Wallace lived in Maplewood at the time that Hang Lee disappeared; police searched his property in 2009. Jan Mansell, an attorney representing Wallace in the Washington County case, said she doesn’t have information about the Hang Lee case because it’s Ramsey County’s jurisdiction. As for the new charges against him in Washington County, Mansell said, “Everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty.” ‘WE WANT HER FOUND’ Hang Lee was about 14 when she met Eileen Lee, who’s not a relative of hers, at the Rice Street restaurant run by Eileen’s family. At the small Wong Cafe, everyone pitched in and so did Hang: She served food, ran the cash register and helped clean. The teen had a good temperament — “a very nice girl,” Eileen Lee said. “She was a little gullible and we used to like to tease her,” she said. “She would laugh it off.” Hang Lee was supposed to work on the snowy night she disappeared, but she called Eileen Lee and told her she had a job interview. “I said, ‘OK,’ but then she didn’t show up the next day, which was really unlike her,” Lee said. Hang Lee’s brother, Koua Lee, has said that he hopes that his sister is alive, though he thinks the chances are slim because she would have contacted him if she could. “For Hang’s mother’s sake, we want her found and properly buried,” Eileen Lee said on Tuesday. “That would be the biggest thing.” Eileen Lee doesn’t know what to make of the new information in the criminal complaint against Wallace and whether it will bring closure to the case. “We’ll have to wait and see,” she said. “… He hasn’t said anything all these years, but if he did it, he should speak up.” HOW TO HELP St. Paul police ask anyone with information about the Hang Lee case to call them at 651-266-5903.