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Speaker 2: We're at pushkin dot fm, slash plus. Previously on The Chinatownsting,
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 3: Talking through a customs agent in California who says, hey, well,
Speaker 3: just got three shipments of heroin. Do you guys want
Speaker 3: the case?
Speaker 4: It was like the first time we've ever seen anything
Speaker 4: like that.
Speaker 1: Really, Basically, you're stay at home moms. We're picking up
Speaker 1: these these law chamansa heroin.
Speaker 4: We don't have that kind of money. So to have
Speaker 4: that kind of money, you take a chance.
Speaker 2: Federal authorities arrested Tina Wong on March first, nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 2: She was accused of receiving packages of heroin in the mail.
Speaker 2: They took Tina to a jail in Long Island, miles
Speaker 2: away from her home outside of Manhattan's Chinatown.
Speaker 1: And at this moment, the gravity must be hitting you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, especially when they tell you twenty five years to life,
Speaker 4: which I didn't think was fair. But I don't make
Speaker 4: the rules.
Speaker 2: Tina was put in a cell. She doesn't remember much else.
Speaker 1: Are you crying?
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I was mad, not at yourself, not at
Speaker 2: the rule.
Speaker 1: Well, the whole thing everything.
Speaker 2: The next day, Tina was taken in a van with
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of other prisoners the US Attorney's office
Speaker 2: in Brooklyn. Agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency met her
Speaker 2: out front, put her in handcuffs and took her into
Speaker 2: a small office. They handcuffed her to a chair, and
Speaker 2: she found herself face to face with Beryl Howell, the
Speaker 2: lead prosecutor in the case, the person who could argue
Speaker 2: that Tina should be put away for decades for heroin smuggling.
Speaker 4: She's got this look, you know, like and no expression.
Speaker 4: I thought she didn't like us, but you know, I
Speaker 4: know she had a job to do, so I'm not
Speaker 4: gonna be hating on her for that. But I just
Speaker 4: thought that she really wanted us to go away for
Speaker 4: a long time.
Speaker 2: And at the same time that Tina was sizing up Beryl,
Speaker 2: Beryl was sizing up Tina.
Speaker 5: You know, to find out like, who was she, what
Speaker 5: was her background, what was her how smart was she,
Speaker 5: what was her educational background? How did she get this business?
Speaker 5: And to see how much of her story all hung
Speaker 5: together and made sense on details before we even started
Speaker 5: talking about any evidence she might have about other people.
Speaker 1: They were both about the same age.
Speaker 2: Beryl was thirty one at the time Tina was thirty,
Speaker 2: but the similarities pretty much ended there. Tina grew up
Speaker 2: on the outskirts of Chinatown, the same apartment where she
Speaker 2: still lived. She never finished college, neither did her parents.
Speaker 2: Beryl's mom nearly completed a PhD in biology. Her dad
Speaker 2: had been a colonel in the army, and she had
Speaker 2: grown up all over the US and abroad in Germany
Speaker 2: and the Netherlands. She had a law degree from Columbia University.
Speaker 2: So yes, she and Tina came from very different worlds
Speaker 2: and met under not the best of circumstances, but each
Speaker 2: needed the other person's trust. Recently, I showed up at
Speaker 2: Tina's apartment to get an interview. I told her the
Speaker 2: truth that Barrel Howell is my boyfriend's mom. I was
Speaker 2: worried she'd close the door as soon as I said that.
Speaker 2: But now I think that's actually why she let me in.
Speaker 4: Beryl, have you seen her.
Speaker 2: I hope she retired, because yeah, she's retired from chief
Speaker 2: judge them. But then it's like you just become like
Speaker 2: a regular judge. That Tina sounds lighthearted now, but she's
Speaker 2: still keeping tabs on what Beryl is up to because
Speaker 2: Beryl once held Tina's future in her hands, and in
Speaker 2: a way, Tina held Beryl's future in her hands as well.
Speaker 2: I am Lydia Jean Kott and this is the China
Speaker 2: Townsting Episode two Onion Head. Beryl is now a federal
Speaker 2: judge in Washington, d C. She's overseen a lot of
Speaker 2: high profile cases. When was a defamation case brought against
Speaker 2: former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The case was
Speaker 2: brought by Georgia election workers, and they won.
Speaker 6: It was a rejection of what Judge Beryl Howell called
Speaker 6: Giuliani's quote significantly tardy request for a bench trial and
Speaker 6: one of his latest art givens to dodge a jury
Speaker 6: that Howell called simply nonsense.
Speaker 2: Also, Beryl's overseeing dozens of cases related to the January
Speaker 2: sixth Capitol riot.
Speaker 7: Following President Trump's sweeping clemency for January sixth, defendants, federal
Speaker 7: judges who presided over cases are letting their discontent be heard.
Speaker 7: US District Judge Beryl Howell rebuke the President's claim of injustice,
Speaker 7: writing quote this quote cannot let stand the revisionist myth
Speaker 7: relate in this presidential pronouncement.
Speaker 2: And she ruled on Donald Trump's revenge on certain law firms.
Speaker 8: The federal judge tonight has just permanently blocked the president's
Speaker 8: executive order that targeted a law firm which represented Hillary
Speaker 8: Clinton in twenty sixteen, and the ruling from Judge Beryl
Speaker 8: Howe is scathing.
Speaker 2: So yes, this is the person that I know on
Speaker 2: a first name basis as Beryl. When I asked her
Speaker 2: if I could do a story about her earliest major case,
Speaker 2: I was pretty confident she would say no. Judges rarely
Speaker 2: give interviews, and Beryl has been under more pressure and
Speaker 2: scrutiny than ever before. Not only did Beryl agree to
Speaker 2: be interviewed, she told me that she'd saved her notes
Speaker 2: from the Chinatown case. What about legoes?
Speaker 5: Oh my god, we have so many legos.
Speaker 2: She my boyfriend and I searched all over her house
Speaker 2: for them.
Speaker 1: The more under meet these things. Oh my god, I
Speaker 1: can't believe we found this.
Speaker 2: Before she let me have the goods, Beryl first went
Speaker 2: through all of the material to make sure it was
Speaker 2: all things that the public's allowed to see. She's a
Speaker 2: stickler for the law. My co reporter Shiru Wang's also
Speaker 2: a lawyer. She hasn't had a chance to meet Beryl,
Speaker 2: but one day we sat down and talked about her
Speaker 2: about how it feels to see Beryl through the eyes
Speaker 2: of the people she once encountered as a federal prosecutor,
Speaker 2: people like Tina won't.
Speaker 9: Does anything that Tina described about Beryl match what your
Speaker 9: personal perception or understanding of Beryl, or like, does it
Speaker 9: reflect anything that you have known about Beryl at that point?
Speaker 2: Well, Tina talked about what it was like the first
Speaker 2: time that she met Beryl, and she said she was
Speaker 2: expressionless and seemed kind of scary. I've definitely experienced being
Speaker 2: very intimidated by her. When my boyfriend was little and they,
Speaker 2: you know, if they were in trouble, it was it
Speaker 2: was their dad that they would go to.
Speaker 9: What does barrel look like?
Speaker 1: She's blonde.
Speaker 2: She has very expressive eyebrows, so if she's feeling skeptical
Speaker 2: of you, her eyebrows.
Speaker 1: Go very very high.
Speaker 2: There is once this tweet by a court reporter. I
Speaker 2: think that said the way that Beryl raised her eyebrows,
Speaker 2: any kid would feel like they have to clean their
Speaker 2: room if they saw that face.
Speaker 9: Oh my god, that's funny.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I've known Beryl since I was an a
Speaker 2: elementary school. I grew up down the street from her,
Speaker 2: but I really got to know her after I graduated
Speaker 2: from college.
Speaker 1: By that point, she was a federal judge.
Speaker 2: And you know, when I started talking to her about
Speaker 2: it over time, it was really cool to hear her
Speaker 2: talk about the law. It felt like she was pulling
Speaker 2: back a curtain and really showing me how the law works.
Speaker 2: And that's actually kind of why I decided I wanted
Speaker 2: to be a reporter who reports about the law because
Speaker 2: I wanted to share what I learned.
Speaker 9: Basically, does she talk about work naturally at all of
Speaker 9: these family friends gathering or she's more like, if you
Speaker 9: have questions, come to me out answer that.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a lot about work that she can't
Speaker 2: talk about. But she's passionate about the law, and she
Speaker 2: does talk about it.
Speaker 9: It comes up all the time, including this case.
Speaker 1: Definitely.
Speaker 2: I think when I first heard about this case, and
Speaker 2: I think it was an evening after dinner, and it
Speaker 2: was one of those stories where everyone else had already
Speaker 2: heard it, but they were really happy to hear it again,
Speaker 2: kind of like a family legend where you love to
Speaker 2: tell it over and over again.
Speaker 9: By the time she got involved in this case, where
Speaker 9: was Berrow in her career.
Speaker 2: So she had actually just become a federal prosecutor. I
Speaker 2: think she had had the job for about six months. Okay,
Speaker 2: you know, you know, as a lawyer, it's a very
Speaker 2: big deal job. It was kind of a dream job
Speaker 2: for her.
Speaker 5: I felt like I was living a story every single
Speaker 5: day with every single investigation, and you know, it was
Speaker 5: all still fairly new to me and still very exciting
Speaker 5: to me.
Speaker 2: It was in the spring of nineteen eighty eight, and
Speaker 2: if you think about the eighties, you know, most people
Speaker 2: you think about the crack epidemic, but heroin was a
Speaker 2: really big deal at the time too, especially in New York.
Speaker 2: I think one out of forty people in New York
Speaker 2: were addicted to heroin.
Speaker 9: That's crazy ratio.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's actually really a lot.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know, for a long time, heroin was coming into
Speaker 2: New York through the mafia, but then in the mid eighties,
Speaker 2: the criminal underworld was going through a shift.
Speaker 10: Federal law enforcement officials are celebrating what they considered to
Speaker 10: be a major victory in their war against organized crime.
Speaker 10: A former head of the Sicilian mafia and sixteen other
Speaker 10: reputed organized crime figures convicted yesterday running one of the
Speaker 10: biggest heroin smuggling rings ever uncovered.
Speaker 11: The government says the operation was masterminded by Sicilians and
Speaker 11: brought one billion, six hundred and fifty million dollars worth
Speaker 11: of heroin into the United States over the past five years.
Speaker 11: The alleged American kingpin was Salvator Toto Catalano, linked by
Speaker 11: the government to organized crime and owner of this bakery
Speaker 11: and pizza restaurant in Queens. In fact, so many of
Speaker 11: the dealings in this case took place in pizza parlor's
Speaker 11: that federal officials have dubbed it the Pizza Connection.
Speaker 2: Federal law enforcement agents realized that heroin was coming into
Speaker 2: the States through these pizza.
Speaker 9: Parlors, Unite sent pizzas.
Speaker 2: I don't actually know what type of pizza parlors they were,
Speaker 2: but yeah, it was a huge bust and I think
Speaker 2: like twenty one mobsters were arrested. But after the pizza connection,
Speaker 2: believe it or not, heroin was still making its way
Speaker 2: into New York City. That's when the Senate started to
Speaker 2: have these hearings and investigations.
Speaker 12: Asian criminal groups are emerging on the American landscape in
Speaker 12: the sense they're becoming more powerful, may become an alternative
Speaker 12: to traditional organized crime. Law enforcement authorities, particularly federal cannot
Speaker 12: afford to wait until these organizations have fully emerged.
Speaker 2: So yeah, in nineteen eighty three, Chinese dealers accounted for
Speaker 2: a three percent of the heroin that was coming into
Speaker 2: the city, and then three years later, according to these hearings,
Speaker 2: they counted for a twenty five percent, and.
Speaker 9: That's a big jump, and the number was going up.
Speaker 2: It was getting, you know, higher and higher. Of course,
Speaker 2: when Beryl started as a federal prosecutor, she was briefed
Speaker 2: and knew about this.
Speaker 5: Was I aware of Chinatown gangs, absolutely, But did I
Speaker 5: immediately think that these boxes being shipped through JFK were
Speaker 5: related to Chinatown gangs that wasn't the first thing on
Speaker 5: my mind.
Speaker 1: I didn't really know.
Speaker 2: You generally had no idea what was going to happen
Speaker 2: where these boxes, where this control delivery was going to
Speaker 2: lead you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not at all.
Speaker 9: What was Barrow's impression about Chinatown before she took on
Speaker 9: his case.
Speaker 2: So Beryl lived in Chelsea, which is not that far
Speaker 2: from Chinatown. It was a place that she walked through
Speaker 2: a lot. But through working on this case, Beryl also
Speaker 2: started to see that Chinatown was a more complicated place
Speaker 2: than she knew, and that also what she was asking
Speaker 2: from these women was really a lot.
Speaker 5: They gave me an insight into all the you know,
Speaker 5: sort of the complexities and loyalties and pressures that were
Speaker 5: all unseen to a mere visitor from Chelsea going to
Speaker 5: Chinatown not that far but world's away.
Speaker 2: So it was clear to Beryl that she had to
Speaker 2: understand more about Chinatown and the pressures her witnesses were
Speaker 2: under if she wanted to get any useful information from
Speaker 2: them about those mail packages and who was really in charge.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back.
Speaker 2: Beryl Howell's goal as a federal prosecutor was not to
Speaker 2: put a bunch of low level drug smugglers in prison.
Speaker 2: She wanted to make an actual difference by building a
Speaker 2: case against whoever was at the top of the scheme,
Speaker 2: whoever was bringing millions of dollars worth of drugs and
Speaker 2: New York through Chinatown.
Speaker 1: To do that, she needed.
Speaker 2: The lower level people like Tina Long to tell her
Speaker 2: everything they knew. But as I look through Beryl's notes,
Speaker 2: it seemed like she was getting one word answers and
Speaker 2: a lot of evasion. Clearly, something was scaring these women
Speaker 2: more than prison, and that's something was in Chinatown. So
Speaker 2: my producer and I did what we imagine Beryl might
Speaker 2: have done. We headed downtown to do some investigating. We
Speaker 2: found three people who could talk to us about how
Speaker 2: criminal networks in Chinatown worked back in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2: When these women agreed to receive packages of heroin in
Speaker 2: the mail.
Speaker 13: Henry walked around the shave with two white girls.
Speaker 2: Henry Tann grew up in Chinatown and is now an author.
Speaker 2: He's written five detective novels, all set here, and a
Speaker 2: little reluctantly, he's agreed to give us a tour of
Speaker 2: the neighborhood.
Speaker 13: The building looks better than it did then. We lived
Speaker 13: there on the dirt floor. There was a railroad flat.
Speaker 13: My brother and I had beds in the middle of department.
Speaker 13: We were here for five years and maybe six.
Speaker 2: We're on Pell Street. It's a street so short it's
Speaker 2: almost an alleyway.
Speaker 13: During the holidays, we'll be crowded. Hip Sing would come
Speaker 13: out with their lion dancers and the street will be
Speaker 13: packed and it'll be fireworks.
Speaker 2: The Hip Singh is a community organization. The name roughly
Speaker 2: means cooperating for success. They're buildings on the opposite end
Speaker 2: of the street from the apartment that Henry grew up in.
Speaker 13: Further down the block on the right side, you see
Speaker 13: the golden doors and the official Hip Sing Organization.
Speaker 2: In the eighteen hundreds, organizations called Tongs first formed in
Speaker 2: Chinatown's across the US. They supported and protected residents. Henry
Speaker 2: writes about the Tongs in his first novel, Chinatown Beat.
Speaker 2: The Hip Singh was considered the working class Hong, and
Speaker 2: around the corner on Maud Street, the onl Tong was
Speaker 2: for merchants. Henry slightly changes their names in his book.
Speaker 13: The One was a businessman's benevolent association. The number one
Speaker 13: high roller in America a coast to coast secret society
Speaker 13: no working man was able to join. They sneered at
Speaker 13: the ship jumpers, the waiters and dishwashers, the laundrymen who
Speaker 13: joined their arrival hip chains.
Speaker 2: By the time Henry was growing up, lots of people
Speaker 2: were ping dues to one tong or another. They were
Speaker 2: doing this in exchange for the kind of help that
Speaker 2: they couldn't get or didn't know how to get from
Speaker 2: the US government way back.
Speaker 13: They will receive the mail for their members because a
Speaker 13: lot of their members who lived in buildings didn't have mailboxes.
Speaker 13: Because when people came here, you know, they were strangers
Speaker 13: in a foreign land, and they didn't speak the language,
Speaker 13: they didn't read English, and so this was the one
Speaker 13: place they could go to for any kind of assistance.
Speaker 2: And the reason that the hip saying matters so much
Speaker 2: to our case is because the organization had another building,
Speaker 2: one right across the street we're now standing in front of.
Speaker 1: It doesn't make you nervous to be here? Should we
Speaker 1: go someplace else?
Speaker 13: No, Well, I'm the one that looks shady, you guys. Obviously,
Speaker 13: I'm being an interview only saying good things.
Speaker 2: Henry's directed that last comment to a security camera that's pointing.
Speaker 1: Straight at us. He's joking. I think.
Speaker 2: In the nineteen eighties this was a gambling parlor. Henry
Speaker 2: tells us that when he was a kid, he would
Speaker 2: watch men head down the basement stairs here it was
Speaker 2: off limits to children. One day, when he was finally
Speaker 2: old enough, he followed those men inside.
Speaker 13: You step into a cloud of cigarette smoke. You could
Speaker 13: barely breathe, and all these men, mostly men, smoking and gambling,
Speaker 13: and they would play thirteen cards, Subsam Jam, seven cards,
Speaker 13: chuck Jam, majong here and there.
Speaker 1: What was the vibe? Was the vibe lighthearted? Was it serious?
Speaker 1: How did it feel down there?
Speaker 13: Well, it was all of that. I mean, you know,
Speaker 13: if you're winning, you know you're giddy. If you're losing,
Speaker 13: your grumpy. But twice on these men they have with
Speaker 13: this very guttural way of like being loud, and because
Speaker 13: of the dialect, sounds like they're always cursing, even when
Speaker 13: they're not cursing.
Speaker 2: Henry already knew by then that he wanted to be
Speaker 2: a writer, and he knew he wanted to write about
Speaker 2: this world.
Speaker 13: You can't whip out a pad and pencil and start
Speaker 13: taking notes. So I would go in the bathroom and
Speaker 13: I would roll up my sleeves and I would write
Speaker 13: things on my arm up and down my own and
Speaker 13: then when I get home and I wake up the
Speaker 13: next morning, I would remember.
Speaker 2: This gambling parlor was operated by one of the most
Speaker 2: powerful gangs in Chinatown, the Flying Dragons. It was also
Speaker 2: their main hangout, kind of like their HQ, and this
Speaker 2: gang would come to matter a lot to Baryl. Part
Speaker 2: of the reason the Flying Dragons were so powerful is
Speaker 2: because they reported to the Hip sing that influential community
Speaker 2: organization with the Golden Pagoda across the street.
Speaker 13: They had their glorious building where they took care of
Speaker 13: their business and where they funded the gang kids.
Speaker 3: They kept that out of sight.
Speaker 2: Because while the Tongs helped families, they also exploited them.
Speaker 2: In the nineteen eighties, the leaders of the Hip Singh
Speaker 2: didn't just earn money from collecting member dues. They also
Speaker 2: earned money from this gambling parlor and other gambling parlors
Speaker 2: all over Chinatown. To help with the seedier parts of
Speaker 2: their operations, they recruited teenagers. Teenagers like Mike Moy.
Speaker 14: Because I grew up being bullied, not being bullied by
Speaker 14: fellow Asians. I was being bullied by the whites, blacks, Hispanics.
Speaker 1: Was physically beat up.
Speaker 15: Oh, everything, everything, everything.
Speaker 2: Mike moy was also born in Chinatown. He says that
Speaker 2: many tongues were connected to youth gangs. It was kind
Speaker 2: of like an open secret.
Speaker 14: The Hipsyng Tongue Association they affiliated with the Flying Dragons,
Speaker 14: the Online was affiliated with the gold Shadows, and then
Speaker 14: you have the Somezing Association, the dun Lawn Associations associated
Speaker 14: with the dun Lawn Gang. So these were three major
Speaker 14: gangs in Chinatown during that time, from the seventies into
Speaker 14: the mid eighties. These were the Flying Dragons, the Gold Shadows,
Speaker 14: and the dun Lag.
Speaker 2: Like many people we've spoken with, Mike points out something important,
Speaker 2: the whole gang system of Chinatown did not arise in
Speaker 2: a vacuum.
Speaker 14: If I had to summarize why these gangs exist, I
Speaker 14: can summarize it in one word. Racism. That is the core.
Speaker 14: The root of the issue is racism. Okay, what does
Speaker 14: racism it created these gangs.
Speaker 2: When Mike was fifteen, he was approached by an older
Speaker 2: gang member in a pool hall. The man had seen
Speaker 2: him there before. He had been watching him, and he
Speaker 2: knew exactly what to say to a lost Chinese American teenager.
Speaker 14: Bullying was it was pretty bad, you know which. It
Speaker 14: was constantly every day, it was something new, and I'm.
Speaker 15: Just sick and tired of it. So that hit a
Speaker 15: chord with me.
Speaker 14: And since I joined a gang, I can tell you
Speaker 14: I never got bullied of it again.
Speaker 1: How did people know not to billy you?
Speaker 14: It's the way you carry yourself. I mean, once you
Speaker 14: join a gang, you feel like you have the whole
Speaker 14: gang behind you.
Speaker 15: You think you're invincible.
Speaker 2: Mike didn't join the Flying Dragons. He joined a gang
Speaker 2: called the Fox Chang. But all the gangs worked pretty similarly,
Speaker 2: he says. When teens joined them, they often moved in
Speaker 2: and lived with other gang members.
Speaker 14: They supply us with the safe house. When we move
Speaker 14: from safe house to safe house, we can live five
Speaker 14: to ten fifteen per apartment. We don't go home to
Speaker 14: mom and dad. So in a way, there's a special
Speaker 14: bond there. It's like family, a family.
Speaker 2: Whose members were loyal to each other no matter what.
Speaker 15: It's different in Chinatown because that's all you have. Who's
Speaker 15: going to back you up, who's going to who's going
Speaker 15: to help you.
Speaker 14: It is your fellow brothers who's going to help you.
Speaker 14: I mean, nobody did anything for us back in those days.
Speaker 2: But to stay in this family, teams like Mike had
Speaker 2: to fulfill us some pretty severe requirements.
Speaker 14: They recruit the young kids to do the shooting because
Speaker 14: it's a slap on the risk for them. They get
Speaker 14: caught with a gun, it's a slap on the risk.
Speaker 14: So anyone who's doing all the shootings, most of the
Speaker 14: shootings are under the age of fifteen or maybe even sixteen,
Speaker 14: so they recruit them to carry the guns.
Speaker 2: Through Mike, I met another former gang member named Peter Chin.
Speaker 2: He actually joined a gang at thirteen. That was shortly
Speaker 2: after his family immigrated to the US from the outskirts
Speaker 2: of Hong Kong.
Speaker 3: Oh was the youngest guy. That's why how my name
Speaker 3: came about.
Speaker 15: Kid.
Speaker 3: They called me Kit. They kid, come here, come on,
Speaker 3: come with kid, So they called me Kid Jai.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Kid Jai went on to become the leader of the
Speaker 2: Ghost Shadows, the main rival to the Flying Dragons.
Speaker 1: The gang headquartered on Pell Street.
Speaker 2: Kijai wound up serving twenty years in prison under the
Speaker 2: Rico Act. Later, he co wrote a book about his experiences.
Speaker 2: It's called In the Ghost Shadows. Pretty Much all the
Speaker 2: gangsters in his book have nicknames. There's Potato spha rib
Speaker 2: I asked him and his co writer Everett Dumourier about that.
Speaker 1: Were there people who hated their nicknames?
Speaker 3: Who hated their their names?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Thank you book, Spinky, Yeah, he goes, no way it.
Speaker 3: She is gonna be proud of that.
Speaker 1: Can you can you change your nickname? Or are you
Speaker 1: stuck with it?
Speaker 12: No?
Speaker 3: You can't change one, just stuck. You stuck with it.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Kidji can laugh about this time, but the truth is
Speaker 2: he barely survived it. As a teenager, he remembers one
Speaker 2: time being in a nightclub when an ex cop from
Speaker 2: Hong Kong showed up. That man had been involved in
Speaker 2: a dispute with the gang. He walked in and just
Speaker 2: started shooting.
Speaker 3: He turned about, he saw me. He pointed a lot
Speaker 3: for it, then hesitated for a second. I'm not gonna shoot.
Speaker 15: You, okay. He left.
Speaker 2: After the X cop left, Kidji looked around the bar,
Speaker 2: trying to make sense of what happened. Two people had
Speaker 2: been killed, people he knew. He started to count the
Speaker 2: spent bullets so.
Speaker 3: I walk over a knee wulm spot. I counted his bullet.
Speaker 3: Nine ship and then the girl got one in the head.
Speaker 15: That's ten.
Speaker 3: One was on the wall, and one just shot somebody
Speaker 3: behind the neck. Scraped it all right. That's that's one,
Speaker 3: and one on the one's wall, the one that he said,
Speaker 3: not gonna shoot this jack. Gays don't have a bullet
Speaker 3: at him because the fight.
Speaker 1: It's whoa back then.
Speaker 2: Shootings like this happen often, but they only really made
Speaker 2: the news when they're particularly bloody or if someone from
Speaker 2: outside of Chinatown got caught in the crossfire.
Speaker 16: In the last six month, Chinese street gang activity is
Speaker 16: erupted in violence throughout parts of the city.
Speaker 10: There have been at least eight known Chinese gang related homicide.
Speaker 17: Threats from gangs are phrased in the worst way imaginable,
Speaker 17: the way that leaves it all up to your own imagination.
Speaker 17: For example, we know who your wife is, we know
Speaker 17: what she looks like, we know who your children are,
Speaker 17: we know where you live.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy seven, a restaurant owner named Mann Bundley
Speaker 2: partnered with the police on a campaign to convince people
Speaker 2: to report gang violence in extortion. He was a respected
Speaker 2: voice in the community, known as Chinatown's unofficial mayor, but
Speaker 2: not long into the campaign, someone came into man Bundley's restaurant,
Speaker 2: pulled a knife out from a Manila folder, and stabbed
Speaker 2: him five times. Mc moy said the stabbing sent a
Speaker 2: clear message. No one who speaks out against the gangs
Speaker 2: is safe.
Speaker 15: They can get to any resident in Chinatown.
Speaker 14: So that's why the fear is there, because there's no
Speaker 14: place for the residents to go.
Speaker 15: The resident of.
Speaker 14: Chinatown will not move over to Staten Island in those days.
Speaker 14: They're not going to move to Jersey. They're trapped in
Speaker 14: Chintown because they don't speak the language where they're going
Speaker 14: to go.
Speaker 2: This fear seems to be a thing of the past
Speaker 2: to mcmoy. Now, he hosts a YouTube channel about his
Speaker 2: former life and interviews other former gang members.
Speaker 14: Welcome to Chintown Gang Stories to they have a special guest.
Speaker 2: And he wanted to make extra sure that I gave
Speaker 2: his channel a shout out. It's called Chinatown Gang Stories
Speaker 2: and you should really check it out. So that's Mike
Speaker 2: moy's way of handling what he's been through the past
Speaker 2: seems to weigh much heavier on the writer Henry Chang.
Speaker 2: He never joined a gang, but when he was a teen,
Speaker 2: a friend of his was stabbed because his friend's older
Speaker 2: brother defied a gangster. The guys who stabbed his friend
Speaker 2: were never.
Speaker 1: Caught after that night.
Speaker 13: I never walk around unarmed, really, so I'm armed right now.
Speaker 2: Henry Chang's novels are all set in the Chinatown that
Speaker 2: he grew up in, and they follow a character named
Speaker 2: Jack Yu, also from the neighborhood, who works there as
Speaker 2: a police detective.
Speaker 13: What do you get over there, Jack, thirty five forty
Speaker 13: g's what all the time that would it costs to
Speaker 13: turn you against people who used to be your friends.
Speaker 13: Jack's face tightened. We only bust the bad ones. Bullshit.
Speaker 13: We take care the bad ones. You guys just come
Speaker 13: for the money to count the bodies. Jack looked up
Speaker 13: from the courtyard. So the oyster colored sky above the
Speaker 13: rooftops they used to run across. It's not about money,
Speaker 13: Jack said, Lucky sneered. It's all about money and damn
Speaker 13: thing funny.
Speaker 2: So this was the state of things in the mid
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties with gangs in Chinatown. They were a protection
Speaker 2: racket connected to powerful community organizations, and for decades law
Speaker 2: enforcement officials had pretty much looked the other way. But
Speaker 2: now they were suddenly paying attention because one gangster had
Speaker 2: figured out a way to make a lot more money.
Speaker 2: While I was reporting this story, I found a Justice
Speaker 2: Department memo from the nineteen eighties. It was for law
Speaker 2: enforcement officials and it listed the names of Asian gangs
Speaker 2: and their leaders, including one gang leader named Johnny Yang.
Speaker 2: The memo called Ang the leader of the Flying Dragons.
Speaker 2: That's that gang that had its headquarters on Pell Street.
Speaker 2: There is a little asterisk next to his name with
Speaker 2: a note that said Aang is believed to be one
Speaker 2: of the most important heroin distributors in New York.
Speaker 18: Machine Gun Johnny Yang became a full fledged gangster in
Speaker 18: March of nineteen eighty three when his boss was found
Speaker 18: full of bullets and scores of Flying Dragons became his
Speaker 18: drug minions.
Speaker 9: I forgot how dramatic the narration yeah in that documentary
Speaker 9: was you have.
Speaker 1: To love it.
Speaker 2: It's from a TV series called Gangsters America's Most Evil
Speaker 2: Machine Gun Johnny and it was broadcast on Cable TV
Speaker 2: in twenty twelve.
Speaker 9: I still feel like it's being a little bit exaggerating.
Speaker 1: Oh, this documentary is.
Speaker 7: He's taking his fellow flying dragons, driving them from New
Speaker 7: York to his spot in Pennsylvania as a farm, and
Speaker 7: they're doing machine gun practice.
Speaker 16: He's copying the Hollywood movies about Chinese gangsters with the
Speaker 16: overcoat hanging off his shoulders, buying luxury goods. You know,
Speaker 16: it's what every Chinese gangster thinks they should look like.
Speaker 15: That's machine gun Johnny.
Speaker 9: It's just funny because like somehow people have met Johnny
Speaker 9: in real life and when they described him, it doesn't
Speaker 9: feel like how they portrayed it in the documentary.
Speaker 2: And to that point, I realized that it's only law
Speaker 2: enforcement who called them machine gun Johnny. The people who
Speaker 2: you know lived in Chinatown. For example, Mike moy knew
Speaker 2: him by another nickname.
Speaker 1: That's not so badass. Why was he called onionhead?
Speaker 14: All right, So here's the mission out there.
Speaker 1: People.
Speaker 14: I've seen some documentaries on YouTube saying that he was
Speaker 14: nicknamed onion head because if you cause him, you know,
Speaker 14: he'll make you cry.
Speaker 15: That is not true.
Speaker 14: That is absolutely not true. He's called onion head because
Speaker 14: of his hairstyle and the shape of his head.
Speaker 1: It's like a spring onion.
Speaker 9: I guess yeah, it's kind of like the mini mohawk
Speaker 9: that you just have, like some here on top of
Speaker 9: the head.
Speaker 1: Oh, all this time I thought it was just sticking
Speaker 1: up by accident.
Speaker 10: Well, we'll never know.
Speaker 9: Has any of these people described what Johnny was like
Speaker 9: even before he became the head of the gang.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he immigrated from Hong Kong to the United States
Speaker 2: when he was twelve years old, and he joined this gang,
Speaker 2: the Flying Dragons, pretty soon after. Because he usually joined
Speaker 2: as a teenager, you know, he didn't really make much
Speaker 2: of an impression. He just kind of seemed like, you're
Speaker 2: in the background gang member. In fact, I couldn't really
Speaker 2: find much about him in the media until around the
Speaker 2: time of the Pizza connection trials.
Speaker 10: I think the impact on the mafia of these cases
Speaker 10: and the convictions today have been devastating. The efforts by
Speaker 10: the DA and the FBI and Custom Service and the
Speaker 10: US Attorney's offices. If it continues, it's not going to
Speaker 10: be in mafia.
Speaker 2: I think Johnny then realized that there was sort of
Speaker 2: a vacuum this big group, the Italian mob, that had
Speaker 2: been bringing in heroin had been busted, and now people
Speaker 2: in New York, you know, they still wanted heroin. And
Speaker 2: at the time, there was a lot of really high
Speaker 2: grade heroin that was being processed in this area around
Speaker 2: Burma Laos, Thailand. It was called the Golden Triangle, and
Speaker 2: heroin would be smuggled from there into various places, including
Speaker 2: Hong Kong and China. So Johnny started going to Hong Kong.
Speaker 2: And I know this because actually Kidjai, one of the
Speaker 2: gangsters that we talked to earlier, he saw him on
Speaker 2: one of the strips to Hong Kong.
Speaker 3: It was the best club in Hong Kong. And so
Speaker 3: when I was walking in with one of the the
Speaker 3: data the movies start right yep, we passed by him
Speaker 3: and I saw him sitting with another man that I
Speaker 3: don't recognize.
Speaker 2: So looking back, Kidji thinks he might have actually witnessed
Speaker 2: Johnny trying to secure connections to start importing heroin into
Speaker 2: New York.
Speaker 9: Okay.
Speaker 2: On his YouTube channel, Mike moy talked to this guy
Speaker 2: Cowboy who was in the Flying Dragons under Johnny aka Onion.
Speaker 19: Onion must like a different regime. He was like, go on,
Speaker 19: make money everyone. It was like the Soviet Union when
Speaker 19: they disbanded. You give a freedom, they gonna say to yourself,
Speaker 19: what the follow one would do with it?
Speaker 18: We don't know how to.
Speaker 19: Make money except distributing drugs.
Speaker 18: So that was the new era.
Speaker 9: Interesting. If there's a way for them to make a
Speaker 9: lot of money in a short time, why not.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Later Mike Mooy told me that this moment in the
Speaker 2: late eighties is when Chinatown really started to change.
Speaker 14: The money started pulling in, and you can actually see
Speaker 14: and feel it because everyone was benefiting woman, including all
Speaker 14: the way down to the cab drivers, the waiters, the
Speaker 14: restaurant owners, the gambling houses. So when you have a
Speaker 14: billion dollars in drug money coming in and the circulating
Speaker 14: within those couple of block radius, everyone was benefiting from it.
Speaker 15: Everyone.
Speaker 2: According to later court documents and news articles, Johnny owned
Speaker 2: a two hundred acre estate in Pennsylvania, a house in
Speaker 2: Long Island, a mansion basically, a Jaguar, a Mercedes Benz,
Speaker 2: a Lotus, just a tip of car, twelve black Nissan pathfinders,
Speaker 2: twenty two snowmobiles and eighteen three wheeled all terrain vehicles.
Speaker 9: Twenty two snowmobiles is crazy maybe he's buying up for
Speaker 9: the whole game.
Speaker 2: I heard that he would bring them out to a
Speaker 2: shooting range she had in Pennsylvania. If a gangster won
Speaker 2: the shooting competition, he would give them like a pathfinder
Speaker 2: or a snowmobile or something.
Speaker 9: It's like Jeopardy at Johnny's house.
Speaker 2: To me, it seems like Johnny was flashy, but the
Speaker 2: reason what made him stand out wasn't that he was
Speaker 2: particularly violent, like the documentary paints, it was that he
Speaker 2: was very good at business.
Speaker 14: There were a lot of dangerous gangsters out there in
Speaker 14: the Asian on the will who made a name for themselves,
Speaker 14: and Onionhead wasn't one of them as far as you know,
Speaker 14: being dangerous.
Speaker 15: He didn't have the reputation of a shula a killer.
Speaker 2: So that's who Beryl Howell was after Johnny Ing her
Speaker 2: target came into focus as she tried to figure out
Speaker 2: what connected the woman she had in custody these mageng
Speaker 2: players with the heroin trade they had.
Speaker 5: Through their gambling at gambling parlors, accumulated debt to the
Speaker 5: gambling parlor, and to pay off the debt they could
Speaker 5: accept these boxes of heroin.
Speaker 2: Beryl started to make some progress getting people to talk
Speaker 2: to her at least about which Majong parlors they were
Speaker 2: going to, and that was actually a huge clue.
Speaker 5: When the information came in through interviews with the cooperating
Speaker 5: witnesses that they were paying off debts to the particular
Speaker 5: gambling parlor that was operated by the Flying Dragons. The
Speaker 5: agents and I knew immediately that this was a Flying
Speaker 5: Dragons operation and had a I think it was very
Speaker 5: well known that Johnny Ang was head of the Flying
Speaker 5: Dragons and that he had to have known were these
Speaker 5: and approved of these very valuable shipments being shipped.
Speaker 2: Beryl was interviewing these women who had been arrested, but
Speaker 2: each played what seemed like only a tiny role. They
Speaker 2: might receive a package or remove it from one place
Speaker 2: to another. It all seemed very well designed to protect Johnny.
Speaker 2: He was still out of reach.
Speaker 1: He was our ultimate target, absolutely.
Speaker 2: But Beryl did start to figure out that there was
Speaker 2: one woman who seemed to be overseeing the whole package
Speaker 2: moving side of the operation. Her name was Wah and
Speaker 2: she was a well known person in the Majong parlors.
Speaker 2: Beryl actually gave her a nickname, although only in her
Speaker 2: own mind. Wicked Wall.
Speaker 5: She was recruiting them to get involved with something with
Speaker 5: very serious penalty consequences, and they had children and families,
Speaker 5: so yes, what she had been doing was wicked.
Speaker 2: Beryl thought that this recruiter Wah, she might be her
Speaker 2: link to Johnny Wall was also Tina Wong's childhood best friend.
Speaker 2: So Beryl wanted Tina to tell her everything she knew
Speaker 2: about Wall. And all of that brings us back into
Speaker 2: that small office in Brooklyn, with Tina handcuffed to a
Speaker 2: chair looking at Beryl's face, which to her seemed expressionless.
Speaker 1: Now Tina had to weigh her options. On the one side,
Speaker 1: it isn't that good to ride out a friend.
Speaker 2: Were you thinking about like the dangers like that you
Speaker 2: could maybe get killed because you were cooperating?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was telling them that, I says, you know,
Speaker 4: if I do.
Speaker 1: This aside to you don't cooperate, Yeah, what happens then.
Speaker 4: A chance to twenty five years to life and then
Speaker 4: don't get to see my door to grow up. So
Speaker 4: you got to weigh out the choices.
Speaker 2: Despite all of her research, all of her investigation, Beryl
Speaker 2: still didn't know the full import of what she was
Speaker 2: asking Tina to do you or the price that Tina
Speaker 2: would pay.
Speaker 1: But maybe that's because Tina wasn't telling her.
Speaker 2: Coming up on the next episode of The Chinatown Sting,
Speaker 2: how do you get people to do whatever you.
Speaker 12: Want for you?
Speaker 1: Because I'm swat I could convince them.
Speaker 2: You know. The Chinatown Sting is written and produced by
Speaker 2: Me Liddy Jeene Cott and reported by Me and Shoe
Speaker 2: Yu Wang. Our senior producer is Emily Martinez, additional production
Speaker 2: by Sonya Gerwit. Our editor is Julia Barton, with additional
Speaker 2: editing by Karen Schakerji. Our story consultant is Wrong shout Ching,
Speaker 2: Our executive our producer is Jacob Smith. Our music was
Speaker 2: composed by John Sung, sound design and additional music.
Speaker 1: By Jake Gorski.
Speaker 2: Our fact checker is Kate Ferby, and our show art
Speaker 2: was designed by Sean Carney. All voiceover work by Tally Leong.
Speaker 2: For more information about this episode, check out our show
Speaker 2: notes or visit Pushkin dot fm slash Chinatown. The Chinatown
Speaker 2: Stag is a production of Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 1: To find more Pushkin
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