Speaker 1: Pushkin previously on the China Townstand.
Speaker 2: Of course, you're going to take a chance, even if
Speaker 2: it's on your life, because when it comes to a kid,
Speaker 2: everybody's gonna chooday kid.
Speaker 3: My goal was to assess her, you know, to find
Speaker 3: out like who was she, what was her background, how
Speaker 3: smart was she? How does she get involved in this business?
Speaker 2: Onion was like a different regime. He was like, go
Speaker 2: out make money everyone.
Speaker 3: As soon as he found out that why and Michael
Speaker 3: Yu had float, he fled.
Speaker 4: You turn right onto main Street when we go back.
Speaker 4: Do I need to explain to zip car why the
Speaker 4: car is so dirty?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. She Yang and I I have
Speaker 1: driven three hours from New York to Newfoundland, Pennsylvania, a
Speaker 1: small town in the Poconos. Then we left that town
Speaker 1: behind to travel what seemed like miles on a dirt road.
Speaker 1: Finally we've arrived at a large house with a stone
Speaker 1: entryway at the top of a.
Speaker 5: Hill supposed to be like the front entrance.
Speaker 1: We're met by caretaker Sam Callahan, a shooting instructor who's
Speaker 1: agreed to give us a tour of this place.
Speaker 2: Today.
Speaker 1: It's a firearms training facility called the Double Eagle. But
Speaker 1: back in the nineteen eighties, this was the property of
Speaker 1: Johnny Yang, a ka onion head or machine gun. Johnny
Speaker 1: the head of the powerful Flying Dragons gang in Chinatown.
Speaker 1: Johnny bought this compound after his gang had allegedly imported
Speaker 1: millions of dollars worth of heroin into the United States.
Speaker 1: She and I heard that Johnny used to bring other
Speaker 1: Flying Dragons here. It was a place where they'd relax
Speaker 1: and do some target practic By coming here, we're hoping
Speaker 1: we'll learn more about the elusive Johnny.
Speaker 5: Side of things. I kind of understand how it would
Speaker 5: be a gangster paradise. You can come out here and
Speaker 5: come to my mansion and shoot machine guns. I mean
Speaker 5: that sounds pretty appealing to me if I was going
Speaker 5: to be I mean, that's my business model now, just legally,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 1: Saminist business partners said that they didn't change much about
Speaker 1: this house when they bought it. When she and I
Speaker 1: step in were transported back to the nineteen eighties, there's
Speaker 1: a pretty much the whole house has wall to wall
Speaker 1: purple carpeting.
Speaker 5: Systems, an old like atari and like, and it was
Speaker 5: probably like top of the line initially because.
Speaker 1: This is like a They have all the games pac Man,
Speaker 1: Missile Command, Space Invaders, indy five hundred. There's also tons
Speaker 1: of bedrooms we look into everyone. It's a pretty luxurious setup.
Speaker 1: It's all a little disorienting.
Speaker 2: So we'll come up.
Speaker 5: Here and then I'll bring you back down the other way,
Speaker 5: because there's multiple ways.
Speaker 1: Every room has multiple entrances and exits. Walking through it
Speaker 1: feels like you're inside one of those Atari video games.
Speaker 1: Something could pop out at you from any corner. On
Speaker 1: the upside, you always have a way out. Part of
Speaker 1: Sam's job is training police officers on how to use
Speaker 1: their weapons. He seems like a rational, practical guy. He
Speaker 1: sleeps here sometimes, and he says he's gotten a little
Speaker 1: freaked out more than once.
Speaker 5: Every once in a while, you'll be in the house
Speaker 5: and you'll hear Clear's day footsteps running upstairs, things like that,
Speaker 5: and it's not like a boom. It's I'm then a
Speaker 5: dooral slam, and I know I'm here alone, and I'll
Speaker 5: go and check that I'm here alone still, And i
Speaker 5: am here alone still. We've had twelve of the same
Speaker 5: stories told by people who've never talked to each other
Speaker 5: at various times of the year. Yeah, it's like a creepy, haunted.
Speaker 1: And there's one part of the house that seems especially
Speaker 1: creepy through here is the pool. Of course, there's an
Speaker 1: indoor pool, but after dark, Sam says, something seems to
Speaker 1: stir its waters, the.
Speaker 5: Cabinets and everything in there. You'll just hear a cannonball
Speaker 5: turn around, have ripples in the pool, as if like
Speaker 5: a human body was in the pool, and then it
Speaker 5: settles to nothing. And then it'll happen three or four
Speaker 5: times throughout the night.
Speaker 1: She You and I left the estate without a lot
Speaker 1: of clues about Johnny Yaning, but I kept thinking about
Speaker 1: that haunted pool and those ripples. Decades ago, the prosecutor,
Speaker 1: Beryl Howell was also looking for clues about Johnnying after
Speaker 1: a jury convicted his underlings of importing and distributing heroin.
Speaker 1: They flipped on him, but before she could have him arrested,
Speaker 1: he'd slipped away. He was nowhere to be found, and
Speaker 1: Beryl's attempt to bring him to justice it would put
Speaker 1: the credibility of her cooperating witness Tina Wong to the test.
Speaker 1: I'm Lidia Jane Cott, and this is the China Townstaning
Speaker 1: episode four, A ghost hand. One time I asked Tina
Speaker 1: Wong if there are special names for winning hands in Majong.
Speaker 1: She mentioned one. It's a name for a hand that's
Speaker 1: really rare, thirteen unique tiles that make no pattern whatsoever.
Speaker 1: If you're going for that, you're almost definitely going to lose.
Speaker 1: But if you somehow manage to complete that hand, you've
Speaker 1: won big. It's one of the highest scoring hands there is.
Speaker 2: They call her like a ghost hand. A ghost hand.
Speaker 1: It's called the ghost hand because you never see it,
Speaker 1: because it's sold.
Speaker 2: They say that if you eat that hand, yeah, either
Speaker 2: you got to get really bad luck, uh huh, or
Speaker 2: you're going to get really good luck.
Speaker 1: The way Tina describes it, a ghost hand is a
Speaker 1: gambler's fantasy, a huge, unlikely win. But in the spring
Speaker 1: of nineteen eighty nine, Tina's luck was looking pretty bad.
Speaker 1: Even though she cooperated and testified against her former best friend,
Speaker 1: she was still potentially facing years in prison, and she
Speaker 1: felt like the people she used to know in her
Speaker 1: neighborhood were now avoiding her.
Speaker 2: Some people said, oh, you know, how could you read
Speaker 2: out your friend? So we don't want to be around her.
Speaker 2: I guess some people thought like that.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, but it kind of sounds like you
Speaker 1: felt a little bit like a pariah or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just a little. But I get over it because
Speaker 2: I know it's going to pass, and nobody could hold
Speaker 2: that old their life.
Speaker 1: While some people were giving her a hard time for cooperating,
Speaker 1: the federal prosecutor Beryl Howell was giving her a hard
Speaker 1: time for not being cooperative enough. When did it occur
Speaker 1: to you that the government thought you were lying?
Speaker 2: Oh? I always thought they thought I was lying from
Speaker 2: the beginning. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, Beryl wanted Tina to give for information about Johnny,
Speaker 1: the man she believed was at the top of the
Speaker 1: heroin importation scheme, but to this day, Tina insists she
Speaker 1: had nothing to offer on that front. Did you know
Speaker 1: he was had to the Flying Dragons?
Speaker 2: Not really, No, you just know that, Yeah, this person
Speaker 2: is up there. You don't know who's number one? Number two?
Speaker 2: Are you?
Speaker 1: Kind of like it's better not to know.
Speaker 2: Actually I didn't really care.
Speaker 1: But Beryl and the dagents didn't see how Tina could
Speaker 1: know so little. After all, she'd gone on a vacation
Speaker 1: with Johnny to Indonesia. Tina had to know something.
Speaker 2: I was trying to tell them. No, I know of him,
Speaker 2: I hung around him with law, but to talk personal
Speaker 2: things and stuff. No, I said, Look, I don't speak Chinese,
Speaker 2: so I'm limited with the friends, you know, especially the guys.
Speaker 2: But they would like keep like pressuring you. So it
Speaker 2: was kind of like upsetting.
Speaker 1: It was deeply upsetting. Under the terms of Tina's cooperation agreement,
Speaker 1: she was supposed to provide her prosecutor, Beryl, with substantial
Speaker 1: assistance by sharing information that was quote full and complete
Speaker 1: and truthful. In exchange, Beryl would inform the judge of
Speaker 1: Tina's cooperation, which would allow him to sentence her to
Speaker 1: less than the mandatory minimum of ten years in prison.
Speaker 1: But if Beryl didn't think Tina was telling her everything
Speaker 1: she knew, the deal could be off. And Beryl clearly
Speaker 1: did not think Tina was telling her everything she knew.
Speaker 1: She made Tina take a polygraph test. Tina was scared
Speaker 1: and frustrated, and she was worried that would impact the results.
Speaker 2: I didn't know how to explain it, especially when you're
Speaker 2: like your head's gone a little kind of ways, because
Speaker 2: I was so afraid and upset, and I was trying
Speaker 2: to tell them that, but they didn't want to hear it.
Speaker 2: They wanted to hear what they wanted to hear. That's
Speaker 2: the way I felt.
Speaker 1: The polygraph examiner concluded that Tina was giving quote deceptive
Speaker 1: responses in regards to Johnny ying.
Speaker 2: But I was telling the truth. So now you know
Speaker 2: that that thing's not one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: Now. She figured her fate was out of her hands.
Speaker 1: She was out on bail, trying to rebuild her life.
Speaker 1: She got her baby daughter back. Fallen was now a
Speaker 1: toddler after living two years with her grandparents in Canada.
Speaker 2: She didn't want to come back to me because she
Speaker 2: was used to her grandmother. She was like devastated and
Speaker 2: she spill toye sign ease. So I don't understand anything.
Speaker 1: But Tina was teaching her the English words she needed
Speaker 1: to communicate. They were reconnecting.
Speaker 2: She learned quick, especially like ice cream old of snacks.
Speaker 1: In the summer of nineteen eighty nine, Tina and Fallen
Speaker 1: were coming home from a shopping trip. It was the afternoon.
Speaker 1: Tina held the elevator doors open for someone, an Asian
Speaker 1: teenage boy. She stepped in and pulled out a weapon.
Speaker 2: Once I saw the gun, I tried to take his
Speaker 2: hand and I saw the flash of light and that
Speaker 2: was it.
Speaker 1: When Tina came to, she was on the ground. She
Speaker 1: couldn't get back up, she couldn't feel her leg.
Speaker 2: I was praying that he wouldn't like shoot me again
Speaker 2: because my daughter was there.
Speaker 1: But the teenager ran away and Tina somehow crawled out
Speaker 1: of the elevator. She told Fallen to knock on the
Speaker 1: door of the first apartment that they saw.
Speaker 2: So I told my daughter, opened the door, opened the doors,
Speaker 2: and she knocked on the door. But those people were scared.
Speaker 2: They didn't want to open the door. So I told him,
Speaker 2: I said, if you don't want to open the door,
Speaker 2: call the police.
Speaker 1: In the hospital, Tina learned that she had been shot
Speaker 1: in the spine. She had months of recovery ahead of her.
Speaker 2: Do you know when you got your back, you don't
Speaker 2: realize how much you need your back. You got to
Speaker 2: get up, you got to sit up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, you need your back for everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you don't realize that's all the starts to hurt.
Speaker 1: Tina was relieved not to be paralyzed, but she had
Speaker 1: another problem.
Speaker 3: Beryl that was the nail in the coffin. That confirmed
Speaker 3: for me my sixth sense. She was telling me only
Speaker 3: cherry picked parts of the truth, and that just wasn't
Speaker 3: good enough.
Speaker 1: Yes, Tina had been shot and miraculously she survived, but
Speaker 1: now things were much worse than before because Beryl believed
Speaker 1: even more strongly that Tina was hiding something.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Beryl Howell does not play Mogong, but if she did,
Speaker 1: I am sure that a big part of her strategy
Speaker 1: would be just believing that she would win. The other
Speaker 1: part be doing everything to ensure that she did win.
Speaker 1: But in the summer of nineteen eighty nine, Beryl did
Speaker 1: not seem to have a great hand. Yes, she had
Speaker 1: convinced a jury that Johnny's underlings Waw and Fox were
Speaker 1: guilty of conspiring to import and distribute heroine. They had
Speaker 1: agreed to cooperate, but Beryl's ultimate target, Johnny Yang, had fled.
Speaker 1: Beryl received information that he was most likely somewhere in
Speaker 1: Hong Kong. Were you like, oh shit, so Vera, Are
Speaker 1: you like we're going to.
Speaker 4: Get him back?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: I just knew we were going to extract him and
Speaker 3: bring him back, And her.
Speaker 1: First step towards getting Johnny back, she needed to complete
Speaker 1: her indictment against him in the United States. Beryl got
Speaker 1: to work interviewing her two newest cooperating witnesses, Waw and Fox,
Speaker 1: who were both in custody. They told Beryl what she
Speaker 1: was hoping to hear. They said that Johnny was the
Speaker 1: head of the heroin importation scheme, that they both worked
Speaker 1: for him, coordinating the delivery, the pickups, and the drop
Speaker 1: offs of the packages of heroin, all at his direction.
Speaker 1: For example, Waugh said that Tina had met her in
Speaker 1: front of a bakery in Chinatown. Tina gave her a
Speaker 1: box and then wa gave the box to Johnny. But
Speaker 1: what was weird is that Tina had never mentioned a
Speaker 1: handoff like this, And when Beryl brought up the subject
Speaker 1: of Johnny, Tina seemed evasive.
Speaker 3: Tina, you know, I liked her. I mean, she was
Speaker 3: very outgoing, you know, in so many ways that in
Speaker 3: answers to some questions where she wouldn't be, she seemed
Speaker 3: to be a little bit more thoughtful or a little
Speaker 3: bit slower and responding. Those were cues to me that
Speaker 3: was I getting the whole story.
Speaker 1: Beryl wondered if maybe there was something going on with Tina,
Speaker 1: something that she felt like she couldn't share. And then
Speaker 1: Beryl got the news that Tina had been shot point
Speaker 1: blank in an elevator, right next to her three year
Speaker 1: old daughter.
Speaker 3: My reaction at the time, to the best of my recollection,
Speaker 3: was oh, my god. You know, I hope nobody on
Speaker 3: my watch got hurt. And did I miss something? Did
Speaker 3: the agents miss something about her security? I felt responsible
Speaker 3: for her and liked her, you know, I didn't want
Speaker 3: to hurt on my watch.
Speaker 1: Beryl was convinced the shooting could not have just been
Speaker 1: a coincidence. Tina's potentially a witness in a federal trial
Speaker 1: against a powerful, dangerous drug trafficker, and then she's nearly killed.
Speaker 1: But when Beryl tried to talk with Tina about who
Speaker 1: might have done this and why she got nowhere, Tina was.
Speaker 3: Not forthcoming about who shot her. She couldn't remember details
Speaker 3: about the identity of the person who shot her, what
Speaker 3: he was wearing, and it was definitely a man.
Speaker 1: It was all too much, the contradictions between Tina's testimony
Speaker 1: and law and Fox's statements, the failed polygraph test, and
Speaker 1: now this shooting. All these things together convinced Beryl that
Speaker 1: Tina knew more about Johnny than she was sharing with her.
Speaker 3: I felt like there had been a breach of trust there,
Speaker 3: that she had abused my trust, And at the same time,
Speaker 3: I felt badly that the one person in her life
Speaker 3: that might be able to protect her, that she couldn't
Speaker 3: bring herself to trust us enough to tell us everything
Speaker 3: that was going on in her complex life.
Speaker 1: I've heard three theories about who might have shot Tina.
Speaker 1: Theory number one, Johnny had someone do it to keep
Speaker 1: Tina from saying something that could hurt him if he
Speaker 1: ended up going to trial. This is Beryl's theory theory too,
Speaker 1: and amped up teen acting on his own accord. That's
Speaker 1: what Mike Moy, the former gangster and host of the
Speaker 1: Utube channel Chinatown Gang Stories, suggested when I told them
Speaker 1: about what happened. He says that it wasn't onion head
Speaker 1: style to endanger someone's family. An elevator shooting in front
Speaker 1: of Tina's daughter just doesn't sound like something he would authorize.
Speaker 1: But Mike Moy also reminded me that it was the
Speaker 1: teen gangsters who carried the guns, and they could be
Speaker 1: hot headed.
Speaker 2: My personal opinion on this. There's a lot of people.
Speaker 6: Who's very loyal to onion Head, so with something like
Speaker 6: this that happened is very odd and someone maybe want
Speaker 6: to make a name for themselves or whatever, you know.
Speaker 6: So that's my speculation on that.
Speaker 7: Theory.
Speaker 1: Number three is Tina's own theory looking back, I don't know.
Speaker 2: It could be Fox too, who knows. Oh maybe was
Speaker 2: Wa told somebody I don't know.
Speaker 1: You don't think Wa would do that to you? To you, I.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't want to think that. But since I went to
Speaker 2: court and I testify against them too.
Speaker 1: The one time I met with Wall I asked her
Speaker 1: about this.
Speaker 3: Only gamble, Honey, was it the fas No, he's a chicken.
Speaker 1: In case you missed that, she said, no, he's a chicken.
Speaker 1: The truth is we'll never know who shot Tina. No
Speaker 1: one was ever convicted. In fact, no one was even charged.
Speaker 1: But even though Tina survived, Beryl felt like the shooter
Speaker 1: had accomplished exactly what he set out to.
Speaker 3: Do, and it was clear to me that she was
Speaker 3: even more buttoned up than she had been before. So
Speaker 3: I really did think that the shooting had worked to
Speaker 3: make sure she stayed quiet.
Speaker 1: Beryl could see she wasn't going to get any more
Speaker 1: information out of Tina, and it also caused her to
Speaker 1: reconsider everything Tina had told her previously.
Speaker 3: She was done for me as a cooperating witness.
Speaker 1: Still, Beryl was able to gather enough evidence against Johnny
Speaker 1: Yang from her witnesses. Wall and Fox brought her case
Speaker 1: in front of a grand jury, and they returned an
Speaker 1: eighteen count indictment against him. A global man hunt for
Speaker 1: Johnny was underway. Johnnyng had been living in Hong Kong
Speaker 1: for about a year. He seemed to have a pretty
Speaker 1: comfortable life there. He had an apartment and a new
Speaker 1: residential complex with a pool. He shared it with the
Speaker 1: woman who he later said was his wife, as well
Speaker 1: as two children, and he had an office in a
Speaker 1: neighborhood that shoe you knows quite.
Speaker 2: Well, seems to joy.
Speaker 4: That's kind of like Times Square equivalent if you think
Speaker 4: about New York, Like if you were first time tourist
Speaker 4: in Hong Kong, that's like a most checkout spot, Like
Speaker 4: everybody would take a photo at the street with the stores, mall,
Speaker 4: shopping mall surrounding and like all these neon lights kind
Speaker 4: of thing like set up there and his office was
Speaker 4: in this new building. It was called the Silver Cord Center.
Speaker 1: He's run away from the States, but he's in this
Speaker 1: like tall, huge building, like the most famous part, you know,
Speaker 1: the center of Hong Kong. Basically it sounds like, yeah,
Speaker 1: he didn't stay low. So, you know, Beryl filed this
Speaker 1: indictment against Johnny, and then Interpol was alerted that there
Speaker 1: was this extradition request out for him, and a local
Speaker 1: investigator named Anthony Pang got a tip. He heard that
Speaker 1: Johnny had been working out of this new office building,
Speaker 1: so he and a bunch of other officers headed over
Speaker 1: and he actually describes the moment where he saw Johnny
Speaker 1: in that documentary America's Most Evil Machine Gun and Johnny
Speaker 1: I tip.
Speaker 7: On his shoulder, I said, are you Johnny said yeah,
Speaker 7: but he was calm. He didn't put up row a
Speaker 7: fight or something like that.
Speaker 1: So he was taken into custody and it seems like
Speaker 1: he was quite chill.
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, but what else could he do when
Speaker 4: he was just like literally cornered in his own office
Speaker 4: by all of those officers investigators. Yeah, so at that
Speaker 4: point he was arrested to put in a detention center.
Speaker 4: Did he have to go back to the US after that.
Speaker 1: So you would think that the hard part would be
Speaker 1: finding Johnny in Hong Kong, but actually the hard part
Speaker 1: was getting him back. For historical context, as you know,
Speaker 1: at the time, Hong Kong was still under British control,
Speaker 1: but recently the UK and China had signed a treaty
Speaker 1: where Hong Kong was going to be transferred to China
Speaker 1: by nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 7: Today, Hong Kong has almost as many millionaires as it
Speaker 7: has high rises. But for how much longer is the question?
Speaker 7: Right now, nineteen ninety seven is viewed by most with trepidation.
Speaker 7: Many are resigned to having to leave when the cash
Speaker 7: register rings for the last time.
Speaker 1: So the US government really wanted Johnny back in their custody.
Speaker 1: This should be very possible to bring Johnny back, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: But Hong Kong kind of like a unique legal culture.
Speaker 1: Like I talked to this barrister in London. His name
Speaker 1: was Alan Jones, and she's an expert in extraditions.
Speaker 8: The legal system in Hong Kong was staffed largely by
Speaker 8: expats from the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, and
Speaker 8: a lot of them were people who had tended to
Speaker 8: be running away from things, either because they hadn't done
Speaker 8: well in known countries, or divorces or scandals or some
Speaker 8: silver or other or taxes.
Speaker 1: And he actually worked on Johnny's case. He was arguing
Speaker 1: for Johnny to be extradated.
Speaker 8: There was an expression that they would call filth failed
Speaker 8: in London, try Hong Kong. That was the story. I
Speaker 8: used to go there about every six months for four
Speaker 8: or five years, and every time I go, I'd find
Speaker 8: that somebody I had a drink with the previous time
Speaker 8: had been arrested or run away something. It all murdered
Speaker 8: in one case.
Speaker 1: So these are lawyers in Hong Kong who maybe are
Speaker 1: not like the most like pro rule type of lawyers.
Speaker 1: They're willing to do anything a lot of the time.
Speaker 1: Like it's you know, it's the frontiers of the law. Basically,
Speaker 1: it's for people who have broken the law, are doing
Speaker 1: the law.
Speaker 4: In that context, in the historical context, assuming that Johnny
Speaker 4: would be extradited, what was the process.
Speaker 1: It's a really long, complicated technical process that Alan the
Speaker 1: barrister talked to me about.
Speaker 8: So you'd have to have witness statements and exhibits, paper exhibits,
Speaker 8: just as in an ordinary domestic court proceedings in its
Speaker 8: early stages, and then you can make your extradition request
Speaker 8: that had to go government to government in those days.
Speaker 8: They had to be sealed and stamped, and it had
Speaker 8: to go through the diplomatic channel.
Speaker 1: And on the US side, it was Beryl's job to
Speaker 1: provide Alan Jones and his team with all of this
Speaker 1: evidence that they needed to prove that Johnny should be extradited.
Speaker 3: It was getting calls from the Crown Prosecutor asking questions
Speaker 3: about the extraditional request, and at some point when the
Speaker 3: hearing was coming up, the Crown Prosecutor suggested to me
Speaker 3: that it would be very helpful if I were there.
Speaker 4: So the Burrough actually go to Hong Kong.
Speaker 1: She and the d agent PAYTMA tester. They flew over there.
Speaker 2: You will have to smoke in the plane inspect that.
Speaker 3: Beryl gets so infuriated about the smoking, so she was like,
Speaker 3: she got the flight attendant to move us.
Speaker 2: We got moved to like business guys. She's like, I'm
Speaker 2: not Chitney one all these I'm like, good for you.
Speaker 2: It was like, man, come on, move up here. So yeah,
Speaker 2: she doesn't hold anything back right now.
Speaker 4: So then leg after they flew down there, what happened
Speaker 4: at Johnny's extradition hearing?
Speaker 1: So Beryl didn't speak, you know, she was just there
Speaker 1: to help the prosecutors make their case there, but she
Speaker 1: did see Johnny, this guy she's been chasing for over
Speaker 1: a year. Beryl said, she just wanted to know one
Speaker 1: thing about Johnny.
Speaker 3: What thing, Well, you know, his nickname was Chun Paw,
Speaker 3: which is onion head. And it had always been described
Speaker 3: to me that his nickname had been given to him
Speaker 3: as a kid because his hair stood up straight. And
Speaker 3: so the first thing I wanted to look for is
Speaker 3: did he live up to his nickname or not? Did
Speaker 3: his hair actually stand up? I think it was disappointed.
Speaker 3: I think he maybe had a more well clothed hairstyle.
Speaker 1: Beryl returned to New York. As the extradition process dragged
Speaker 1: on and on. Johnny was making the most of Hong
Speaker 1: Kong's filthy lawyers. He'd hired this one guy whose nickname
Speaker 1: was never plead guilty Gary. The months turned into two years.
Speaker 1: Johnny remained in Hong Kong as he fought extradition in
Speaker 1: New York. The government's key witnesses. Waw and her ex
Speaker 1: boyfriend Michael Yu remained in custody in the MCC that
Speaker 1: jail that looks like a square death star outside of Chinatown.
Speaker 1: If Johnny returned, did have to testify against him. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Tina Wong was facing sentencing. Her hearing was scheduled for
Speaker 1: the same day as the sentencing of all the other
Speaker 1: low level operators. She was looking at a mandatory minimum
Speaker 1: of one hundred and twenty months or a decade in prison,
Speaker 1: unless she received a special dispensation for cooperating. She had
Speaker 1: no idea if she'd get any mercy. On March eighth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one, Tina Wong took the Long Island Railroad
Speaker 1: to a courthouse in Hall Park. The journey was over
Speaker 1: an hour long, but it fell even longer. If Tina
Speaker 1: got the mandatory minimum, she wouldn't be coming home again
Speaker 1: for a long time.
Speaker 2: I had people praying for me. She was praying for you,
Speaker 2: my friends.
Speaker 1: That you must have been like stressing like crazy on
Speaker 1: the train there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, because you don't know what's going to happen.
Speaker 2: But I said, whatever happens to happen, let me just
Speaker 2: go and get it over with.
Speaker 1: If Tina had one thought years ago, she was lucky.
Speaker 1: This was the moment where she felt her luck had
Speaker 1: truly run out. All the odds were stacked against her.
Speaker 1: As she stood in the courtroom, her mind was going
Speaker 1: so many places so fast. She could hardly process what
Speaker 1: was happening. Do you remember when the judge said the.
Speaker 2: Sentence no, well I knew was that was free?
Speaker 1: Do you remember what that felt like when you realize.
Speaker 2: That I probably was too shocked.
Speaker 1: Tina and another woman who had cooperated both got time served.
Speaker 1: The judge decided that the months they had already spent
Speaker 1: in jail had been long enough. They were under probation,
Speaker 1: but they were free to go home. They boarded the
Speaker 1: Long Island Railroad back to the city together. As they
Speaker 1: walked down the aisle searching for a place to sit,
Speaker 1: they saw a familiar face.
Speaker 2: I bumped into bedroom and then she said to me,
Speaker 2: I remember, she goes you guys are lucky that judge
Speaker 2: liked you, And I was thinking, yeah, you wanted to
Speaker 2: put us away forever. You know, twenty five years to
Speaker 2: life is no joke. But I don't hold no animosity. Yeah,
Speaker 2: she had her job to do you know, so it
Speaker 2: is what it is, but.
Speaker 1: You didn't sit together.
Speaker 3: No, did she think I was being snarky or does
Speaker 3: she think I was saying because if I said that,
Speaker 3: because I felt then like I feel now, which is
Speaker 3: respect for how well they navigated. They were navigating so
Speaker 3: many different pressures. They were navigating children being mothers, they
Speaker 3: were navigating cross cultural current between the immigrant world and
Speaker 3: the American world. They were navigating making money and then
Speaker 3: they get caught up in illegal drug smuggling. I was
Speaker 3: just one of the pressure points in their life being
Speaker 3: brought to bear.
Speaker 2: I don't think she thought.
Speaker 1: You were being snarky, but I think she did think
Speaker 1: that maybe he felt like she had gotten away with
Speaker 1: something and she was really lucky to get away with it.
Speaker 3: And she did get away with something because she didn't
Speaker 3: tell the whole truth and everything she knew.
Speaker 1: Beryl may sound harsh here, but the fact is she
Speaker 1: did not tear up the Tina's cooperation agreement. She told
Speaker 1: the judge that even though she didn't think Tina had
Speaker 1: been entirely truthful, she had still provided her with substantial
Speaker 1: assistance and that's why the judge was able to give
Speaker 1: her time served somehow. In the end, Tina had pulled
Speaker 1: the tiles that she needed to complete her own ghost hands.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like it worked out just because you're lucky?
Speaker 2: What is it luck skill? We'll never know, But the
Speaker 2: main thing is that I'm out and I had a
Speaker 2: second chance.
Speaker 1: Very soon after Tina went free, Beryl finally got a
Speaker 1: little luck of her own. In the spring of nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one, a judge ruled that the government had the
Speaker 1: right to seiz Johnny's estate in Pennsylvania, which they alleged
Speaker 1: he had purchased with the proceeds of his criminal activities.
Speaker 1: A few months after that, Johnnyang lost his last appeal.
Speaker 1: One of the longest extradition cases in Hong Kong's history
Speaker 1: was finally over.
Speaker 9: This is therefore to command you, the said members of
Speaker 9: the Royal Hong Kong Police, to deliver the body of
Speaker 9: the said Johnny Ang known as Sui Hung Eng Chung
Speaker 9: Tau and onion Head into the custody of the Commissioners
Speaker 9: to Correctional Services and be there safely.
Speaker 1: Captain Johnny Yang was coming to the US to stand
Speaker 1: trial for him. The game was only just beginning. Next time,
Speaker 1: on the Chinatownsting.
Speaker 3: Then when he arrived in New York City, then it
Speaker 3: was sort of a race against Todd.
Speaker 2: It's like a boxer coming like out of ringside, like
Speaker 2: the round begins and you know he's already on his feet.
Speaker 2: He wants to get into the fight. We felt good
Speaker 2: about our case.
Speaker 3: We believed it, We believed our witnesses, but you just
Speaker 3: never know when it comes to the jury.
Speaker 1: The chinatownstan is written and produced by Me Liddy Jine
Speaker 1: Kott and reported by Me and Chuy Wang. Our senior
Speaker 1: producer is Emily Martinez. Additional production by Sonya Gerwit is
Speaker 1: Julia Barton, with additional editing by Karen Chakerji. Our story
Speaker 1: consultant is Rongshau Ching. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith.
Speaker 1: Our music was composed by John Sung, sound design and
Speaker 1: additional music by Jake Gorski. Our fact checker is Kate Furby,
Speaker 1: and our show art was designed by Sean Karney. All
Speaker 1: voiceover work by Kelly Leong. For more information about this episode,
Speaker 1: check out our show notes or visit Pushkin dot fm
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