Kyung Kim will not testify at her first-degree murder trial.
Instead, a jury Monday and Tuesday heard a taped interview
between Gilroy police and the 47-year-old Gilroy woman accused of
hiring a Hollister hit man to kill her husband.
SAN JOSE –– Kyung Kim will not testify at her first-degree murder trial.
Instead, a jury Monday and Tuesday heard a taped interview between Gilroy police and the 47-year-old Gilroy woman accused of hiring a Hollister hit man to kill her husband.
Reliving the April 28, 2000 interview was an emotional experience for Kim. At times, the sounds of her sobs on the four-year-old recording mixed with her sobs in the courtroom. Her daughter, son and sister in the audience also wiped away tears.
Kim’s husband, Young Kim, was last seen on Nov. 13, 1998. His body has never been found, but prosecutor Peter Waite convinced a jury in February 2003 that Gustavo Covian, of Hollister, was guilty of murdering him. This spring, two alleged accomplices – Covian’s brother and ex-wife – pleaded to voluntary manslaughter and got prison time.
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.
At one point in the recorded interview, Kyung Kim recalled to detective James Callahan the night her husband was last seen. She said she was sleeping in an upstairs bedroom with her son Daniel, then 12 years old, when
Gustavo Covian came to get her husband. “I think I see him, what (Gustavo Covian) did to … my husband,” she said.
“I got shaking so hard, … and I say, ‘How can you do that to me?’ Then he say that’s what I’m saying. I say, ‘I never say to do that.’
“He just stand there and he say I say so. He, he, he go to jail, I go with him. I said, ‘No, I didn’t do anything wrong,’ but he say, he, “No; I’m going, then you’re going, too.’ I’m scared for that.”
Kim denied asking anyone to kill her husband but told Callahan she paid Gustavo Covian at least $46,000 after her husband disappeared. He threatened to kill her and her children if she didn’t pay, she told detectives.
Recalling this was one of the most emotional parts of the interview for Kim. She broke down crying in the interview as she told Callahan that Covian said he knew people that could hurt her and her children even if he was in jail.
“He always threaten me, out, like, ‘I can kill you right there, and I know where is your house. … I know where is your Helen. I know where is Daniel, and I can break in your house.'”
Kyung and Young Kims’ 24-year marriage, arranged by family in their native Korea, was rocky by the time Young disappeared. Kyung and Helen Kim have said he drank often, made gambling trips of as long as a week to Mexico and Reno and sometimes hit his wife and daughter. He became agitated when business was slow at the restaurant the couple owned, and he sometimes smashed glasses angrily in front of customers.
Waitresses often wondered why Kyung didn’t divorce her husband, she told police in the interview, but she said divorce was not acceptable in their Korean culture. Both Kims had extramarital relationships, however, she admitted.
Also in the interview, Kim described to investigators a conversation she had at the restaurant with waitress and friend Maria Zapian, then Gustavo Covian’s wife, less than a month before Young Kim’s disappearance.
Zapian told Kyung Kim there were people who would be willing to kill Young for between $10,000 and $20,000. Kim said she thought Zapian was joking.
“I didn’t really take it serious,” Kyung Kim said. “I tell her, I don’t have money to do that.”
Kim told police she thought her statements might have led to her husband’s death, but she didn’t intend for them to be taken that way. She admitted to police she sometimes wished her husband would go away and never come back. Sandy Herman, a veteran waitress at the restaurant and a confidante of Kim, was present for part of the police interview.
Herman testified last week in the trial, saying she had heard Kyung Kim say she hated her husband and wished he was dead.
Kim’s defense attorney, David Epps, called only two witnesses: Gustavo Covian’s brother Octavio and a San Benito County dairy farmer who fell victim to a botched home-invasion robbery orchestrated by Gustavo. Prosecutor Peter Waite called 21 people to the witness stand.
Among these were Alaina Rentie, who was in jail with Kyung Kim, and Waite’s investigator, John Kracht. Kracht said Rentie told him she had heard Kim confess to hiring Gustavo Covian to kill her husband, but Rentie denied this on the stand.
According to Kracht, Rentie said Kyung Kim phoned Gustavo to alert him that Young was coming home, then waited upstairs while Gustavo and others accosted her husband.
“She did not want to know the details,” Waite said.
Witness testimony wrapped up Tuesday and Superior Court Judge Robert Ambrose dismissed the jury until Thursday, when the lawyers will give their closing statements.
