Massage parlor where woman died in fire tied to prostitution

The manager of a Cahokia Heights massage parlor, where a fire killed a female employee earlier this month, has a long history of prostitution-related charges, Southern Illinois Source has learned.

She has faced scrutiny following a recent federal criminal complaint, supported by a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives affidavit, which accuses a Ballwin, Missouri, man named Quentin Hanks of starting the Oct. 19 fire at Fuji Super Spa, a reputed brothel on South 88^th Street in the St. Clair County town.

In the early morning hours, Hanks, a 36-year-old bartender, arrived at an adjacent Cahokia Heights massage parlor called One Spa, where the manager, Kyong Suk Kipilla, allowed him to sleep in the lobby “because he was intoxicated,” according to the federal complaint.

When Kipilla, who goes by Jackie, left the room, Hanks tried and failed to set a couch on fire with his lighter, the complaint states. He then drove to Fuji Super Spa next door and again allegedly tried to light a lobby couch on fire, this time successfully. The fire soon consumed the entire building and caused the death of a woman, whose name has not been released.

The criminal complaint states that Hanks “set the fires because he paid for sexual services at One Spa, but he failed to achieve sexual gratification. He targeted Fuji Super Spa as well because “the masseuse that failed to provide him with his sexual gratification also worked” there.

Hanks has been charged with arson.

Ronnie G. Kipilla, who owns both massage parlors, as well as a third adjacent spa called Bellagio, which also received minor damage in the fire, could not be reached for comment. His mother, Kyong Kipilla, One Spa’s former owner, denied any knowledge of the situation. “I don’t know nothing,” she said, speaking in the One Spa lobby. “I just came to help temporarily.”

But Kyong, 69, who shares a home address with her son Ronnie in north St. Louis, has run the spa for years, and records show she has a long history of prostitution-related charges. Originally from South Korea, she was arrested for soliciting an undercover officer while working as a massage parlor employee in Youngstown, Ohio, in 1997, and pleaded no contest to soliciting for prostitution in Clay County, Florida, in 2004. Three years later, she was arrested again in Dallas, Texas, charged with prostitution. She received a fine and three months probation, after which time the case was dismissed.

She began building a small empire of Cahokia Heights massage parlors around 2009, when she bought the site of a popular former steak house near the intersection of state routes 13 and 157 and converted it into a spa. In 2012 she sold another facility, now housing Tokyo Oriental Spa, for $225,000, according to records.

In 2014, Kyong was charged in federal court with facilitating prostitution, and then in 2016 pleaded guilty to structuring financial transactions intended to deceive the IRS about prostitution profits from her massage parlor Pink Spa, now known as One Spa. She received two years of probation and a $20,000 fine.

She was also forced to sell the spa, which was purchased by her son Ronnie, who now owns three of the four Cahokia Heights massage parlors. The fourth, Tokyo Oriental Spa, is currently owned by Kyong Seob Yeom, a St. Louis County-based CPA and South Korea native who is not related to Jackie and Ronnie.

For years, patrons have referred to these massage parlors as brothels. Websites including one called Rubmaps feature dozens of anonymous, user-generated reviews of prostitution experiences at the four facilities, including some that mention Jackie by name and offer details clearly identifying her. She did not respond to an inquiry about prostitution.

Kyong Seob Yeom said he is simply Tokyo Oriental Spa’s “landlord,” and not actively involved in day-to-day operations. He said he is unaware of prostitution activities at the property.

“That’s never been brought to my attention,” Cahokia Heights Police Chief Thomas Trice said when asked whether he was aware of prostitution at the massage parlors. “We’ve never gotten a complaint or anyone making any allegations of anything like that. If we would have, I assure you, under my chain of command, that would have been investigated.”

A review of 911 call logs over the past two years before the fire show no calls for service to the Cahokia Heights massage parlors.

Trice said he met Kyong Kipilla last year after taking over as police chief, part of a series of meetings with “quite a few of the different business owners around the city.”

“I have never had an encounter, criminally or otherwise, with her as a business owner,” he said.

Cahokia Heights Mayor Curtis McCall did not respond to a request for comment. Campaign finance records show that Kyong Kipilla contributed four times to his 2025 reelection campaign, totaling $6,500, and that in 2021 Ronnie Kipilla gave an additional $700.

‘She was hysterical’

Beyond the prostitution allegations, questions remain about the fire and the resulting death, including the identity of the deceased. The St. Clair County Coroner’s Office had not responded by press time to a Freedom of Information Act request for her name.

A 911 call concerning the fire was placed around 3 a.m. on Oct. 19. Seven people had gotten out of Fuji Super Spa by the time the Signal Hill Fire Department arrived, but one woman remained inside. Signal Hill Fire Chief Tom Elliff, who said the woman was a spa employee, is unclear why she remained inside.

“Other employees had interaction with her,” he said. “So she was up, she was moving. Why she didn’t just get out and stay out, I’m not sure.”

“We did not hear any smoke alarms going off,” he added. “The property owners couldn’t tell us if they were working or not.”

Elliff said he spoke with both the site’s owner, Ronnie, who arrived to the scene sometime after the fire crew, and Ronnie’s mother, Kyong.

“She was hysterical,” said Elliff, though “able to tell us that there was somebody unaccounted for.” Elliff said the Kipillas also told him that the building’s insurance had lapsed.

Four firefighters were sent into the building.

“They were able to search just a little bit of the northwest corner, but when the conditions got too bad, we had to pull them back out,” Elliff said. “We have one person that’s unaccounted for. We don’t need to make it five unaccounted for.”

According to the complaint, Hanks confessed after ATF agents tracked him down in St. Louis. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Illinois said in a statement it would conduct a full grand jury investigation before seeking an indictment.

Trice said his department is not part of this investigation. But he added that, depending on the investigation’s results, it might be time to reassess how local police interact with the massage parlors.

“I think any time you have a tragedy like this, you have to assess the business and what it’s doing and how that happened,” he said. “There’s not anything that we won’t investigate as a police department.”

Reach the author at ben.westhoff@gmail.com

This story was produced by Southern Illinois Source, the Illinois Press Foundation’s nonprofit news collaborative serving the bottom third of the state.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.