Washington, D.C. (1919)
01/31/1919: Person or persons unknown murdered “three
Chinese educators… in their luxurious home.”
Other reports describe one of the dead as “chief of the Chinese
educational mission to the United States” and the other two as students at George
Washington University. “The pistol with
which the men had been shot was found on
a chair near Dr. Wong's body. Traces of
a death struggle were in evidence. A
heavy brass table lamp lay on the floor among the shattered remnants of the shade and bulb. A chair in the dining-room adjoining
was overturned, and a brown-colored elastic from a .garter was on the floor.
"The bodies of Hsie, who was secretary and treasurer of the
mission and Wu, confidential secretary to Dr.
Wong, were found head to head in the furnace room, and evidently had been
dragged there….
“Dr. Wong had a deep gash in the back of his head and two
bullet wounds in the chest. The pistol had been held so closely that the vest was
scorched. Wu had one bullet wound in the head and another in the chest, and Hsie
had one wound in the head. The police
are at a loss for a motive for the triple murder. There was no evidence that robbery had been committed,
and so far as they were able to establish from the friends of the men, they had
no enemies. The theory of the officers is that the two students were killed
first by some one who lurked in the house and that Wong was murdered later when
he returned home.
“This theory is based upon several facts. The first is that Li
[a neighbor dispatched by the university to make a welfare check] went to the
house Wednesday and upon ringing the bell was told by a strange Chinese that
Dr. Wong was not at home. Another is that there were only two discharged
cartridges in the pistol, whereas at least five shots were fired into the
bodies. The officers think that sufficient
time elapsed between the death of the students and of Dr. Wong for the murderer
to hide the bodies of the first two and reload the gun before Dr. Wong reached the
house.”
Category: residential
Suicide: no
Cause: unknown
Weapon: pistol[1]
[1]
“Hired Assassin Killed Chinese Police Theory,” Washington [D.C.] Herald,
Feb. 2, 1919, 1; "China's Envoy Slain In Mysterious Crime," Richmond Times-Dispatch, Feb. 01, 1919, 1.
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