Hsu Sent Suicide Note Before Disappearance
By IANTHE JEANNE DUGAN and KRIS HUDSON
September 13, 2007; Page A4
Before Democratic fund-raiser Norman Hsu skipped a court hearing and temporarily vanished last week, he typed out a suicide note and sent copies to several acquaintances and charitable organizations, according to people who received it.
The one-page note, signed by Mr. Hsu, "very explicitly said he intended to commit suicide," said one of the recipients in an account corroborated by others, including law-enforcement officials. Mr. Hsu also apologized for putting anybody "through inconvenience or trouble," the recipient said.
The letter, which began, "To whom it may concern," arrived by FedEx at the addresses of several recipients last Thursday, the day after Mr. Hsu disappeared.
As the letters arrived, Mr. Hsu was on a Chicago-bound train from California. He fell ill and was taken to St. Mary's Hospital in Grand Junction, Colo., where he was arrested. Yesterday he was released from the hospital and transferred to the Mesa County Jail, pending extradition back to California.
A spokesman for Mr. Hsu said he wouldn't comment about the letter.
In the letter, Mr. Hsu wrote he was very upset by a wave of press in recent weeks that raised questions about his political fund-raising and business activities. Among other things, the articles brought attention to a 1991 fraud charge in California, to which he had pleaded no contest and then disappeared before his sentencing hearing.
On Aug. 31, Mr. Hsu turned himself in to California authorities after that case came to light, then posted $2 million bail. He forfeited that money after he failed to show up in court on Sept. 5.
The next day, acquaintances received the suicide note. One recipient was the Innocence Project, a New York-based charitable organization that uses DNA evidence to help free inmates. Mr. Hsu was a "significant donor," according to Eric Ferrero, a spokesman. Mr. Ferrero declined to elaborate on the note, but said he and others on the staff were very worried when they received it.
The group faxed the letter to the California attorney general's office, which was handling the 1991 fraud case. Ronald Smetana, a deputy California attorney general, confirmed his office has a copy of the note.
After mailing the letters, Mr. Hsu boarded Amtrak's train No. 6, the California Zephyr, near Oakland. According to passengers and Amtrak workers, Mr. Hsu locked himself in an economy-class sleeper cabin -- a room about 6 feet, 6 inches by 3 feet, 6 inches.
Travelers became concerned when he failed to emerge the next morning, these people said. Joanne Segale, a retired school-bus driver from Sonora, Calif., who was in the cabin across from Mr. Hsu's, said she knocked on his door and his window during the lunch hour but got no response. Peeking through the curtains, Ms. Segale noticed someone pressed up against the cabin's wall and door who appeared to be bare-chested and huddled in the fetal position, she said.
Ms. Segale summoned Amtrak workers, who eventually used a crowbar to pry the door off its hinges, according to Ms. Segale and another person involved. Mr. Hsu was wedged into a one-foot-wide space between the door and his convertible bed, disoriented and unable to stand due to loss of circulation in at least one of his legs, these people said.
Amtrak conductors and a car attendant freed Mr. Hsu and called ahead for medical assistance. Ms. Segale said that in the cabin "I could see pills on the floor, rolling around -- prescriptions." At Grand Junction, Colo., Mr. Hsu was taken to the hospital. Federal officials arrested Mr. Hsu there later.
Yesterday afternoon, his doctors released him without making a statement on his case, citing privacy laws. About 6:30 p.m. local time he was booked at the Mesa County Jail, the sheriff's office said. He will go before a Mesa County judge this afternoon to hear the charges against him. A separate extradition hearing will follow.
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