Fri, Jul 04 2008
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Published May 17, 2008 09:30 pm - John Lee suspected cousin Ger Lee had not quit his opium habit when he saw him in January, shortly before his disappearance. Victim’s opium habit at center of murder case By Jeff Lehr jlehr@joplinglobe.com John Lee suspected cousin Ger Lee had not quit his opium habit when he saw him in January, shortly before his disappearance. “I think I could tell, but I didn’t say something,” John Lee, 52, told the Globe in interviews last week. John thought he could smell the narcotic on Ger’s clothes. His troubled cousin came to his home near Cassville twice the second week of January, as Lee recalled. The first time, Ger, 40, came alone. The second time, a couple days later, he’d stopped over with his girlfriend, Soun Sachao, and their 5-year-old boy and baby daughter, who were living in Cassville at the time. Ger was driving a black Acura, maybe 8 to 10 years old. Minnesota license plates. It seemed like a pretty nice car to John. “I’m a free man now,” Ger told him on the first of the two visits. John knew what Ger was talking about. A drug-possession charge Ger picked up the previous June in St. Paul, Minn., had been dismissed in early December. His lawyer managed to get the evidence — a little less than a pound of opium — suppressed. John congratulated Ger and gave him a hug. But John also let him know he had talked to Ger’s attorney by telephone, and she’d told him Ger still faced obstacles. The authorities were holding his green card and other identification. He wasn’t out of the woods just yet, John tried to warn him. “Make sure you stay clean,” John told his cousin. “Make sure you change.” Ger promised that he would, he said. During the second visit, in the company of Soun and his kids, Ger had spoken to John of his need to return to Minnesota “soon,” although he never said why. It proved to be the last time John would see him. Ger Lee’s decomposed body was discovered in a field near Granby on May 5. John Lee helped identify the body by recognizing a distinctive gold Buddhist necklace his cousin wore that was found with the skeleton. Hmong cousins 
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