At a glance
- Location: Lacey, Washington, a residential community near Olympia
- Case period: October 2022, amid a contested divorce
- Victim: A 42-year-old wife and mother, referred to here as “Jenny” to protect her identity
- Critical clue: A 911 call placed from an Apple Watch, cut short by screaming, that led officers to duct tape and blood inside an otherwise quiet suburban home
A dispatcher in Thurston County picked up a call on October 16, 2022, and heard only a woman’s scream before the line went dead. When officers reached the address minutes later, they found no struggle in progress, no raised voices, nothing but a still afternoon on a quiet street. It would take investigators hours to understand what had actually happened inside that house — and nearly a full day to learn whether the woman who made the call was even still alive.
A House With No Answers
Police arrived at the Lacey address at 1:02 p.m., responding to what the 911 system flagged as an active emergency. The home belonged, at least on paper, to 53-year-old Che Kyong An, though his 42-year-old wife — called Jenny in court records to shield her privacy — lived there as well. Neither of them answered the door. Officers made entry through the garage.
Inside, they found a torn strip of duct tape on the dining room floor and a cell phone left on the table. When they dialed the number tied to the Apple Watch that had placed the 911 call, it rang from inside the house. So did a second phone upstairs. Both belonged to Jenny. She was nowhere to be found.
In another bedroom, officers discovered more duct tape and blood staining the carpet. Rugs in the hallway had been shoved out of place, consistent with a struggle. This was not a false alarm. Something violent had happened here, and both Jenny and her husband were missing.
The Daughter Fills In the Gaps
As investigators processed the scene, the couple’s 20-year-old daughter arrived. She told officers her parents were in the middle of a divorce and that a court order was in place limiting contact between them. Her father no longer lived at the house full-time but still came by occasionally. That morning, she said, his van had been parked in the driveway when she and her mother returned from church. Jenny went inside; the daughter left to run errands. She hadn’t heard from either parent since.
With that account and the blood evidence in hand, police issued an urgent missing-persons alert and requested a location ping on Che An’s cell phone. Investigators feared they were now looking for two victims.
A Desperate Knock in the Dark
Just after midnight on October 17, residents of a house near a wooded trail on the edge of town were woken by frantic pounding on their door. They found a woman covered in dirt and blood, duct tape still wrapped around her neck. She told them she had just been buried alive. It was Jenny. She was rushed to a hospital and, once stable, to detectives who needed her account of everything that had led to that hole in the ground.
Two Decades of Warning Signs
In recorded interviews, Jenny described a 20-year marriage marked by secrecy and control. She said her husband, a career military service member who had served in both the Navy and the Army since 1988, had a hidden life involving pornography and relationships with other men that she said she only discovered by accident, through text messages and a citizenship interview where an examiner revealed he had been married once before — something he and his family had denied when they were dating.
She told investigators that during one argument, years earlier, he pushed her against a wall while she was pregnant, causing a miscarriage, and that he was more concerned about what she might tell doctors than about her health. In August 2021, she said, he threatened her with an axe during a fight in the garage. She called police that time. A no-contact order followed, along with a divorce filing.
“I had the will to survive from the situation, thinking of my kids,” Jenny told investigators, describing how she fought to stay alive after the attack.
According to Jenny, her husband grew increasingly fixated on money as the divorce moved forward, at one point telling her, “If you give me your retirement money, I’ll kill you.” Friends of the couple later told detectives he had a history of retaliating against people who crossed him, no matter how much time had passed.
The Attack
On October 16, 2022, Jenny returned home from church to find her husband’s van in the driveway. She sent her daughter away and stayed to discuss custody and finances. The conversation turned into an argument, she said, and he struck her, bound her ankles and wrists with duct tape, and taped her mouth and eyes shut. While he stepped away, she managed to trigger an emergency alert through her Apple Watch — the same call that brought police to the empty-seeming house. When he realized what she had done, he struck the watch and her wrist with a hammer, according to her account, then drove her into the woods, where he dug a hole and left her buried under dirt and lime, believing she was dead.
Investigators Feared They Had Lost Him
For hours after Jenny’s 911 call, Che An was simply gone. Officers had a name, a van, and a house full of physical evidence — but no suspect in custody, and no confirmation of whether either spouse was alive. Search teams combed the area through the evening without success. Investigators later found a torn, handwritten note in the van addressed to the couple’s children, along with travel documents for a flight to Miami booked for the following month — details that raised the possibility he intended to flee, or worse. For a tense stretch of that night, the case risked becoming an unsolved disappearance rather than an active pursuit.
The Van on Shafer Western Trail
The break came around 7:30 a.m. on October 17, when a suspicious vehicle matching the description of An’s van was spotted on Shafer Western Trail, about a mile from the home where Jenny had appeared seeking help hours earlier. Officers found the van running, with An dozing inside. He was taken into custody without resistance and treated for an injury to his hand.
A search of the surrounding woods turned up a hidden clearing with a covered hole matching Jenny’s description, along with torn duct tape matching that found in the house. Inside the van, investigators recovered a blood-stained pillowcase, a hatchet, a bladed tool, divorce paperwork, and the note to his children.
Where the Case Stands Today
An declined to answer investigators’ questions, invoking his Fifth Amendment right. But neighbor surveillance footage placed his van at the home around the time of the 911 call, and his daughter identified him from the recordings. At his bail hearing, prosecutors read a statement from Jenny asking that he be held without release, saying she feared for her life. Bail was denied.
An ultimately entered a guilty plea to attempted murder, citing PTSD from his military service. He was sentenced to nearly 14 years in prison, the maximum allowed for the charge, and barred from contacting Jenny or owning a firearm upon release. Jenny, who needed medical attention in the courtroom as the case concluded, continues to live with the physical and emotional aftermath of that October afternoon.
