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The calls came in the middle of the night to an empty, darkened house.
Bangor police had urgent news for Laurence Jones Sr. and
his wife, Yong. They called at 4 a.m. At 5. At 6.
No one picked up the phone.
Just after sunrise Yong came home from working the
late shift at a local paper mill.
The blinking red light on the answering machine caught
her eye. She pressed the Play button.
"This is the Bangor Police Department. Would someone
please call us back?"
Yong called, wondering why the police had phoned
her at such an odd hour.
The officer who took her call asked her: "Do you
have a son?"
''Yes,'' she said, fear rising like poison in her
throat.
''He's had some kind of accident,'' the officer explained.
He told her to telephone a hospital in Baltimore.
A nurse there told her: ''Your son's been hurt.''
''Can he talk?'' Yong asked.
''No,'' the nurse said gently. ''Is it possible for
you and your husband to come down here?''
It was Nov. 20, 1993. Just three months earlier,
Yong's only child, Laurence Jones Jr., had moved from Bangor
to Baltimore. He'd hoped to get his master's degree in psychology
at one of the best schools in the country, Johns Hopkins.
Now he lay dying in a hospital bed, shot in the face
during a late-night robbery outside his apartment.
Yong and her husband chartered a plane to Baltimore
later that morning. The flight would mark the beginning of
an excruciating journey for Yong, a journey for justice that
would stretch four years.
In that time she would grow desperate to see her
son's murderer caught and punished. Her grief and rage would
be intensified by cultural beliefs she had learned long before
she came to this country.
As a young girl in South Korea, Yong was taught that
the spirit of a murder victim was damned to roam
between Heaven and Hell until the killer was brought to justice.
Soon after she buried her son in the cold Maine ground,
Yong would become obsessed with avenging his murder
and freeing his stolen soul.
Her crusade would test her strength, ravage her health
and nearly kill her.
It would be a grueling journey, but it was one that
Yong could not abandon. She was a mother. A mother hoping
to rescue the soul of her only child.
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