By Jon Jeter
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 6, 1999; Page A02

CHICAGO, March 5—That their romance defied
distance and logic did not seem to matter to Julie
Yasa. She lived in Paris; he, outside Detroit. She
was lonely; he was online. His flirtations
appeared to her in the middle of the night, words
brightening a dark computer screen and her
melancholy heart, fastening to something inside
her. Photographs were exchanged. Finally, after
eight months, they agreed: a tryst.

She arrived in Detroit last week, looking for
love. What she found was a one-night stand. They
consummated their cyberspace affair at her
paramour's apartment, and afterward he dropped her
off at a Motel 6, heartbroken and alone. When she
reappeared on his doorstep three days later
threatening suicide, he wanted no part of her. He
handed her a sheet to ward off the March chill,
then drove her to the edge of his apartment
complex and put her out. "You're not going to
commit suicide in my place," he told the woman,
according to police. He watched as Yasa walked off
toward the thicket behind his suburban home.

Police found Yasa's slightly bruised body
Wednesday, lying face down in the frigid woods
where she was left to wander. She had only a
credit card and $27 in her pockets. A bed sheet
was wrapped around her legs. Three pills lay
beside her and police suspect the woman made good
on her threats to kill herself. Authorities
continue to investigate Yasa's transatlantic trip
and her death, and whether her lover played a
criminal role in her apparent suicide. Chances
are, police say, that her suitor is a cad, but no
criminal. Much as they would like to prosecute him
for boorishness, they say, they can only bring
charges if they discover that he played a direct
role in her suicide.

"He's a very cold-blooded person," said William
Dwyer, chief of police in Farmington Hills, a
middle-class suburb just north of Detroit. "It's a
very cruel and callous person that can look
someone in the eye like this, do what he did, and
just not give a hoot."
The courtship and death of a young, troubled woman
is as ancient as any Greek tragedy but also a
coarse and cautionary tale on the dangers of
romance in the age of e-mail. "Love is a tough
enough thing," Dwyer said. "It just seems like the
Internet lends a dangerous edge to it."

Yasa's lover, whom police have not identified,
knew she had a history of depression and mental
illness and yet financed her trip to the United
States, Dwyer said. When immigration officials in
New York thwarted her first attempt to enter the
country, the man arranged for a smuggler to help
her enter through Canada. And when she got to
Detroit, he refused to help or love her.

Yasa's body was discovered after the man called
police dispatchers Wednesday, pretending to be a
passerby who stumbled onto a body in the woods. In
the 911 recording, the man described spotting the
body from a distance, then explained: "I didn't
want to get too close."

Their courtship began in August, police said. He
was 24, a recent college graduate between jobs in
the computer industry. She had been treated for
depression in France, Dwyer said. Yasa flew from
Paris to New York on Feb. 5 but was not allowed to
enter the United States. The reason U.S.
immigration agents denied her entry was unclear.
Officials at the French consulate here said she
was a French citizen and had a valid passport. She
returned home to France, and her suitor helped pay
for another flight, this time to Toronto. She
arrived in the Canadian border town of Windsor on
Valentine's Day.

Dwyer said that authorities in Windsor noted Yasa
acting strangely and tried, unsuccessfully, to
have her committed to a psychiatric ward there.
Yasa's paramour in the Detroit area told police
that he paid a man to smuggle Yasa into the city
on Saturday, Dwyer said. After having sex last
Saturday, the man took her to a hotel and left. An
employee at the hotel told the Detroit News that
Yasa paid for her stay in advance and with cash,
but staff had little reason to notice her.
Distraught, she showed up on her lover's doorstep
Tuesday, wearing only black jeans and a white
blouse and saying that she had swallowed a bottle
of pills, Dwyer said. The man refused to let her
inside the apartment, handed her a bed sheet, then
coaxed her inside his car. She continued her
threats inside the car, but the man put her out
near the end of the driveway leading to his
apartment building.

He phoned police nearly 24 hours later, providing
police with no hint that he knew the woman or how
she got there. "I was driving by and saw it in the
woods," he told dispatchers. But police became
suspicious when a neighbor told officers that she
saw a man walking out of the wooded area where
Yasa's body was found. The neighbor's description
resembled that of Yasa's lover, and the sighting
was five hours before he placed the phone call to
911, Dwyer said.

The blue pills recovered near Yasa's body matched
those found outside the man's apartment, as well,
although Dwyer said that authorities were
uncertain if she actually took the drugs. Yasa's
body was slightly bruised but showed no signs of
trauma, Dwyer said. Police are awaiting the
results of a toxicology test before determing the
cause of death. Jallal Oussar, director of general
affairs for the French Consulate in Chicago, said
that the family had been notified of Yasa's death
and is making arrangements to have her body
returned to France.

"They are devastated by this," Oussar said.