Colorado police are seeking Bay Area residents who might have had interactions with a San Francisco man on the dating app Tinder, after he was arrested for allegedly killing his ex-girlfriend and stashing her body in a storage unit.
The body of 33-year-old Colorado Springs woman Julie Tureson was discovered Friday in a storage unit belonging to 38-year-old San Francisco resident James Woo, NBC Bay Area reports, just hours after she was reported missing.
Police say that Tureson was found in a van that she owned, parked inside a storage unit rented by Woo. A man that El Paso County Sheriff's investigators say is Woo was caught on camera at the storage facility, and a search for him began.
That search ended later Friday, when investigators tracked Woo to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. He was detained by Homeland Security as he waited for a flight to Hong Kong, the Denver Post reports, in an apparent attempt to flee the country. He has since been booked on suspicion of first-degree murder.
Woo and Tureson "had a relationship for several years," El Paso County Sheriff's Office spokesperson Jacqueline Kirby told the Denver Post. She declined to say how long Tureson had been dead, and said that they were still waiting on a toxicology report to confirm how she was killed.
It's unclear how Tureson and Woo met, as Woo lives in San Francisco, "where he has a job and family," Kirby says. According to NBC Bay Area, "San Francisco police said officers served a search warrant at [his] apartment on Saturday." Neighbors, who were "stunned to learn the man they described as quiet is accused of murder" say that "police were in his apartment all weekend."
Though Kirby says that at present police don't believe that Woo had other victims, she says that he was very active on Tinder, and believe that his matches will help police "form a complete background" on the suspect. El Paso County Sheriff's detectives are very eager to speak with all of those (dating app users and otherwise) in the Bay Area who had any interactions with Woo, and ask that anyone who recognizes him contact them at 719-520-6666 or 719-520-7777.