June 17, 2025 • 43 mins
In this episode, we look at the collegiate tragedy of Sinedu Tedesse: friendship gone wrong, the limits of human ambition, and the dark underbelly of the American dream. Because the thing they don’t tell you about having your greatest dream come true, is what to do with yourself afterwards.
• Follow Diversion Audio on Instagram
• Explore more: diversionaudio.com
This series is hosted by Mary Kay McBrayer. Check out more of her work at www.marykaymcbrayer.com.
This episode was written by Mary Kay McBrayer
Developed by Scott Waxman, Emma DeMuth, and Jacob Bronstein
Associate Producer is Leo Culp
Produced by Antonio Enriquez
Theme Music by Tyler Cash
Executive Produced by Scott Waxman and Emma DeMuth
Special thanks to:
Carter, Stephen L.. Invisible. Henry Holt and Co.. Kindle Edition.
Pre-order Mary Kay's forthcoming true crime book 'Madame Queen: The The Life and Crimes of Harlem’s Underground Racketeer, Stephanie St. Clair' here
SOURCES
- The Harvard Student Who Killed Her Roommate, Melanie Thernstrom
- Harvard Deaths Leave a Puzzle Whose Central Piece May Never Be Found, Fox Butterfield
- Hostage to The Past: The 1995 Murder Suicide in Dunster, Hillary A. McLauchlin
- Rethinking the American Dream: The Cost of Coming to America: Immigration and Depression in the Case of Sinedu Tadesse, Menna Demessie
- Halfway Heaven: Diary of a Harvard Murder, Melanie Thernstrom
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Diversion audio. A note this episode contains mature content and
descriptions of violence that may be disturbing for some listeners.
Please take care in listening. There's nothing like being on
(00:27):
a college campus during the final week of classes. The
relaxing exhale of summer is right around the corner, and
the energy of what's next bubbles up in every conversation
and social circle. For students of Harvard, there's an added
pride in having completed another semester. At an ivy league.
(00:51):
On Saturday, May twenty seventh, nineteen ninety five, two young
women in Harvard's Dunster House dorm building were celebrating the
end of a long, hard year. The women were juniors,
both pre med and both immigrants to America with dreams
of becoming doctors. Decades of dedication, sacrifice, and faith had
(01:18):
brought them here to the world's most prestigious institution, and
they were a source of immense pride for both of
their families. That the girls would meet in a science
class their freshman year and end up roommates seemed like fate.
Both had made journeys of many thousands of miles to
(01:40):
end up in Massachusetts and they must have felt like
kindred spirits. But while from the outside their similarities were
impossible to deny, the girls' inner worlds couldn't have been
more different. While one found purpose and thrived in her
college environment, the other struggled to find a place. While
(02:04):
one made strong friendships and found community, the other grew
isolated and distant from her loved ones. What started as
a fated friendship after a while became estranged. Admiration turned
to jealousy, good will turned to resentment, and late on
(02:25):
that Saturday night in May nineteen ninety five, when the
air was thick with anticipation of good things, one girl
saw the end of her world. Other residents of Dunster
House would wake up the next morning to screams coming
from the girl's dorm room. Harvard campus security in Cambridge
(02:47):
police would be called in. The gruesome scene they would
find on the other side of that door would be
like something out of a nightmare. But the two women,
for their families and for the university, Welcome to the
(03:15):
greatest true crime stories ever told. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer.
Today's episode we're calling Harvard's Forgotten Murder Suicide. It's the
story of a friendship gone wrong, the limits of human ambition,
and the dark underbelly of the American dream. Because the
(03:35):
thing they don't tell you about having your greatest dream
come true is what to do with yourself afterwards. We'll
get into all of that right after this quick break.
(04:03):
The college experience is so much less about academics than
you think it's going to be when you're eighteen. It
isn't until you're well out of school that you realize
that the most important lessons you learned during those years
were how to be a normal, functioning adult in the world,
one who knows how to make friends, form a community,
(04:23):
and take care of themselves. It's a time to figure
out where you fit inside this much bigger pond, and
it's something that doesn't come easy for a lot of kids.
I know this from experience. I showed up to a
liberal arts school from suburban Georgia and had to answer
the question where are you from? Twice, once to name
(04:45):
my hometown and again to say where I was from from.
It highlights your experience, or at least other people's experience,
of you. Introducing yourself means explaining parts of you that
you've never had to earn articulate before. But my experience
was nothing compared to the task that immigrant and international
(05:05):
students face when they come to college in America. Not
only are they learning how to handle new levels of
academic challenge, but many also carry the dreams of proud
and expectant families being there, finding your place, making the
most of the unparalleled opportunities in front of you after
(05:27):
decades of sacrifice in single minded dedication is a big
task for an eighteen year old. Reconciling your past self
with the person you're becoming is one of the greatest
transformations any person can experience. The story I'm going to
tell you today is about the limitations of the human
(05:48):
psyche when those needs of community and social connection aren't met,
even in a place as picture perfect as Harvard. Sinnadu
(06:11):
Taedessa had big dreams for her life from the very beginning.
She was born and raised in Addis Ababa in nineteen
seventy five, the capital of the world's third poorest country
at the time, Ethiopia. Walking those crowded streets of Addis Ababa,
(06:32):
you'd see livestock, hungry mothers with outstretched hands, and malnourished
children selling trinkets. In public schools, students sat on dirt floors,
dozens and dozens to a class. Books and supplies were
a luxury, but Sinnadu Taedessa was fortunate. As a member
(06:53):
of an elite class, her family had the resources to
send her to one of Oddis Ababa's coveted Internet schools. There,
she was given opportunities. Few Ethiopians had English instruction, rigorous
courses preparation for university in America. The gravity of this
(07:14):
opportunity was not lost on Sinadu. While her country buckled
under the weight of a political turmoil, warfare, and famine,
Sinnadu studied. One of her English teachers remembered her as
being quote quiet and demure, academically focused to the point
(07:35):
of tunnel vision, and she was successful. In fact, Sinnadu
wasn't just good in school, she was exceptional. During her
senior year of high school, she was named the number
two student in all of Ethiopia. Her high school guidance
counselor said, you couldn't tell her that academics weren't everything,
(07:59):
because they were. They were her ticket out. The day
she received her acceptance letter and a full scholarship to
Harvard was the happiest day of her life. She would
go to America, get the best education money could buy
from the world's most prestigious institution, and return home a doctor.
(08:20):
But the way Harvard looked in Sinnadu's dreams was a
lot different than her reality. Accustomed to being exceptional, she
found classes difficult. The reinforcement and praise she was used
to receiving for her efforts didn't come. Far from standing out.
She struggled to make bees. The cold Massachusetts weather depressed her,
(08:45):
and she felt deeply isolated. Visiting her family in Ethiopia
was out of the question financially. The only person she
knew on campus was neb, a smart and popular classmate
of hers from the International School, but the two of
them didn't run in the same social circles. Learning how
(09:07):
to make friends wasn't something Sinna Dou had spent much
time doing. Now she not only had to learn how,
but do so among young adults who had grown up
with entirely different customs, cultural references, and social etiquette. When
she didn't have friends to confide in, Sinadu would divulge
(09:29):
her feelings in her diary and journals. One of her
spiral notebooks was labeled My Small Book of Social Rules.
In it, Senadu wrote pages and pages of numbered instructions
for how to address the problems she was facing socially,
things like what to discuss with the other students in
(09:50):
the cafeteria Every morning when you wake up, you have
to come up with three fat topics of conversation. This
is always your greatest problem, so deal with it properly,
one entry said. But as the diary goes on, her
words take on a more paranoid tone. One said, do
(10:12):
not show off what you really think. Put on a mask.
These social exercises didn't seem to bring sinnad much success, though.
The summer after her freshman year, Sinadu reached a point
of desperation. In a baffling move, she sent a letter
to a stranger at Harvard's law school pleading for help
(10:33):
making friends. The glimpse this letter gives into sinad psyche
is honestly fascinating and frankly, she writes, beautifully, I'm going
to take a minute to read a few paragraphs from it.
Why am I writing this letter because I am desperate.
As far as I can remember, my life has been hellish.
(10:56):
Year after year, I became lonelier and lonelier. When I'm
with a group of people, I keep so quiet. I
have nothing to say that I send the chills through
those who notice me. Then I cry when people forget
about me or dislike being with me. When I'm with
one person, I shake with nervousness, fearing that we will
(11:17):
run out of things to say, or she or he
will be bored. For math, I had a teacher for painting.
I had a teacher for social life. I had no one.
All you have to do is give me a hand
and put into words what you already know. All it
takes is a few hours from your week and some energy.
(11:39):
Please do not close the door in my face. Even
if you are not interested. Please give this letter to
a friend or relative who might be We don't know
much about who the recipient of this letter was, but
what we do know is that they forwarded it to
a dean at Harvard, who then placed it in Sinedu's
(11:59):
file and left it at that, no investigation, no follow up.
To be fair, this was probably unlike anything the dean's
office or student health services had ever seen before, but
still it's a literal cry for help. More on the
student health services later, though. There was one bright spot
(12:25):
in Sinnidu's freshman year. It came in the form of
another student named Trang Ho, whom Sinnadou met in her
science class. The two had a lot in common. Both
were polite, hard working biology majors who had moved to
America from across the world. Both had risen from humble
(12:46):
circumstances to become valedictorians of their high school graduating classes,
and both dreamed of becoming doctors. Trang was born near
Saigon in nineteen seventy four, just five months before the
culmination of the Vietnam War. Both of Treng's parents were
(13:06):
sent to re education camps in the wake of the war,
and in nineteen eighty four, when Treng was ten, they
made the difficult decision to attempt to escape Vietnam for
a better life abroad. Treng, her older sister, and their
father went first Under the cover of night, they crammed
(13:27):
inside a small boat along two hundred and sixty five
other refugees. Their destination was Indonesia, where they'd stay in
a refugee camp for a few months and hopefully continue
on to America. The boat was so crowded that the
passengers were forced to stand for seven days. At the
(13:49):
refugee camp, mister ho gave the girls English words to
learn to prepare them for their life in America. At
first it was ten or twin words, and later nearly
one hundred a day. Mister Hoe knew about the famous
universities on the East Coast, and in nineteen eighty six
(14:10):
he settled his family in the Boston area, hoping to
send his daughters to one of the IVY leagues one day.
Like Sinadu, Train took her studies very seriously. Once as
a young student, when she found herself stuck on a
homework problem, she called nine one one to ask her help.
(14:30):
The dispatcher told her that someone would call her back,
and when her father answered the phone a few minutes later,
he heard a policeman on the other end asking for
the little girl who needed help with her assignment. But
unlike Sinadou, Train didn't seem to have a problem forming friendships.
Her teachers would later describe the joy and excitement she
(14:52):
found in learning. All through high school, she tutored her classmates.
By the beginning of her sophomore year at Harvard, Trang
had established a solid group of friends and was thriving.
Her grades were good, and she seemed well on her
way to the goal of medical school. A few weeks
before meeting Trayng in that science class, Sinadu had been
(15:14):
hurt to find that her then roommate wanted to live
with someone else next year. Finding yourself without a roommate
at the end of the spring semester is a tough
blow for anyone, but it must have been especially tough
for Sinadu, who was struggling so hard socially. Treng was kind,
and it's not difficult to imagine how the two must
(15:37):
have formed a connection around their similar upbringings and dreams
for the future. Sinadou decided to ask Trang to be
her roommate, and Trang agreed. Sinadu was overjoyed. Perhaps this
would finally be the chance for the kind of close
friendship that had always been beyond her grasp. In her
(15:58):
diary entry from that week, Sinnadu wrote, the last four
days were the highlight of my life thus far in Harvard.
My roommate problem was solved in the best way possible
with a girl I thought I would really enjoy to
be with with a girl I would make the queen
of my life. Sinadu would later tell her father she
(16:21):
had found a best friend. Unfortunately, Trang seems to have
had no idea of the role she was playing in
her new roommate's life. The high hopes Sinnadu had for
(16:50):
her friendship with Treyng would never come to be. Far
from being Sinnidu's new confidant, Treng was away from campus
nearly every weekend, visiting her family who lived close by.
Even more of a blow was the fact that Trang
already had a best friend, her name was Tao. When
(17:11):
Tao was twenty nine years old and working as a
teacher in a nearby town, she too had emigrated to America,
but only recently Trang had become her first friend. Here.
The two would go shopping, and Trang would insist that
they spoke English to help Tao learn. Tao would even
(17:32):
stay over in Trang in Sinadu's dorm from time to time.
Before long, this friendship became a source of jealousy for Sinadu.
Sometimes she would even neglect to tell Trang about Tao's
telephone messages to Senadou. Tao and Trang's friendship felt like
(17:52):
another rejection, and little by little this feeling of rejection
was hardening into something else else, something closer to anger.
Sinadu's diary entry from a month into their living arrangement
shows a sharp and alarming turn taking place in her
mental space, on the way to depression and battered with
(18:14):
pessimistic thoughts. Tray told me I am boring. I felt
like I'm boring her. If I ever grow desperate enough
to seek power and a fearful respect through killing, she
would be the first one I would blow off. Reading
words like this in someone else's diary, it's hard to
know what to think of them. Was this a serious consideration?
(18:39):
Was it sarcasm? How does a person shift from frustration
and loneliness to murderous anger. Are these the kind of
words that only become significant in retrospect, or are they
a clear marker of a break from reality? These are
questions I, unfortunately can't answer her. But what is clear
(19:02):
is that Sinadu was having a hard time reconciling the
dreams she had for her friendship with Tray and the
reality that Treng was her own person with a busy
routine and a well established social circle. Sinadu's anger grew,
and as it did, so did the tension in the
dorm room. By the middle of their junior year, Treng's
(19:26):
patience with Sinadu was coming to an end. This was
their fourth semester as roommates, and according to accounts from
people who knew treg Sinnadu had become uncharacteristically and aggressively messy.
She leave fruit peels out around the room to rot.
Trein complained about Sinadu to her mother and sister, who
(19:50):
asked if there was anything they could do to intervene,
but Treng assured them she would handle it. She made
up her mind to tell Sinadu that for their senior
year she be rooming with someone else. She knew it
would be a difficult conversation, but in the spring, when
the deadline for next year's rooming decisions was approaching, Train
(20:11):
got up the courage to break the news to Sinadu.
Treng was right to be worried. Sinnadu was beside herself
after their conversation. According to an article in The New Yorker,
Sinadu followed Trang onto the street and into the subway
after their conversation, pleading with her to reconsider. Sinadu even
(20:32):
wrote Treng a letter saying that Trang would always have
a family to go to, but Sinnadu had no one.
Couldn't they just please finish out their time at Harvard together. Trang,
whose impulse was always to be kind and accommodating, felt terrible.
She asked her friend tal whether she was making a mistake,
(20:55):
but Tao assured her that everything she was doing was
completely reasonable. So she wrote Sinadu a note in response,
I respect you, so you should respect my decision despite
what happened. I hope that we can still be friends,
it said. For Senadu, a boundary like this just wasn't acceptable.
(21:20):
She retaliated by giving Tray the cold shoulder, a powerful
gesture in their tiny shared space once. Senadu even refused
to unlock the door when Treng was accidentally locked out,
forcing her to call building security. Now, on some level,
all of this feels like a serious overreaction, but I
(21:43):
think it's worth taking a minute to consider this from
Sinadu's perspective. Here, she was weeks before the start of
her senior year, a time when most students had well
established friend groups and were solidifying next year's living arrangements
with people they really loved. Instead, Senadu would be added
to the general roommate pool as a floater to be
(22:06):
matched with someone else. She didn't know. She was probably
feeling supremely lonely and maybe even embarrassed. These social failings
of hers were now on display. For someone with so
few emotional resources and so little community, this must have
been really difficult. Of course, circumstances like this are no
(22:30):
excuse for emotional warfare, but they may help give context
to her behavior. According to doctor Randolph Catlan, chief of
Harvard's Mental Health services during traying and Sinidu's time at
the university, in cases of mental distress, where a person's
quote self esteem is narrowly based, it becomes terribly important
(22:54):
to feel there is one person who cares about you.
If you take that person's rejection and as clear evidence
that you as a person are not valuable, that might
make you enormously angry. A primitive response to this is
that you might want to destroy that person or yourself,
(23:15):
or both. According to Sinideu's diaries, traying appears to be
Sinnidhu's only source of emotional support at this time. Her
name shows up again and again in the pages of
her notebooks, but the truth was Sinnadu had others she
could have turned to. Neb Sinnidhu's classmate from Ethiopia, who
(23:38):
also went to Harvard, was in her same year. Her
brother was also studying in the US by now, and
she had cousins in the Boston area. Sinnidou told none
of them about the loneliness she was facing or her
sadness over losing traying as a roommate. Two weeks before
(24:05):
the end of the semester, Sennadou methodically packed her computer
into its original packaging and sent it to one of
her cousins to use. She acquired two knives and a
nylon rope. She sent her school photo to the staff
at Harvard's student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, along with an
(24:26):
anonymous note that read, keep this picture. There will soon
be a very juicy story involving the person in this picture.
Editors at the newspaper looked at the photo, unsure what
to do before throwing it in the trash, only to
phish it out a few days later, when its significance
(24:47):
became very clear, Sinadu did one other thing that was
totally out of character. During that last week of school.
She called her friend Neb, whom she hadn't spoken to
a unps. Sinadu invited him to brunch on Sunday, May
twenty first, a week before the end of classes. According
(25:09):
to Neb, when he sat down across from Sinadu at
the restaurant, she was practically unrecognizable. She was brighter, lighter,
wearing makeup, high heels and shorts, something she never did.
In fact, in Ethiopia, shorts were considered disrespectful. Sinnadu was
usually a modest dresser, and Neb was later quoted as
(25:31):
saying that there was a profound change in the way
she looked, and moved and carried herself. It was the
happiest Neb had ever seen her. It was only after
what happened in Dunster House a week later that the
memory became a disturbing one for Neb. That week, Senedu
(26:08):
turned in the final work for one class, on which
she got an A, but didn't study for her next
few classes. Students who saw her in the library said
she looked distracted and distant. She would end up requesting
medical forbearance for the rest of her exams and spend
much of the next few days in bed. On Friday
(26:31):
May twenty sixth, just a few days before the official
end of the year, Trang invited her best friend Tao
to stay the weekend at their dorm. Tao would offer
moral support as Trang finished her exams and would help
Trang move out once she was done. On Saturday, May
(26:51):
twenty seventh, Trang left the dorm around ten am to
study for the physics exam she'd be taking that evening.
Was taking the same physics course, so Treng found it
odd that Sinadu wasn't also studying that day. Instead, Sinnadu
had been laying in her bed all day, knees to
(27:12):
her chest, quietly crying. At this point, the two women
hadn't spoken in months, but Treng hesitantly broke the silence
to ask if Sinnadu was okay. Sinnadu waved her off
without saying a word, so Treg left to focus on
her exam. Once she was finished, Trang met Tao back
(27:33):
at the dorm before heading out to celebrate together. They
watched a movie in another friend's room until about two am,
when they returned to tray in Sinadu's room to sleep.
This time, they found Cinnadu lying face down on her
bed with the light on. The two friends talked for
a while in Trang's bed about how far each of
them had come, the summer ahead, and their big dreams
(27:56):
for the future. Sometime before eight am, the girls woke
to an alarm. After realizing it was Sinnadou's, the two
closed their eyes again. Tal heard the sound of running
water coming from the bathroom before drifting back to sleep.
Some time later, Tao awoke to see Sinnadu standing above
(28:17):
Trayng's small bed, silently stabbing Trang with a five inch
hunting knife. There was a glazed, determined expression on Sinnadu's face.
Tal watched as Traying held up her hands to block
the knife and cry out, but no sound escaped her lips.
Tal sat up and tried to grab the knife from Sinnadu,
(28:40):
but Sinnadu pulled it away, slicing through Too's hand in
the process. That's when instinct took over. Tal rolled out
of bed and stumbled toward the dorm room door. Her
life was in danger. She had to escape. Blood from
her hand smeared on the handle as she pulled open
the door and dragged her body into the quiet hallway.
(29:04):
Then she heard the sound she'd never forget, the heavy,
self locking door clicking shut behind her. Towel was safe
in the hall, but now only someone with a key
would be able to get into that room, and the
only two people who had a key were inside. Training
(29:28):
was trapped in a panic. Towel ran down the hall,
banging on doors, trying desperately to get someone's attention, but
it was early in the morning on a Saturday, few
students were awake. Finally, she got the attention of a
student in the quad, who called the police. When officers
entered the room, the first thing they saw was Traying
(29:51):
lying lifeless on the floor with forty five stab wounds
to her face, chest and legs. Sinnadu appe apeared to
be missing until they checked the bathroom. There, hanging from
the ceiling by the rope she'd purchased a week earlier.
With Sinnadu's body, officers attempted to resuscitate her, but pronounced
(30:15):
her dead just moments later. The initial story about the
murder suicide that circulated in the media was one of
confusion and disbelief. A Harvard official was quoted in The
Boston Globe saying that there is no conventional motive. It
is not about sex or revenge. There is no apparent reason.
(30:39):
A New York Times piece ran with the headline Harvard
deaths leave a puzzle whose central piece may never be found.
People magazine wrote that quote, the sense of mystery is
unlikely to lift any time soon. But how much of
a mystery was it really? As we already know, there
(31:03):
were plenty of signs that things were unraveling for Sinadu.
She was withdrawing socially. She sent that pleading letter to
the law school student asking for help making friends, and,
as investigators would soon discover, Sinnadu was in fact receiving
counseling from a therapist through Harvard's student health services, and
(31:25):
had been for months prior to the stabbing. As more
and more reporting came to light, the central question shifted
from how could this have happened? To how much was
Harvard to blame? Harvard was reluctant to comment, much to
reporters in the weeks and months that followed, but not
(31:46):
for the reason you might expect. Yes, Harvard is an
elite institution that relies heavily on its reputation. But as
it happened, the murder suicide occurred just a month after
another murder scandal that had put the school in a
very tough position. An applicant, Gina Grant, had been accepted
(32:08):
into the newest freshman class when it was later discovered
that she had bludgeoned her mother to death with a
candlestick five years before. A great deal of debate ensued
about whether a murderer should be admitted to Harvard. The
answer turned out to be no, and Gina's acceptance was withdrawn,
But having the school appear in headlines next to the
(32:30):
word murderer had done enough pr damage. The last thing
they needed was to figure out how to deal with
another killing, this time on their own campus. Members of
the Harvard community who were willing to speak to reporters
revealed some stunning information. According to them, appointments with mental
(32:52):
health professionals through Harvard Student Medical Services were few and
far between in nineteen ninety five. According to an editorial
piece from the Harvard Crimson, Making an appointment to see
a mental health professional often took ten to fifteen days,
far too long of a wait for someone going through
(33:12):
a mental health crisis. On top of that, the most
any student could get was one appointment a month. Students
who were in need of long term therapy were referred
off campus, as the school's health plan didn't cover treatments
like this. In the year before Senadu's suicide, three other
Harvard students had taken their lives, two of whom had
(33:36):
lived in the same building. These rates were quote very
unusual for the university, said Randolph Catlan Junior, who was
chief of Harvard's mental health services at the time. All
of this information led to a growing mistrust in Harvard's
ability to support its students' mental health and raised questions
(33:57):
about how much the school was to blame for what
happened to train. But while in America, Sinadu's attack and
suicide were spoken about in the context of mental illness,
the story was much different in Ethiopia. This, as you'll remember,
is where Sinnadu grew up and where her family still lived.
(34:17):
When news of the stabbing reached Sinnidu's community, there were
two common explanations for her actions. One was the belief
that Sinnadu was a lesbian, perhaps in love with Traying,
and so she did the right thing by killing herself
and the object of her affection. I am not an
(34:38):
expert on Ethiopian culture, but in the research we did
for this story, I learned that the culture in Ethiopia
is modest, predominantly Christian, and very conservative when it comes
to LGBTQ issues. Mental health is also not commonly discussed,
at least it wasn't in the nineties. Big life altering
(35:03):
incidents like this one at Harvard were understood within the
context of the traditional Ethiopian Orthodox framework that the Tedessa
family and their community were brought up in. Sinadou was
plagued by improper thoughts and feelings, and her decision to
end things could be seen as a noble one. Whether
(35:26):
or not her feelings toward Traying were indeed romantic isn't
totally clear. Most seemed to think it was a platonic relationship,
based on her diary writings, which mentioned dreams of a
husband and children. The other potential explanation whispered about an
Ethiopia was that Sinadou was possessed by spirits. According to
(35:48):
an article about the murder in The New Yorker, spirit
possession is regarded as a kind of consequence of leaving
Ethiopia and living in the West Sinada. It was a
good girl from a good family. It was plausible that
the devil had taken hold of her and influenced her behavior.
If she had stayed in Ethiopia, none of this would
(36:11):
have happened, because the moment she started feeling unwell, her
parents would have taken her to holy waters to be cleansed.
In Ethiopia, possession is perfectly curable. In America, there are psychologists,
but they can't address the possession of spirits, can they.
(36:31):
Regardless of the explanation, Sinnidu's death was a tragedy for
the whole culture. Two thousand people attended her funeral. Funerals
are usually a major expense to an Ethiopian family, and
church burials are normally not permitted for suicides because it
is believed that the devil has claimed that soul forever,
(36:53):
but Sinidu's family insisted on both, in large part because
they believe that no no one really knows what happened
to her. In an interview for the New Yorker article
I mentioned earlier, Sinadu's father explained to a reporter that
I don't care what a hundred psychologists or one thousand
police detectives tell me. I know my daughter did not
(37:18):
commit these crimes. The stories we read, we do not
believe something no one yet knows must have happened. One day,
the truth will come to light. Who would know if
not her parents, Her mother and I. We have been
with her all her life. We ate from the same
(37:40):
table every week. For the first forty nine days after
training death, there was a service at the Vietnamese Buddhist
(38:03):
temple in Boston. Relatives and friends came to pray that
Treng's consciousness would be accepted for salvation and not reborn
again on earth. Treng's mother was in a deep depression
for months after Treng's death. She feared she did something
gravely wrong in this life or a past one to
(38:26):
have a daughter die this way. Treng's younger sister took
a leave of absence from Tufts, where she was studying biopsychology,
so she could better care for her broken mother. But
she had plenty of healing to do herself. There is
no one I talk to now, she said in the
New Yorker article, I have lost my best friend, my
(38:48):
life companion, my sister. Treng's father was also left broken
in the aftermath of her stabbing. But while so many
were quick to villainize Harvard for their lack of preparedness
and failure to take responsibility for the incident, Treng's father's
feelings about the school were complicated. Having train go to
(39:09):
Harvard was everything the whole family had dreamed of and
worked for. It is the future they envisioned when they
left everything they knew in Vietnam and boarded that crowded
boat twenty years earlier. Harvard will always be in my heart,
her father said in an interview. For me, it is
the best place and the worst place. There is one more,
(39:44):
less talked about, but equally compelling explanation for Senadutdesay's fate.
It's a theory that Mena de Messi, a PhD in
political science and public policy, lays out in her paper
titled Rethinking the American Dream The Cost of Coming to America.
(40:04):
Doctor de Messi attributes Synadou's social and mental health challenges
to a state she calls assimilation unaccomplished. Essentially, her argument
is that the traditional rags to riches American immigrant narrative
is incomplete and in some ways even harmful. It doesn't
(40:25):
make space for the darker, less favorable aspects of making
life work in America. In her words, there's a price
one must pay to become an American quote, a price
that tests the strength of one's mental stability and in
some cases can lead to severe forms of depression that
(40:47):
go unannounced or misconstrued. It's a fascinating concept because in America,
if we look far enough into our own past, almost
everyone's family is an immigration story. So why is this
theory such a new one? Are we descendants just the
product of accomplished assimilation? I have to think sort of
(41:12):
decades of sacrifice, single minded focus, dreaming, fantasizing even about
what life would be like in the United States must
have left Sinadu's expectations for her time at Harvard impossibly high.
Sinadu's success meant so much, not just to her, not
just to her family, but to her whole country. Imagine
(41:35):
the weight of that, the fear that by not fitting in,
not thriving at the best college in the world. She
was squandering a fantastic opportunity. Expanding the immigrant narrative to
encompass these challenges could do a lot to prevent the
kind of heavy self criticism and unhappiness that Sinadu experienced.
(41:59):
It may have even saved Tranghoe's life. I'd like to
(42:26):
shout out a few of the excellent sources I relied
on for this episode. The first is a New Yorker
article called The Harvard Student Who Killed Her Roommate, written
by Melanie Thornstrom. It's a fascinating telling of the incident
and a look at some of the angles of the
story that other news outlets overlooked. The author of that article,
(42:48):
Melanie Thornstrom, eventually expanded the piece into a book called
Halfway Heaven Diary of a Harvard Murder, which is by
far the most comprehensive and immersive exploration of this story.
I highly recommend it. The rest of our sources can
be found in our show notes. For information about this
(43:10):
case and others we cover on the show, visit Diversionaudio
dot com. The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told is
a production of Diversion audio. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer and
I hosted this episode. This episode was written by Grace Herman.
(43:33):
Our show is produced by Emma Dmouth, edited by Antonio Enriquez,
Theme music by Tyler Cash. Executive produced by Scott Waxman.
Diversion audio. A note this episode contains mature content and
descriptions of violence that may be disturbing for some listeners.
Please take care in listening. There's nothing like being on
(00:27):
a college campus during the final week of classes. The
relaxing exhale of summer is right around the corner, and
the energy of what's next bubbles up in every conversation
and social circle. For students of Harvard, there's an added
pride in having completed another semester. At an ivy league.
(00:51):
On Saturday, May twenty seventh, nineteen ninety five, two young
women in Harvard's Dunster House dorm building were celebrating the
end of a long, hard year. The women were juniors,
both pre med and both immigrants to America with dreams
of becoming doctors. Decades of dedication, sacrifice, and faith had
(01:18):
brought them here to the world's most prestigious institution, and
they were a source of immense pride for both of
their families. That the girls would meet in a science
class their freshman year and end up roommates seemed like fate.
Both had made journeys of many thousands of miles to
(01:40):
end up in Massachusetts and they must have felt like
kindred spirits. But while from the outside their similarities were
impossible to deny, the girls' inner worlds couldn't have been
more different. While one found purpose and thrived in her
college environment, the other struggled to find a place. While
(02:04):
one made strong friendships and found community, the other grew
isolated and distant from her loved ones. What started as
a fated friendship after a while became estranged. Admiration turned
to jealousy, good will turned to resentment, and late on
(02:25):
that Saturday night in May nineteen ninety five, when the
air was thick with anticipation of good things, one girl
saw the end of her world. Other residents of Dunster
House would wake up the next morning to screams coming
from the girl's dorm room. Harvard campus security in Cambridge
(02:47):
police would be called in. The gruesome scene they would
find on the other side of that door would be
like something out of a nightmare. But the two women,
for their families and for the university, Welcome to the
(03:15):
greatest true crime stories ever told. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer.
Today's episode we're calling Harvard's Forgotten Murder Suicide. It's the
story of a friendship gone wrong, the limits of human ambition,
and the dark underbelly of the American dream. Because the
(03:35):
thing they don't tell you about having your greatest dream
come true is what to do with yourself afterwards. We'll
get into all of that right after this quick break.
(04:03):
The college experience is so much less about academics than
you think it's going to be when you're eighteen. It
isn't until you're well out of school that you realize
that the most important lessons you learned during those years
were how to be a normal, functioning adult in the world,
one who knows how to make friends, form a community,
(04:23):
and take care of themselves. It's a time to figure
out where you fit inside this much bigger pond, and
it's something that doesn't come easy for a lot of kids.
I know this from experience. I showed up to a
liberal arts school from suburban Georgia and had to answer
the question where are you from? Twice, once to name
(04:45):
my hometown and again to say where I was from from.
It highlights your experience, or at least other people's experience,
of you. Introducing yourself means explaining parts of you that
you've never had to earn articulate before. But my experience
was nothing compared to the task that immigrant and international
(05:05):
students face when they come to college in America. Not
only are they learning how to handle new levels of
academic challenge, but many also carry the dreams of proud
and expectant families being there, finding your place, making the
most of the unparalleled opportunities in front of you after
(05:27):
decades of sacrifice in single minded dedication is a big
task for an eighteen year old. Reconciling your past self
with the person you're becoming is one of the greatest
transformations any person can experience. The story I'm going to
tell you today is about the limitations of the human
(05:48):
psyche when those needs of community and social connection aren't met,
even in a place as picture perfect as Harvard. Sinnadu
(06:11):
Taedessa had big dreams for her life from the very beginning.
She was born and raised in Addis Ababa in nineteen
seventy five, the capital of the world's third poorest country
at the time, Ethiopia. Walking those crowded streets of Addis Ababa,
(06:32):
you'd see livestock, hungry mothers with outstretched hands, and malnourished
children selling trinkets. In public schools, students sat on dirt floors,
dozens and dozens to a class. Books and supplies were
a luxury, but Sinnadu Taedessa was fortunate. As a member
(06:53):
of an elite class, her family had the resources to
send her to one of Oddis Ababa's coveted Internet schools. There,
she was given opportunities. Few Ethiopians had English instruction, rigorous
courses preparation for university in America. The gravity of this
(07:14):
opportunity was not lost on Sinadu. While her country buckled
under the weight of a political turmoil, warfare, and famine,
Sinnadu studied. One of her English teachers remembered her as
being quote quiet and demure, academically focused to the point
(07:35):
of tunnel vision, and she was successful. In fact, Sinnadu
wasn't just good in school, she was exceptional. During her
senior year of high school, she was named the number
two student in all of Ethiopia. Her high school guidance
counselor said, you couldn't tell her that academics weren't everything,
(07:59):
because they were. They were her ticket out. The day
she received her acceptance letter and a full scholarship to
Harvard was the happiest day of her life. She would
go to America, get the best education money could buy
from the world's most prestigious institution, and return home a doctor.
(08:20):
But the way Harvard looked in Sinnadu's dreams was a
lot different than her reality. Accustomed to being exceptional, she
found classes difficult. The reinforcement and praise she was used
to receiving for her efforts didn't come. Far from standing out.
She struggled to make bees. The cold Massachusetts weather depressed her,
(08:45):
and she felt deeply isolated. Visiting her family in Ethiopia
was out of the question financially. The only person she
knew on campus was neb, a smart and popular classmate
of hers from the International School, but the two of
them didn't run in the same social circles. Learning how
(09:07):
to make friends wasn't something Sinna Dou had spent much
time doing. Now she not only had to learn how,
but do so among young adults who had grown up
with entirely different customs, cultural references, and social etiquette. When
she didn't have friends to confide in, Sinadu would divulge
(09:29):
her feelings in her diary and journals. One of her
spiral notebooks was labeled My Small Book of Social Rules.
In it, Senadu wrote pages and pages of numbered instructions
for how to address the problems she was facing socially,
things like what to discuss with the other students in
(09:50):
the cafeteria Every morning when you wake up, you have
to come up with three fat topics of conversation. This
is always your greatest problem, so deal with it properly,
one entry said. But as the diary goes on, her
words take on a more paranoid tone. One said, do
(10:12):
not show off what you really think. Put on a mask.
These social exercises didn't seem to bring sinnad much success, though.
The summer after her freshman year, Sinadu reached a point
of desperation. In a baffling move, she sent a letter
to a stranger at Harvard's law school pleading for help
(10:33):
making friends. The glimpse this letter gives into sinad psyche
is honestly fascinating and frankly, she writes, beautifully, I'm going
to take a minute to read a few paragraphs from it.
Why am I writing this letter because I am desperate.
As far as I can remember, my life has been hellish.
(10:56):
Year after year, I became lonelier and lonelier. When I'm
with a group of people, I keep so quiet. I
have nothing to say that I send the chills through
those who notice me. Then I cry when people forget
about me or dislike being with me. When I'm with
one person, I shake with nervousness, fearing that we will
(11:17):
run out of things to say, or she or he
will be bored. For math, I had a teacher for painting.
I had a teacher for social life. I had no one.
All you have to do is give me a hand
and put into words what you already know. All it
takes is a few hours from your week and some energy.
(11:39):
Please do not close the door in my face. Even
if you are not interested. Please give this letter to
a friend or relative who might be We don't know
much about who the recipient of this letter was, but
what we do know is that they forwarded it to
a dean at Harvard, who then placed it in Sinedu's
(11:59):
file and left it at that, no investigation, no follow up.
To be fair, this was probably unlike anything the dean's
office or student health services had ever seen before, but
still it's a literal cry for help. More on the
student health services later, though. There was one bright spot
(12:25):
in Sinnidu's freshman year. It came in the form of
another student named Trang Ho, whom Sinnadou met in her
science class. The two had a lot in common. Both
were polite, hard working biology majors who had moved to
America from across the world. Both had risen from humble
(12:46):
circumstances to become valedictorians of their high school graduating classes,
and both dreamed of becoming doctors. Trang was born near
Saigon in nineteen seventy four, just five months before the
culmination of the Vietnam War. Both of Treng's parents were
(13:06):
sent to re education camps in the wake of the war,
and in nineteen eighty four, when Treng was ten, they
made the difficult decision to attempt to escape Vietnam for
a better life abroad. Treng, her older sister, and their
father went first Under the cover of night, they crammed
(13:27):
inside a small boat along two hundred and sixty five
other refugees. Their destination was Indonesia, where they'd stay in
a refugee camp for a few months and hopefully continue
on to America. The boat was so crowded that the
passengers were forced to stand for seven days. At the
(13:49):
refugee camp, mister ho gave the girls English words to
learn to prepare them for their life in America. At
first it was ten or twin words, and later nearly
one hundred a day. Mister Hoe knew about the famous
universities on the East Coast, and in nineteen eighty six
(14:10):
he settled his family in the Boston area, hoping to
send his daughters to one of the IVY leagues one day.
Like Sinadu, Train took her studies very seriously. Once as
a young student, when she found herself stuck on a
homework problem, she called nine one one to ask her help.
(14:30):
The dispatcher told her that someone would call her back,
and when her father answered the phone a few minutes later,
he heard a policeman on the other end asking for
the little girl who needed help with her assignment. But
unlike Sinadou, Train didn't seem to have a problem forming friendships.
Her teachers would later describe the joy and excitement she
(14:52):
found in learning. All through high school, she tutored her classmates.
By the beginning of her sophomore year at Harvard, Trang
had established a solid group of friends and was thriving.
Her grades were good, and she seemed well on her
way to the goal of medical school. A few weeks
before meeting Trayng in that science class, Sinadu had been
(15:14):
hurt to find that her then roommate wanted to live
with someone else next year. Finding yourself without a roommate
at the end of the spring semester is a tough
blow for anyone, but it must have been especially tough
for Sinadu, who was struggling so hard socially. Treng was kind,
and it's not difficult to imagine how the two must
(15:37):
have formed a connection around their similar upbringings and dreams
for the future. Sinadou decided to ask Trang to be
her roommate, and Trang agreed. Sinadu was overjoyed. Perhaps this
would finally be the chance for the kind of close
friendship that had always been beyond her grasp. In her
(15:58):
diary entry from that week, Sinnadu wrote, the last four
days were the highlight of my life thus far in Harvard.
My roommate problem was solved in the best way possible
with a girl I thought I would really enjoy to
be with with a girl I would make the queen
of my life. Sinadu would later tell her father she
(16:21):
had found a best friend. Unfortunately, Trang seems to have
had no idea of the role she was playing in
her new roommate's life. The high hopes Sinnadu had for
(16:50):
her friendship with Treyng would never come to be. Far
from being Sinnidu's new confidant, Treng was away from campus
nearly every weekend, visiting her family who lived close by.
Even more of a blow was the fact that Trang
already had a best friend, her name was Tao. When
(17:11):
Tao was twenty nine years old and working as a
teacher in a nearby town, she too had emigrated to America,
but only recently Trang had become her first friend. Here.
The two would go shopping, and Trang would insist that
they spoke English to help Tao learn. Tao would even
(17:32):
stay over in Trang in Sinadu's dorm from time to time.
Before long, this friendship became a source of jealousy for Sinadu.
Sometimes she would even neglect to tell Trang about Tao's
telephone messages to Senadou. Tao and Trang's friendship felt like
(17:52):
another rejection, and little by little this feeling of rejection
was hardening into something else else, something closer to anger.
Sinadu's diary entry from a month into their living arrangement
shows a sharp and alarming turn taking place in her
mental space, on the way to depression and battered with
(18:14):
pessimistic thoughts. Tray told me I am boring. I felt
like I'm boring her. If I ever grow desperate enough
to seek power and a fearful respect through killing, she
would be the first one I would blow off. Reading
words like this in someone else's diary, it's hard to
know what to think of them. Was this a serious consideration?
(18:39):
Was it sarcasm? How does a person shift from frustration
and loneliness to murderous anger. Are these the kind of
words that only become significant in retrospect, or are they
a clear marker of a break from reality? These are
questions I, unfortunately can't answer her. But what is clear
(19:02):
is that Sinadu was having a hard time reconciling the
dreams she had for her friendship with Tray and the
reality that Treng was her own person with a busy
routine and a well established social circle. Sinadu's anger grew,
and as it did, so did the tension in the
dorm room. By the middle of their junior year, Treng's
(19:26):
patience with Sinadu was coming to an end. This was
their fourth semester as roommates, and according to accounts from
people who knew treg Sinnadu had become uncharacteristically and aggressively messy.
She leave fruit peels out around the room to rot.
Trein complained about Sinadu to her mother and sister, who
(19:50):
asked if there was anything they could do to intervene,
but Treng assured them she would handle it. She made
up her mind to tell Sinadu that for their senior
year she be rooming with someone else. She knew it
would be a difficult conversation, but in the spring, when
the deadline for next year's rooming decisions was approaching, Train
(20:11):
got up the courage to break the news to Sinadu.
Treng was right to be worried. Sinnadu was beside herself
after their conversation. According to an article in The New Yorker,
Sinadu followed Trang onto the street and into the subway
after their conversation, pleading with her to reconsider. Sinadu even
(20:32):
wrote Treng a letter saying that Trang would always have
a family to go to, but Sinnadu had no one.
Couldn't they just please finish out their time at Harvard together. Trang,
whose impulse was always to be kind and accommodating, felt terrible.
She asked her friend tal whether she was making a mistake,
(20:55):
but Tao assured her that everything she was doing was
completely reasonable. So she wrote Sinadu a note in response,
I respect you, so you should respect my decision despite
what happened. I hope that we can still be friends,
it said. For Senadu, a boundary like this just wasn't acceptable.
(21:20):
She retaliated by giving Tray the cold shoulder, a powerful
gesture in their tiny shared space once. Senadu even refused
to unlock the door when Treng was accidentally locked out,
forcing her to call building security. Now, on some level,
all of this feels like a serious overreaction, but I
(21:43):
think it's worth taking a minute to consider this from
Sinadu's perspective. Here, she was weeks before the start of
her senior year, a time when most students had well
established friend groups and were solidifying next year's living arrangements
with people they really loved. Instead, Senadu would be added
to the general roommate pool as a floater to be
(22:06):
matched with someone else. She didn't know. She was probably
feeling supremely lonely and maybe even embarrassed. These social failings
of hers were now on display. For someone with so
few emotional resources and so little community, this must have
been really difficult. Of course, circumstances like this are no
(22:30):
excuse for emotional warfare, but they may help give context
to her behavior. According to doctor Randolph Catlan, chief of
Harvard's Mental Health services during traying and Sinidu's time at
the university, in cases of mental distress, where a person's
quote self esteem is narrowly based, it becomes terribly important
(22:54):
to feel there is one person who cares about you.
If you take that person's rejection and as clear evidence
that you as a person are not valuable, that might
make you enormously angry. A primitive response to this is
that you might want to destroy that person or yourself,
(23:15):
or both. According to Sinideu's diaries, traying appears to be
Sinnidhu's only source of emotional support at this time. Her
name shows up again and again in the pages of
her notebooks, but the truth was Sinnadu had others she
could have turned to. Neb Sinnidhu's classmate from Ethiopia, who
(23:38):
also went to Harvard, was in her same year. Her
brother was also studying in the US by now, and
she had cousins in the Boston area. Sinnidou told none
of them about the loneliness she was facing or her
sadness over losing traying as a roommate. Two weeks before
(24:05):
the end of the semester, Sennadou methodically packed her computer
into its original packaging and sent it to one of
her cousins to use. She acquired two knives and a
nylon rope. She sent her school photo to the staff
at Harvard's student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, along with an
(24:26):
anonymous note that read, keep this picture. There will soon
be a very juicy story involving the person in this picture.
Editors at the newspaper looked at the photo, unsure what
to do before throwing it in the trash, only to
phish it out a few days later, when its significance
(24:47):
became very clear, Sinadu did one other thing that was
totally out of character. During that last week of school.
She called her friend Neb, whom she hadn't spoken to
a unps. Sinadu invited him to brunch on Sunday, May
twenty first, a week before the end of classes. According
(25:09):
to Neb, when he sat down across from Sinadu at
the restaurant, she was practically unrecognizable. She was brighter, lighter,
wearing makeup, high heels and shorts, something she never did.
In fact, in Ethiopia, shorts were considered disrespectful. Sinnadu was
usually a modest dresser, and Neb was later quoted as
(25:31):
saying that there was a profound change in the way
she looked, and moved and carried herself. It was the
happiest Neb had ever seen her. It was only after
what happened in Dunster House a week later that the
memory became a disturbing one for Neb. That week, Senedu
(26:08):
turned in the final work for one class, on which
she got an A, but didn't study for her next
few classes. Students who saw her in the library said
she looked distracted and distant. She would end up requesting
medical forbearance for the rest of her exams and spend
much of the next few days in bed. On Friday
(26:31):
May twenty sixth, just a few days before the official
end of the year, Trang invited her best friend Tao
to stay the weekend at their dorm. Tao would offer
moral support as Trang finished her exams and would help
Trang move out once she was done. On Saturday, May
(26:51):
twenty seventh, Trang left the dorm around ten am to
study for the physics exam she'd be taking that evening.
Was taking the same physics course, so Treng found it
odd that Sinadu wasn't also studying that day. Instead, Sinnadu
had been laying in her bed all day, knees to
(27:12):
her chest, quietly crying. At this point, the two women
hadn't spoken in months, but Treng hesitantly broke the silence
to ask if Sinnadu was okay. Sinnadu waved her off
without saying a word, so Treg left to focus on
her exam. Once she was finished, Trang met Tao back
(27:33):
at the dorm before heading out to celebrate together. They
watched a movie in another friend's room until about two am,
when they returned to tray in Sinadu's room to sleep.
This time, they found Cinnadu lying face down on her
bed with the light on. The two friends talked for
a while in Trang's bed about how far each of
them had come, the summer ahead, and their big dreams
(27:56):
for the future. Sometime before eight am, the girls woke
to an alarm. After realizing it was Sinnadou's, the two
closed their eyes again. Tal heard the sound of running
water coming from the bathroom before drifting back to sleep.
Some time later, Tao awoke to see Sinnadu standing above
(28:17):
Trayng's small bed, silently stabbing Trang with a five inch
hunting knife. There was a glazed, determined expression on Sinnadu's face.
Tal watched as Traying held up her hands to block
the knife and cry out, but no sound escaped her lips.
Tal sat up and tried to grab the knife from Sinnadu,
(28:40):
but Sinnadu pulled it away, slicing through Too's hand in
the process. That's when instinct took over. Tal rolled out
of bed and stumbled toward the dorm room door. Her
life was in danger. She had to escape. Blood from
her hand smeared on the handle as she pulled open
the door and dragged her body into the quiet hallway.
(29:04):
Then she heard the sound she'd never forget, the heavy,
self locking door clicking shut behind her. Towel was safe
in the hall, but now only someone with a key
would be able to get into that room, and the
only two people who had a key were inside. Training
(29:28):
was trapped in a panic. Towel ran down the hall,
banging on doors, trying desperately to get someone's attention, but
it was early in the morning on a Saturday, few
students were awake. Finally, she got the attention of a
student in the quad, who called the police. When officers
entered the room, the first thing they saw was Traying
(29:51):
lying lifeless on the floor with forty five stab wounds
to her face, chest and legs. Sinnadu appe apeared to
be missing until they checked the bathroom. There, hanging from
the ceiling by the rope she'd purchased a week earlier.
With Sinnadu's body, officers attempted to resuscitate her, but pronounced
(30:15):
her dead just moments later. The initial story about the
murder suicide that circulated in the media was one of
confusion and disbelief. A Harvard official was quoted in The
Boston Globe saying that there is no conventional motive. It
is not about sex or revenge. There is no apparent reason.
(30:39):
A New York Times piece ran with the headline Harvard
deaths leave a puzzle whose central piece may never be found.
People magazine wrote that quote, the sense of mystery is
unlikely to lift any time soon. But how much of
a mystery was it really? As we already know, there
(31:03):
were plenty of signs that things were unraveling for Sinadu.
She was withdrawing socially. She sent that pleading letter to
the law school student asking for help making friends, and,
as investigators would soon discover, Sinnadu was in fact receiving
counseling from a therapist through Harvard's student health services, and
(31:25):
had been for months prior to the stabbing. As more
and more reporting came to light, the central question shifted
from how could this have happened? To how much was
Harvard to blame? Harvard was reluctant to comment, much to
reporters in the weeks and months that followed, but not
(31:46):
for the reason you might expect. Yes, Harvard is an
elite institution that relies heavily on its reputation. But as
it happened, the murder suicide occurred just a month after
another murder scandal that had put the school in a
very tough position. An applicant, Gina Grant, had been accepted
(32:08):
into the newest freshman class when it was later discovered
that she had bludgeoned her mother to death with a
candlestick five years before. A great deal of debate ensued
about whether a murderer should be admitted to Harvard. The
answer turned out to be no, and Gina's acceptance was withdrawn,
But having the school appear in headlines next to the
(32:30):
word murderer had done enough pr damage. The last thing
they needed was to figure out how to deal with
another killing, this time on their own campus. Members of
the Harvard community who were willing to speak to reporters
revealed some stunning information. According to them, appointments with mental
(32:52):
health professionals through Harvard Student Medical Services were few and
far between in nineteen ninety five. According to an editorial
piece from the Harvard Crimson, Making an appointment to see
a mental health professional often took ten to fifteen days,
far too long of a wait for someone going through
(33:12):
a mental health crisis. On top of that, the most
any student could get was one appointment a month. Students
who were in need of long term therapy were referred
off campus, as the school's health plan didn't cover treatments
like this. In the year before Senadu's suicide, three other
Harvard students had taken their lives, two of whom had
(33:36):
lived in the same building. These rates were quote very
unusual for the university, said Randolph Catlan Junior, who was
chief of Harvard's mental health services at the time. All
of this information led to a growing mistrust in Harvard's
ability to support its students' mental health and raised questions
(33:57):
about how much the school was to blame for what
happened to train. But while in America, Sinadu's attack and
suicide were spoken about in the context of mental illness,
the story was much different in Ethiopia. This, as you'll remember,
is where Sinnadu grew up and where her family still lived.
(34:17):
When news of the stabbing reached Sinnidu's community, there were
two common explanations for her actions. One was the belief
that Sinnadu was a lesbian, perhaps in love with Traying,
and so she did the right thing by killing herself
and the object of her affection. I am not an
(34:38):
expert on Ethiopian culture, but in the research we did
for this story, I learned that the culture in Ethiopia
is modest, predominantly Christian, and very conservative when it comes
to LGBTQ issues. Mental health is also not commonly discussed,
at least it wasn't in the nineties. Big life altering
(35:03):
incidents like this one at Harvard were understood within the
context of the traditional Ethiopian Orthodox framework that the Tedessa
family and their community were brought up in. Sinadou was
plagued by improper thoughts and feelings, and her decision to
end things could be seen as a noble one. Whether
(35:26):
or not her feelings toward Traying were indeed romantic isn't
totally clear. Most seemed to think it was a platonic relationship,
based on her diary writings, which mentioned dreams of a
husband and children. The other potential explanation whispered about an
Ethiopia was that Sinadou was possessed by spirits. According to
(35:48):
an article about the murder in The New Yorker, spirit
possession is regarded as a kind of consequence of leaving
Ethiopia and living in the West Sinada. It was a
good girl from a good family. It was plausible that
the devil had taken hold of her and influenced her behavior.
If she had stayed in Ethiopia, none of this would
(36:11):
have happened, because the moment she started feeling unwell, her
parents would have taken her to holy waters to be cleansed.
In Ethiopia, possession is perfectly curable. In America, there are psychologists,
but they can't address the possession of spirits, can they.
(36:31):
Regardless of the explanation, Sinnidu's death was a tragedy for
the whole culture. Two thousand people attended her funeral. Funerals
are usually a major expense to an Ethiopian family, and
church burials are normally not permitted for suicides because it
is believed that the devil has claimed that soul forever,
(36:53):
but Sinidu's family insisted on both, in large part because
they believe that no no one really knows what happened
to her. In an interview for the New Yorker article
I mentioned earlier, Sinadu's father explained to a reporter that
I don't care what a hundred psychologists or one thousand
police detectives tell me. I know my daughter did not
(37:18):
commit these crimes. The stories we read, we do not
believe something no one yet knows must have happened. One day,
the truth will come to light. Who would know if
not her parents, Her mother and I. We have been
with her all her life. We ate from the same
(37:40):
table every week. For the first forty nine days after
training death, there was a service at the Vietnamese Buddhist
(38:03):
temple in Boston. Relatives and friends came to pray that
Treng's consciousness would be accepted for salvation and not reborn
again on earth. Treng's mother was in a deep depression
for months after Treng's death. She feared she did something
gravely wrong in this life or a past one to
(38:26):
have a daughter die this way. Treng's younger sister took
a leave of absence from Tufts, where she was studying biopsychology,
so she could better care for her broken mother. But
she had plenty of healing to do herself. There is
no one I talk to now, she said in the
New Yorker article, I have lost my best friend, my
(38:48):
life companion, my sister. Treng's father was also left broken
in the aftermath of her stabbing. But while so many
were quick to villainize Harvard for their lack of preparedness
and failure to take responsibility for the incident, Treng's father's
feelings about the school were complicated. Having train go to
(39:09):
Harvard was everything the whole family had dreamed of and
worked for. It is the future they envisioned when they
left everything they knew in Vietnam and boarded that crowded
boat twenty years earlier. Harvard will always be in my heart,
her father said in an interview. For me, it is
the best place and the worst place. There is one more,
(39:44):
less talked about, but equally compelling explanation for Senadutdesay's fate.
It's a theory that Mena de Messi, a PhD in
political science and public policy, lays out in her paper
titled Rethinking the American Dream The Cost of Coming to America.
(40:04):
Doctor de Messi attributes Synadou's social and mental health challenges
to a state she calls assimilation unaccomplished. Essentially, her argument
is that the traditional rags to riches American immigrant narrative
is incomplete and in some ways even harmful. It doesn't
(40:25):
make space for the darker, less favorable aspects of making
life work in America. In her words, there's a price
one must pay to become an American quote, a price
that tests the strength of one's mental stability and in
some cases can lead to severe forms of depression that
(40:47):
go unannounced or misconstrued. It's a fascinating concept because in America,
if we look far enough into our own past, almost
everyone's family is an immigration story. So why is this
theory such a new one? Are we descendants just the
product of accomplished assimilation? I have to think sort of
(41:12):
decades of sacrifice, single minded focus, dreaming, fantasizing even about
what life would be like in the United States must
have left Sinadu's expectations for her time at Harvard impossibly high.
Sinadu's success meant so much, not just to her, not
just to her family, but to her whole country. Imagine
(41:35):
the weight of that, the fear that by not fitting in,
not thriving at the best college in the world. She
was squandering a fantastic opportunity. Expanding the immigrant narrative to
encompass these challenges could do a lot to prevent the
kind of heavy self criticism and unhappiness that Sinadu experienced.
(41:59):
It may have even saved Tranghoe's life. I'd like to
(42:26):
shout out a few of the excellent sources I relied
on for this episode. The first is a New Yorker
article called The Harvard Student Who Killed Her Roommate, written
by Melanie Thornstrom. It's a fascinating telling of the incident
and a look at some of the angles of the
story that other news outlets overlooked. The author of that article,
(42:48):
Melanie Thornstrom, eventually expanded the piece into a book called
Halfway Heaven Diary of a Harvard Murder, which is by
far the most comprehensive and immersive exploration of this story.
I highly recommend it. The rest of our sources can
be found in our show notes. For information about this
(43:10):
case and others we cover on the show, visit Diversionaudio
dot com. The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told is
a production of Diversion audio. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer and
I hosted this episode. This episode was written by Grace Herman.
(43:33):
Our show is produced by Emma Dmouth, edited by Antonio Enriquez,
Theme music by Tyler Cash. Executive produced by Scott Waxman.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.