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OVERLAND PARK MATRICIDE
LEAVES COMMUNITY IN SHOCK |
| (By Anthony Tao, KCCJ reporter, August 26, 2005) On the evening of Friday, Aug. 19, an Overland Park girl stabbed and killed
her mother, Shuyi Zhang, 55, in their home on the 5600 block of West 125th Street. |
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Esmie Tseng, 16, a Blue Valley North High School junior, was taken into custody
after police found her at the scene. She has been charged with first-degree
murder and prosecutors have requested she be tried as an adult.
Since the incident, Tseng's father, Tao Tseng, has not appeared in public
or made any statements. As of Thursday, efforts to contact him have been
unsuccessful.
Matricides are rare in the United States, even more so when the assailant
is a girl. According to Paul Mones in the 1991 book When a Child Kills,
only four out of every 100 cases of parricide involve a daughter killing
her mother.
News of this particular incident left the community bewildered. Several of
Tseng's classmates described her as a smart and friendly girl who was a
skilled pianist - "She could have played professionally", a schoolmate
said. Tseng was an honor roll student and part of the gifted program.
"(The initial response) was probably more surprise, and then it was grief,"
said BVN principal Dr. Carter Burns Jr. "There're a lot of feelings for
the family. It's a very tragic situation."
BVN opened Saturday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. to offer counseling services.
On Monday all teachers at the school read a statement to their students explaining the situation.
But the astonishment was not limited to Blue Valley students.
"I was just completely shocked," said Jake Schumaker, 19, a college sophomore
who said he has spoken online with Tseng about three times a week for the
past nine months. He described her as a "really cool, down to earth, smart,
reasonable" girl who could talk about the worldly and trivial, from the
philosophy of life to the movie Fight Club.
Schumaker learned about the incident on Sunday from one of Tseng's online
blogs. On her two personal Web sites, Tseng wrote verse, shared her ideas
and divulged private secrets. She also documented family problems and revealed
she had a volatile relationship with her mom. By Sunday, parts of Tseng's writing had been quoted by certain news outlets.
One of Tseng's blogs received more than 100 messages, mostly words of encouragement
from friends. But there were also comments that were derisive, insensitive
and vulgar.
On Monday, one of Tseng¡¦s close friends took Tseng's Web sites offline.
"Esmie's name has been made into a joke, and I hate to hear the ridicule,"
the friend said on condition of anonymity.
The friend also disclaimed rumors of Tseng¡¦s erratic behavior, drug abuse
and early leave from school Friday, as some have reported.
Burns confirmed that Tseng was not sent home Friday. Still, there remain more unanswered questions than answers.
Many of Tseng's friends contacted for this story did not respond.
"The bottom line is she seemed like a really normal, smart, cool person,"
Schumaker said. "I never would have expected something like this to happen to her."
For the second article of this series, click here.
For the third article of this series, click here.
For the forth article of this series, click here.
Reach Anthony Tao at y-tao2@northwestern.edu |
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