Two Louisiana teenagers were charged Friday with the murder of a professor in Arizona whose remains were found in a landfill almost four m...
Two Louisiana teenagers were charged Friday with the murder of a professor in Arizona whose remains were found in a landfill almost four months after his disappearance.
Junseok Chae was reported missing on March 25 when he didn't return home from work at Arizona State University and his car was found just a week later in Louisiana.
Javian Ezell and Gabrielle Austin, both 18, were charged in connection with his killing Friday after they, and a third unnamed person, were caught driving the professor's vehicle on March 30.
The body of Arizona State University professor Junseok Chae was found in the Northwest Regional Landfill on July 17 almost 4 months after his disappearance
Javian Ezell (pictured right) and Gabrielle Austin (pictured left), both 18, were extradited to Arizona from Louisiana and booked with his murder on Friday. A motive is not clear
Chae's body was found during a search here at Northwest Regional Landfill in Arizona
Their statements to police led officers to believe Chae had been murdered and the hunt at the landfill began on May 11.
Yet it was a further 48 days until investigators found his body, despite a search costing hundreds of thousands of dollars with an average of 15 people per day sifting through the site.
Human remains were finally discovered on July 17 in Northwest Regional Landfill and identified as the professor.
A motive for his murder has not been revealed, nor has the manner of his death.
The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office was first alerted to the teenagers after receiving a call from police in Shreveport, Louisiana, on March 30.
Officers there had responded to a 'suspicious' vehicle call and found the suspects and the third person in what they later discovered was the professor's car.
After speaking to Ezell and Austin, police believed Chae had been killed in Maricopa County and the investigation found 'several items of evidence' there.
Further investigation found he was murdered near Carefree Highway and Seventh Street.
According to ABC News, authorities believed that Chae's body had been placed in a dumpster that was then transferred to the landfill.
Pictured, The Northwest Regional Landfill, which is located in Surprise, Arizona. The remains of the professor were found here four months after he was first reported missing in March
Police mounted a 48-day search of the site that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars
There was an average of 15 people per day working on the search at the landfill
Their suspicions appeared confirmed when they began a hunt for the remains there on May 11 and came across 'related evidence'.
However, it took more than a month more for his body to be found.
According to Arizona Central, the 48-day search of the landfill cost the sheriff's office $304,000.
They had mounted a 15-person search per day, working for about 10 hours.
Junseok Chae was an accomplished academic and held four patents
'I continue to be impressed by the hard work of our deputies,' said Sheriff Penzone in a statement.
'Their perseverance in an extremely complex and demanding case will now allow the victim’s family closure to what has surely been a difficult period. Investigative efforts to recover a body from a landfill are rarely successful.'
Ezell and Austin were recently extradited from Louisiana to Arizona to face their charges and booked on first-degree murder, armed robbery and vehicle theft on Friday.
Their bail was set at $1million each.
Chae is reported to have been an accomplished academic and educator.
According to the bio on the university's website, he graduated from Korea University in Seoul in 1998.
He then received two advanced degrees from the University of Michigan before joining ASU as a professor in 2005 at the School of Electrical, Cimpoter and Energy Engineering.
Among his accomplishments, Chae held four patents, had published more than 150 academic papers, and authored a book.
'We are saddened by the loss of ASU community member Junseok Chae,' the university said in a statement.
'Our condolences go out to Professor Chae’s family and friends.
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