News / Courts & Crime

Records reveal details in homicide of Vancouver woman

Her body was found at Portland hotel

The Columbian

Published: January 15, 2015, 4:00pm

PORTLAND– New court records show detectives used phone records to track down a Washington man accused of killing an escort last month at a Portland hotel.

Search warrant affidavits filed in Seattle and obtained by The Oregonian show Tae Bum Yoon sent or received more than 25 text messages from Ashley Benson on Christmas and called her twice. The records indicate he arrived at the hotel Christmas night and got a room where Benson had gone to meet a man.

The records show Benson and Yoon had previous encounters and had some type of disagreement over money owed.

Benson’s body was clothed when it was found Dec. 26 just inside a stairwell door at a DoubleTree hotel near downtown. The affidavit says a medical examiner believes Benson’s attacker strangled her.

Yoon, 24, pleaded not guilty to murder at a court appearance last week. He remains in custody at a Portland jail.

According to the affidavits, Yoon, who also goes by Chris and lives in Bellevue, had checked into his room at the hotel under a reservation made by another Bellevue man with a similar name: Chris Youn, was expected to arrive the next day.

Yoon showed up at the hotel’s front desk about 9 p.m. Christmas and pretended to be Chris Youn, the records state. He said he wanted to check in early.

Chris Youn later told police he had no idea how someone else had known about his reservation. He was home on Christmas and had photos to prove it.

Police found that multiple phone calls had been made from the DoubleTree’s Room 715 to a phone number listed in ads for an escort service. The ads showed photos of a woman matching Benson.

Shortly after Benson’s body was found, police obtained a judge’s permission to track through GPS the location of the cellphone. Court records show it was found Dec. 28, but don’t say where.

The cellphone revealed Benson had received an email from an address believed to be Yoon’s.

The email said: “Let me make this clear before you read my message. You WILL be COMPENSATED for all the time you invested in me. I have every intention of PAYING you … Before you blame me 100%, I want you to know that you did break our agreement.”

Meanwhile, Benson’s boyfriend told police he knew she had met a man by the name of “Chris Yoon,” and Yoon had paid her for the dates, and also had given her a large amount of money “for doing nothing at all,” an affidavit says.

Portland detectives also got a warrant to track Yoon’s phone and “ping” the phone for its location. Last week, the phone pings showed he was heading to Portland. Police arrested him when he got off a train at Union Station.

During an interview with homicide detectives, Yoon told police he first met the escort about three or four months earlier.

Related Stories