Robert O’Dubaine was 31 years old in late September 1993 when he was shot and killed when entering the garage of the home he shared with his girlfriend Catherine Suh in Bucktown, Chicago. Suh had called him and told him she was having car troubles so he was heading into the garage to drive his own car over to her when a waiting gunman shot him twice in the head.
The gunman then took O’Dubaine’s wallet and car and fled the scene. After a police interview with Suh, authorities found inconsistencies in her story and met with the young woman again, at which time she admitted that she’d lured her boyfriend into the garage on purpose, court documents show.
She was arrested and charged with his murder and armed robbery. However, a lot of questions remained about her motive and the identity of the gunman.
After Her Arrest, Authorities Turned to Her Brother Andrew Suh, Who Confessed to Authorities of His Role in the Crime
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Five days after Suh’s arrest, her brother Andrew Suh was stopped at a Texas airport by Drug Enforcement Administration agents who were suspicious of the 19-year-old college student, according to court documents. Andrew Suh said he was on his way to post bond for his sister and agreed to answer the agents’ questions. He was eventually allowed to continue on his flight to Chicago but the agents alerted the Chicago Police Department to his arrival.
When he landed, he was met by two officers and after they said they wanted to discuss O’Dubaine’s murder, Suh “began crying, hugged one of the officers, and told them that he wanted to ‘tell the truth,'” as reported in court documents.
He confessed to being the gunman in O’Dubaine’s murder and revealed that he’d been waiting for hours in the garage before his sister called O’Dubaine and told him to go there.
Andrew Suh Described the Events Leading Up to O’Dubaine’s Murder to Investigators
Catherine Suh and her brother were no strangers to murder as their mother, Elizabeth Suh, was brutally stabbed to death in what appeared to be a robbery gone wrong when Catherine was just 18 years old and Andrew was 13. Since their father had already passed a few years prior, Catherine Suh became Andrew’s legal guardian, the Chicago Tribune reported. She had begun dating O’Dubaine, who was 25 years old at the time, a few months before her mother’s murder and O’Dubaine soon moved in to help her raise Andrew.
From the onset, Catherine Suh was a suspect in her mother’s murder but she and O’Dubaine were each other’s alibi so the case never progressed. Andrew Suh said he and O’Dubaine were close when he was growing up, with Suh describing their relationship to the Chicago Tribune as “brothers.” He said, “Rob was like a brother to me. He was the guy I went to for everything.”
Things appeared to change for the worse after Andrew Suh left for college, he told the outlet. He told officers during his confession that his sister had been calling him repeatedly at school to complain that O’Dubaine was abusing her and gambling away all her money. He added that she’d frequently asked him to help her kill her boyfriend. Suh also said his sister told him that O’Dubaine was the one responsible for their mother’s murder.
His first thought was that they should go to the police, he said, but his sister was against the idea since O’Dubaine was her alibi for the murder. Suh told the Tribune that while he was at college, “she called me 66 times over two weeks. I couldn’t escape her. She said, ‘You have to do this. You have to do this for our family.'”
According to the Chicago Tribune, Andrew Suh said he now feels confident she lied to him and he believes his sister is actually the one who murdered their mother. He told the outlet he thinks the motive was Elizabeth Suh’s $800,000 life insurance policy, which was supposed to go to him as the male heir but actually went to Catherine Suh as his legal guardian. Elizabeth Suh’s murder is still unsolved to this day.
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