CA CA - Eunsoon Jun, Murdered by Suspected SK, Richmond, 2002

The first time Elaine Ramos laid eyes on her cousin’s new boyfriend she sensed he was “pure evil.”

“She brought him to a New Year’s Eve party. I opened the door to him and it was the first time in my life the hairs on the back of my hand raised up. A chill came over me,” Ramos said.
“I couldn’t even reach out my hand to shake his hand. He was the creepiest person ever.”

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Within two years, Ramos’ cousin, a free-spirited chemist named Eunsoon Jun, was dead, her body found buried under kitty litter in the basement of her northern California home in 2002.

The boyfriend was charged with her murder, pleaded no contest and died in prison in 2010 -– and Jun’s family tried to forget about the domineering drifter who stole her heart and snuffed out her life.
Then about two months ago, police from New Hampshire called with disturbing news: They had uncovered evidence that Jun’s killer, known to her family as Larry Vanner, was tied to two icy-cold cases.

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Decades later, he surfaced in Richmond, under the aliases Larry Vanner and Curtis Mayo Kimball. Authorities say he went by Dr. Vanner as well. Jun, a Korean immigrant who had a master’s degree in chemistry from San Francisco State University, hired him as a handyman. He soon moved in with her.

According to records, the two became romantic. They had an unofficial wedding — with no certification — in the summer of 2001. It had a Star Trek theme.

Before long Jun began complaining to friends that her husband, who she knew as Larry Vanner, was lazy and not interested in getting a job or starting a family, according to court documents.
In May 2002, Jun went missing. Evans had multiple explanations for her absence: She had gone to Virginia, or to Oregon to work on a cabin. According to court documents, when one of Jun’s friends asked Evans why she had not shown up for an outing the two had planned, Evans said, “Wherever the (expletive) you guys were going, she’s not going.”

By July 2002, Evans had started using Jun’s credit card to make purchases.

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"Our Crimes Against Persons Detail received a missing-persons case for a woman named Eunsoon Jun," said Gruenheid.

Eunsoon Jun, a bio-tech worker, was reported missing by a friend after she hadn't been heard from in months. Contra Costa County Sheriff's deputies track down her live-in boyfriend, Lawrence Vanner.

"In Richmond, California, where he was working at a corner convenience store, they spoke with him and he agreed to come back to our office," said Gruenheid.
On the ride to the sheriff's office, Captain Gruenheid sits in the back seat of the patrol car with Vanner. They strike up a friendly conversation.

"Kind of, 'Where are you from?' Just making small talk. He stopped in his tracks what he was saying and he turned towards me and he got really close, kind of in my personal space in the back seat of the car, and he said 'That's none of your damn business,'" said Capt. Gruenheid.

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His reaction is odd, but so is something else: his name.
"The name 'Larry Vanner' or 'Lawrence Willam Vanner' that that he provided us, the name and the date of birth, there was no driver's license associated with it, there was no prior criminal history associated with it," said Gruenheid.
So who is this Lawrence Vanner?
"The detectives asked him if he would be willing to go down to our records bureau for fingerprinting, and he agreed to do that," said Gruenheid.
And when they run his prints, there's a match -- to someone else.
"He was identified as Curtis Mayo Kimball, and he had been absconded from parole for approximately 12 years. Upon learning that knowledge, he was under arrest and he was no longer free to leave," said Gruenheid.

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Gruenheid, at the department since 1991, served as a homicide detective for five years in the middle of her career. All those investigation files she left behind in cabinets elsewhere in the sheriff’s department, most of them resolved.

But one file has come with her, and remains in her office, even in these final weeks at the department: the 2002 murder of Eunsoon Jun. Gruenheid and the other detectives got their killer: the woman’s live-in boyfriend who was going by the name of Lawrence Vanner at the time.

But even though they got a guilty plea in the death of Jun, and he died in prison in 2010, Gruenheid could never shake the feeling that the killer with the piercing blue eyes and affable manner had many more victims in his past.

Her gut feeling was proven right two weeks ago, when authorities in New Hampshire made the startling revelation that Vanner was a drifter who had abducted a little girl—and likely killed four females found in barrels in the infamous cold case that has come to be known as the Bear Brook Murders.

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Gruenheid was a homicide detective in 2002 when a call came in. A friend reported to police that she hadn’t heard from her friend Eunsoon Jun in months—even though they had a lunch date she had never showed for. The sheriff’s missing persons crime unit had done a welfare check at the woman’s home in East Richmond Heights, an unincorporated community that overlooks the northern part of San Francisco Bay.

The live-in boyfriend, a man going by the name of Larry Vanner, told the investigators that she was out of state. He appeared to be cooperative, and even “amicably” agreed to come down to the department to answer some questions.

“They interviewed him for some time,” recalls Gruenheid.

The man calling himself Vanner was given a phone, and he called a phone number from memory: a licensed therapist in Eugene, Oregon.
“It was pretty weird,” the detective recalls. “He had this number memorized, as part of his ruse. The fact that he had gone that far, and had that in his mind, to get out of some situation.”
The name Lawrence William Vanner had no paper trail—no driver’s licenses in California, or any state in the U.S. No criminal history, or records of any kind, turned up in the databases at the sheriff’s department. But still he agreed to continue talking, and give his fingerprints.

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When police in Contra Costa County, Calif., questioned the man calling himself Lawrence William Vanner about his missing girlfriend, he insisted she was fine and was in Oregon.

But detectives noticed he spoke of her in the past tense.

It was September of 2002 and friends and relatives of Eunsoon Jun, a petite, dark-haired woman who had moved to California from Korea, were worried. No one had seen or heard from her in months, according to a 2002 affidavit by a California homicide detective.

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After Eunsoon disappeared, Vanner told some friends that she had gone to Virginia to take care of her mother; he told others she was in Oregon, working on a cabin they were building there.

Later, Vanner told investigators that Eunsoon didn't want to be found, but that she was alive and in Oregon.

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Police searched Eunsoon Jun's home on Sept. 26, 2002. In a dirt basement, they found a pile of clean kitty litter.

An investigator noticed some tools near the pile - a saw, an axe and a meat cleaver - that appeared to have hair on them.

Then they saw a woman's sandal sticking out of the pile.

Investigators had found Eunsoon Jun.

Vanner - the man who called himself Bob Evans when he lived in Manchester, N.H., in the late 1970s and early 1980s - was convicted of her murder in 2003 and sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.

He died in prison on Dec. 28, 2010, having never disclosed who the child Lisa was and where she was from.

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“I rode with him downtown when we fingerprinted him,” Gruenheid told me. “He had extremely twinkly bright blue eyes and at that time he was charming and talkative and very intelligent. He was super smart, and he was very calculating.”

From what Gruenheid learned, Jun was smart, too, and also artsy and trusting. She worked for a bio tech company and loved doing pottery work. She might have met the chameleon while he was repairing something at a Korean restaurant. Jun needed help at her nearby home.

“She met him and needed some work done,” Gruenheid said. “She needed carpentry work and he went to work at her property.”
He moved in, isolated Jun from her family and married her in the backyard, in a unofficial ceremony that lacked a marriage license.
Then he hit her on the head with something and killed her. Jun’s friends wondered where she was, and the chameleon always had an answer to keep things normal. Jun left to care for her sick mother, he said. She went to check on property they owned in Oregon.
“He had a keen ability to convince you of truths and he sounded convincing and people would go away and expect her to call them in the next couple of weeks and they would move on,” Gruenheid said. “One friend did not believe a damn thing that guy told her.”
So she went to the police, to Gruenheid and her partner. They went to the couple’s house on Bernhard Avenue, brought the chameleon downtown and learned the chameleon was not who he said he was, was not Lawrence William Vanner.

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Eunsoon Jun, 45, a chemist, died in Richmond, the victim of a homicide.

She was born July 5, 1957, in Korea. She lived in Monterey County for about five years, attended Pacific Grove High School and graduated from Monterey Peninsula College.

Ms. Jun was living in Richmond this spring when she disappeared. Her body was found earlier this fall.

She graduated from the University of California at Davis and earned her master's degree from UC-San Francisco. She worked for Bio Rad, Syntex and GenTech pharmaceutical companies. She worked for City of Hope Hospital in Los Angeles, researching bone marrow transplants. She was an active member of the Richmond Art Center, and enjoyed creating pottery and helping those less fortunate than herself.

Ms. Jun is survived by her mother, Kyo Yea Jun of Carmel; a sister, Jinsoon An of McClean, Va.; three brothers, Sung Il of Los Angeles, Sang Sun of Clifton, Va., and Sang Kyung of Carmel; numerous uncles, aunts and cousins.

Graveside services will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday at the City of Monterey Cemetery El Encinal.

The family suggests that any memorial contributions be made to the Contra Costa Community College — Eunsoon Jun Scholarship Fund.

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BOSTON - New England's Unsolved's Bob Ward traveled to an undisclosed location out of state, to talk to the retired investigator who finally caught Terry Rasmussen: the serial killer behind the Allenstown, New Hampshire murders. A woman and three children who were found in those barrels.

They're identities are still unknown.

But a mummified body, found in cat litter in a California crawl space helped unravel the mystery.
Ward spoke with retired Contra Costa County homicide detective Roxane Gruenheid. In 2002, she was investigating the disappearance of Eunsoon Jun.Jun was the common-law wife of Larry Vanner, and had been missing for four months. They brought Vanner in for questioning. Vanner told investigators Jun suffered an emotional breakdown and was being treated out of state.

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Roxane and another detective searched the home Rasmussen shared with Eunsoon Jun in Richmond, California. They soon made a disturbing discovery in the garage.

“There was this mound of kitty litter. But through the kitty litter were electrical cords and wires, there were power tools around and lighting hung up."

Crime scene services investigators dug through the kitty litter.

They found Eunsoon Jun.
"The thing that came out first was what appeared to be mummified foot, with a flip flop on it," Gruenheid said.

Gruenheid told Ward Eunsoon Jun suffered blunt force trauma, the same fate as all four Allenstown victims.
Roxane Gruenheid says she will never forget this case or the chilling conversation she had with this mysterious killer.
"I said, 'Where are you from?' He stopped, just stopped what he was saying, and he was sitting next to me and he leaned in closer to me, like, in my personal space, in a threatening, like a presence, and he looks at me and he goes, 'That’s none of your God-damned business'."

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