Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
In October 2022, a woman in Lacey, Washington, is in the middle of a painful divorce from her estranged husband, Chae Kyong An. But what begins as another confrontation inside the family home quickly turns into a terrifying fight for survival.
When she manages to trigger an emergency call from her Apple Watch, dispatchers hear muffled screams and signs of a violent struggle — but by the time police arrive, she is gone. Hours later, covered in dirt, blood, and duct tape, she emerges from the woods after escaping what investigators describe as an unimaginable attack: she had been stabbed, buried alive, and left to die.
As detectives piece together the frantic emergency call, the missing victim, and the evidence hidden in the forest, one question remains: how did she survive long enough to expose what really happened?
On October 16th 2022, police in Lacey Washington receiving a chilling 911 call.
The call was made via an Apple watch and the caller can’t seem to answer any of the dispatcher’s questions.
For god reason ,she’s been bound …
and gagged with duct tape.
But by the time help gets there , it’s to late.
When cops arrive at the address ,the caller and her kidnapper are gone.
The only clues are a roll of duct tape and blood spatter on the carpet.
And the caller’s daughter, she says that her mom was having issues in her personal life but she never exptected ….
those issues could lead her to this, being kidnapped and burried alive.
With only her Apple Watch to call for help.
The cops arrive at the address on a suburban Street in Lacy at 1:02 pm, it is a quiet afternoon with no apparent signs of a distrubance, only that haunting 911 call.
The 42 year old caller ,Young An , livews in that house, but the name on the mortage is 53 year old Chae Kyong An her husband and there’s no sign of either of them.
With the 911 call providing sufficient welfare concerns, the cops enter the house through the garage.
Inside, in the dining room ,there’s a strip of torn duct tape on the floor and a cell phone left on the table.
When cops call the number associated with the Apple Watch , it rings and so does another phone found upstairs in one of the bedrooms.
They’re both Young An’s phones ,but Jenny isn’t here.
In another bedroom, they find more duct tape and blood stains on the carpet and the rugs in the hallway had been disturbed.
Like there was some kind of physical altercation, this is no medical emergency… something very bad has happened.
While they’re going through the scene, a young woman arrives
Young An and Chae ‘s 20 year old daughter, she says they’r going through a divorce
And that there’s a court order in place, but she doesn’t know any details.
Chae doesn’t live here anymore ,but he still comes around to do laundry sometimes.
And his wan was here this morning when she and her mom came back from church, her mom went inside the house, and she ( daughter) drove off to go shopping.
She hasn’t seen either of her parents since.
Based on this information, the cops put out an urgent missing person’s release and requested a ping for, Chae ‘s cell phone given the blood stains.
They fear the worst that Young An and maybe, Chae as well have been murdered.
Just after midnight , October 17th ,2022, residents of a remote house at the edge of the woods are woken up by frantinc banging on the door.
They come to open it and they find a visibly injured woman covered in dirt and blood with duct tape around her neck, she pleads with them for help, she’s just been buried alive.
That woman is Young An, she survived an awful attack, she’s taken to the hospital and then to the detectives.
And to understand what happened to her , they’ll need to start from the beginning.
Young An and Chae have been married for decades and they lived between the US and Korea, they have two children , aged 20 and 11.
And Chae has had a successful career int the military , serving both in the Navy and the Army since 1988.
But Young An says the american dream wasn’t working out as they planned.
Sinvr they were newlyweds, he was really involved in porn, and then he was engaged in chatting with men and women throughout friday, saturday, and sunday nights.
So after Jenny got birthed to her daughter, he left them alone.
So even when he was at home , he didn’t come ,he didn’t come out of his toom because he was chatting and watching porn.
So with that kind of things ,they argued.
About two to three instances , he left home for two to three weeks, he didn ‘t tell her and there was no context, so she didn’t know.
Once she says she saw one of his text messages ,the text messages said;
” when you come,bring socks or something else”
she says ,she realized that he has a gay friend ,she knew that because he enjoyed watching gay porn,he collected photos of men’s naked bodies.
When they were in korea , he went on a business trip , and she learned later on that he invited male friends in his hotel.
The chatting was on the screen and he forgot to turn it off, that’s how she saw.
And she saw a video , and she have the context.
These chats were mainly about sex.
He was using this work to fascilitate his affairs.
This included a time when he was called back to be stationed in Korea ,leaving her with their children in Colorado.
So , she learned that her husband went to see his first love and then drive a long distance several times to do that.
Even after he returned to America , still had contact with that person,and in the text , there’s a promise from him that he said he will return to Korea to his boyfriend.
There were whole swaths of his life he was keeping secret.
In 2010, she applied for citixenship. which involves an interview.
The examiner asked Young;
” your husband was dvivorced once, did you know that?”
And also ” did you prepare these documents yourself?”
Young An didn’t prepare the documents herself, her husband prepared the application form for citizenship and then he put it in an envelope and sealed that.
And he said ; “you never open this envelope ,you just give this to examiner”
The examiner opened the envelope and read it and then said ;
“do you know your husband was marriced once?
She didn’t know, it was the first time she knew , so she was shocked.
He’s 11 years older than her ,she knew when they started dating that he might have had another life before they met.
She had asked him if he ever married and he said “no”
And even his family said “no”.
She still doesn’t know why he hid his first marriage, and that wasn’t the only piece of his past that came back to haunt her.
Even at that time, he still had contact with his first love, so the phone call was very often , one time she picked up the phone, by that time , she was 12 weeks pregnant.
Young An was trying to pick up the phone and Chae blocked his wife not to do that and pushed her against the wall, because of that , she miscarriage.
At the time Young An was bleeding, and went to the hospital, Chae didn’t care about Young An’s safety or anything like that , but he was worried about when the doctor asked what happened at home.
He was afraid that Young might say the things that happened,he told her , because of her , he almost got fired from his works, he asked Young , what did you tell the doctor? did you tell the doctor what happened?.
Young didn’t say anything to the doctor.
It was the first time she was afraid of her husband but it wouldn’t be the last so when she found the texts , it felt like the last straw.
At that time Young An decided that they cannot go on like this , so she decided to get divorced from him, at that time her second child was young , and she didn’t have any financial means.
She needed time to gather the resources she needed to leave Chae, but divorce was always on her mind.
On August 28th , 2021, a year before that fateful day in October , they were arguing in the garage, they talking about a divorce, Young An said she cannot go on like this anymore.
At that time, she saw someone,so when she was in that time of domestic violence that person helped her out.
They were arguing , and Young An’s phone was on the floor.
And then with an axe, he was trying to smash her cell phone at that point, she opened the garage door, but realized that the other people in front of her house they have a camera, so she thought .
If she opened ther garage door he would stop, and he did .
just like with the miscarriage , he was terrified that she’d get the authorities involved in their marriage.
But this time she didn’t keep her mouth shut, she told the cops.
She told that Chae grabbed her ,and then pushed her to the floor, she fell and then he grabbed on her ankles and dragged her .
Since that time, Young An hid her cell phone and she used her daughter’s cell phone and then called the police.
The image shows the scars happend on that day and the statement on that day.
Chae told her daughter;” if you don’t write this statement , i’ll go to jail .”
he made their daughter defend him but he couldn’t do the same to Young.
And the daughter told her mother she was scared, so she had to write this statement.
Chae made their daughter defend him but he couldn’t do the same to his wife.
Serveral times, he insisted that his wife signed the statement that he wrote and send it to the attorney.
she didn’t write any statement, she didn’t sign this letter because she knew this was a lie , and he wants to use it against Young An.
He sent her several emails to sign this letter, but she refused.
Their marriage was over in all but name.
But it had never been the most perfect to start with.
Since the beginning, they’d slept in separate rooms, and he made it clear they should live their own lives .
So with divorce on the horizon and a no contact order in place after the August attack, she started living her own life as well.
She went out on dates and she met someone who became her boyfriend,Chae was mad, it was okay for him to do that , but not for Young An to do that.
So, he was pretty upset that she had a boyfriend and he went to see her boyfriend and threatened him.
Chae’s behavior was becoming more and more unhinged.
In June 2022 , she found a divorce laywer, someone who’d made sure any settlement and treated her fairly.
While she was not home , he came in and he removed the doors to the rooms and he threw them away and kept harrasing Young.
On june 6th , he threatened to kill himself, and he said ,he was ready to die.
It escalated into september, and told Young An, she have to repay his mom the money she borrowed from, like $ 150,000. but Young An said she never borowed money from his mother.
He was not even close with his family , Young An says he cut ties with them 12 years ago, and the family didn’t know that he was bisexual.
And it wouldn’t not be acceptable in their family or culturally, so it was a secret.
With his wife and children slipping out of his grasp, Chae was growing increasingly desperate and he was fixated on the money.
Prior to October 16, he came home, in and out to pick up the documents and pick up some of his belongings.
One day Young an came back from work and she saw in their room , the closet and the drawers were upside down, Young An had an expensive bag.
Chanel, whitch was gone, this was October 11th, Young An,blocked all credit cards. she had some emergency money in the room which was $ 2.000 , so he took the bag and the money.
At first she thought there was some bugglers in her house so she called the police but later on she realized it could be her husand too,so she called her husband, he didn’t answer the phone, so she asked her daughter to call him.
She used her daughter’s cell phone.
And then he answer the phone and Young An asked him why did he steal from her he answered ” it’s up to me what i do “
By that point she knew he’d go to any lengths.
She learned how to operate the Apple Watch, she was prepared, she knew the no contract order might not be enough
and she was right, on october 16th, she came back home from church with her daughter to find Chae’s van in her driveway.
He was waiting for her in the house , she sent her daughter away and came in to talk to him about practical things ,like custody and child support.
Chae started bringing up the past issue that they had in between the family and started complaining and it became an argument.
She told him she didn’t want him coming in to the house again .
Young An went to her room and then she heard the garage door open and closed and she heard his steps,h is steps were very fast.
And then suddenly he came to the room and then started hitting Young An in the face and her head, and then she fell down .
And he came after her on the ground and told her that he would kill her and that he didn’t need anything and he was pushing her with his weight and was trying to grab her both hands after that , he duct taped her ankle together.
and duct taoe together a thigh together, he duct taped her mouth with her head all together, and he also put the duct tape on her eyes so that she couldn’t see.
He left her alone to open his van , this was her one window to get help and she took it ,using her Apple Watch to call 911,and send out emergency contact notification, when he came back he realized what she’d done.
He went to the garage and came back then hit the Apple Watch with the hammar on her wrist and then also used the hammer to hit her wrist couples of several time as well.
He carried out into his van and then drove out in the woods.
they likely drove right past the officers responding to her address, too little , too late….
The man she loved and moved across the world with made a plan to kill her and he nearly succeeded.
October 17th, a suspicious vehicle is spotted on the Shahalis Western trail about a mile away from the house Young An came to pleading for help the night before.
It matches the description of Chae’s van.
The cops respond to the location and find it with the engine running and Chay dozing inside.
they take him into custody without resistance.
He has an apparent injuriy to his hand , so he’s taken first to the hospital .
Meanwhile , officers search the surrounding woods.
They found an area just as Young An had described, a clearing with down trees.
There , they found a hole in the ground with tree, limbs placed on top to hide it .
Inside the hole,
there are torn strips of duct tape matching those in Young An’s house.
This hole was intended to be her grave.
Searching Chae’s van , the chilling discoveries don’t stop.
They find a bloodstained pillowcase.
A hatchet in a plastic bag.
And a bladed utility tool.
There are also multiple documents, including the divorce papers and travel arrangements for a flight to Miami on November 17th.
Did he intend to flee to Florida, or did he plan something worse?
Because the officers also find a torn handwritten note adressed to his children.
It read;” i’m so sorry that it came down to this,sorry that wecaused youguys so much pain and suffering since you were born.
I didn’t want to do this but i felt trapped, i truly don’t want to live anymore, when you guys were born,those was the happiest days of my life, and it was awesome being a dad and spending time together .
I love you guys so much, i hope that you have a better life than we did , thank you for being my daughter and son, good bye, dad”
Was he planning a murder suicide? if he was ,he won’t tell the detectives.
He takes thefifth , the right against self- inccrimination, and refuses to talk, but there’s are plenty of evidence against him .
A neighbor CCTV captures him getting into his van and pilling into the garage right around the time the 911 call .
His daughter identifed the man seen here as Chae and those who know the couple had daming things to say as well .
friends described that there was a history of domestic and that Chae had been arrested for domestic violence .
And upon that arrest he had made comments to Young An something along the lines that he’s not going down alone. and that he’s taking her with her.
accrodingly , bail is denied and ultimately he pleads guilty to attempted murder.
He claims that PTSD from 3o year long military career led to a mental break, but he campaign of controlling abusive behavior would suggest otherwise.
As he made his statement in court, Young An started to have trouble breathing, needing to be attended by paramedics.
Chae is sentenced to nearly 14 years in prison.
The maximum sentence for his crime, when he’s released, he’ll not be able to own a firearm .
And he’s forbidden from contacting his wife, who will suffer the scars of what he did to her for the rest of her life.