Palisades Park, NJ: Authorities: Palisades Park home site of murder-suicide

Monday, January 25, 2010
LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY JANUARY 26, 2010, 12:33 PM
BY JUSTO BAUTISTA AND WILLIAM LAMB
THE RECORD
STAFF WRITERS
14 Comments
PALISADES PARK — The bodies of a man and a woman were found in their second-floor apartment on West Harriet Avenue on Monday, victims of an apparent murder-suicide, authorities said.


GEORGE MCNISH / SPECIAL TO THE RECORD
A Palisades Park police car sits in front of a West Harriet Avenue residence earlier Monday.
The bodies of Sun Chu Cho, 78, and her husband, Dae Sung Kim, 79, were found by their son around 12:45 p.m., said John L. Molinelli, the Bergen County prosecutor. Molinelli said the son left work early, worried because he had not been able to reach his parents all morning by phone.

Cho, who Molinelli said had been partially bedridden since she suffered a stroke about 10 years ago, was in her bed, strangled with a necktie when her son arrived. Her husband, who had learned recently that he had prostate cancer, was found hanging by a necktie from a hinge on the apartment’s bathroom door, his body facing his wife’s, Molinelli said.

An envelope next to the couple’s bed had the words “suicide note” written on it in Korean, Molinelli said. Inside it was a note, handwritten in Korean by Kim, that detailed the physical discomfort of his cancer and apologized to the couple’s children. Kim did not mention his wife in the note, Molinelli said.

The son, whose name was not made public, was being interviewed by authorities late Monday, Molinelli said. The prosecutor said the couple also had a daughter.

The couple had lived in their second-floor apartment at the corner of West Harriet and Broad avenues for about two years, according to the superintendent of the three-story building. The superintendent declined to give his name.

The couple’s next-door neighbor, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Kim occasionally would speak to him in fluent Spanish.

“It’s a pity,” the neighbor said. “They were a nice couple, very quiet. I saw them once in a while. They pretty much kept to themselves.”

E-mail: bautista@northjersey.com and lamb@northjersey.com