DATE: Tuesday, August 19, 1997              TAG: 9708180089

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: PUBLIC SAFETY

SOURCE: BY MIKE MATHER, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   61 lines

1993 SLAYING OF ACCOUNTANT BAFFLES POLICE

Harleen Singh was 26, a pretty and personable Virginia Beach accountant from Bombay, India, when someone stole her life more than four years ago.

She was smart, once a straight-A college student. Her employers praised her dedication and hustle.

As a corporate controller for Essex Financial Group Inc., a home-mortgage business in the Lynnhaven area, she had made many friends. She was becoming more ``American'' with each passing week.

But her recent separation from her 31-year-old husband, Harjeet Singh, was taking an emotional toll, according to colleagues at work. Still, she was planning to move into a new apartment and was looking forward to her independence.

But before she could get that new start, her dark-gray Honda Accord turned up in front of a fast-food restaurant in Virginia Beach. Her body was face-down behind the front seats.

For months, police detectives dogged the case. Quickly, they targeted a prime suspect, but never accumulated the evidence to act on their theories. They have always hoped that someone, somewhere, has the pieces to help them complete the puzzle.

The mystery of her death started with her uncharacteristic disappearance, on Thursday, March 4, 1993. This is what happened to Harleen Singh, according to interviews with friends, workers and police:

At 5:45 p.m. on the day she disappeared, Harleen Singh, who was at work, called her estranged husband at Ultimate Beauty Supply, a Wards Corner store the couple owned under the name H&H Traders. She was supposed to meet him to fill out business tax forms. She checked her voice mail first.

At 6 p.m., she and a co-worker rode the elevator from Singh's third-floor office to the lobby. She told the co-worker she was leaving to meet her husband. The co-worker saw Harleen Singh drive her car to the Virginia Beach-Norfolk Expressway. That was the last time she was seen alive.

At 9:15 a.m. the next morning, Harleen Singh's father, Surendra Juneja, reported her missing. Friends and relatives, including her estranged husband, distributed hundreds of fliers asking for information about her.

At 5:50 p.m. on Sunday, March 7, police found Harleen Singh's body in her car. The car was in the Wendy's restaurant parking lot at Bonney Road and Independence Boulevard. Her body was face-down behind the front seats. She had been shot. Only her car keys were missing.

She was wearing the black and white dress and white shoes that she was wearing when she disappeared.

No one knows for certain what happened after Harleen Singh drove onto the expressway. No one remembers seeing her after that. Workers at the fast-food store where her body was found couldn't remember when the car first appeared in the lot.

Police questioned many people, but nothing pushed the case forward.

On May 1, 1993, about two months after Harleen Singh's death, her uncle's company took over the beauty store.

The store later closed, as has, for all practical purposes, the homicide file on Harleen Singh. MEMO: Detectives ask that anyone with information about this case call

Crime Solvers at 427-0000. KEYWORDS: UNSOLVED MURDER

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