'Family' bound by love rallies around murder victim

They call themselves a family - one formed by the shared love of a friend.

Melissa Ketunuti had lived far from her own family. So before she was killed in her adopted hometown, she had collected another one - with many branches.

There's her college family. The ones who first encountered Ketunuti's passion for life and learning when she came from her native Thailand in 1995 to study neuroscience at Amherst College. The friends who celebrated each of her many successes, from her graduation from the Stanford School of Medicine to her surgery residency at Georgetown University Hospital to the prestigious scholarships that sent her to Botswana to do AIDS research.

And there's her Philadelphia family. The friends who worked alongside her at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, where was she was a fellow in infectious diseases and where she was working on a master's degree with the aim of going back to Africa to work with children suffering from HIV.

The friends who gravitated toward her warm, magnetic personality. And her ability to bring people together.

Every day last week, that collective family came together in Courtroom 607 of the Criminal Justice Center for the trial of Jason Smith, the Levittown exterminator who prosecutors say strangled Ketunuti, 35, in her Southwest Center City rowhouse in January 2013, then tied her up and set her body afire.

Ketunuti's killing was terrifying not only in its brutality, but also in its mundanity. Her death took on a chilling resonance, exposing the vulnerabilities that we all open ourselves up to each day. Things we may not often think about - things we should never have to worry about.

Ketunuti had mice in the basement. She called the exterminating company that employed Smith. She let him into her home. She had no reason to think he would hurt her.

In his confession to police, Smith, 38, said he strangled Ketunuti because he felt she didn't appreciate his work. He said she criticized him, demeaned him.

Police have characterized those statements as self-serving excuses. So have Ketunuti's friends, who say the thought of her demeaning anyone is simply unthinkable.

Smith said he burned the body to get rid of evidence. His lawyer now contends that was a false confession. The trial resumes Monday.

And though those of us who didn't have the privilege of knowing Ketunuti struggle with the senselessness of the loss, her friends, who each day fill three rows in the courtroom, grapple with how such a violent death could befall someone they knew to be so gentle. Someone full of such life and promise. Someone who meant so much to them.

"We don't want the jury to forget for even one moment just how much of a loss this was - a loss for all the people here," said Levon Utidjian, a Children's Hospital of Philadelphia fellow and close friend of Ketunuti's. "That she was a person who was intensely loved."

Ketunuti was an only child. Her parents live in Bangkok. Her death devastated her parents. Ketunuti's father fell into such deep anguish and illness he cannot leave the apartment. Her mother is his sole caretaker.

So each day, after court, Wendy Diamond calls the Ketunutis with an update. Diamond's daughter, Pam, was Ketunuti's roommate at Amherst. Ketunuti became a surrogate daughter. Wendy and her husband, Ken, traveled from Florida to be at the trial. Pam flew in from Atlanta.

In January, Wendy and Ken visited the Ketunutis in Bangkok. A beautiful photo of Melissa hung on the wall along with artwork from Melissa and her mother's many travels.

" 'We have no life without her,' " Wendy Diamond remembered Ketunuti's mother saying.

In court, Ketunuti's other family turned their eyes from the photos of Melissa's charred and bound body, wanting to remember her as she was in life.

During breaks in court, they filed into the hall and recalled those memories - her love of running and of travel and good restaurants, like Spice 28, and of karaoke nights at Yakitori Boy in Chinatown.

How her black Lab, Pooch, was really her baby. How she was a selfless and thoughtful friend - always the calm and reassuring one, whether with friends or with a patient. How her smile lit up a room.

How "only in a broken world would something like this happen to her," her associate residency director, Jim Callahan, said.

And how many people she could have helped.

Then they excused themselves, and headed back in to Courtroom 607, so they could be there for Melissa.

215-854-2759 @MikeNewall