The views and opinions expressed in Cold and Missing are exclusively those of the hosts. All parties mentioned are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Cold and Missing also contains adult themes and languages. Listener discretion is advised. I'm your host, Ali McLaughlin-Sulkowski. And I'm your co-host, Eli Sulkowski. And this is Cold and Missing, where we cover cold cases and missing person cases. Hello everyone and welcome back to Cold and Missing. Welcome back everyone.
I'm your host, Ali. And I'm your co-host, Eli. We're on episode 51 today. That we are. And I've seen you researching all week, so you want to share with us what you have? I do. And I'm going to jump into that in one second, but I did just want to give a quick heads up as we zero in on one year of the podcast. We are going to be updating our cover art across our social media, in the podcast player, just giving it a little jushy. A little jush. A fresh look. A fresh look.
So I just want to plant that in your ear now that this time next month, if you see a different picture in your podcast player. Graphics. I'm going to be making new graphics for the podcast. Eli's making some new graphics. But we'll have a totally different look, very different from what you're used to. Nothing too like, well, you'll see it when you see it. But yeah, we're going to have a new look.
So we wanted to make note of the change before it happens, so that way you know to keep listening, keep your eye out for us. We're still releasing episodes every Monday, so we're there. You might just have to look for a different picture. And with that, let's keep going. Yeah, let's get into episode 51. So today we have a missing persons case, and just at the top I wanted to give a content warning that this case does involve several mentions of sexual assault.
Today we are talking about the missing person case of Hang Lee. And this takes place in January of 1993 in St. Paul, Minnesota. But first a little bit about Hang. Hang is 17 years old in 1993. She was born October 9th, 1975, and she would be 47 years old today. When Hang was a child, her family lived in a refugee camp as they were from Laos. Eventually, the Lee family settled in St. Paul, Minnesota. Hang's family are Hmong, so Hang spoke both Hmong and English.
In 1993, Hang is a senior at Highland Park High School and has dreams of becoming an author to chronicle the Hmong experience in America. Hang planned to attend the University of Minnesota that fall and had been saving money for her tuition. Hang loves heavy metal. When you think of an 80s hairband, that was absolutely the look that Hang rocked. She had dyed her bangs red and teased out her hair.
Since she listened to heavy metal and smoked cigarettes, this earned her a reputation of a quote unquote bad kid in her community. But Hang was anything but. She was a loyal and true friend who trusted people quickly. She had started working at the age of 13 at the Wong Cafe in order to help her family with the bills and save for college. She was a bookworm who loved romance novels. She was a dependable and good kid. And now a timeline of events.
On Tuesday, January 12, 1993, Hang gets a call from her friend, Kia Lee. No relation. Kia also goes by Nikki, so that's what I'll call her throughout the podcast today. Nikki had called Hang to see if she was interested in working for her boss, Mark Steven Wallace. He ran a paint and decorating business near Iroquois Avenue and Stillwater Avenue in St. Paul.
She worked as a receptionist for him for about a month, and she thought it was strange she was looking to hire someone else since he never seemed to have any customers. She told police that the only people that seemed to come into the business were young teenage boys. Wallace and the boys would often disappear behind a locked door in his office where Nikki had no idea what they were doing. Hang was looking for another job at this time to help save for college and continue to help her family out.
She was one of 13 siblings, and money was tight. Her current job only paid $7 an hour, so she was very interested in finding another one. Hang called her current boss, Eileen, at the Wong Cafe to tell her that she had a job interview and she wouldn't be coming in that night since she was scheduled to work. Hang got ready to leave between 6 and 7 p.m. that evening.
It was a snowy day, but true to her metal rock look, Hang was only wearing a black t-shirt that said Skid Row on the back, a light black leather jacket, black pants, and tennis shoes, and she had on lots of jewelry, including two silver bracelets. She told her brother Koua that she was leaving and asked him to lock the door behind her. She did not have a key to the house. This was something that they did often.
Hang would leave for the night and when she needed to get let back into the house, she would knock and Koua would let her back in. Before she left, she told Koua, quote, if I don't come back, please come looking for me. I don't trust Nikki, end quote. Now I want to take a minute here to talk about Mark Steven Wallace. Without burying the lead too much, he is the prime suspect in this missing person case.
In 1993, Mark Steven Wallace is 30 years old and he had recently been released from prison after serving time on a rape charge. In 1988, he was convicted of sexually assaulting a woman but was linked to four other attacks. This was actually his second rape conviction. The first one happened in 1984, but we're just going to talk about the 1987 attacks here. In 1987, a series of sexual assaults were happening. All of the women had had their legs tied so that way they were forced open.
All of them were gagged and all of them had their eyes and mouth taped shut. Some were covered with blankets during the attacks. He was caught because he had called a woman offering her a job at a radio station. The woman set up a time to meet with Wallace, but she became suspicious. Some documents with her personal information had been stolen out of one of her teacher's cars recently. The woman called police who sent an undercover police officer to meet with Wallace.
Police arrested him and he admitted to investigators that he had planned to tie the woman up with shoestrings that he had in his pocket. He also admitted to police that he was the person who stole the documents out of the car and was calling women using the numbers he found with the hopes of assaulting them. He was sent to jail for three years but was released early in June of 1991. That's when he started his painting and interior decorating business.
Nikki, Hang's friend, worked for Wallace from December of 1992 to March of 1993, so just four months. She said during this time she never saw any other customers or employees, just the teenage boys. Wallace also talked to Nikki about becoming a model and took pictures of her promising to introduce her to someone who could give her a job. This never happened and Nikki has no idea what happened to the pictures.
She also said that one morning she came into work around 9am and Wallace gave her a drink telling her it would help her from becoming nauseated by the paint fumes. She drank it and said she started to feel numb and lost feeling in her hands. Wallace told her it was normal and to keep drinking. He even gives her a second glass. Nikki gets sick and throws up. She eventually is overwhelmed by sleepiness and lays down on the ground to sleep.
She doesn't wake up until seven hours later at 4pm that day and she's wrapped in a blanket when she wakes up. Nikki will come up a lot in our story and I just think it's important to remember that she is also a teenage girl who appears to have been a victim of Mark Steven Wallace as well. So back into the timeline of the night that Hang disappeared. There's no clear reports on who exactly Hang left with that night. I believe that Wallace and Nikki picked her up.
Wallace started that night by driving a white pickup truck but at some point Nikki says that he switches into a 1988 Chevrolet Cavalier that is either tan or silver. It's unclear when or why he switches cars. Wallace drove around with Nikki in the front seat and Hang in the back seat. He talked about taking the girls to a casino when Nikki reminded him that they had school the next day. Wallace then drops the girls off. He lived closer to Hang so he dropped Nikki off first.
When she got to her home she saw Wallace pull away and Hang was climbing out of the back seat and into the front seat. Nikki believed that Wallace was going to drop Hang off at her home. Koua, Hang's brother, wakes up around 1am that night and realizes that he hadn't woken up for his sister to be let in. He hops up thinking he might have slept through her knocking and looks outside.
It was snowing that night and Kua thought that if Hang had been home she would have left footprints in the snow but there weren't any. Koua says quote, The snow was coming down pretty hard and I didn't see footprints from the parking lot. I got up to see if I missed her or if she was going to be on her way. I did have a bad feeling that kind of crawled up my neck but of course I was still a kid and I didn't know what to do."
So the next day, this is Wednesday, January 13th, Koua wakes up and there's still no sign of Hang. He decides to head straight to the source and track down Nikki like his sister had said before she left. Koua went to Como High School where Nikki went and found her in the cafeteria eating breakfast. Koua says quote, Soon as I show I say, hey, where's my sister? just in a calm nice way, you know? And of course she gets all mean about it. I don't know where your sister is.
I don't know what you're talking about. End quote. A few days later Hang's parents report her missing to police. Police do not take her disappearance seriously. They write Hang off as a runaway since this is something that she had done in the past. To further fuel that theory, police did talk to Nikki and she told them that she saw Hang leave with some unknown young men. Hang's family do not believe that she ran away.
She didn't take any of her other clothing with her, she left her purse, and she never picked up her $100 paycheck from work. Hang's parents are at a loss for what to do. Since they don't speak English, they have to rely on their teenage children to translate for them. They don't have any contacts with the media to get Hang's story, the press coverage that it desperately needs. In June of that year, so six months since Hang disappeared, Hang's family start to hang flyers up around town.
Police do start to find it strange that Hang has not returned home or contacted her family. Police go back to talk to Nikki about what happened that night. This time, Nikki has a different story for them. She tells police that she dropped Nikki off to hang with her white friends. After more questions, Nikki says that Wallace was the last person that she saw with Hang.
When asked why she lied about it, she told police she thought that Hang really had run away and didn't want to get her in trouble, and that Wallace had warned her not to tell anyone about his business. Once police learn of Mark Steven Wallace's possible involvement, they start looking into the case seriously, but they're six months behind now. Police conduct a search of Wallace's home, office, car, and pickup truck. It's reported that they did luminol tests, but nothing was found.
Shortly after this, Wallace lawyers up and refuses to talk to police or answer their questions. Wallace was talking about the case with his friends, however. Wallace had told a friend, who later told police, that he had dropped Hang off at a gas station near her job at the Wong Cafe. Police talked with Hang's friends, and nobody said that they had seen her that night.
In July of 1993, so the next month, police tell Hang's parents what they know and what they know about Wallace, but the investigation has stalled. Both Wallace and Nikki were refusing to cooperate with police, and they didn't have any evidence that a crime had been committed. Those that knew Hang knew that she hadn't run away. Her boss, Eileen, at the Wong Cafe says, quote, we knew she didn't run away. She never went anyplace without that purse.
That's where she kept a lead ball and a knife for protection. She always wanted to act real tough, but she wasn't. She was really too sweet for her own good. End quote. And then the case appears to go really cold for a while. The next update that I could find comes 16 years later in 2009. The home that Wallace had grown up in and later inherited from his mother went into foreclosure.
A neighbor had called police and told them that in 2004, when Wallace first inherited the home, he built a detached garage super quickly on the property. The neighbor said he had never seen a garage get built so quickly. When the home was put into foreclosure, the new owners who acquired the home gave police permission to search the property. Near the detached garage that Wallace had built, two out of three cadaver dogs hid on the garage in the same spot.
Encouraged by this, police get a search warrant to drill holes into the garage of the floor to give dogs better access to the soil underneath. When the dogs were turned, none of them hit or were interested in the garage. Police wanted to tear up the garage and the foundation, but without more evidence, they couldn't get the search warrant and the new owners didn't want their garage ripped up.
In 2016, so this is 23 years now that Hang has been missing, Mark Steven Wallace is arrested and charged with kidnapping, stalking, and possession of meth. He was caught in a hotel room with a 20-year-old friend of his daughter's. When police found them, they said the woman was covered in bruises and malnourished. She told police that she was being held against her will and Wallace kept threatening her to do what he did to a woman in St. Paul. He said she entered by business and never came out.
Wallace is charged with this case and given a three-year sentence. In April of 2017, Hang has been missing now for 24 years. Her family decides to hold a spirit release for her. A spirit release ceremony is a Hmong custom that allows for the person's soul to be reincarnated. Hang's niece Lillian wrote on her Facebook, quote, As much as it breaks our hearts that we can't find closure and answers we seek, we, as a family, have decided to finally release her spirit on April 7th and 8th, 2017.
The spiritual release acknowledges that Hang may no longer be alive in this world, but she will live in our hearts forever. We as her family would like to honor her by releasing her spirit to the other world. End quote. This is the first memorial held for Hang. Her family do believe that if she was alive, she would have reached out to them by now if she was able to.
Hang's mother, Chong Vang, forgives whoever hurt her daughter, but wants to know where Hang is so that she can bring her home and have a proper burial. The family invite the public to her spirit release, hoping to help raise awareness for the case. Her mother, Chong, says, quote, Those who love her, please come. Also please come and see that this is not something that's just in a story. It is real too.
End quote. Around 2019, Mark Steven Wallace was getting ready to be released from prison from the kidnapping case. Prosecutors filed a petition for him to be civically committed at the Minnesota Sex Offender Program in Moose Lake. This is a quick summary because I didn't know what this was. People are detained here who no longer have an active prison sentence, but who the government believes pose too much of a danger to the public and to reoffend.
In theory, people who are sent here are given therapy and the state attempts to rehabilitate them and release them back to the public. To date, only 16 people have ever been released from this program. And there are several complaints that the people here are not being given treatment despite asking for it and that the state has no real plans to rehabilitate. During the argument phase for Wallace to be committed, prosecutors laid out everything that they knew about Hang Lee.
This is the closest that the law has ever gotten to putting Wallace on trial for her murder. The judge agreed with prosecutors and Mark Steven Wallace is still in the Minnesota Sex Offender Program. The last update that I could find for this case comes from 2021. So this is 28 years now that Hang has been missing. The police returned to the former home of Wallace, the one with the detached garage. This time they returned to do some digging and to penetrate the ground with 3D imaging.
Police say that they did not find Hang's body or sufficient evidence to make an arrest. That is all we know about the disappearance of Hang Lee. If you know anything about what happened to Hang Lee in January of 1993 or her whereabouts today, please call the St. Paul Police Missing Person Unit at 651-266-5612.
And the sources for the timeline today come from The Star Tribune, Twin Cities Pioneer, Superior Telegram, CBS News Minnesota, The Republican Eagle, KSTP-TV, Kare 11 News, and The Charlie Project. So that is the case of Hang Lee. It's just devastating. You know, they all are. But the moment you kind of described what she looked like, and I don't mean by race, just that the moment you said that she was like rocker, whatever.
It's not a case that I knew, but after that I was like, she probably didn't really stand a chance of there being a great effort in looking for her. And that was like just from that alone. I don't know. I think it's interesting that I had that reaction. Like my body knew. Yeah, and she is like quintessential 80s rocker. That is what she looks like. Just like whatever image just popped into your head, she was rocking it. I think she looks so cool.
Oh yeah, incredible. Like Joan Jett, but really cool, iconic. I imagine that her looks now, people would be like, would want to turn them out themselves. I do. I saw them. Totally. I love how she talks about the fact that she was a really cool person. And that it's like unfair how in a small moment, a descriptor of someone can really change the pace of a case. One word can just like, the direction is not going where the family may want it to go. Right.
And her family was already at such a disadvantage with her parents being refugees and her herself being a refugee. They just didn't know the police system and who to talk to, how to get her case in the media. They just did not have the resources that they needed. Yeah. And it was at a time where, you know, social media wasn't, wasn't there.
Something else that I think just came up for me in listening is that like, she was just like truly robbed of her opportunity to like share her and her family's culture with the world. And like from a pretty early age that that was her vocation. She said like the Hmong lifestyle. Yeah. She wanted to write about being Hmong in America.
Yeah. And being like, I'm assuming that she probably had some perspective of like, this is what it's like for me in like assimilation with a look that yes, I assimilated to, but I also really liked that made me stand out. That made me stand out just on the, and the look by itself, but also being a refugee who stands out in this way. Like I'm sad. I'm sad we don't get to like hear that perspective.
Yeah. I mean, I hope we still really get to, but like, it was like, I guess the through note that kept getting me because her family like did it anyway in like a small way for her, but in like the most heartbreaking way. Right. Like it's like the most heartbreaking aspect of their culture, but that they still like honored it in full was like, it was so beautiful, but like unnecessarily so, you know what I mean? With her spirit release. Yes. Her spirit release. Sorry. That was beautiful.
And someone took that from her and in turn, like took that from the world. And that's just mean at its core, evil maybe. Absolutely. More about the case though. I just wish they weren't teens. Like I'm trying to talk about Nikki with like kindness, but I'm also like, maybe she was just like a teen with a bad attitude. It was like, whatever. I don't know where your sister is, you know, like, because I was, you know, we've all been teenagers. Yeah. And you know what?
That's actually something that I thought about too of like, on one hand, yeah, I would totally respond that way to some people as a snotty teenager. Yeah. Like, I'm her best friend's brother. Yeah. But then at the same time, I'm like, but if she's missing, why aren't you saying, what do you mean she didn't come home last night? Like that was, I can see it both ways. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yes. I thought the same thing. Like there's no concern. That seems odd.
Totally. And I did mention in the timeline that Nikki is a teenage girl that does appear to have been a victim of Mark Steven Wallace. Yeah. Keeping that in mind, her behavior makes a lot more sense as to why her story is changing because she's a child who is being manipulated by an offender. An adult. Yes. Yeah. Mark. Like Wallace, he's 30 years old at this time. He's been convicted of sex crimes twice. And in each of those instances, it was a repeated behavior. It was a pattern.
And it seemed to keep escalating. Yeah. I would say the social justice system on all fronts really failed in regard to this person and how he kept slipping through the cracks. I don't know. I don't understand what happened there. But yes, we here at Cold and Missing believe in rehabilitated practices for offenders, even particular offenders. But that doesn't mean rehabilitation for the exact same world you and I live in.
Boundaries can still be around those people who just require more to exist safely for themselves and others. I felt shocked that... Yes, shocked. Yeah. I felt shocked in 2016 that he only got three years for a kidnapping charge. A kidnapping? Just a failure. It was upsetting. You know, unfortunately, I'm not always surprised, especially in the 70s, 80s, and 90s when there's short sentences for a sex crime, for sexual violence. It doesn't always surprise me because I'm like, well, men hate women.
So that makes sense that they give short sentences for these kinds of crimes. Well, just, yeah. I mean, historically, societally, we've never placed great value on justice for people who commit justice for victims and survivors and true accountability for the perpetrators. It's very true that, yeah, quote, men hate women. Like, I, even as a man, like I, 100% I know what you're saying. I see how this is the world, like the systems at play and how they function within them. And three years.
Three years. And that when he was convicted before he got out in 1991, he was convicted of one of those rapes, but there was all of those that like kind of helped support it, but he was only put away for one. But there was like a history. So, I mean, I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here with the audience of Cold and Missing that we know that sexual assaults are not prosecuted and they're not reported. No, and like they, nothing happens.
An attorney, your own attorney will tell you most of the time, you're probably going to lose, which is like, it speaks volumes about the proof of the system and how it functions and how like they look at women. Right. Who the system was built for. The system was built for white cis men and anybody that falls outside of that and the farther you fall outside of that, the more fucked you are by the system. Yeah. The farther you are from that label, the much steeper the drop.
Another kind of question that I had was in 2021 when police go back to this house where he had built the garage and you know, they do this 3D ground penetrating radar. They say that they don't have sufficient evidence for an arrest, but I'm like, did you get some evidence? Did something come out of that space that like was linked to hang, but it just wasn't enough to convict somebody beyond a reasonable doubt of murder?
Yeah. And if it's not enough that perhaps that's why they can't say anything because it's, I don't know the semantics of that, but I guess I think I understand why they wouldn't say anything. Yeah. But it was vague. I think Paul was vague because I wondered what, I think I said the same thing out there. Yeah. Was there something found there that could be linked to hang? I don't know. But it does seem like the St. Paul police department revisits this case pretty consistently.
This is the oldest missing person case in St. Paul. So it almost feels like the police want to like solve it for that reason, like to be the detective that solved the oldest missing person case in St. Paul. You know what I mean? Like to kind of like take that. They claim it's never been a cold case because they're always working it. So technically a case is cold when it's no longer worked, but... It's a little wintery. It's a little wintery. A little snowfall on the case.
I'm hopeful that they can at least get answers for her siblings. I believe her mother is still alive. Her father has passed away. But her mother, I believe, is still alive, but she's on in her years now. So her brother, Koua, really kind of helms the media coverage for the family and keeps her story in the media and makes sure that it's covered by the press and kind of access the spokesperson for the family. So I really hope she was one of 13 siblings.
So I hope she can get home to them in some way and that they can have her again. If you know anything about what happened to Hang Lee in January of 1993 or her whereabouts today, please call the St. Paul Police Missing Person Unit at 651-266-5612. While you're getting ready to go to your next podcast, if you could leave us a little review in your podcast app. If you're an Apple, leaving us a written review helps us so much and helps others find us. We got two new reviews this week.
One from Bella Z. So thank you so much. And then one from somebody who just has numbers as their username. 121664. But if that's you, thank you so much. Thanks to both of you. It's so helpful. It makes my day. I run around with like a spring in my step and a smile if you leave us. And Allie doesn't run anywhere. I don't. You should watch her across the street even when a car is coming. Boy, is it fun to be married to her in those moments. Hit me in a crosswalk.
And my wife, she won't change her pace for anyone. And I love it. I'm not going to. So thank you for adding a spring in my step. Thank you for taking the time. I know everyone's so busy these days. So anytime you take the time out to review us, write to us, message us, comment, it means a lot to me. And it feels like getting snail mail. It really does. Yeah, it feels so cool. And of course, Eli will be making the beautiful graphics this week on Instagram.
We'll have pictures of Hang Lee, her incredible rocker look. You should absolutely check her out because she looks incredible. And we'll also have an age progressed picture of her as well. So you can see what she would look like today. And if you or someone you know is hard of hearing or deaf and need transcripts, you can hop over to our website, coldandmissing.com. There you can sign up for our newsletter. You can leave us reviews there. You can donate to our buy us a coffee campaign.
You can even leave us a voicemail if you want to. That's all available on our website, www.coldandmissing.com. But that's all I have. Have a great week and stay safe, y'all. Stay safe, y'all.