(ominous music)
- [Narrator] Though we have recently seen
a remarkable number of cold cases
and missing persons solved,
some cases are still shrouded in mystery
and questions decades after they first began.
And sometimes these cases gain notorious reputations
for haunting those who have tried to solve them.
What is up, EWU crew?
We are taking a look at a case that has done just that.
Today's case is one of the oldest
unsolved missing persons cases in Minnesota.
And with each year that passes,
it has only become more of a mystery.
Let's get into it.
On January 12th, 1993, a 17-year-old girl named Hang Lee
left her family's apartment in St. Paul, Minnesota
to interview for a new job.
It was a cold, dark night, and the Midwestern capital
had just received its first major snowfall of the season.
This was the night everything went wrong.
Hang Lee was born on October 9th, 1975 in a refugee camp
in the small Southeast Asian country of Laos.
Her parents were from the Hmong ethnic group.
During the United States involvement
in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and '70s,
the Hmong people often allied themselves with the Americans
to fight against the North Vietnamese and the Pathet Lao.
After the defeat of the United States-backed Hmong forces
in the so-called secret war, a civil war in Laos,
many of the Hmong people faced severe persecution
from the Laotian government,
and they fled to refugee camps within the country
and in neighboring Thailand.
Hang Lee's parents were among these refugees.
Her family moved to the United States
shortly after Hang was born,
and like many other Hmong families,
they settled in St. Paul, Minnesota.
As refugees, Hang's family was quite poor,
and her parents did not speak much English.
They lived in public housing
in the North End neighborhood of St. Paul.
Despite this, by January, 1993,
Hang was an accomplished student
at Highland Park High School,
and she was looking forward
to attending the University of Minnesota the following year.
She was a gifted storyteller with hopes to use her talents
to write about the Hmong experience in the United States.
Her family and coworkers described her as a quiet and sweet,
but somewhat naive girl who often fell for practical jokes.
Hang worked part time as a cashier and dishwasher
at a Chinese restaurant called Wong Cafe
to help provide for her parents and siblings.
As she was not making very much money
from her job at the restaurant,
she began asking her friends about other job opportunities.
Her friend Kia Lee, no immediate relation,
known as Nikki, was working as a receptionist
for a painting and carpentry business
located on the East Side of St. Paul.
And she mentioned to Hang that they were looking
for a new employee.
Hang jumped at this opportunity,
and Nikki offered to introduce her to her employer.
Although Hang and Nikki were friends,
a later police report revealed that there is some evidence
that Hang suspected Nikki may have had ulterior motives.
On that January night,
just before she left for her job interview,
Hang turned to her younger brother, 15-year-old Koua
and said, "If I don't come back, come and look for me."
Despite this suspicion, Hang left the house anyway.
She was last seen wearing a black leather jacket,
black pants and a t-shirt
from the heavy metal band Skid Row,
her long, black hair teased into a typical early '90s style.
Hang's instincts would prove to be correct.
She didn't return home after the interview,
and there was no sign of her over the next few days.
It eventually became clear
that something had happened to Hang,
but her parents had a difficult time reporting her missing
because of their limited English.
The police initially dismissed her case
as a teenage runaway,
but upon investigating her bedroom,
they quickly found evidence
that pointed to something more sinister.
Hang had been saving money for college,
and she left it all at home
on the night of her disappearance.
Her boss at Wong Cafe reported
that she had not come to the restaurant
to work her scheduled shifts,
which was unusual for Hang,
and that she hadn't even come in
to pick up her most recent paycheck.
Hang had also left her purse at home,
which contained a knife and a lead ball
that she usually carried for self-defense.
If she was actually a runaway, it was unthinkable
that she would have left without her money and belongings.
Hang's brother Kuoa told police
about his suspicions concerning Hang's friend, Nikki Lee.
And the police began asking Nikki about Hang's whereabouts.
According to police records, during their interviews
Nikki gave two vastly different accounts
of what had transpired that night.
At first, she told detectives that Hang
had not actually attended the job interview
and instead left with a group of men she did not recognize.
This seemed to confirm the police's original hunch
that Hang was another teenage runaway.
However, several months later,
Nikki changed her story completely.
She would go on to claim that she made up the story
about Hang running away with the unknown men.
She admitted that she had done this in part
out of wishful thinking, and in part
because she claimed that her boss had instructed her to lie,
and she reportedly feared retribution from him.
Nikki said she hoped that Hang had, in fact,
run away from home and therefore would return someday.
But that wasn't the case.
The business where Nikki worked
was owned by a man named Mark Steven Wallace.
Before Hang's disappearance, Wallace asked Nikki
if she had any friends who were looking for a job,
and she immediately suggested Hang.
Nikki would later say
that she thought this was very unusual.
The painting and carpentry business had very few customers,
and Nikki hardly ever had any work to do.
She didn't understand
why Wallace would need another employee.
There were a few other things about Wallace's business
that Nikki reportedly found troubling.
Although there were never any customers or clients,
she reported to police
that young teenage boys would occasionally visit the office.
She told investigators
that Wallace would take these young boys into his office
and lock the door behind them,
although she did not elaborate further on this point
Nikki also reported
that Wallace had frequently talked to her about modeling.
According to Nikki, he said that he had a friend
who could find modeling work for her.
And Wallace took some photographs of her
to show to this friend.
Nothing ever came of this, and Nikki never found out
what happened to the photographs.
Nevertheless, despite these apparent red flags,
she had known that Hang needed a better paying job
and offered to introduce her to Wallace.
After Nikki changed her story, she told police officers
that on the night of Hang's disappearance,
Wallace had taken her and Hang to his office.
Nikki's new story to police
was that after Hang's job interview,
Wallace offered to give the two young women a ride home
in his truck.
They all got into his white pickup truck and drove off.
He said that he would drop Nikki off at her house
and then take Hang back to her home.
At some point, for reasons that were never made clear,
Wallace reportedly instructed Nikki and Hang
to get out of the truck and into a Chevy Cavalier.
He drove with Nikki in the passenger seat,
while Hang sat in the back.
Wallace then dropped Nikki off at her house
in the Frogtown neighborhood of St. Paul.
When Nikki exited the car, Hang climbed into the front seat.
That was the last time Nikki saw Hang.
Nikki later hired a lawyer
and refused to continue speaking
with the police or the media.
And Wallace would soon be named by police
as a key person of interest in Hang's disappearance.
A few months later, as police in St. Paul
continued investigating the case,
their records reveal that they realized
that Mark Steven Wallace had been convicted
of two sexual assaults in the neighboring Washington County.
He had served time in prison
for both of the assaults that he committed in 1987.
One of the assaults was of a 16-year-old girl.
Police records reveal Wallace allegedly told the girl
that he had a job offer for her.
Reportedly, Wallace had picked the girl up
and taken her to where he said the interview was to occur.
But when they arrived,
police say that he bound and assaulted the girl.
Records reveal that he held a knife to her
and allegedly threatened that he would kill her
and her family if she told anyone.
Wallace was arrested by an undercover police officer,
who he also reportedly approached
with a similar proposition.
In 1988, he was convicted and sentenced to prison
for two counts of first degree assault,
and he served a little under three years.
He was let out on a supervised release,
and his sentence since expired
a week before Hang went missing.
When the police finally had the chance to talk to Wallace
about Hang's disappearance, he admitted
that he did indeed interview her on that night.
After the interview, he said
that he dropped Nikki off at her house in Frogtown
and then dropped Hang off at the intersection
of Rice Street and Wheelock Parkway
near the restaurant where she worked.
This seemed to corroborate Nikki's story,
although it did not bring the police much closer
to figuring out Hang's whereabouts.
Wallace then hired a lawyer
and stopped cooperating with the police.
Although police never closed the case,
Hang Lee's disappearance fell into obscurity
until a potential lead emerged 16 years later.
Though there was still no sign of Hang,
in 2009, there was a potential break in the case.
Mark Wallace's house, located in the suburb of Maplewood,
had gone into foreclosure.
With Wallace no longer in possession of the home,
the police had the opportunity to conduct a search.
The police received permission from the bank
to search the property, using a team of cadaver dogs.
Reportedly the dogs showed a lot of interest in the garage
and led investigators to the back of the structure.
It was there that all three dogs appeared to police
to indicate that there could be human remains
beneath the concrete floor.
This was sufficient evidence to get a warrant,
and officers then drilled holes into the floor of the garage
to help the cadaver dogs more accurately locate
any human remains that might have been buried underneath.
After drilling through the floor,
the cadaver dogs were brought back in.
But this time, only one of the dogs smelled human remains.
This was not enough evidence
to justify excavating the garage,
and the police then stopped their investigation
of Mark Wallace's house.
Another break in the case came in 2016,
23 years after Hang Lee's disappearance
and seven years after the police
investigated Mark Wallace's property.
In August, 2016, Wallace fled a traffic stop
near his new home in Andover,
which is about 20 miles north of St. Paul.
Police then discovered Wallace's car
parked at the Key Inn Motel in Woodbury.
When police arrived at the motel,
they kicked down the door of the room he was staying in,
where they found Wallace
with a frightened 20-year-old woman.
Wallace was arrested when he tried to flee the room.
The woman, who has never been identified,
told police that Wallace was the father
of one of her friends from high school.
She said that she did not have a permanent home,
and that Wallace had agreed to let her stay with him.
And in exchange, she did his housework.
For a time, it seemed like this arrangement
was going to work, but the situation reportedly soured.
According to a police complaint that the woman filed,
Wallace allegedly physically and verbally attacked her.
She eventually filed a no-contact order against him.
Wallace was never accused of sexually assaulting the woman,
but when police found her in the motel room,
they found evidence that she had been beaten,
bruised and malnourished.
Wallace was charged with felony kidnapping
to commit great bodily harm, felony stalking
and misdemeanor drug possession.
The stalking and drug charges were later dropped,
and Wallace was convicted and sentenced
to 54 months in prison for the kidnapping.
Hang Lee's disappearance
had largely been forgotten by the media
prior to the 2016 kidnapping.
But the trial and conviction renewed interest in her case
because of allegations that the kidnapping survivor
revealed to the police.
She told the police that she had known
about Hang Lee's disappearance and that she knew
Wallace had been a person of interest in that case.
She reportedly claimed
that she had asked Wallace about Hang Lee.
Police documents state that the woman alleged
that Wallace told her Hang entered his business,
quote, "and never came out."
The complaint also stated that the woman claimed
that Wallace warned her that he would do to her
what he did to Hang, and that he allegedly told her
that he knew how to get rid of blood and cut through bone.
Authorities from Washington County,
where Wallace was tried and convicted,
passed this information along
to the St. Paul Police Department.
St. Paul police did not comment
on the woman's statements or Wallace's conviction,
but Hang Lee's case is still open.
In August, 2019, after his prison sentence was complete,
a court in Anoka County, where Mark Wallace lived,
had him committed to a treatment program.
The court's decision cited
both his 2016 conviction for kidnapping
and his 1988 convictions for assault
and testimony from psychiatrists
who described him as a dangerous person
and a psychopathic personality.
In September, 2020, Mark Wallace appealed his commitment,
but the court upheld their decision
on the basis of his previous convictions.
He is currently held as a patient at the treatment center.
Mark Steven Wallace is still considered a person of interest
in Hang Lee's disappearance,
but he has never been officially named as a suspect.
Hang Lee's Hmong heritage was very important to her.
A traditional part of Hmong shamanism
is the (speaking in foreign language)
or spirit release ceremony,
in which the soul of a deceased family member
is invited to visit with their family for one last time.
After the ceremony, the loved one's spirit
is released for reincarnation.
Traditionally, this is done some time after the funeral.
But in missing persons cases,
it often isn't held for many years
after their disappearance,
when the family no longer believes
that their loved one will return in their physical form.
Hang Lee's father had refused
to hold a (speaking in a foreign language) in the hopes
that police would someday find his daughter's remains.
Before he died in 2013, he told his family
that they should probably go ahead
and hold the ceremony for Hang.
In 2017, her family held a (speaking in a foreign language)
in the hopes of releasing Hang's spirit
so that she could be reincarnated.
Hang Lee's mother, Chong Vang says
that she has forgiven whoever might have been involved
in her daughter's disappearance,
but she would like to know where her body is
so that Hang can have a proper funeral.
Anyone with information is encouraged
to contact the St. Paul Police Department.