In my heart, I always knew deep down that this day would come. Some of you who have read here regularly know I’ve posted several times about an unsolved murder of then 15-year-old teenager Hanna Denise Montessori in Santa Ana on January 19, 2004. Two of my grandchildren, both teenagers, were living with me at the time and initially the murdered girl’s face reminded me so much of my own granddaughter, who was 16 at the time, that I found I wasn't being objective. I had a hard time letting this death just be another one reported routinely in the big city media of Southern California. I first posted on March 8, 2004 with a post entitled, “Santa Ana Unsolved Teenage Murder Haunts Me.”
During the past few days I have heard from friends and family of Hanna via e-mail that a suspect, 20-year-old Jonathan Phong Khanh Tran of Garden Grove, was arrested as Hanna’s alleged murderer. Family members apparently always knew that someone was under surveillance by the Santa Ana police, but it was only after other women who had been assaulted by Tran were questioned that the police felt confident they had their man. The first article I was referred to was Maine Today’s Press Herald. On December 9, though I didn’t see it, the Los Angeles Times Orange County Edition ran a comprehensive story.
It’s a relief to have finally nailed a suspect, but on behalf of the family and friend’s of the late teen, I’m sad that the media has chosen to sensationalize the story with the lifestyle she had chosen to survive. On the other hand, perhaps it will ultimately be a deterrent for other teens who think they can escape their problems by running away and living unsafely on the streets. For any of us who have raised children, getting them safely raised to productive adulthood becomes our life's work. This whole Montessori case was such a fiasco because Hanna had fallen through the Georgia social service cracks, but her family finally claimed her and I wrote about these details on April 21, 2004 with a post called
Murdered Child’s Family Found.
This past March 16, a few of Hanna’s family and friends reminded me by e-mail that it would have been Hanna’s 16th birthday, and asked that together we keep her memory alive. It was then I was reminded how the Internet, which is often bashed as bad, has the potential of making us all more connected in a compassionate way.
Tran will be arraigned in Santa Ana on December 21, 2005 and the papers say that he faces 55 years to life in prison if convicted. At least Hanna's family and friends can take comfort in the fact that another piece in the puzzle of her death is in place. How sad to lose a young woman so young, but as I often say here, death does not end a relationship. Even people who never knew her, me for one, mourn her loss. She is gone but not forgotten.
