In the winter of 2007, a terrible crime cast a dark shadow over the Korean community of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Pung Yi, a 69-year-old Asian woman, and her husband, Tak Yi, 79, were found dead in their Northeast Heights home on December 4th. The couple, who had moved to Albuquerque three decades prior as part of the first wave of Korean settlers, were discovered by one of their sons when they failed to show up for a planned shopping trip. Both had suffered massive head trauma.
Pung was known for her active involvement in the Korean Methodist Church, where she was a member of the choir, while her husband was a veteran of the South Korean military and a former president of the Korean American Association in Albuquerque.
The initial investigation swiftly led to two suspects, a pair of young, transient magazine salesmen from the Dallas area who had been working in the Yi's neighborhood. Travis Rowley, 23, and Michael Lee, 21, were arrested just days after the murders. The case against them seemed to solidify when Rowley confessed to being inside the Yi's home during the killings, implicating Lee and admitting to striking Tak Yi on the head. Rowley recounted details about the crime scene that investigators believed only someone present would know. Based on this confession, both men were charged with two open counts of murder and tampering with evidence. They were held on a $2 million bond.
However, the case took a dramatic and unexpected turn. While Rowley and Lee languished in jail, DNA evidence from the crime scene was being processed. In mid-2008, that evidence was matched not to the two young salesmen, but to a serial killer named Clifford Bloomfield. This forensic link unraveled the initial narrative of the crime. Bloomfield eventually confessed to the brutal murders of both Tak and Pung Yi, among other killings. Faced with this new, undeniable evidence, the charges against Travis Rowley and Michael Lee were dropped in March 2009, and they were released from jail after spending 15 months incarcerated for a crime they did not commit.
The wrongful arrest and the coerced confession became a focal point of the case's aftermath. It was revealed that many of Rowley's statements about the crime scene did not actually align with the evidence found by detectives. Michael Lee later filed a lawsuit against the city of Albuquerque for the shoddy investigation and his wrongful imprisonment, which resulted in a settlement of nearly $1 million. In the end, justice for Pung and Tak Yi came with the conviction of their true killer, Clifford Bloomfield, who pleaded guilty to their murders to avoid the death penalty and was sentenced to life in prison.
