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- [00:02]
Narrator/Advertiser
This is exactly right.
- [00:06]
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- [01:11]
Ryan Seacrest
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Paul Holes
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- [02:16]
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- [02:44]
Ryan Reynolds
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- [03:18]
Kate Winkler Dawson
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime.
- [03:25]
Paul Holes
And I'm Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of American America's most complicated cases and solve them.
- [03:31]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes.
- [03:36]
Paul Holes
And I weigh in. Using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.
- [03:41]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st century lens.
- [03:49]
Paul Holes
Some are solved and some are cold. Very cold.
- [03:53]
Kate Winkler Dawson
This is buried bones.
- [04:16]
Paul Holes
Hey, Kate, how are you?
- [04:18]
Kate Winkler Dawson
I'm well, Paul. How about you?
- [04:19]
Paul Holes
I am doing great.
- [04:21]
Kate Winkler Dawson
So we solicited viewer listener questions a while back through Instagram, and we have a great list of questions. Everything from have you ever heard of anybody in a fictional book patterning their detective after you? To what's it like to have twins? So I've got an array of questions, but we're just going to kind of take one per episode for a little bit and just see how it goes.
- [04:47]
Paul Holes
Okay, Sounds good.
- [04:48]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Okay, you ready?
- [04:49]
Paul Holes
Sure.
- [04:50]
Kate Winkler Dawson
So someone wanted to know what your kids and my kids think about having a. I'm going to put air quotes for the listeners. A famous, famous parent. I don't consider myself famous, but I'm flattered. So what about. We'll start with you. You've got four kids. So what? And there's Some are older and some are younger.
- [05:09]
Paul Holes
Yeah, no, I. My two older kids, you know, they're. I mean, believe it or not, both of them, one's over 30 and one is approaching 30 years old. I know they, you know, they weren't living with me. Golden State Killer case was solved and all of a sudden all this public notoriety came in. So my oldest daughter, I think she just kind of rolls her eyes at it. My. My oldest son, he doesn't pay attention to it at all. You know, it just. Yeah, I'm just dad to them. My two younger kids. Because you Know, they grew up in the house after I got this public notoriety, and they would run into things like teachers at school would recognize the last name. And turns out they had teachers that were fans, you know, and I think that they thought part of that was. Was pretty cool. And they even had my. My youngest daughter had a couple of guy friends that were fans, you know, and so she would give them gifts. Like. Like one year she had socks with my image made on it to give to these guy friends just as a joke.
- [06:17]
Kate Winkler Dawson
So they could walk all over you. Yeah.
- [06:20]
Paul Holes
You know, and one of the funny things was she had me, you know, like, I have, like, the headshot photo. And so she had me sign. Sign the. The photo to. To this. This guy and his dad signed a photo of himself to give to me. So that was pretty funny. But no, you know, it is. It is interesting from their perspective, for sure.
- [06:47]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Yeah. I think my kids go between being really embarrassed about it and then proud of me, and I think it goes back and forth. One of them said yesterday that a friend of theirs had seen us on giant Netflix on their big tv and so sort of pointed that out. And then they get the last name, like, oh, okay. And then they'll sometimes put it together. But I came into their school, I did a presentation about. It was supposed to be about podcasting, but then, you know, the. The teacher said, you know, you could talk about your own work. So here I am with a huge group of freshmen, and I start talking about kidnapping and how I handle that in a podcast. And I think they sort of like, literally, one of them gave me. Gave me the whole, like, hand against the throat. You should wrap. Really wrap this up at this point. So that's the embarrassing part, I think. But I think they think it's kind of cool, too. It's nice for me because one of them said, you know, you've kind of taken some. Something out of nothing and turned it into something which, you know, I understand what she means. And so I think that that's pretty cool. As long as I don't embarrass them too much, they're fine. I can do anything, and they're fine.
- [07:54]
Paul Holes
Yeah, yeah, it's. It's a mixed bag for sure, you know, but they seem to have adapted to the, you know, that notoriety, and now they're both. The younger ones are both off at college, so they're not in the mix of where, you know, I'm kind of known in the area.
- [08:12]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Do any of the four know about. Hashtag hot for holes?
- [08:16]
Paul Holes
You had to bring that up.
- [08:19]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Well, has to be part of. They have to. I hope they don't know about that, but maybe they do.
- [08:23]
Paul Holes
The younger kids for sure know about it. You know, that's. And it's like, I. I'm aware of it. I don't pay attention to that. I never talk about that part of me. But everybody, you know, especially this younger generation who is so entrenched into the social media, they're all aware of it, you know, so I'm sure the kids been teased about that.
- [08:43]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Yeah. Sorry about bringing that. It's gonna make things worse for you. Well, this is a good start. I like listener, viewer questions, and we have a really great list. So every once in a while, we'll throw some in and. And see what people have to say.
- [08:56]
Paul Holes
Yeah, it'll be fun.
- [08:57]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Let's get very serious. We are now going back into the 1800s. I feel like we've been in the 20th century for a little while, and now we're going to go back to late 1800s. So the good news is it's a really good story. The bad news for you is, of course, what's the next thing I'm gonna say?
- [09:14]
Paul Holes
There's no photos.
- [09:15]
Kate Winkler Dawson
No photos. Not really, no. But it's got a good mystery to it, and I always like these kinds of stories. We kind of told a similar story, so I'll see if you remember any of those details. A different city, but it felt like similar circumstances. All right, so let's do it. Let's set the scene. Okay. 1886, Boston. Back in Boston. I've talked way too much about Boston, so everybody knows I love Boston. This is in Boston's Chinatown, which is a stretch of the South End, and it was developed by Chinese immigrants in the 1840s. So this is patrolled by the Boston police. And in the late 1800s, as with, you know, many cities, there is a tremendous amount of racial tension between the police and whatever immigrant group is in that neighborhood. In this case, you know, Chinese immigrant group is here, and they're running kind of everything, including a lot of illegal activity. So then we're looking at kind of, you know, police payoffs and political ties. We're not an idyllic, you know, upper New York state, you know, countryside. This is definitely a major city, and there are a lot of opportunities for people to get hurt or killed just depending on, you know, where they're sticking their nose.
- [10:35]
Paul Holes
Yeah.
- [10:36]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Okay, so we are looking at July 18, 1886, and there is a woman named Kitty Welsh, and she's walking to Quang Si Keys Laundry, which is at 585 Shawmut Ave and she's walking over there. It's early in the morning, she's walking over there. Obviously she's wanting to drop off some laundry and she sees the blinds are raised so that means that they're open. And she opens the door, which is unlocked and she enters and walks into a horrific crime scene. So this is where we start, right, with all the blood. There is blood everywhere across the room. Of course we know that everybody's definition of everywhere and how much blood is different, but right now we can just say a bloody crime scene. And the Victim is a 38 year old man named Li Ding Chong and we're going to call him bai ding. He's 38 and he is the owner of this laundromat. He's lying on his back in a pool of blood and he's near the front of the main room of the laundromat, not locking the door, but just sort of, you know, in the main room. And just I think off first blush, everybody who starts to kind of gather the police know that he's been just brutally stabbed to death. So we have to get the time of death. We have a medical examiner, an actual medical examiner, not just a coroner, which is good news. His name is Frank Draper and they take Ding to the City Hospital morgue. So Draper thinks that his time of death was at about 5am and I don't have a clear idea of when Kitty Walsh walked up, but fairly early in the morning. Let me just tell you about some of these wounds. So There are between 12 and 15 stab wounds, 2 and a half to 6 inches in length and depth along the left side of his body. And there's a theory about that. They all appear to have been made with a double edged dagger. How would you know that?
- [12:42]
Paul Holes
So when, when the knife goes, you know, through the skin, think about a single edged blade. You know, so you have the sharp edge and then you have a blunt edge. You can, pathologists can often see where the, the skin is separated, which edge that knife the, the direction of the knife blade itself. So you'll see a very sharp V where there's a sharp edge and then you'll almost see just sort of a blunt edge to the upper part of the stab wound. And what this pathologist is seeing is that sharp V on both sides. Now it's also possible that, let's say you have a stab wound into the sternum. You know, you can see because now you have this solid structure, this bone. You can actually see the blade configuration from that.
- [13:37]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Okay, well, he says double edged dagger. There is a gash running from ear to ear that severs Ding's jugular vein and spinal column. What's the space between, like a normal man? How deep is that kind of a cut?
- [13:54]
Paul Holes
It sounds like that this cut to the throat. You know, I've talked about this before. All the tissues in the front of the neck can be cut very easily with a sharp knife. And so most of the time with homicidal throat cuts, it looks like near decapitation. Now, if the pathologist is saying that the spinal cord itself is severed, now that's significant. I haven't seen that. So that would tend to indicate that there was a fair amount of force behind the use of this, this blade, not just going through the soft tissue, but now going through the vertebrae in order to get down into that, that spinal cord.
- [14:35]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Well, these injuries keep getting worse and worse. So I told you about the spinal column. From the corner of Ding's mouth to his left ear, there is a wound that is so deep that it exposes his teeth. And the lower part of his jaw, as well as both of his eyes have been stabbed with such force that the knife likely penetrated his brain. And then there are some more injuries. So his chin, his left chest, and his left thigh are all stabbed. There's a deep slice across Ding's right abdomen that exposes his intestines. And then we've got what they presume are defensive wounds. The back of his left hand and his fingers are also lacerated. So, you know, the medical examiner says, well, this is. He was fighting for his life.
- [15:22]
Paul Holes
Yeah.
- [15:22]
Kate Winkler Dawson
And that's, that's the end. There's one weird thing after this, but I want to hear what you think about, you know, all of these wounds. It's, it's so much, so much force.
- [15:30]
Paul Holes
When you do have, let's say you have the victim and they are defending themselves. And now the offender is stabbing with force with a sharp knife. You do see, like these larger incisions, you know, knife goes in, the victim is moving. Now you have the incision. It's not unusual, like this gash to his face. You know, if there is force behind that, it doesn't surprise me at all that the teeth in the jaw are being exposed through this incision. The stabs to the eyes. Now that's something the offender wouldn't have done during the fight. That, to me is sounding like the offender is sending a message. And what is that message. Is this a warning to others? Is this a warning to his family? It's almost like he saw something and this offender is as saying don't talk.
- [16:33]
Narrator/Advertiser
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Kate Winkler Dawson
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Narrator/Advertiser
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Kate Winkler Dawson
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Kate Winkler Dawson
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Narrator/Advertiser
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- [18:50]
Ryan Seacrest
Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons Safeway. It's stock up savings time now through March 31st. Spring in for store wide deals and earn four times the points. Look for in store tags to earn on eligible items from Hunts Nerds, Pillsbury, Lowry's, Breyers, Quaker and Culture Pop. Then clip the offer in the app for automatic event long savings. Stack up those rewards to save even more Enjoy savings on top of savings when you shop in store or online for easy drive up and go, pick up or delivery restrictions apply. See website for full terms and conditions.
- [19:21]
Narrator/Advertiser
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- [20:14]
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- [20:59]
Kate Winkler Dawson
here's the weird thing that I was going to mention to you that I actually ended up having to do a little bit of research on more, more research to figure out what the significance was. So Ding wore a very specific type of hairstyle called a Q. And it's a very long braid that was worn on the back of the head of a Chinese man during the Qing dynasty. And you know, usually it's like shaved around the top and then this very long braid. Are you familiar with that?
- [21:28]
Paul Holes
Yeah, that sounds familiar to me.
- [21:31]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Okay. He wore that and someone cut it off and it wasn't him. And then I wanted to tell you the significance of that. So when you're talking about a message based on the wounds, there might be an even bigger message based on the fact that somebody cut that off and must have, must have known the significance of doing something like that?
- [21:49]
Paul Holes
Well, that, you know, my immediate question is, what is the significance in that culture? You know, if you cut, you know, another man's Q hair off that braid, that. That must mean something. You know, that sounds like a form of. You're denigrating that man, if you will.
- [22:07]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Well, it's a little bit of history where we have to jump around. So during the Qing dynasty, men were forced to wear these cues because they were supposed to show loyalty to the emperor. If you didn't wear it, then you could be executed.
- [22:25]
Paul Holes
Okay.
- [22:25]
Kate Winkler Dawson
You know, now in 1886 Boston, nobody is forcing Ding to wear this hairstyle, but it was significant to him. And there. And there were people who certainly wore it, but because his had been chopped off, it was also lying limply next to his body. And there is a point that his body was a little bit warm. So this was a big insult. And then there's a twist on who might be doing the insulting. But let me just, you know, get your reaction to that. Cut off. And then it wasn't taken. It was laying on him.
- [22:58]
Paul Holes
You know, in some ways, you know, I've. I'm aware of a. Of a case with a serial predator in which he scalped one of his victims. You know, and there's a different aspect to the, you know, some of the sexual aspects of the predatory type crime. But the scalping of the victim is a way to, like, emasculate.
- [23:22]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Do you think, or no?
- [23:23]
Paul Holes
Well, you know, I think in Ding's case, that might be part of what's going on there. But this is to. To further damage the victim is, I guess, the only way I can say it right now. So with Ding and his hair being cut off, I mean, that just kind of correlates with the stabs through the eyes. There is a message being sent. It's obviously, Ding's dead. So the offender feels Ding has done something that he shouldn't have up to a point to where now he's being killed. But now a message is being sent, and it almost sounds like, you know, he's the laundry shop owner. You know, did he have to pay, you know, for protection from some sort of organized, you know, group, like a mob of some sort, and he either failed to pay or did something else, and now they're sending a message to the other people, hey, if you don't keep up with your payments, this will happen to you.
- [24:26]
Kate Winkler Dawson
So what I was thinking about was who in this community would know the significance of the queue and why cutting it off would be an insult or, like you just said, sending some kind of a message. And certainly you would think it would be somebody who is in the Chinese community. But when I started really reading about this, I realized that it was also really rooted in racism in the United States. So there was a time in the mid to late 1800s where the economy was taking a big downturn, particularly like after the gold rush in Northern California, and people were blaming Chinese immigrants for that. And so they were heavily discriminated against. Right. And in 1873, in San Francisco, they passed an ordinance that if a Chinese man who was wearing a Q was arrested and put into prison, he was forced to have the hair cut off. And so then when I read that, I was thinking, okay, maybe not part of the Chinese community, maybe somebody who is so, you know, full of hatred and racist feelings, that this is, you know, maybe there was a personal argument and he. He really lashed out. I don't know. I mean, that would certainly widen out the suspect pool, but there are people who hate it on both sides is what I'm saying.
- [25:47]
Paul Holes
Yeah. So this is where now it's the victimology.
- [25:50]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Yeah.
- [25:51]
Paul Holes
You know, what is Ding doing and who is he involved with? Is there something we can discern about the victimology that might be able to narrow that suspect pool?
- [26:03]
Kate Winkler Dawson
So to add to that, in parts of California during that time period, also, there would be entire groups of men anti, you know, immigrant, anti Chinese men, who would force Chinese men to, you know, stay still, and they would cut off their cues also. So this was definitely a sign. It was a sign from, you know, Chinese people, and this was a sign from, you know, people who were racist in other parts of the country, too. So that's significant. Like you said, it's going to be interesting to see how this all unfolds.
- [26:36]
Paul Holes
Yeah. And so you have a very broad array of potential suspects just because of the cultural aspect. Now you've got the racism aspect. Then there's the interpersonal. You know, this could be an offender who has a huge amount of anger towards Ding for whatever reason. And it's cutting the cue off just as a way to. Because he knows this was important to Ding. And so it's just further damaging the victim, even though it's after death.
- [27:06]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Okay, let me ask this, because I hear overkill used so much, and I know it's overused in a lot of cases because you and I have talked about. And you just sort of mentioned this. If you have a victim who's fighting back, moving around, you'll have an offender who is, I mean, frankly, freaked out and has to stab them until they stop moving, which could take a long time. And sometimes you said you'll see strangulation part of that, too. So does this read to you like a personal vendetta? I know we mentioned the eyes already, but does the rest of this seem personal, like what they would call overkill, or does this still seem like I've got to get this job done?
- [27:43]
Paul Holes
Yeah, you know, as. As horrible as his injuries sound, I would say they're not exceptional. From a, you know, a brutal stabbing type of case, if you do have the victim actually fighting back for a period of time, there's going to be more and more injuries that are being inflicted as the offender is trying to, you know, gain control of the victim. So overkill is something where the offender has done so much more than what was necessary to kill the victim. That's not what's going on here. The stab to the eyes, there's a reason I focused in on that, because that is unusual. That's not happening during a fight. The, the cutting the throat is. Is making sure ding is. Is dead, you know, and it's a, It's a deep cut, you know, going into. Into the, the spinal column. But the other, the other injuries, you know, that's sometimes what you commonly see. It's, you know, a lot of people just see stabs, you know, and you think, oh, they, they've got these little. No, you start getting brutal types of incisive injuries to forearms or in the abdomen as the victim moves. And sometimes you can get what looks like evisceration. It's just that the abdominal wall has been compromised and it's not a purposeful thing that the offender is doing. So right now, I mean, yeah, it's a, It's a brutal stabbing, so to speak, but it's not an exceptional type of case. Where I'm going to go, yeah, this offender was going way overboard in terms of the amount of injuries inflicted on
- [29:18]
Kate Winkler Dawson
David, would you expect this offender to have the nicks, cuts and all of that from, you know, working with a knife that has so much blood that it slips and cuts the blade, which we hear about that a lot. Let's assume this is somebody who's not wearing gloves. Fingerprints are not quite a thing yet. What do you think?
- [29:36]
Paul Holes
Well, with a stabbing, there's always a possibility, and you always have to consider the possibility that the offender himself got cut. And this is, you know, one that you brought up is sometimes the knife hit, hits bone and now the offender's, you know, hand slips off the handle down onto the blade. In this particular case, I think the, the more likely scenario of the offender being cut is you, the offender's grabbing onto Ding, he's got a control hand and Ding's fighting and the offender's trying to stab. He may cut his own hand, you know, as he's doing the stabbing. So that's a common way for the offenders to, to get cut themselves. And so this is where the blood, interpreting the blood patterns at the scene becomes important. You know, do you have a dripped trail as the offender is now, you know, moving away from, you know, the, the victim himself?
- [30:29]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Well, you know, the way they're describing it is there's blood everywhere. I don't see a mention of a specific trail. And this is a small Laundromat too. Let me see if there's anything more heading into this. So I'm going to tell you about what they think the motive could be and then the weapon. And then we have a investigator who tries to sequence the events. And I wanna see if it matches up with what you would think is what happened. Okay. So as they're examining his body before they took it to the medical examiner's office, they look around. The laundry mat is totally ransacked. So Ding had a trunk and had been dragged from the back bedroom where he stayed into the main laundry area. And all of its contents were on the floor. So there were sewn garments that had bloody fingerprints. There were valuables that were once in the chest were gone. I mean, these were probably trinkets, it could be jewels, who knows? But there was 34American dollars also in his money drawer in the laundromat. That's about $1,100 today. That's a lot of money. And that got missed so that the thief didn't take it. And this is a money drawer, which would have been obvious to a thief, you know, working in a business. So we've got that aspect. Then they're trying to find the weapon. So, you know, they're looking for this double edged dagger, I think is what it was described as. The next day they're searching more in the Laundromat bathroom and there's a large ash heap where I guess he would be burning stuff in the city. And they find a carving knife. It's about 6 inches long, 2 inches wide, but it's new and it's sharp and only the handle is charred. So they hand it over to Dr. Draper, who by this time is, you know, Looked at all of these injuries and he compares it to the jagged edges and he said this is not the knife. Is that possible? I mean, can he definitively say this is not the same knife without a blood test or anything?
- [32:31]
Paul Holes
Right. Yeah, I would say if that's just a single bladed knife and he is spot on accurate in terms of it's a double edged blade that was used to stab Ding, then I would say yeah, he's, you can absolutely do that elimination. You also just depending on the, you know, where the stabs are occurring on, on Ding's body, you can get a sense, you know, for the blade length as well as the, the, the width of the blade and you can't really do that, let's say with stab wounds to the abdomen because that's soft tissue that it presses and it blade look longer than what it is. But if you have stab wounds to the chest, you can, the pathologist will measure that depth and say it's at least a, you know, a blade this long, six inches because the chest isn't compressing down and so the blade has to be at least that long to go 6 inches into the chest.
- [33:27]
Kate Winkler Dawson
If it has hit the spinal column and makes like teeth marks in it. Are you able to definitively match a blade that you find and just say I can't say for sure this is the blade. But, but you know, it matches up kind of like, you know, matching teeth marks.
- [33:43]
Paul Holes
So you're, are you talking about let's say a serrated blade?
- [33:46]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Yes. Yeah.
- [33:47]
Paul Holes
Okay. Not necessarily, you know, like doing a, what we would call a tool mark comparison. Let's say, you know, you have some marks on bone to the blade, maybe you can get a sense of if it just hit the bone just right. In terms of the serrated pattern, what I've seen is where a serrated blade has been used to scrape along the side of the victim's face. And so I could clearly see I've got a pattern of three teeth, a gap, two teeth, a gap, three teeth. So there are times, depending on the case, where pathologist or a forensic examiner can determine additional characteristics of the knife.
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Paul Holes
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- [39:01]
Kate Winkler Dawson
So let me tell you about the layout of this place. There's the laundry area that's public. In the laundry area were sort of like window sills that are really long and wide because he had very big windows. So sometimes he would close the blinds and he would sleep on those window sills.
- [39:19]
Paul Holes
Oh wow. Okay.
- [39:20]
Kate Winkler Dawson
He also had a couch in the bedroom area. He didn't have a bed. And so, you know, that was back there. The theory that this captain who walks in on this says is that because of almost all of the wounds I'm sure you picked up on this are on his left hand side. So it's like stab wounds up and down on his thigh. There's a defense wound on his left hand. The cut that exposes the teeth from the jaw to the ear is on the left side. The eyes are of course, both. And then there's the cut across the jugular vein. But the captain's theory is that Ding was sleeping on the windowsill at the front. And then of course he's found at the front. Does that make sense to you?
- [40:03]
Paul Holes
Yeah, it very, very well could. You know, he's got, he's sleeping on his right side, so his left side is exposed. You know, the offender comes in and starts stabbing. And stabbings can occur very, very quickly. Now with the types of incisive injuries. You know, I would be looking for, you know, the blood patterns that would suggest that Ling was laying down on that windowsill before being moved or moving himself off the windowsill during a fight. Offender. That's one possibility. I was also thinking, you know, if Ding is facing the offender, the offender's using his left hand to control Ding and is now coming right handed and now is doing most of the stabs to the left side of Ding's body. That's another possibility.
- [40:50]
Kate Winkler Dawson
So, you know, I think what's interesting about this scenario and the sequencing seems very muddled to me is when Ding is found, the blinds are up, the door is unlocked. It's like he's open for business. He's found there all bloodied. And Captain White believes that this is somebody that Ding knew, that this wasn't somebody who just pushed his way in. He believed that this would have been somebody that Ding knew. And Ding said, it got late, you can sleep on my couch and I'll sleep on the windowsill. That wasn't usual that he would sleep on the windowsill because he had a couch. But White thinks that that would account for number one. He was obviously, maybe he was sleeping on his right hand. That's why all the wounds are on the left. And then that's how the killer would have gotten in. I don't know why he wouldn't have drawn the blinds. But if this really happened at 4 or 5 in the morning and this was not a busy street, maybe no one was out there and this was a spur of the moment thing, you know, I don't know. But that right now is the working theory. This is someone he knew that he let in before he closed up for the night. And sometime in the middle of the night, this person stuck up and killed him.
- [41:58]
Paul Holes
I don't know. I'm not liking that, that theory just because of the messaging that the offender is doing. I would lean more towards Ding had let the offender in, possibly didn't have a choice because this offender is coming over and over again, like under, you know, sort of the hypothetical scenario where Dean owes this, this money, you know, has to Pay, you know, $20 every week or something, you know, so this is where, you know, with the, the blinds being open, what time does Ding normally get up and start getting the, you know, the, the shop ready for business that day. That, that may have just been something Ding had done. And then this guy, the offender comes there, you know, to collect the debt, and Ding doesn't have the money and the. The offender goes off on him.
- [42:49]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Yeah, yeah. The idea was also that when the police reported there that his body was still warm. But it's also July. I mean, we don't know. Even July in the morning in Boston could be hot. So I'm thinking about the 5am Is that a logical time for him to get up? And it could be, for sure.
- [43:09]
Paul Holes
Yeah, I would think so. For somebody running their own business, it seems like, yeah, they're going to take a couple hours just to kind of get the shop set up for both interfacing with the customers, but also with what they're doing in the back, know, doing all the laundry.
- [43:24]
Kate Winkler Dawson
So, you know, White's idea is that this is somebody who personally knows and this is a vendetta or rage or something like that. But it sounds like we need to stay more open minded, kind of just maybe the sequencing is not what, what White thinks it is.
- [43:37]
Paul Holes
Yeah, you know, I, I think so. I just. The messaging is really what bugs me for. Let's say it's a friend that Ding is letting sleep overnight. And then this friend gets up and goes off on Ding and now, you know, stabs him in the eyes and cuts his cue off to send a message. I don't know. I'm not liking it right now.
- [43:56]
Kate Winkler Dawson
All right, well, we need to learn more about Ding. So he stayed out of trouble. He immigrated here through San Francisco from China six years earlier. So he left behind a wife and a young child so he could make money and eventually come home to work. Which now seems sort of heartless. Right. But that was very common. And his intention was to go back to China. So he worked at this laundromat for three years. He saved money and then he bought it from the owner and he actually kept the name, which was nice. And he was well liked in the community. Everybody knew who he was. He smoked outside and would talk to the kids and he would lend people money in need. But when I read that, the first thing I thought of was, okay, so people know he has money if he's lending out money. And that's problematic. Right?
- [44:47]
Paul Holes
For sure. But I think my guess is that the Chinese immigrants probably didn't trust the banking system here. Right. So I would think that many of these shops probably had large amounts of cash or the residents that were there staying had large amounts of cash.
- [45:06]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Yep, absolutely. Well, on a laundromat, certainly would. This gets to me to be really interesting, just as we see kind of, you know, his role in the community was important. And the police are taking this very seriously, which is good, because sometimes we have police who don't take it very seriously. Okay. Lowell liked in the community. People really, you know, like, leaned on him when they needed money. But he was wrapping things up, so he wanted to go home. He was a month or so away when he was murdered from having enough money to be able to go back to China. And that was the plan. So he had told his cousin, who was a guy named Sam Singh, who is a local bookkeeper, you know, in Chinatown. He told his cousin that he had saved $400 and that he was gonna get another $100 by the end of the month, basically right before he was murdered. So total, that would be 17 grand today. So he planned to sell the laundromat, even more money and then go home to his family in China. The day before the murder, he took out a very large sum of money from the bank. I think he had advertised that he was gonna sell the business. So people in Chinatown around him, all the neighbors, knew he was going to sell this business. He was gonna be taking off. So the day before he died, he takes a large amount of money. Who would know, besides a banker, that he was going to take that amount of money out? The cousin would have suspected it was going to happen soon, I would guess. Right?
- [46:38]
Paul Holes
Yeah. I think that's the million dollar question, you know, is, you know, first at the crime scene or his residence, was he actually living at the laundromat? Do we know?
- [46:48]
Kate Winkler Dawson
He had a little back bedroom that had just a couch in it and a bathroom, and that was it, you know.
- [46:52]
Paul Holes
So, of course, if, you know, through the crime scene search, they're not finding that cash, then there's a presumption that the offender did find that cash. There was only the 34 dol dollars in the. In the money drawer, is what you said. Even though that's a lot of money back then, but sounds like Dean had much more money than that elsewhere within the laundromat. And so now it's, you know, you have to follow that. That money trail. Like, who is Ding talking to about leaving? Who are his friends? You know, he's got the. The bookkeeper, you know, would know. So. And. And employees at the bank would know. So, you know, there' certain groups of individuals that now you have to go talk to and find out what their knowledge was.
- [47:39]
Kate Winkler Dawson
And I think one of the issues knowing, you know, about the 1800s is if he's advertising that he's selling this laundromat and people know what the due date is, that he's going to have to leave soon, which I assume most people in the neighborhood would know. They would know that there's not going to be a wire service where he will get money from Wells Fargo and Boston to try. They would know that he would have money on him. Everybody probably would know. They'd be able to put it together. But I do think you're right. I mean, Sam seems to me to be a pretty good suspect because it would work. The cousin. Because it would work both ways. Right. He could. Either white could be right and Sam is sleeping on the couch for some reason at the back and this happens, or, you know, Sam could Show up at 5 in the morning when nobody else is out but Ding is opening up.
- [48:26]
Paul Holes
Yeah, well, well. And if it's somebody like Sam and this was a financially motivated crime, then I would say cutting the cue off and stabbing Ding in the eyes is a form of staging, trying to make it look like something that it's not. And so that is a distinct possibility. But it's also, what else is Ding involved with? There's that theory. And then what other secrets does Ding have that potentially could be the reason he got killed?
- [48:56]
Kate Winkler Dawson
So you have the police in New York really running into a brick wall for several reasons. Because they are predominantly white, and the community that they're trying to get information from is prominently an immigrant community. So they are running into two different kinds of witnesses, neither of which are helpful. One is the people who literally don't speak English and they can't get that information out of them. And they don't have a translator. They would later have a translator on hand, but they don't right now. And then the other half are the people who don't trust the police because there were kind of constant anti Chinese riots and violence. There were police raids and the police, you know, obviously were the enemy. And I'm sure there's crossover between those two groups. So they're not getting much information about, you know, this crime from anybody. They do end up going to neighbors, many of whom are either black or they're white. And they will give some information, but it's limited. And then there are some folks in the Chinese community who step forward because people really did like Ding. So the first person that Captain White gets A little bit of hope from is from a guy named Jude Costello. He is a barber who sublets his salon from Ding. So they're connected. And the salon is separated from the laundromat by a very thin pine partition, which of course means he can hear everything. And what Jude says is that on the night of the murder, at about 11 o' clock that night, he saw a strange and small statured Chinese man pacing in front of the Laundromat building. He said he thought that the man was 19 years old. He was 5 foot 4 inches tall. He was wearing a tall black hat with a broad rim, a faded blue tunic jacket and black trousers. And he said that the man managed to get inside the laundromat at midnight by Ding. And then Jude said he could hear Ding and this man speaking in Mandarin, I mean, which he does not know, Costello doesn't know, Jude doesn't know. But he said the conversation sounded fine, the tones were fine, and he said that he assumed that this is a guy who had just come from California to Boston and maybe, you know, Ding, knowing his nature, was trying to set him up to, you know, have a good life here. He said at about 1:00 clock in the morning. So two hours after he first saw this strange man pacing outside, he heard coins rattle. And then after that, Jude becomes not a good witness, he falls asleep. So the caveat here is that Jude is black. And the way that he pegs the age of this frenetic man pacing will come into play and there will be the 1800s, sort of like, I don't know, they didn't use the term, but the cross racial misidentification stuff, and that becomes important.
- [52:02]
Paul Holes
So obviously you have an unknown Chinese male. Okay, you gotta identify him. Unfortunately, the ear witness isn't hearing an argument, isn't hearing the homicide. So we can't say for sure that this man is the actual killer. It's just that he's there under unusual circumstances.
- [52:24]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Mm, absolutely. So we've got more kind of witnesses trying to fill in the timeline here. There's another guy. This is a teenager, 16 year old messenger boy named Bartholomew Connolly, and he works for Western Union Telegraph. So he backs up basically Jude's story. He says that he had gone to ding's laundromat about 11 o' clock that night and that when he got there, Ding was happy and laughing and smoking with this other Chinese man who Bartholomew had never seen before. He said the stranger was wearing the dark brimmed hat, had a thin, sharp face, and he was lying on Ding's ironing board. And he said that he had seen the man once before in the shop about a month earlier. But that night, between 11 and 12:30 in the morning, the stranger came and went several times, and each time he passed Bartholomew, this kid, he put his hand on his right hip pocket like he was holding something which he was afraid might break, like, kind of bracing it, I guess. Okay, so now you've got two different witnesses who are confirming seeing this strange man, which I don't know if anybody's gonna be able to pick out in this large community, someone from the other, especially because I am guessing Bartholomew Connolly is not Chinese. I could be wrong, though.
- [53:45]
Paul Holes
Yeah. Well, obviously it's a very difficult situation to try to track down who this man was based off of those witnesses. Witnesses. This type of community that does not trust law enforcement. Of course, we have that today. And generally this is where law enforcement, you try to develop informants to be able to give you some inside information as to what's going on. And so I'm wondering if Boston PD has developed some informants within the Chinese community to see as somebody talking about what Ding has been involved with.
- [54:24]
Kate Winkler Dawson
We do end up getting a little bit more information, which is good.
- [54:27]
Paul Holes
Okay.
- [54:27]
Kate Winkler Dawson
More witnesses. So there are several other witnesses who come forward with a matching description of this stranger. Angular face and all of that, whom they had seen walking up and down Lenox Street. So one is a guy named Mr. Walsh. He doesn't like the heat. It was really hot that day. He couldn't go to sleep. And he had seen a man at Ding's laundromat as late as 2:30. So now you've got two people who say they've seen someone between 11 or heard someone between 11pm and 12:30. Ish. And now we've got this other person saying he was there as late as 2:30. And so he has a smoke at his window, and then that's when he notices the conversation with Ding while Ding is ironing. So this is 2:30 in the morning. Gosh, Ding works long hours. So now there is a Chinese milkman. So parts of the community are, you know, helpful. So there's a Chinese milkman on Sunday morning. He says at 5:30 he saw a man generally matching what Jude and Bartholomew had described as the person in the door. He slams the door, the laundromat, and he darts down the street. He says that this stranger kept looking over his shoulder as he ran toward downtown. Now this is why I was bringing up the other story, because what this milkman says is that this guy had a long scar on his cheek. And what I thought was, because this came up in the other case, too, how can you see that kind of detail when you're reporting that you see him close the door, turn and run, essentially, and look over his shoulder?
- [56:06]
Paul Holes
Well, the milkman, he may have just gotten, you know, a. A glance at the side of this man's face and. And that scar stood out. It's. It's hard to say. I mean, witnesses sometimes will give descriptions of, you know, they. Some. A suspect, and it doesn't match up when you finally, you know, get the suspect. That is just the nature of how humans perceive the world, especially under, let's say, a dramatic event, you know, that. That trauma, that unexpected thing, and people will just visualize something that's not real. Yeah, but with this milkman, you know, that scar, I'd go, well, you know, that's. That sounds interesting. You know, And. And are. Were they able to make a composite with these witnesses, you know, that they could now go around and start showing other people in the community?
- [56:57]
Kate Winkler Dawson
No, because they very quickly target somebody and make an arrest.
- [57:00]
Paul Holes
Oh.
- [57:01]
Kate Winkler Dawson
So apparently Boston PD does not think there's a need for a composite. And, you know, you were talking about the human nature, and it's sort of like the prism that you're looking through. And, you know, I had always heard it's that your brain is filling in the blanks to make that what you just saw make sense, what makes sense, you know?
- [57:20]
Paul Holes
Sure.
- [57:20]
Kate Winkler Dawson
So it'll be interesting to see if the Chinese milkman, if we come up with this person. So they arrest a guy the next day whose name is li Sing. He's 40 and he's Chinese, and he matches the description of this stranger. And the reason I said 40, the way I said it, is we remember that the person who did definitively see him, who is Jude next door, said 19, which is a huge difference, you know.
- [57:47]
Paul Holes
Yeah. But at the same time, I mean, you're trying to judge somebody's age based off physical appearance, and it wouldn't surprise me that you're seeing this type of age difference. You know, it's more. Okay, does this Lee Sing first, is he matching the general description? Plus, you know, does he have any connection to Dean and the laundromat?
- [58:06]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Well, let me tell you what the description is. So he's working at this Laundromat on Harrison Avenue, and he's. I think he's just a, you know, a worker there. He doesn't own it or anything. He's packing a trunk and he's preparing to leave Boston when the police show up. He's wearing a faded blue jumper speckled with red stains, a slouchy hat and brand new shoes. He has a jackknife in his pocket. They bring him into the station and according to witnesses, people who are around, he was not at his laundromat after 6pm the night of the murder and he didn't come back until Sunday in the early afternoon. I have to presume that Lee Singh also sleeps at this laundromat, which I don't think would have been unusual. That probably would have been part of a deal, an employment deal at that time. But he doesn't come back until early Sunday afternoon when the police are searching around for somebody. He said that he had been at the owner of the laundromat's home on Essex street that night and he had gone to bed about 11 o' clock that night. But when the detectives go question Sam Waugh, who, who owns this house, he said that Lee came and left at 7pm now we're kind of getting inconsistencies, right? And they look at the blood because that's the first thing I thought of. And it's not human blood. It is calcimine, which is a common dye that they used in Chinese laundromats at the time. Even though Jude identifies Li as the man he saw at Ding's the night of the murderer, there are other witnesses who say, I know, don't, I don't think so. And I have to assume that this is the Chinese milkman. Also. I don't believe that Lee has this scar down the face. So they have nothing else. They have to release him at that point.
- [59:56]
Paul Holes
Well, they can't place him at the laundromat. They can't place him committing the homicide, you know, so right now, yeah, he's maybe a suspect, but they have to, you know, build a case. They have to find the evidence, you know, where's the double edged murder weapon? Where's the, the money that is missing? Is there any bloody clothing? You know, this is where you have to search Lee Singh's, you know, place, wherever he had access. And it sounds like they came up empty right now. So he's just a suspect and he may be the killer, he may not be the killer.
- [60:31]
Kate Winkler Dawson
And I thought that this weak alibi of his, because he clearly lied about the alibi was going to do him in. But with the mistrust between the Chinese community and the police in Boston. There were a myriad, I'm sure, reasons why he would have lied. I mean, who knows? He might have done illegal activity. He didn't want to cop to that, and he thought he'd just get out of it, and he did. So, yeah, you're right. So they let him go. So this crime has spread all over New England now, and their police are getting what I would consider to be incredibly unhelpful tips, most of it rooted in racism, you know, and so that doesn't help. So, you know, we've always talked about this phenomenon where the police are trying to search a needle in a haystack for a good tip. And the haystack is so large because there's so many bad tips. So the police now are listening to rumors. Which is a good thing or a bad thing? I'm not quite sure yet. They said that they had heard from Chinatown residents that Ding was, while he was a good, kind man, he was also a very shrewd man. And even though Jude had never, he said, seen in the Laundromat, like even a deck of cards to indicate that Ding was into gambling, people suspected that Ding was into gambling because the amount of money that he had around and that. I think people like Sam, his cousin, the withdrawal from the bank, it doesn't seem like a laundromat would generate that kind of money. So now the police are going, great. Now, do we have to deal with the Chinese underworld here? Because people are suspecting that, you know, he was. He was getting money from other illegal sources.
- [62:13]
Paul Holes
That tracks with me in terms of the messaging that the offender did.
- [62:16]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Okay.
- [62:17]
Paul Holes
You know, with the stabs of the eyes and cutting the cue off. So this is where, you know, victimology is huge. And now. Okay, so who. Who did Ding piss off?
- [62:30]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Well, here are your options. There are four companies, they call it, like the mafia families, that operate all of these vice businesses in Chinatown. It's Moi, Ching, Li, and Singh. And these are gangs that organize investments, capital investments for vice businesses. So they will. I mean, people can invest in. In sex work or gambling or, you know, whatever it is. And these four businesses extort business owners for protection, which could be, of course, Ding. And enforce justice in Chinatown. So there is a rumor that Ding was part of Mr. Lee's company. So there are, you know, more theories. And now people are saying it's a conspiracy. Policeman say that about 1:30 the night of the murder, two Chinese men in what they called Americanized clothing were seen leaning over a fence on Lennox street spying on Ding's Shop. And Captain White now is saying, do we think that these were lookouts for some assassin that was supposed to come on behalf of either one of the other companies or Ding's own company to kill him? And now it's just speculation at this point.
- [63:49]
Paul Holes
Point, yeah. But, you know, from my perspective, it's, it's informed because, you know, part of, of working a case is you have to understand based on what the offender has done, the offender is kind of doing certain behaviors that if you interpret those behaviors right, it can give you direction on where the investigation should at least march down, you know, to see if there's any, any leads that develop. And, you know, early on, I, I, I thought, hey, this sounds like the, the offender is sending a message the way Ding is killed. And what was done to Ding is a message to other people. So I personally think that this is possibly the right path for the investigators to go down.
- [64:33]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Well, let's see what ends up happening. They have now identified a member of one of these companies that they think could be responsible. So this is very quick, this investigation. So Ding was, they think, murdered in the early morning hours of July 19th, this is July 20th, and they arrest a guy named Ah Moy Chong on suspicion of murder. Ah Moi is the head of one of these companies, the Moi Company. And per the Chinese milkman's observation, this guy has a long scar along his jaw and has any, a really bad reputation for violence. So, you know, allegedly he killed three men in California. And there was a rival company, which is the Ching Company. And in the Ching Company, it was one of the. Now we're down to three companies. The Ching Company was run by a guy named Ching Fu. And Ah Muy Chong literally ran that guy out with a gun. The guy left, you know, that whole company shut down because Ah Muy Chung had a gun on him and said, you better get out of the city. So very, very violent. And the idea was that the rumor was that Ding worked for another rival company, the Lee Company. So where the connection is, how Ding may have, you know, screwed over this guy, we don't know. The arrest comes when Moy is in bed with his wife and he's smoking a pipe. They arrest him, and on the way to the police station, he drops a silk handkerchief. It is stained with blood. You know, his wife alibis him, and she says, you guys are barking up the wrong tree. He was in bed with me during Saturday night. And there are no witnesses that can identify Moy as the killer, so, so he is released. There is not Enough information or either he is not the killer or witnesses know exactly who he is. And nobody wants to point to Moy because he's probably the most powerful out of all of these companies.
- [66:46]
Paul Holes
Sure. You know, but, you know, at least Moy as a suspect seems to fit. You know, somebody within that circle is. Is possibly the killer. You know, Moy might be the killer, but they have to make a case. You know, he's a suspect. That's. Again, it's. It's. It's just like.
- [67:04]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Yeah.
- [67:05]
Paul Holes
Oh, the previous guy, who was that? That was Singh. You know, so this is where if they made an arrest, they're making an arrest just off of reputation. And maybe the milkman saying the guy had a scar. Okay.
- [67:20]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Yep.
- [67:21]
Paul Holes
Definitely not enough to hold the guy in custody and. And charge him with. With murder. So, you know, I'm kind of curious. Well, how deep did the investigators search and interview along this line of investigation?
- [67:36]
Kate Winkler Dawson
You know, I don't know what they do with the handkerchief, but they do confirm it's blood. I don't know what his explanation is. I would guess because of the relationship and how high up he is, the head of this company, that there wasn't much of an investigation. That would be my guess because that's the end of the story.
- [67:55]
Paul Holes
Oh, really?
- [67:56]
Kate Winkler Dawson
It isn't. Is an unsolved. I'm going to set you loose on this case. It's an unsolved case. They never find who kills him. He is buried locally, and that is that. And you have witnesses who don't want to talk. Probably someone knows exactly who this is, who did it. But, you know, we just. We don't. No, we would be able to find out. Of course, as with every case, we would be able to find out a lot more now. But you're right. Everything was rumors. I mean, welcome to the 1800s. That's how a lot of people were executed, was from rumors. So in a time period when you know a man's character is based on his handshake and looking you in the eye, this is what ends up happening. Especially in a crowded city with a lot of racism and. And the police are not getting. Don't have a good relationship with the community, so they're not getting information either. You have this man. We don't know if he was involved with gambling. We don't know about Ding, but we know that he was murdered and his case is unsolved.
- [68:58]
Paul Holes
Again, the offender's behaviors in terms of committing the crime does point investigators into a direction, into a certain type of Suspect pool. And based on the messaging that the offender did with Ding's eye and cutting his cue off, I like the idea that within these Chinese companies, this organized crime aspect, the killer is probably within that environment and came out of that environment. You know, it be interesting talking to other shop owners, going, okay, why would somebody be doing this to Ding? To send you a message who is coming around collecting money from you on a weekly basis. You know, that seems pretty apparent to me what's going on here.
- [69:44]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Yeah. Well, you know, if we believe the milkman, and you're right, he could have just gotten the right glimpse when he was turning around and shutting the door and running. Even if this is the killer, we assume this is the killer. And you know, that scar. While I'm sure there are many men in Chinatown who have scars, the culmination of this guy's reputation, plus the suspicion that Ding had a little bit too much money for being a laundromat owner. I mean, the amount of money people describe him having, I don't know why the previous laundry owner would have shut down business if you're really that profitable. And it sounds like he was ready to go. So it's definitely a big mystery. I don't know what happened to that massive chunk of money that he had to have withdrawn. Maybe it's the 17,000 that he was talking about. 17,000American dollars, but. But what a mystery. It's a good mystery.
- [70:35]
Paul Holes
Yeah. And he may have been trying to get out of Dodge to avoid this from happening to him because he knew he upset somebody out of this criminal element.
- [70:45]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Yeah. And I also wonder if maybe he was participating not in gambling, but maybe, like, literally money laundering, you know, because they could just run stuff through businesses, and who knows? I don't know what his participation is, but. But he had been there eight years. It's a long time to kind of establish yourself within that community. So interesting mystery from late 1800s. I miss that time period when we're not. I don't think we're not there nearly enough, But I know how much you like photos, but this was a, you know, another kind of unsolved mystery in a city like New York and Boston, where people can be. Anonymity is just like currency there. It's. You can do anything you want in a big city. In some. In some cases like that.
- [71:30]
Paul Holes
Nope. For sure. All right. Well, interesting case, Kate.
- [71:33]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Yeah, there you go.
- [71:35]
Paul Holes
Always, I want the bad guy caught. But, you know, it's a good case.
- [71:39]
Kate Winkler Dawson
But you like unsolved cases, too, but you're right. I mean I don't have a. I don't have a case file and we don't have dings relatives to run DNA with. Okay, next week maybe a solved case, maybe not. We'll see.
- [71:53]
Paul Holes
All right, thanks again.
- [71:54]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Thanks. This has been an exactly right production.
- [72:02]
Paul Holes
For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com buriedbones sources our senior producer is Alexis Amorosi, research by Alison Trouble and Kate Winkler Dawson.
- [72:13]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.
- [72:16]
Paul Holes
Our theme song is by Tom Bryf.
- [72:18]
Kate Winkler Dawson
Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac, executive
- [72:21]
Paul Holes
produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark and Danielle Kramer.
- [72:25]
Kate Winkler Dawson
You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook@ buriedbonespod.
- [72:30]
Paul Holes
Kate's most recent book, all that Is A Gilded Age Story of Murder and the Race to Decode the Criminal Mind is available now.
- [72:37]
Kate Winkler Dawson
And Paul's best selling memoir, Unmasked My Life Solving America's Cold Cases is also available now.
- [72:44]
Paul Holes
Listen to Barry bones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
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