Speaker 1: You're listening to the second and final pard of Unexplained,
Speaker 1: Season nine, episode fifteen, Red Dust. A haze of smoke
Speaker 1: filled the harshly lit air of the interrogation room. Harold
Speaker 1: Pinfold sat alone as he chained smoked one three, five
Speaker 1: after another. He fidgeted with the packet. He picked at
Speaker 1: a scab on his arm. He bit at his nails.
Speaker 1: The man was clearly nervous and quite possibly in the
Speaker 1: early stages of opium withdrawn. Nineteen year old Pamela Werner
Speaker 1: had been dead for over a week, and Pinfold was
Speaker 1: the first real suspect Inspectors Hans shir Cheung and Richard
Speaker 1: Dennis had had to work with. Having made little progress
Speaker 1: up till then Inspector Hahn's sweep of Beijing's infamous den
Speaker 1: of iniquity, the ominous bad Land Zone, had finally borne fruit.
Speaker 1: During door to door inquiries. A Russian landlady, clearly rattled
Speaker 1: by the discovery of Pamela's body, wasted little time in
Speaker 1: informing the attending officer that she just recently found a
Speaker 1: blood stained dagger, shoes and cloth in the room of
Speaker 1: a tenant of hers. The man was on further investigation
Speaker 1: revealed to be a Canadian called Harold Pinfld. Pinfold was
Speaker 1: a deserter from the Canadian Army who'd acquired a criminal
Speaker 1: record in the United States before fleeing to China, where
Speaker 1: he scratched a living working various low paid jobs. He
Speaker 1: was quickly apprehended and taken into custody for questioning. One
Speaker 1: officer at the Beijing police station recognized him immediately as
Speaker 1: one of the rubberneckers that he'd seen at the crime
Speaker 1: stone see the day they found the body. For hours,
Speaker 1: Pinfold refused to answer Inspectors Hahn and Dennis's questions what
Speaker 1: was he doing at the crime scene? They asked what
Speaker 1: did number twenty seven on a street in the bad
Speaker 1: Lands named chan Ban mean to him? The place was
Speaker 1: a known brothel, they'd found a business card for it
Speaker 1: among Pinfold's possessions, and what was the newdest retreat. Harold
Speaker 1: Pinfold feigned ignorance of it all, but they'd already spoken
Speaker 1: to Joseph Nuf, the manager of Number twenty seven. It
Speaker 1: was Nuf who told them that Pinfold was a regular
Speaker 1: customer at the brothel and at the establishment next door
Speaker 1: to number twenty eight, and it was Nouf who told
Speaker 1: them that Pinfold had a side hustle working as a
Speaker 1: security guard for what he described as a newdest retreat.
Speaker 1: Nuf claimed not to know too much about it, only
Speaker 1: that it took place in the Western Hills, a secluded
Speaker 1: area of wooded mountainous terrain on the western side of
Speaker 1: the city. Eventually, under sustained questioning and probably when he'd
Speaker 1: run out of cigarettes, Pinfold finally dropped his guard Harold
Speaker 1: Pinfld admitted to having worked security once or twice at
Speaker 1: the so called nudest retreats, and that on occasions he'd
Speaker 1: even been paid to recruit women to dance naked for
Speaker 1: the attendees there. Inspectors Hahn and Dennis had good reason
Speaker 1: to suspect that these women were recruited for a little
Speaker 1: more than just dancing. Was Pamela one of these dancers,
Speaker 1: they asked. Pinfald said he couldn't tell them because he'd
Speaker 1: never heard of Pamela before her body was found. He
Speaker 1: also claimed that he'd only been at the crime scene
Speaker 1: because he happened to be passing the area at the
Speaker 1: time and was just curious to know what was going on,
Speaker 1: And as for the blood on his possessions, it wasn't human,
Speaker 1: he told them, so they needn't concern themselves with that either.
Speaker 1: According to Pinfald, he sometimes went hunting in the woods
Speaker 1: whenever he worked at the Newdest Retreat. The blood, he said,
Speaker 1: was from his latest kill. Inspectors Hahn and Denis wanted
Speaker 1: to know more about these newdest Retreats, as Pinfald and
Speaker 1: Nouf called them, but Pinfald refused to be drawn any
Speaker 1: further into it, other than to say if they really
Speaker 1: wanted to know what went on there, they should speak
Speaker 1: to Wentworth Prentice. Pinfald had apparently met him at the
Speaker 1: brothel next door to twenty seven number twenty eight twan Ban,
Speaker 1: but declined to say any more. As it happened, the
Speaker 1: pathology report on the bloody knife seemed to confirm Pinfold's story,
Speaker 1: and the man was released. They should have known that
Speaker 1: he would go to round immediately, but it didn't matter.
Speaker 1: By then they had everything they needed. Wentworth Apprentice was
Speaker 1: a debonair, mustachioed American dentist whose patients were mostly wealthy
Speaker 1: expats and diplomats. Although on first impressions he seemed to
Speaker 1: be entirely respectable. A little digging revealed something darker lurking
Speaker 1: underneath the facade. He first came to China with his
Speaker 1: wife in nineteen seventeen after graduating from Harvard's dental School.
Speaker 1: The pair had children while living in Beijing, and by
Speaker 1: all accounts, planned to make a permanent base there. That
Speaker 1: was until June nineteen twenty six, when Prentice's wife left
Speaker 1: the country abruptly, taking the children with her. They would
Speaker 1: never go back. A strange note on his file at
Speaker 1: the US Consulate suggested that at some point there had
Speaker 1: been concerned for the safety of one Apprentice's children, without
Speaker 1: specifying why. Since he was a foreign national of some
Speaker 1: local repute, it failed to inspect a Denis to interview him,
Speaker 1: which he did alongside legation Court of Police Commissioner Edward
Speaker 1: Howard at the commissioner's own home. The dentist presented himself
Speaker 1: as an upstanding member of the expat community, unlike Pinfalt,
Speaker 1: claimed never to have heard of Pamela before, but more
Speaker 1: to the point, he'd been at the cinema on the
Speaker 1: evening she disappeared, so couldn't have had anything to do
Speaker 1: with her. Murder. Inspector Dennis had little choice but to
Speaker 1: take him at his word for the time being. But
Speaker 1: it hadn't gone unnoticed that Wentworth Prentice just so happened
Speaker 1: to live right next door to the French Club's new
Speaker 1: ice rink, where Pamela had last been seen. The day
Speaker 1: after Wentworth Prentice was interviewed by the police, an article
Speaker 1: appeared in Beijing's English language newspaper written by an Irish
Speaker 1: reporter named George Gorman. In it, Gorman criticized the authorities
Speaker 1: for considering Prentice a possible suspect and unfairly tarnishing his reputation.
Speaker 1: The real killers were Chinese, not Westerners, Gorman insisted. Many
Speaker 1: had already begun to speculate that the reason Pamela's organs
Speaker 1: had been removed was so they could be sold for
Speaker 1: medical purposes on the Chinese black market, which were tracked
Speaker 1: with Gorman's assessment. Intriguingly, George Gorman did know Pamela Werner,
Speaker 1: as Inspector Dennis found out when he went to speak
Speaker 1: with him shortly after the article was published. It was
Speaker 1: Gorman's wife that told Dennis that Pamela had even been
Speaker 1: to their house visiting their daughter only the night before
Speaker 1: her murder. The potential connections demanded to be followed up,
Speaker 1: but time was running out for the two detectives. Inspector
Speaker 1: Dennis had only been given enough leave to stay until
Speaker 1: February seventh, just before Chinese New Year. It wasn't nearly
Speaker 1: long enough. Not only had they failed to find any
Speaker 1: verifiable suspects, they hadn't even established where Pamela was murdered
Speaker 1: in the first place. The inquest into Pamela's death was
Speaker 1: held on January twenty ninth. After hearing testimony from Pamela's
Speaker 1: friends and some of the investigating officers, the coroner, Nicholas Fitzmorris,
Speaker 1: a British consul, concluded rather redundantly that Pamela's death was
Speaker 1: an unlawful killing, but that it would be up to
Speaker 1: a later hearing to decide who might have committed the crime.
Speaker 1: The following day, much to the dismay of Inspectors Hans
Speaker 1: and Dennis, details of the autopsy were published in the papers,
Speaker 1: having been secretly leaked to the press. It was an
Speaker 1: unmitigated disaster that also led to Fitzmorris's demotion. Now with
Speaker 1: so much key information in the public domain the culprit
Speaker 1: or culprits could use it to stay a step ahead
Speaker 1: of the investigators, but by then it would have made
Speaker 1: little difference in any case, because Inspectors Hahn and Dennis
Speaker 1: had reached the end of the road. As the raucous
Speaker 1: celebrations of Chinese New Year began, many in Beijing were
Speaker 1: convinced it would be the last such holiday for them
Speaker 1: and their city for some time. Inspector Dennis was forced
Speaker 1: to return to Tianjin, while Inspector Hahn was moved on
Speaker 1: to other cases. After all, there were far more pressing
Speaker 1: concerns now than an unsolved murder, not least of all
Speaker 1: the impending invasion of the city. By March nineteen thirty seven,
Speaker 1: the Japanese government was becoming increasingly bold with their military provocations.
Speaker 1: They began driving tanks through parts of the city and
Speaker 1: flying their fighter planes overhead at low altitudes, feeling out
Speaker 1: the Chinese government's appetite for pushing back. Meanwhile, the Japanese
Speaker 1: army's presence outside the city grew ever bigger and more threatening.
Speaker 1: It was only a matter of time before they mounted
Speaker 1: a full scale occupation. On the night of July seventh,
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty seven, near the Marco Polo Bridge just outside
Speaker 1: of Beijing, Japanese and Chinese Nationalist Army troops clashed during
Speaker 1: what had begun as a routine military exercise. When a
Speaker 1: Japanese soldier was reported missing, demand's weight to search the
Speaker 1: nearby town of Wuanping, which were refused by the Chinese Army,
Speaker 1: shots were fired. What followed became the opening act of
Speaker 1: a wider war, as reinforcements poured into North China and
Speaker 1: the fragile balance that had been in place since the
Speaker 1: Boxer rebellion finally gave way. Beijing fell with little sustained resistance.
Speaker 1: By the end of July, it was completely occupied by
Speaker 1: the Japanese military. The old order gave way to something
Speaker 1: far harsher and more uncertain. Any lingering hope that the
Speaker 1: truth behind Pamela Werner's death might be uncovered quietly slipped away.
Speaker 1: There was only one man left to keep investigating Pamela's murder.
Speaker 1: Her dogged and heartbroken father, Edward Werner, had been extremely
Speaker 1: disappointed with the lack of progress on his daughter's case.
Speaker 1: British authorities in Beijing had offered a reward of one
Speaker 1: thousand Chinese silver dollars roughly ten times what the average
Speaker 1: Chinese family would spend in a year for information that
Speaker 1: would help resolve the case. But the reward fliers had
Speaker 1: only been printed in English. Werner's plea for them to
Speaker 1: be printed in Mandarin too, fell on deaf ears, since
Speaker 1: many Chinese citizens distrusted their own authorities those of foreign countries.
Speaker 1: Werner also argued unsuccessfully to allow useful informant to claim
Speaker 1: the money anonymously, and when he finally got the Beijing
Speaker 1: police to return Pamela's clothes and to other personal effects,
Speaker 1: it appeared the items had not been properly stored or
Speaker 1: even checked for fingerprints. Convinced that the authorities weren't doing enough,
Speaker 1: Werner decided to hold a press conference on the steps
Speaker 1: of the British legation headquarters. He criticized the decision to
Speaker 1: let Canadian suspect Harold Pinfold go, despite the fact he
Speaker 1: clearly had some crucial information that they failed to follow
Speaker 1: up on. He also drew on his considerable knowledge of
Speaker 1: Chinese culture to dispute any suggestion that his daughter's organs
Speaker 1: had been harvested for traditional practices. Werner firmly believed that
Speaker 1: his daughter's killer or killers were Westerners, and offered an
Speaker 1: extra five thousand Chinese gold dollars, three times what an
Speaker 1: average Chinese family could earn in their lifetimes and a
Speaker 1: sum that constituted most of his life savings for any
Speaker 1: vital information, But still no informant came forward. Months after
Speaker 1: the official inquest Edward Werner was still living in his
Speaker 1: courtyard house, but due to the Japanese occupation, was no
Speaker 1: longer free to roam around the city as he had
Speaker 1: once been. Nonetheless, he stubbornly kept up the search to
Speaker 1: find his daughter's killer, repeatedly pleading with the Foreign Office
Speaker 1: to reopen the case. He also used his considerable financial
Speaker 1: resources to encourage former Beijing police officers to share whatever
Speaker 1: they knew with him. Like the two inspectors before him,
Speaker 1: Werner's investigations led him to the brothels at twenty seven
Speaker 1: and twenty eight chuan Ban, although by then their owners
Speaker 1: appeared to have closed the establishishments and fled the city.
Speaker 1: Werner became fixated with number twenty eight, especially where it
Speaker 1: seemed dentist Wentworth Prentice was a regular, and where he
Speaker 1: was introduced to Harold Pinforlt, and potentially many of the
Speaker 1: other men whom Werner discovered also attended his secret nudest
Speaker 1: retreats in the Western Hills. But there was far more
Speaker 1: to come. When Edward Werner went through his daughter's diary,
Speaker 1: he claimed to find evidence which detectives Hahn and Dennis
Speaker 1: had overlooked, namely entries his daughter had apparently written about
Speaker 1: how she'd gone on a weekend visit to the Western
Speaker 1: Hills with the Irish reporter George Gorman and his family
Speaker 1: six months before her murder, and that while on that trip,
Speaker 1: Gorman had made sexual overtures to her, which she'd rebuffed, this,
Speaker 1: of course, being the same George Gorman who had so
Speaker 1: stoutly defended the reputation of his friend Wentworth Apprentice in
Speaker 1: the newspaper the day after he was taken in for questioning.
Speaker 1: Was Gorman also a regular at number twenty eight. It
Speaker 1: was around this time that Werner apparently heard of rumor
Speaker 1: that Canadian suspect Harold Pinflt, on his release from questioning,
Speaker 1: had gone straight to the city of Tianjin, where he
Speaker 1: was heard asking someone if Prentice had been arrested yet,
Speaker 1: and that wasn't all that Werner had on Wentworth Prentice
Speaker 1: when he was interviewed back at the start of the year.
Speaker 1: Prentice claimed never to have met Pamela before, but this
Speaker 1: wasn't true, as Werner tried to impress upon anyone that
Speaker 1: would listen to him, Pamela had actually once been a
Speaker 1: patient apprentices and he had the receipt to prove it,
Speaker 1: which he said was dated from only five weeks before
Speaker 1: the murder and in case it had gone unnoticed. Though
Speaker 1: it wasn't Prentice that Pamela had seen the morning before
Speaker 1: she disappeared, she had been to the dentist that day.
Speaker 1: Could that have been linked to anything at all? At
Speaker 1: some point Edward Werner learned that a rickshaw puller had
Speaker 1: been brought in for questioning after he was seen washing
Speaker 1: a bloody seat cushion near to where Pamela's body was
Speaker 1: found not long after she was killed. At the time,
Speaker 1: he told Inspector Hahn that the blood was the result
Speaker 1: of a fight between a Russian expat and an American marine.
Speaker 1: Werner hired agents to track down the ritual puller so
Speaker 1: he could speak to him himself. The man allegedly told
Speaker 1: Werner a very different story to the one he gave
Speaker 1: to Inspector Hahn. According to Werner, the rickshaw puller claimed
Speaker 1: that on the night Pamela went missing, he was called
Speaker 1: to the Barcum brothel at number twenty eight Juan Ban.
Speaker 1: There he picked up two men and what appeared to
Speaker 1: be a young European woman wrapped in a white sheet
Speaker 1: who wasn't moving. It was her blood that had got
Speaker 1: on the rickshaw cushion, he said. Werner again took his
Speaker 1: findings to British diplomats, pleading with them to reopen the case,
Speaker 1: but the rickshaw puller, who Werner likely paid some considerable
Speaker 1: money for his apparent confession, was not regarded as a
Speaker 1: credible witness. Throughout nineteen thirty eight and into nineteen thirty nine,
Speaker 1: Werner continued investigating, but all his efforts to get British
Speaker 1: officials to reopen the case failed. In fact, they became
Speaker 1: so annoyed with him he was eventually banned from entering
Speaker 1: the Legation quarter. So keen were they to draw a
Speaker 1: line under it all, but Werner would not be deterred. Eventually,
Speaker 1: he also discovered that Joseph Nuf, who had turned out
Speaker 1: round the brothels at twenty seven and twenty eight. Juan Ban,
Speaker 1: despite what he told police back in nineteen thirty seven,
Speaker 1: had in fact not only known more about the Western
Speaker 1: Hill's nudest weekends, he was a regular participant. It was
Speaker 1: all becoming glaringly obvious to Werner that Wentworth, Apprentice and
Speaker 1: all his fellow frequenters of Number twenty eight knew far
Speaker 1: more about his daughter and possibly what had happened to her,
Speaker 1: than they were letting on. Werner's own theory was this,
Speaker 1: over a period of months, Pamela had been essentially groomed
Speaker 1: by Prentice and his associates. Then, possibly under the pretext
Speaker 1: of a Christmas party, they had finally made their move
Speaker 1: and invited her to meet them at Number twenty eight.
Speaker 1: Perhaps she'd even met one of them first for a
Speaker 1: secret dinner, which would explain the food that was later
Speaker 1: found in her stomach. Werner surmised that the men planned
Speaker 1: to have sex with his daughter that night, but having
Speaker 1: realized the truth about why she'd been invited out, Pamela
Speaker 1: refused their advances and a struggle ensued. During that struggle,
Speaker 1: Pameler was likely struck with a chair. Werner had in
Speaker 1: fact spotted a wooden chair with a broken leg when
Speaker 1: he visited the brothel as part of his own investigations.
Speaker 1: Having been killed in sight, Werner surmised that the assailants
Speaker 1: had then taken Pamela's body to the Fox Tower because
Speaker 1: it was unlit and unpatrolled. There, the men, some of whom,
Speaker 1: if Werner's theory was to be believed, were hunters and
Speaker 1: medical professionals, mutilated the corpse with a combination of crude
Speaker 1: stabs and cuts, as well as clinical incisions to remove
Speaker 1: her organs, but nobody else bought it, or at least
Speaker 1: didn't want to know about it. Despite it all, Werner
Speaker 1: continued pursuing the case, and was still doing so in
Speaker 1: late nineteen forty one when the Japanese Air Force attacked
Speaker 1: Pearl Harbor. With Japan now formerly at war with many
Speaker 1: of the nations represented in the Legation Quarter, things only
Speaker 1: became even more intense for expats in Beijing and across China.
Speaker 1: Edward Werner was forced to flee his home and move
Speaker 1: into the relative safety of the Quarter, whose right to
Speaker 1: diplomatic and legal immunity was getting more and more fragile
Speaker 1: by the day. All the while he continued to write
Speaker 1: long requests to the Foreign Office to have the killers
Speaker 1: he'd singled out brought to justice, all of which was
Speaker 1: in vain. In March nineteen forty three, the Japanese government
Speaker 1: finally took over the Legation Quarter and removed all its
Speaker 1: remaining European residents, including Edward Werner and Wentworth Apprentice. All
Speaker 1: were marched to the train station and sent to an
Speaker 1: interment camp in Shandong, two hundred fifty miles away to
Speaker 1: the south. Ironically, Edward Werner would spend the rest of
Speaker 1: the war as a prisoner of the Shandong interment camp,
Speaker 1: alongside many of the men he believed had been involved
Speaker 1: with Pamela's death. Wentworth Prentice even became the camp's de
Speaker 1: facto dentist, earning a measure of respect from fellow inmates,
Speaker 1: something that could only have deepened Werner's sense of grievance
Speaker 1: toward him. Survivors of the camp later said that the
Speaker 1: by then seventy five year old Werner periodically confronted Prentice,
Speaker 1: yelling you killed her. I know you killed Pamela. You
Speaker 1: did it. When the war ended, Edward Werner remained in China.
Speaker 1: It had, after all, been his home for most of
Speaker 1: his life, but more than that, it was where he
Speaker 1: felt closest to his daughter. To leave would have felt
Speaker 1: like abandoning her and giving up on her. Case. Old
Speaker 1: age and ill health finally convinced him to return to
Speaker 1: England in nineteen fifty one. On his death three years later,
Speaker 1: the British Times newspaper published a lengthy obituary containing only
Speaker 1: a brief mention of Pamela's murder. It would be several
Speaker 1: decades before the mysterious unsolved case would surface in print again.
Speaker 1: One rainy day in London in the early two thousands,
Speaker 1: a writer named Paul French sat at a desk in
Speaker 1: the National Archives. French had studied Chinese at the University
Speaker 1: of London and had become interested in the career of
Speaker 1: a journalist who had been working in Beijing just prior
Speaker 1: to the Second World War, a woman by the name
Speaker 1: of Helen Foster Snow. The dismal wet weather that day
Speaker 1: led to French staying a little longer at his desk
Speaker 1: than normal, and as he read on a footnote in
Speaker 1: Snow's biography, suddenly caught his attention. In the note, Snow
Speaker 1: alluded to her fears in the wake of Pamela Werner's
Speaker 1: murder that it was her and not the young woman
Speaker 1: who'd been the intended target. French was intrigued. When he
Speaker 1: woke the next morning, he had to find out more
Speaker 1: about the story. His curiosity led him back to the archives,
Speaker 1: where he searched a box of nineteen forties records from
Speaker 1: the British embassy in China for any mention of the killing.
Speaker 1: He was not disappointed. There were numerous documents on the case,
Speaker 1: including a one hundred and fifty page letter from Edward
Speaker 1: Werner setting out his own private efforts to solve the case,
Speaker 1: concluding with the accusation that Wentworth, Prentice and his fellow
Speaker 1: nudists had been the killers. French wrote a book about
Speaker 1: the case called Midnight in p King, in which he
Speaker 1: concurred with Werner's theory. The book became a best seller
Speaker 1: and won many awards, but like the original investigations, French's
Speaker 1: conclusions were dogged by counterclaims and controversy. Several critics, including
Speaker 1: two descendants of individuals who featured in the case, cast
Speaker 1: doubt on French's presentation of Werner's conclusions. They posted photographs
Speaker 1: of many original documents referred to in the book, which
Speaker 1: true Werner's reliability into question Edward Werner was not a
Speaker 1: credible source, the critics said, claiming that French had downplayed
Speaker 1: the man's violent temper. They drew attention to an incident
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirteen while Werner was the British consul in Fujo,
Speaker 1: when he struck a customs official with a whip, an
Speaker 1: incident which led to Werner being forcibly retired from the
Speaker 1: diplomatic service. The critics also said that Werner's assertions were
Speaker 1: hard to substantiate and not mentioned in any other accounts
Speaker 1: of the investigation in Foreign office correspondence or newspaper articles.
Speaker 1: They also showed that the receipt for the dental work
Speaker 1: that Prentice had carried out on Pamela was in fact
Speaker 1: dated six years before her death, not five weeks as
Speaker 1: her father had claimed, and that the time of the
Speaker 1: cinema performance that Princess said he'd been at the night
Speaker 1: Pamela was murdered was backed up by newspaper records from
Speaker 1: the time. French's reconstructions relied too heavily on warness letters,
Speaker 1: they said, while it was likely that more accurate police
Speaker 1: records had not survived the war. In twenty eighteen, a
Speaker 1: death in p King Who Killed Pamela Werner was published.
Speaker 1: Its author, Graham Shephard, openly admitted that he was not
Speaker 1: a fan of true crime books or writing, but he'd
Speaker 1: become intrigued by the case after reading Poor French's book,
Speaker 1: partly because his wife's grandfather was Nicholas Fitzmorris, who'd presided
Speaker 1: over the inquiry into Pamela's death, but also because he
Speaker 1: was a retired British police officer with over thirty years
Speaker 1: on them. For the former detective, Pamela Werner's killing presented
Speaker 1: an intriguing cold case. Using his policing skills, Shepherd methodically
Speaker 1: drew up a full list of possible suspects, which included
Speaker 1: not just Wentworth, Prentice and his fellow nudists, but Chinese
Speaker 1: and Japanese agents and some previously unexamined suspects and leads.
Speaker 1: Shepherd found the gory nature of the murder especially curious.
Speaker 1: Why had her chest been opened and her heart taken out?
Speaker 1: For one? At first, Shepherd didn't discount the possibility that
Speaker 1: Edward Werner himself might have murdered his daughter Indeed, he
Speaker 1: considered the father, with his history of violence and controlling,
Speaker 1: insecure nature, to be a stronger candidate than many of
Speaker 1: the other suspects. Shepherd noted how Werner seemed aware of
Speaker 1: every detail of Pamela's movements on the day that she died.
Speaker 1: He was known to have disapproved of her boyfriends and
Speaker 1: to have had an explosive temper. Not only that he
Speaker 1: turned up at the crime scene the following morning, as
Speaker 1: offenders are often known to do, but in his final analysis,
Speaker 1: Shepherd came to believe that Werner didn't kill his only child.
Speaker 1: He felt, from his policing perspective that there was someone
Speaker 1: else much more likely to have been the murderer. Han
Speaker 1: Shao Ching, Pamela's classmate who had been so brutally beaten
Speaker 1: off by her father when he attempted to call on
Speaker 1: Pamela's home a week before she died. Shepherd's conclusion was
Speaker 1: that the loss of face, so important in Chinese culture,
Speaker 1: prompted the young man to exact an extreme form of revenge,
Speaker 1: of which the removal of Pamela's heart was its symbolic climax.
Speaker 1: The former detective noted that the crime scene was just
Speaker 1: around the corner from Pamela's home on her route there
Speaker 1: from the ice rink, which to him was highly suggest
Speaker 1: festive of a lone offender, full of obsessive resentment, lust
Speaker 1: and rejection, determined to exact revenge on Pamela's father. According
Speaker 1: to Edward Werner, Hans Shu Ching was murdered by Japanese
Speaker 1: military police sometime in the nineteen forties. As for Inspector
Speaker 1: Richard Dennis, he was relieved of his position as police
Speaker 1: chief in Tianjin when the Japanese military took over and
Speaker 1: immediately put in prison, where he was subjected to months
Speaker 1: of solitary confinement and torture. He was only released after
Speaker 1: he signed a forced confession to crimes he didn't commit.
Speaker 1: Returning to China after the war, he assisted with the
Speaker 1: war crimes trials of some of the very people who'd
Speaker 1: imprisoned him, before returning to England, where he lived until
Speaker 1: his death in nineteen seventy seven. The fate of Inspector
Speaker 1: Hahn shir Chong, who was also forced out by the
Speaker 1: Japanese occupying forces, is unknown. As for Pamela Werner, she
Speaker 1: was laid to rest in what at the time was
Speaker 1: Beijing's English Cemetery. Today it lies under the pavement of
Speaker 1: Beijing's second largest ring road. There is a walking tour
Speaker 1: there which retraces Pamela's steps the night she went missing.
Speaker 1: The Werner's home, which she left mid afternoon on that
Speaker 1: fateful day, is now a print shop. The Fox Tower,
Speaker 1: or dong Biyan Men, as it's known locally, where Pamela's
Speaker 1: mutilated body was found, is today home to a contemporary
Speaker 1: Chinese art space. As Beijing's traffic thunders over her remains
Speaker 1: in a case as cold as the city's winters. It
Speaker 1: seems the identity of Pamela Werner's killer or killer's will
Speaker 1: very likely remain forever unexplained. This episode was written by
Speaker 1: Diane Hope and Richard McLain Smith. Thank you as ever
Speaker 1: for listening Unexplained. As an Avy Club production, the podcast
Speaker 1: created by Richard McLain Smith. All other elements of the podcast,
Speaker 1: including the music, are also produced by me Richard McLain Smith. Unexplained.
Speaker 1: The book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide.
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