'Remember to search out the goodness of God in the face of tragedy': Last message of American stabbed to death hiking in Israel
By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
Last updated at 5:13 AM on 21st December 2010
Murdered: Kristine Luken was described as a woman whose commitment to god and the Jewish people were 'everything to her'
A friend of Kristine Luken, the American missionary murdered in Israel, says she is haunted by the final message sent to her before the brutal attack.
Naomi Harralson, a friend and former colleague of the 44-year-old, said she and Miss Luken regularly shared inspirational messages via email.
Ms Harralsion said: 'She has always from the first day I met her had a love for the Jewish people. She felt nowhere more at home than in Israel. Her relationship with God was everything to her.'
It was a relationship so meaningful to Miss Luken that she left her job at Patrick Henry College in 2009 to move to the United Kingdom to work with an evangelical Christian ministry called the Church's Ministry among Jewish people.
Ms Harralson told ABC News: 'It was not an easy process for her, but she was so confident that it was what she was supposed to do.'
Ms Harralson was Miss Luken's boss at the Virginia college where Miss Luken worked as an assistant.
When Miss Luken moved to the UK, she and Ms Harralson kept in touch by emailing inspirational quotes to each other. The last quote Miss Luken sent Ms Harralson a few weeks ago now haunts her. It said 'Remember to search out the goodness of God in the face of tragedy'.
Few could have predicted the tragedy that awaited Miss Luken.
On Sunday, her body was found in a forest outside of Jerusalem. Her hands were tied behind her back. She'd been stabbed to death.
Miss Luken and Kaye Susan Wilson, 46, a friend she met on a trip to Poland with her Christian ministry, had been hiking together.
Miss Wilson survived the stabbing attack by playing dead. She said that they were attacked by two Arab men, adding: 'My friend was dying, I heard her making gurgling sounds.'
Tragic: Israeli Zaka volunteers carry the body of U.S. citizen Kristine Luken out of the forest in Mata, Israel, after she was stabbed to death
Horror: Miss Lukan had been on a hike with a British friend when the pair were attacked. Her friend survived by playing dead - listening as the men continued to attack Miss Lukan
Large-scale search: Israeli border police are briefed near the site of the attack as a manhunt begins
When the men had gone she managed to flee, her hands still bound behind her back, to a nearby parking area where she found help.
Israeli police said they have not yet ruled out whether the attack was 'nationalistic', their term for an attack carried out by Palestinian militants.
Oolice spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld said: 'There's a strong possibility that they could have been from Palestinian areas, but everything is under investigation. It's still open, still new, still fresh.
'It might take time but we're hoping arrests will be made as soon as possible, if those alibis are 100 per cent correct.'
Mr Rosenfeld said authorities were treating the attack as politically motivated, while not ruling out that it could have been criminal.
Gruesome task: Police look in the forest for Miss Lukan after Miss WIlson raised the alarm. But the rescue operation soon became a murder investigation
Miss Wilson said she and her companion had been sitting down, just off the hiking trail, when the two men approached and asked them in Hebrew if they had any water.
She tried to get them to leave, she said, feeling that 'something wasn't right', and the two women then headed back towards the trail.
'Suddenly I noticed them,' she went on. 'It all happened so fast. They came and attacked us.'
One of the men pulled out a long knife, which looked like a bread knife with a serrated edge, she said.
'I was scared but my friend became hysterical. I told her in English to be quiet and not make noise,' she said.
Guard: Grim-faced investigators keep watch over Miss Lukan's body (not shown) after its discovery in the forest some 25 miles out of Jerusalem
But the men then began to stab both women.
'I had a Star of David hanging on a chain around my neck. He took it off like a gentleman and then turned me around and stabbed in the place where the Star of David had been,' she said.
It was clear that the two men had come to kill, she added, questioning why they would have been carrying such a knife otherwise.
She recalled how she then lay still. 'I played dead,' she said. 'I saw (the knife) hadn't gone into my heart. My friend was dying, I heard her making gurgling sounds.'
The discovery of the stabbed and bound body prompted speculation that the brutal attack was politically motivated.
'There have been no claims by [terrorist] organizations,' police spokesman Micky Rosenfield told reporters.
The attack took place in the Mata Forest, some 25miles from Jerusalem
But security levels have not been raised in the area. Mr Rosenfield said police were waiting to investigate further before doing so.
He said Miss Wilson had her hands tied up [and was] stabbed pretty bad in the upper part of her body'.
'The obvious intention [was] to have her killed,' he told the Jerusalem Post.
'This was not something where they were just trying to take her purse. It was a serious crime scene. We’re talking about two women walking around Jerusalem forest, we’re not even talking about Judea and Samaria.'
A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: 'We are aware of the hospitalisation of a British national in Jerusalem. We stand ready to offer consular assistance if requested.
'We are aware of reports of the death of a woman in Jerusalem. We are urgently looking into these reports.'
Yuval Weiss, director of Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, told media he expected Miss Wilson to be released in a few days.
Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said he could not confirm any details about the dead woman or her friend.
The hospital said later that Miss Wilson had been moved from intensive care to a normal ward in the cardiothoracic surgery department.
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