Hunched over in the easy chair, her body shaking and her eyes clenched shut, Kenzi Snider finally uttered the words the investigators longed to hear.
“I killed her!” she cried out.
For a moment, her whimpers were the only sounds in the motel room. DiVittis, standing directly in front of her with his back against the window, stared down at her. Tears dripped from her face and into her lap. Mansfield, taking notes from a spot behind the chair, and Lee, who stood near the door, locked eyes. Could this really be happening? they seemed to ask each other.
The clock on the night stand read 8:30. It had been two hours since DiVittis directed Kenzi to the easy chair and took charge of the questioning.
We know you did this, he had told her then. It’s just a matter of helping you figure out what happened.
Kenzi shook her head.
“If I killed her, I don’t remember it,” she told him.
An experienced interrogator, DiVittis heard in her answer an opening for the minimization technique. “If I killed her”? Why not a simple “I didn’t kill her”?
He began talking to her about traumatic memories and how good people who did something totally out of character could cover up the event with other memories.
She looked at him quizzically.
Maybe it’s just too tough to remember, he suggested. His comments became what he later termed a monologue.
“You let them know you know what happened, and it’s futile for them to continue denying what happened,” he said afterward.
He talked about the possible effects of alcohol. He raised the lesbian angle. Maybe you were turned on by Jamie. We need to figure out what triggered this, he told her.
“There are a lot of things that happen to people that cause them to do things they never think they would ever do,” he told her.
Do you want us to help you figure this out or not? It’s up to you, he said.
I do want to know what happened, she told him.
Okay, he said, let’s go back to that night.
Watching from across the hotel room, Lee was amazed. He had never seen a murder interrogation before and was astonished by DiVittis’s skill. My job, he told himself, is just to stand here like a tree trunk and let the professional work.
DiVittis’s questions gradually became more intense and confrontational. Kenzi became more emotional and hesitant about her answers.
Lee felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
“She did it,” he thought. “She did it and she’s going to confess.”
The confession came haltingly and through sobs, but it boiled down to this: Kenzi admitted killing Jamie during a lesbian encounter after they returned to the motel. Her answers to DiVittis’s questions did not always make sense, and both he and Kenzi jumped around in the chronology. Mansfield realized he should make some sort of record of the interview and grabbed a stack of copier paper and a pen and began scribbling down what Kenzi said as fast as he could. A barebones narrative began to emerge:
Kenzi and Jamie returned from the Kum Sung after several hours at Nickleby’s. They went to Room 103. Jamie immediately came on to Kenzi in the bathroom. They began kissing and stroking each other.
“I touched her chest and back,” Mansfield quoted Kenzi as saying.
Kenzi performed oral sex on Jamie. Jamie then tried to undo Kenzi’s pants. As Jamie reached for her waistband, Kenzi flashed back to an unpleasant incident when she was four and her brothers and some other boys tried to look up her skirt. Kenzi became enraged with Jamie.
“I don’t want her touching my button!!” Mansfield quoted her. He added, “Deep sobbing.”
Kenzi backhanded Jamie across the face, knocking her into the bathtub. Jamie slumped uncomfortably in the tub.
“I did not go for help because I didn’t want anyone to know,” Mansfield quoted Kenzi.
Kenzi lifted Jamie up and tried to carry her into the bedroom. She tripped over a ledge leading into the room and dropped Jamie against the wall. She picked her up again and laid her on her back. She thought Jamie was staring up at her, and that made her angry again. She stomped on her head and chest.
“I feel my foot, and it’s heavy. I see her chest. My foot is heavy. Pushing she’s pushing on foot. She knows what I’m doing. I push harder, her chest,” Mansfield scrawled out.
Repulsed by what she had done, she covered Jamie’s head with the jacket, returned to her room, locked the door and crawled over Jeroen and into bed.
As she gave the account, Kenzi told DiVittis again and again that the memories were just coming to her. She had been repressing them for a year, and now images from that night were flooding back, she said. When Mansfield flipped through a book of crime scene photos, she stopped him on a shot of a bloody footprint in the foyer. “That’s mine,” she said. How can you be sure? he asked, adding, “Most people don’t look at the bottom of their shoes.” She replied, “It’s mine.”
Although DiVittis reassured her that repressing these traumatic memories was normal, neither he nor the other two agents actually believed it. It’s a common effort for criminals to save face, they thought.
“I personally didn’t believe that a person could forget doing something like that. So to me it’s evasive,” Mansfield said later. It reminded him of so many soldiers who had told him they were too drunk to remember their roles in bar fights.
It was just a story she was telling to make herself appear less evil, the investigators felt. It was easier to say she’d buried the memory than to admit that she’d spent a year lying to Jamie’s family and her own relatives and friends.
Just before midnight, the agents asked if she would let them search her off-campus apartment. They were looking for the clothing and boots she had worn that night and any journals she had kept. She escorted them to the apartment and pointed out jeans and a plaid shirt. The items matched the outfit Kenzi was wearing in the photos the hashers took at Nickleby’s. Mansfield held them up to his nose, and they smelled of laundry softener. It had been a year since the murder, and Kenzi said she had worn and washed the shirt and pants many times. He did not see any stains on the pants, but put them in an evidence bag for testing at an army crime lab in Georgia.
What they didn’t find was the boots. Kenzi told them she did not know where they were. They were a cheap generic brand, and the last time she had seen them was in Minnesota. She had either put them in storage there or thrown them away. Lee arranged for FBI agents in St. Cloud to search for the boots.
As he wandered through Kenzi’s apartment, Lee was still trying to digest her confession.
“It was an amazing, amazing experience. It was like poetry,” he later said.
He looked at the young blond woman helping Mansfield find things in her apartment. It was just a campus efficiency, but she had decorated it with care. The art and photos and keepsakes reflected her international travels. Lee paged through her scrapbooks and journals as the other agents talked. They included letters from pen pals around the world, Girl Scout badges, report cards and photos of all the places she had lived.
“She seemed to know exactly what she wanted and was a good student and [did] volunteer activities,” he recalled.
“She’s a wonderful human being,” he concluded.
It was this fundamental goodness that led her to confess, he later said, “to unburden herself from that cancerous knowledge.”
The mood in Kenzi’s apartment was markedly different from the tense atmosphere during her confession.
“They kept assuring me that I was still a good person and it’s not my fault, that things happen, we don’t hate you, now you can get your life back, now you can go on,” Kenzi recalled later. They told her they would have a few more questions in the morning, and then they left her alone.
Back at the Ramada, Lee placed a phone call to an official at the embassy. The man was not in his office, but Lee insisted his secretary track him down. When he finally came to the phone, the official was irritated.
“You just interrupted a meeting with a four-star general. This better be good,” he told the FBI agent.
“I think you’ll be happy,” Lee told him. “We just got a full confession to Jamie Penich’s murder. It’s over.”
“Great news, great, great news,” the official replied.
The next day, Kenzi drove herself out to the motel. As she and Mansfield waited for the elevator up to the room, he asked her how she felt.
“She said that she had slept well, better than she had in a very long time, and that she was remembering a lot more,” he said later.
Back in the room, they asked her to dictate a confession to Mansfield. He did not have a tape recorder or a computer, so he had to write it out long hand.
We were arm and arm walking home. We got into the room. [Jamie] unbuttoned my plaid shirt and drops [it] in the corner. She checks on Anna and says we have to be quiet. She takes my hand we walk into the bathroom. I don’t know who turned on the light. She’s by the tub. She takes off [my] bra. She takes off her bra, jeans and underwear. She takes my hand, pulls me closer and we start to kiss. I don’t know how long we’re kissing. I start playing with her chest. I kissed her down her stomach. She’s still standing and I go to kiss down there. I don’t know how long. We kiss a bit more. She kinda pushed me back. She moves her arms around me and is playing with my waist. She’s going for my button. I move away. I’m thinking no, but I can’t get it to come out. She goes for my button again. I hit her hard. She’s in the bathtub. She looks hurt. She’s quiet. She hit her head. She looks uncomfortable. I don’t mean to hit her, but I’m mad at her. I’m angry. I go to pick her up. She’s heavy. I trip and she falls. Her head hits the floor. We’re outside. I trip on the thing in the floor. I’m mad at her. She’s still unconscious. I pick her up and move her again. She doesn’t make me feel any better. I am hurt and I am angry. I don’t want her looking at me. She won’t stop looking at me. I don’t know why, and I pick up my foot and it’s heavy. I don’t know how many times I hit her. I don’t know how many times. And then I just stare at her. I don’t know, but I pick up a jacket. I didn’t know it was a jacket, and cover her head and she’s not looking anymore. And I stare. I don’t know but I pick up my shirt and I go and lock everything out. I didn’t mean to.
Mansfield felt there were still some problems with her confession. She had never explained the blood-soaked rag found near Jamie’s body or mentioned the tooth that had been knocked across the room. Additionally, she did not explain the drop of saliva on Jamie’s chest. Kissing her there might have left some saliva, but not the amount the Korean police described. Mansfield and Lee, however, were wary of pushing too hard for more details.
“We were worried about the damage to her mental stability,” Lee said. The follow-up questions Mansfield asked were gentle:
Q: Where are you standing while you’re using [your] foot?
A: I’m above her. I’m above Jamie. Anna is behind me.
Q: The item you discussed stepping on, where is it?
A: I think it’s what I used to cover her face. It’s beside the right side of her face. When I’m standing and staring at her I have to reach over her, to her right side to pick it up.
Q: You had described last night that Jamie used her hands to push on your foot. Is this true?
A: My foot was heavy. Last night was hazy. This isn’t hazy.
Q: When you dropped Jamie, where did she land exactly?
A: At the bathroom door. I trip on the ledge. I see her in the corner. Her head’s in the corner. It’s tilted up in the corner.
Q: What corner?
A: The corner of the ledge in the room. Her toes are in the bathroom door. She’s crooked. My back is against the wall. Her head is to the left of me. Her arm’s on my shoes.
Q: Her tooth is found in that corner. Did she fall face down?
A: I don’t know. I don’t know.
Q: Last night you described wiping your shoes. What did you do?
A: I don’t remember. I don’t know. I stepped on the thing above her head.
Q: How are you feeling right now?
A: I didn’t mean too! [sic]
Q: Did you have a relationship with Jamie before that night?
A: No, we were just friends. I didn’t know she or I felt that way.
Q: Did you believe Jamie was dead when you left the room?
A: I just stare[d]. I knew she was pretty and couldn’t look like that.
Q: When you left the room did you know you killed Jamie?
A: I don’t know. I am staring. I’m not angry anymore. She doesn’t make me feel angry anymore.
Q: When did the bathroom light go off?
A: I don’t know. It’s off, maybe I bump it. I don’t know.
Q: Do you remember paper under your feet?
A: I don’t hear noises now. It’s dark, it’s dark. I can’t hear noises.
Q: Did you kill Jamie?
A: Yes, I didn’t mean to. I was angry. She kept looking at me. I don’t know. I was angry. I didn’t want her touching my button. I killed her.
Q: Is there anything to add?
A: I don’t remember the rag or the tooth.
Later that day, Kenzi agreed to let local FBI agents fingerprint and photograph her. They did not arrest her, however. A warrant could be issued only by authorities in Korea, where the crime had occurred.
Before they left, Lee and Mansfield met one last time with Kenzi. It was a cordial meeting. The agents gave her a Snickers bar and thanked her for “helping everyone get their lives back,” she remembered later. They instructed her not to tell anyone of her confession and to check with them before leaving the state. As Lee later described it, the conversation had the tone of parents talking with a worried child.
“We felt almost protective of her,” he recalled. He slowly explained that he had to return to Korea to talk to the authorities there, and the process might take a while.
“Hang in there, though,” he told her.
Kenzi asked if she could still become a teacher. “Of course,” she remembered them saying. Then they left her alone.