Jailed Twin Hospitalized in Suicide Attempt, Sources Say

Jeen “Gina” Han, sentenced last week to 26 years to life in prison for conspiring with two teenagers to kill her identical twin sister, was at an Anaheim hospital Tuesday, recovering from what sources said was a suicide attempt after she took an overdose of sleeping pills.

A spokeswoman for Western Medical Center-Anaheim confirmed that Han was a patient but said hospital officials could not release any information about her condition, including why and when she was admitted.

The spokeswoman referred questions to the Orange County Sheriff’s office, which administers the County Jail where Han had been held. Sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Hector Rivera said Han was discovered ill in her jail cell at 6 a.m. Monday.

Rivera said he did not know what caused Han, 24, to become ill or if she had attempted suicide. “There is an investigation to determine what, if anything, she took,” Rivera said. He said more details will be available today.

However, Han’s attorney, Roger Alexander, a public defender, said he visited his client in the hospital Tuesday afternoon. He learned of the overdose when he was unable to see her at the jail.

“She took a bunch of pills that she had been hoarding for quite awhile and began vomiting,” Alexander said. “Her cellmate called a deputy and they rushed her to the hospital where they pumped her stomach.”

Alexander said Han is in the intensive care unit and was expected to be released back to the jail late Tuesday or sometime today. He said he expected her to be placed under suicide watch.

“Hopefully, she’s going to be OK,” Alexander said. “I don’t know what kind of damage the pills caused or what kind of pills she took. She is lying in bed with a lot of tubes coming out of her. We didn’t really talk about why she did it.”

If Han did attempt suicide by swallowing pills, it raises questions about how she obtained the medication while in jail and how she was able to hide the pills from the jail staff.

She had been distraught after her sentencing Friday, when Superior Court Judge Eileen C. Moore imposed the lengthy prison term. Han had been hoping for leniency and said in court Friday that she never planned to kill her sister.

She also apologized to the victims in the case, including her twin Sunny Han and her sister’s former roommate, Helen Kim. They were bound and gagged in a November 1996 attack inside their Irvine apartment.

Han’s accomplices, 18-year-old Archie Bryant and 16-year-old John Sayarath, received lighter sentences from a judge who believed that Han should be held largely responsible for hatching the plot and persuading them to participate. Bryant was sentenced to 18 years in state prison. Sayarath is expected to be sentenced to eight years.

The twins were co-valedictorians at their high school in Campo, located 40 miles east of San Diego, near the Mexican border. Other family members and friends said the two women were very close at one time but had a falling out as a result of Jeen’s gambling.

Before the attack on Sunny and her roommate, Jeen was convinced that her sister had some of her belongings and would not return them, investigators said. Authorities said Jeen was also angry at Sunny for reporting her to the police for stealing her car and using her credit cards.

Police said Jeen recruited Bryant and Sayarath, of El Cajon, to kill Sunny. The two posed as magazine salesmen to get into Sunny Han’s apartment. She was in her bedroom when she heard Kim scuffling with the men and used her cellular telephone to call police.

The two assailants ran into Sunny’s bedroom, tied her up and forced both women into a bathtub. Police arrived and arrested Bryant, but Sayarath escaped with Jeen, who was waiting outside. Jeen and Sayarath were arrested later that day in San Diego.

This is not Jeen Han’s first suicide attempt. She took an overdose of pills in January 1996 after she incurred huge gambling debts playing blackjack. She drank liquor and took an overdose of sleeping pills and was taken to Grossmont Hospital in El Cajon after calling her then-boyfriend to tell him what she had done, according to court records.

The recent suicide attempt is the latest chapter in an already bizarre tragedy of Korean-born twins whose adult lives have been fraught with legal and emotional problems.

Sunny Han made a well-publicized suicide attempt herself last fall during her sister’s trial. Emotionally distraught after having to testify against her twin, Sunny took an overdose of sleeping pills after her first day of testimony. She arrived in court the next day in a daze, barely able to walk or speak coherently. She was rushed to the hospital after she told the judge what she had done and was unable to return to the stand for several days. She later explained that she had been “extremely depressed.”

Although Sunny Han did not appear at her sister’s sentencing Friday, she wrote a brief letter to the judge asking for leniency for her sister. She has said in past interviews that she does not believe Jeen would have killed her.