Police Say Little on Investigation Into Deaths of 4 Koreans

Los Angeles police continued to say little Monday about the slaying of four members of a Korean-American family in Granada Hills.

Representatives of Asian-American groups said they were frustrated by the lack of information on the killings, a case they said has deeply shaken the Korean-American community.

Investigators have been unusually silent since the bodies of Hee Wan Yoo, 36; his wife, Gyung, 34, and their children Pauline, 6, and Kenneth, 4, were discovered Wednesday.

Lt. Daniel Lang, the detective in charge of the investigation, has acknowledged only that there was no sign of a forced entry, that no weapon was found and that police had ruled out the possibility of murder-suicide.

Family and friends have said the couple’s bodies were found lying under a blanket on their living room floor, but police have refused to discuss that and other details. The killings were discovered by relatives who were called when Hee Wan Yoo, usually at work as early as 6:30 a.m., failed to arrive at the Koreatown dental lab he bought three years ago.

Detectives have consulted Downey police about an unsolved killing in which an elderly Korean woman was fatally stabbed in a relative’s home and found covered by a blanket, police sources said.

But Lang said Monday that the Downey case was only one of many avenues being pursued, adding, “It would be improper to draw any kind of parallel. We don’t look upon them as being connected.

“We’re going to take a look at everything and anything we can,” Lang said.

Because the entire family was killed, and for no obvious reason, detectives from the Police Department’s robbery-homicide division downtown were assigned to the case instead of detectives from the Devonshire Division.

The Los Angeles County coroner’s office has also refused to release details, attributing the cause of death to the cryptic phrase “multiple sharp-force wounds” without any explanation. Lang said the phrase meant that a sharp instrument was used, but he declined to elaborate.

Bob Dambacher, a coroner’s spokesman, said Monday that the coroner plans to seal autopsy reports until the case is solved.

The coroner released the family’s bodies Sunday, and a funeral is planned Saturday.

Grieving relatives say they are at a loss to explain why anyone would want to kill the hard-working, church-going family that moved to Granada Hills a year ago from an apartment in Koreatown.

The mystery has increased anxiety among Korean-Americans already uneasy over racial tensions with blacks exacerbated by the killing of a black teen-ager by a Korean-American grocer, leaders of Asian-American groups said.

“It generally does not help the morale. Everybody’s been talking about it within the Korean community,” said Jai Lee Wong of the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission. The Yoo murders, she said, have become “one of the No. 1 issues, along with the Korean-black conflict.”

“I certainly hope they will be able to solve this as soon as possible because it has put a tremendous amount of fear in the Korean community,” Wong said.