AUSTIN (KXAN) — New eyes have started reviewing evidence in the unsolved murder of a beloved Austin teacher. This week, Austin police homicide cold case detectives are going over all of the evidence in the Grace Chen homicide. Chen was murdered in the Northwest Austin shopping center that was home to her Chinese language school. Her body, with obvious signs of trauma, was discovered in a locked bathroom.
“We do not consider this a cold case,” said APD Homicide Lt. Justin Newsome. “We just want some fresh eyes to take a look at it.”
February 19 will mark two years since Chen was murdered.
“It’s been two years and we have not heard anything, ” said Amy Wong Mok, Directer of the Asian American Cultural Center in Austin. “And we do not want her to be forgotten.”
Detectives have said they collected forensic evidence, specifically DNA, at the scene, but so far, there has been no match.
But there are precious few other clues. Investigators know Grace left home the morning of February 19, 2014 around 9:30. She opened the school in the office space she leased on the second floor of the Galleria Oaks Shopping Center. And then, at 3:30 in the afternoon, a call to 9-1-1 reporting a woman’s body in the second floor restroom.
They think someone killed Grace two hours earlier. But they still won’t say how or what the motive might have been.
“Grace Chen is just like one of our family members and at a time like this, we really feel for her family, especially her only son,” said Mok. ” It is already hard enough to lose a mother, but without having any closure about why and whose the one who did it, and the son, it is hard for him to start his healing process.”
Last year, on the first anniversary of the killing, KXAN spoke to Chen’s only son.
“As long as the killer is not [caught] and the crime is not solved, just something in your heart, you just feel like you can’t really move on until they [catch] someone,” Yuchong (Jacky) Chen told us.
Anyone with information about Grace Chen’s murder should call the APD homicide tipline at 512-477-3588 or Crime Stoppers at 512-472-8477.