It is now up to a jury to decide whether Kyung Kim should leave
jail a free woman or go to prison for first-degree murder.
SAN JOSE –– It is now up to a jury to decide whether Kyung Kim should leave jail a free woman or go to prison for first-degree murder.
In closing arguments Thursday before a full courtroom that included the defendant’s relatives from Gilroy and San Diego, prosecutor Peter Waite said the evidence proves the 47-year-old Gilroy woman not only hired Gustavo Covian of Hollister to kill her husband, Young Kim, on Nov. 13, 1998, but that she called Covian that night to arrange it and then stood watch from an upstairs window.
“She had an active role in the murder,” Waite said.
Waite said Kyung Kim and Covian were “business partners” until April 28, 2000, when Gilroy police arrested Covian and interviewed Kim – an interview in which she changed her story.
Kim’s defense attorney, David Epps, insisted she never asked anyone to kill her husband. In the 2000 interview, Kyung Kim told police Covian extorted tens of thousands of dollars from her by threatening to tell police she asked him to kill her husband. Covian also threatened to kill her and her two children if she didn’t pay, she said.
Epps argued that Covian and others kidnapped Young Kim that night at his home with the intention of robbing the safe at the Kims’ Gavilan Restaurant – now under new management as the Sunrise Cafe. The robbery was botched, however, Epps said; Young Kim had left the safe combination in his car.
Epps implied that Young Kim escaped this encounter alive. His body has never been found, and Epps argued there is no physical evidence he ever died. Prosecution investigators dug up the bed of Vibroras Creek in Hollister with a backhoe and used cadaver dogs, following tips that Young Kim might have been buried there, but they found nothing.
Epps said he doesn’t think Young Kim is dead. Instead, Epps said, Kim could be having “piña coladas on the beach” in Mexico with a girlfriend he brought from there to Salinas 10 years before he disappeared.
Waite called this hypothesis “nonsense” and “a smokescreen” to distract the jury. In February 2003, Waite convicted Covian of first-degree murder for killing Young Kim. Covian is now serving life in prison without parole, although he has an appeal pending. The fact that Covian was convicted was not allowed to be introduced as evidence during Kyung Kim’s trial.
This spring, two alleged murder accomplices – Covian’s ex-wife and brother – pleaded to voluntary manslaughter and were sentenced to prison.
Kyung Kim is the final defendant and could face life in prison without parole if found guilty. She has been in jail since her arrest in June 2001.
Kyung Kim waited 16 days before reporting her husband missing to police – and then she told them nothing about suspecting him dead until the 2000 interview, when police first arrested Gustavo Covian and his then-wife, Maria Zapian.
In that two-and-a-half-year interim, Kyung Kim paid Covian at least $46,000, borrowing money from family friends and bankrupting the restaurant, she admitted to police in the 2000 interview. Covian wanted $50,000 more, and she said she sold her house to get it but could not close the sale before police intervened.
“No doubt he drained her, he took more than he should have,” Waite said Thursday. “She made a very stupid mistake in hiring Gustavo Covian to kill her husband. … In no way is Mrs. Kim a master criminal.”
Waite said Kyung Kim solicited her husband’s murder in a conversation at the restaurant less than a month before he disappeared. He had just had a second car wreck, and she was angry enough to tell two waitress friends – one of them Zapian – she wished he had died. Zapian said there were people who could kill Young Kim for a fee of $10,000 to $20,000, Kyung Kim told police in 2000.
Epps said there is no evidence Kyung Kim took this as anything but a joke.
Why would Kyung Kim kill her husband? To get rid of his abusive, drunken ways and start life anew, Waite said.
The Kims’ 24-year-old arranged marriage had grown bitter, their daughter Helen confirmed on the witness stand. Young Kim was devoted to the business but also hit his wife and daughter, came home drunk, smashed glasses in the restaurant out of anger and went on week-long gambling trips to Mexico and Reno, Kyung told police in 2000.
She also told police that divorce was not an option in her Korean culture. More than 15 years before Young Kim’s disappearance, however, she left him temporarily and considered divorce.
Through divorce, Waite said, Kyung Kim would have lost half the couple’s property, partial custody of their children and respect from her Korean family.
Waite suggested Kyung Kim decided to have her husband killed after she began an affair with Gilroy High School counselor Frank Valadez.
“She had a new love in her life,” Waite said. “She could kill her husband and live with Frank Valadez and keep everything.”
