2011 September 15 News Article – Prosecutors say woman lured mother-in-law to her death
Prosecutors say woman lured mother-in-law to her death
Bloomington woman details scheme to police
September 15, 2011|By Andy Grimm, Tribune reporter
Prosecutors say a Bloomington woman carefully plotted the murder of her 70-year-old mother-in-law, luring the Crest Hill woman to a predawn meeting, killing her and hiding the body in a Will County nature preserve.
Misook Wang, 45, faces several counts of murder and concealing a homicide in the slaying of Wenlan “Linda” Tyda, whose body was found Tuesday in a shallow grave in the Des Plaines Fish And Wildlife Area in south suburban Wilmington Township, McLean County, prosecutors said.
A Chinese interpreter, Tyda had been missing since Sept. 4, when she left her home in Crest Hill around 3 a.m. to pick up a client in Bloomington and drive her to a Chinese school in Chicago, prosecutors said.
Tyda’s husband, Larry, called Crest Hill police when his wife hadn’t returned home that evening.
Prosecutors say Wang confessed to paying a Chinese-speaking restaurant hostess to call Tyda posing as a client and set up a meeting at a Bloomington grocery store parking lot.
When first interviewed by police earlier this week, Wang told police she and Tyda argued in the parking lot and parted ways, and she hadn’t seen her mother-in-law since. When police told her they had found Tyda’s clothing and shredded identification cards in a Dumpster behind Wang’s house, she said Tyda followed her to a sewing shop Wang owned.
Wang claimed the septuagenarian attacked her and tried to kill her, but Wang said she wound up on top of her mother-in law and choked her with both hands for five to 10 minutes.
She then dragged the older woman inside the shop and left her gasping on the floor. As Tyda slowly died, Wang said she lay on an office couch, exhausted from the struggle. She told investigators she then hid Tyda’s body in a back corner of the shop, abandoned Tyda’s car at Midway Airport and took a bus back to Bloomington.
On Sept. 6, Wang stuffed Tyda’s body into a storage container and drove with it to the Des Plaines Fish and Wildlife Area in Will County, just outside Wilmington. She buried Tyda in a wooded area near New River Road. She agreed to take investigators to find the body.
Larry Tyda said Wang continued living with Linda’s son and their 5-year-old until she was taken into police custody. The child rode with Wang as she drove to bury Tyda’s body, said Larry Tyda.
“She acted like nothing had happened,” Tyda said Wednesday from his home in Crest Hill.
Three days before his wife disappeared, Tyda said, Wang had angrily confronted her at the couple’s home in Crest Hill and wouldn’t leave until he threatened to call police. Linda Tyda’s son, Don, had told Wang he wanted a divorce, and Wang was outraged, he said.
“She was abusive. She was a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I had heard she could get mean, but I never believed she was capable of something like this,” Tyda said. “She wanted to hurt (her husband). … She planned this all out to a T.”
Linda Tyda counted the Chinese consulate and numerous Chicago law firms among her clients, her husband said. She had lived in Bloomington for some 20 years before moving to the Chicago area, and made frequent trips back for work and to visit family, Tyda said.
The Tydas married eight months ago, a year after they met on a dating website, Tyda said. They were planning a trip to Linda’s native China later this month to meet her family and to renew their vows in a traditional Chinese ceremony, Tyda said.
An autopsy completed Tuesday in Will County showed Tyda had been strangled, but positive identification was still pending because of “significant decomposition,” the coroner’s office said. Wang is being held in McLean County in lieu of $1 million bail.
“(Linda) was all excited to go,” Tyda said. “There are people that are monsters that are out there.”
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