Years later, Lynn teen’s killer still on the loose

This is the third in a weekly series of stories concerning cold cases in LynnLYNN – Five days before Christmas in 1997, 17-year-old Oeun Sen was found beaten with massive head injuries and submerged in a bathtub of running water and bleach, a steady stream splattering out onto the floor below.It was a Saturday afternoon and Sen, a popular student at Classical High School, was supposed to have been working at her part-time job at Filene’s at the North Shore Mall, but she never made it.Her father, Vann, returned home from work at 4 p.m. and saw that the front door was ajar and a table had been tipped over. Since their Williams Avenue home had been broken into before, Vann got a neighbor to go inside with him and the pair made a gruesome discovery in the first floor bathroom.An extensive crime scene was quickly set up, complete with methodical interviews of neighbors, but the investigation came to a halt because of cultural differences and the fact that no one came forward with information or said they saw anyone enter or leave the Sen home.”This case is particularly troubling because she was a normal high school senior who for all intents and purposes, was doing the right thing and her life was violently cut short,” said Lynn Capt. Michael O’Toole.Oeun’s mother, Kan, said she remembers the moment she learned her daughter had been murdered as if it were yesterday. She was pulling up to her home after shopping at a jewelry store for Christmas presents when she saw a swarm of police and heard that a teenager had been killed inside.”I just kept thinking, ‘Why God, why did you do this to me?'” she said. “I was kept from going inside, but my husband told me she had died a horrible death and that there were empty bottles of Clorox bleach and soap dumped in the tub with her.”Having escaped from an unstable Cambodia in 1979 with her husband and two young daughters, Kan said her family fled to Thailand, where Oeun was born in 1980. The family moved to the United States in 1983 and to Lynn in 1987.By the time Oeun was a teenager, both of her sisters, Prim and On, had married. One of the sisters and her husband continued to live in the family home but, soon after, the husband was told to move out.”He had done something wrong to Oeun. He tried to rape my daughter,” Kan said. “We reported it to the police and, two years after, she was killed. I don’t know what happened, it could have been a friend from school? I just don’t know.”Kan said her daughter divorced her husband soon after and that the family hasn’t heard from him since.At the time, O’Toole said, the estranged family member was considered a strong suspect but there wasn’t enough evidence to press charges.”He hasn’t been eliminated,” he said. “The way she was killed, it was personal.”A recent tip made to the department has shed new light on the case but, so far, it remains far from being solved. In the coming weeks, O’Toole said evidence from the case will be analyzed by the department, along with State Police and the District Attorney’s office.”DNA testing is changing everyday,” he said. “Fourteen years ago, we might not have had a testable sample and now we do,” he said. “Something the size of the end of a pin can be examined now so, you never know, there could be a break and we can solve this.”Anyone with information on the cold case is asked to call the Lynn police at 781-595-2000. Anonymous tips can be submitted by texting the word tiplynn and the information to tip411 or 847411. Tips can also be submitted through the department’s Web site, www.lynnpolice.org and clicking the submit tip icon.