WEBVTT - Season 09 Episode 15: Red Dust (Pt.2 of 2) 0:00:10.680 --> 0:00:13.800 You're listening to the second and final pard of Unexplained, 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:25.400 Season nine, episode fifteen, Red Dust. A haze of smoke 0:00:25.600 --> 0:00:30.040 filled the harshly lit air of the interrogation room. Harold 0:00:30.080 --> 0:00:33.760 Pinfold sat alone as he chained smoked one three, five 0:00:33.880 --> 0:00:38.120 after another. He fidgeted with the packet. He picked at 0:00:38.159 --> 0:00:41.120 a scab on his arm. He bit at his nails. 0:00:41.960 --> 0:00:45.199 The man was clearly nervous and quite possibly in the 0:00:45.240 --> 0:00:50.240 early stages of opium withdrawn. Nineteen year old Pamela Werner 0:00:50.479 --> 0:00:53.519 had been dead for over a week, and Pinfold was 0:00:53.560 --> 0:00:57.480 the first real suspect Inspectors Hans shir Cheung and Richard 0:00:57.480 --> 0:01:01.520 Dennis had had to work with. Having made little progress 0:01:01.600 --> 0:01:06.000 up till then Inspector Hahn's sweep of Beijing's infamous den 0:01:06.040 --> 0:01:10.520 of iniquity, the ominous bad Land Zone, had finally borne fruit. 0:01:11.640 --> 0:01:16.039 During door to door inquiries. A Russian landlady, clearly rattled 0:01:16.080 --> 0:01:19.880 by the discovery of Pamela's body, wasted little time in 0:01:19.880 --> 0:01:23.520 informing the attending officer that she just recently found a 0:01:23.560 --> 0:01:27.399 blood stained dagger, shoes and cloth in the room of 0:01:27.440 --> 0:01:31.640 a tenant of hers. The man was on further investigation 0:01:32.120 --> 0:01:36.640 revealed to be a Canadian called Harold Pinfld. Pinfold was 0:01:36.680 --> 0:01:40.080 a deserter from the Canadian Army who'd acquired a criminal 0:01:40.120 --> 0:01:43.959 record in the United States before fleeing to China, where 0:01:43.959 --> 0:01:47.960 he scratched a living working various low paid jobs. He 0:01:48.080 --> 0:01:52.960 was quickly apprehended and taken into custody for questioning. One 0:01:53.000 --> 0:01:57.200 officer at the Beijing police station recognized him immediately as 0:01:57.280 --> 0:01:59.760 one of the rubberneckers that he'd seen at the crime 0:01:59.800 --> 0:02:03.400 stone see the day they found the body. For hours, 0:02:03.800 --> 0:02:09.120 Pinfold refused to answer Inspectors Hahn and Dennis's questions what 0:02:09.320 --> 0:02:12.040 was he doing at the crime scene? They asked what 0:02:12.200 --> 0:02:14.960 did number twenty seven on a street in the bad 0:02:15.080 --> 0:02:19.040 Lands named chan Ban mean to him? The place was 0:02:19.080 --> 0:02:22.000 a known brothel, they'd found a business card for it 0:02:22.200 --> 0:02:28.840 among Pinfold's possessions, and what was the newdest retreat. Harold 0:02:28.880 --> 0:02:33.079 Pinfold feigned ignorance of it all, but they'd already spoken 0:02:33.160 --> 0:02:38.080 to Joseph Nuf, the manager of Number twenty seven. It 0:02:38.240 --> 0:02:41.160 was Nuf who told them that Pinfold was a regular 0:02:41.240 --> 0:02:44.720 customer at the brothel and at the establishment next door 0:02:44.760 --> 0:02:48.880 to number twenty eight, and it was Nouf who told 0:02:48.880 --> 0:02:51.800 them that Pinfold had a side hustle working as a 0:02:51.840 --> 0:02:55.560 security guard for what he described as a newdest retreat. 0:02:56.560 --> 0:02:59.760 Nuf claimed not to know too much about it, only 0:02:59.840 --> 0:03:03.280 that it took place in the Western Hills, a secluded 0:03:03.360 --> 0:03:07.080 area of wooded mountainous terrain on the western side of 0:03:07.120 --> 0:03:12.639 the city. Eventually, under sustained questioning and probably when he'd 0:03:12.680 --> 0:03:24.120 run out of cigarettes, Pinfold finally dropped his guard Harold 0:03:24.160 --> 0:03:27.920 Pinfld admitted to having worked security once or twice at 0:03:27.960 --> 0:03:31.679 the so called nudest retreats, and that on occasions he'd 0:03:31.720 --> 0:03:34.680 even been paid to recruit women to dance naked for 0:03:34.720 --> 0:03:39.160 the attendees there. Inspectors Hahn and Dennis had good reason 0:03:39.320 --> 0:03:42.480 to suspect that these women were recruited for a little 0:03:42.520 --> 0:03:47.000 more than just dancing. Was Pamela one of these dancers, 0:03:47.040 --> 0:03:50.920 they asked. Pinfald said he couldn't tell them because he'd 0:03:50.920 --> 0:03:54.400 never heard of Pamela before her body was found. He 0:03:54.480 --> 0:03:57.000 also claimed that he'd only been at the crime scene 0:03:57.120 --> 0:03:59.520 because he happened to be passing the area at the 0:03:59.560 --> 0:04:02.640 time and was just curious to know what was going on, 0:04:03.880 --> 0:04:07.200 And as for the blood on his possessions, it wasn't human, 0:04:07.280 --> 0:04:10.840 he told them, so they needn't concern themselves with that either. 0:04:11.920 --> 0:04:15.600 According to Pinfald, he sometimes went hunting in the woods 0:04:15.720 --> 0:04:19.640 whenever he worked at the Newdest Retreat. The blood, he said, 0:04:20.040 --> 0:04:24.680 was from his latest kill. Inspectors Hahn and Denis wanted 0:04:24.680 --> 0:04:27.960 to know more about these newdest Retreats, as Pinfald and 0:04:28.080 --> 0:04:31.800 Nouf called them, but Pinfald refused to be drawn any 0:04:31.880 --> 0:04:34.920 further into it, other than to say if they really 0:04:34.960 --> 0:04:37.719 wanted to know what went on there, they should speak 0:04:37.760 --> 0:04:41.960 to Wentworth Prentice. Pinfald had apparently met him at the 0:04:41.960 --> 0:04:46.240 brothel next door to twenty seven number twenty eight twan Ban, 0:04:46.839 --> 0:04:51.000 but declined to say any more. As it happened, the 0:04:51.080 --> 0:04:55.760 pathology report on the bloody knife seemed to confirm Pinfold's story, 0:04:56.160 --> 0:04:59.279 and the man was released. They should have known that 0:04:59.320 --> 0:05:02.320 he would go to round immediately, but it didn't matter. 0:05:02.839 --> 0:05:07.680 By then they had everything they needed. Wentworth Apprentice was 0:05:07.680 --> 0:05:12.799 a debonair, mustachioed American dentist whose patients were mostly wealthy 0:05:12.839 --> 0:05:17.240 expats and diplomats. Although on first impressions he seemed to 0:05:17.279 --> 0:05:22.279 be entirely respectable. A little digging revealed something darker lurking 0:05:22.360 --> 0:05:26.279 underneath the facade. He first came to China with his 0:05:26.360 --> 0:05:31.160 wife in nineteen seventeen after graduating from Harvard's dental School. 0:05:32.080 --> 0:05:35.280 The pair had children while living in Beijing, and by 0:05:35.320 --> 0:05:39.080 all accounts, planned to make a permanent base there. That 0:05:39.360 --> 0:05:43.799 was until June nineteen twenty six, when Prentice's wife left 0:05:43.839 --> 0:05:47.840 the country abruptly, taking the children with her. They would 0:05:47.880 --> 0:05:51.320 never go back. A strange note on his file at 0:05:51.360 --> 0:05:55.000 the US Consulate suggested that at some point there had 0:05:55.040 --> 0:05:58.719 been concerned for the safety of one Apprentice's children, without 0:05:58.760 --> 0:06:02.719 specifying why. Since he was a foreign national of some 0:06:02.880 --> 0:06:06.800 local repute, it failed to inspect a Denis to interview him, 0:06:06.960 --> 0:06:10.880 which he did alongside legation Court of Police Commissioner Edward 0:06:10.920 --> 0:06:15.680 Howard at the commissioner's own home. The dentist presented himself 0:06:15.720 --> 0:06:19.840 as an upstanding member of the expat community, unlike Pinfalt, 0:06:20.120 --> 0:06:23.520 claimed never to have heard of Pamela before, but more 0:06:23.560 --> 0:06:26.080 to the point, he'd been at the cinema on the 0:06:26.120 --> 0:06:29.320 evening she disappeared, so couldn't have had anything to do 0:06:29.400 --> 0:06:33.560 with her. Murder. Inspector Dennis had little choice but to 0:06:33.600 --> 0:06:36.359 take him at his word for the time being. But 0:06:36.480 --> 0:06:40.719 it hadn't gone unnoticed that Wentworth Prentice just so happened 0:06:40.760 --> 0:06:43.760 to live right next door to the French Club's new 0:06:43.760 --> 0:06:54.520 ice rink, where Pamela had last been seen. The day 0:06:54.560 --> 0:06:58.320 after Wentworth Prentice was interviewed by the police, an article 0:06:58.360 --> 0:07:02.520 appeared in Beijing's English language newspaper written by an Irish 0:07:02.520 --> 0:07:07.760 reporter named George Gorman. In it, Gorman criticized the authorities 0:07:07.960 --> 0:07:12.920 for considering Prentice a possible suspect and unfairly tarnishing his reputation. 0:07:13.760 --> 0:07:19.119 The real killers were Chinese, not Westerners, Gorman insisted. Many 0:07:19.160 --> 0:07:22.760 had already begun to speculate that the reason Pamela's organs 0:07:22.760 --> 0:07:25.160 had been removed was so they could be sold for 0:07:25.280 --> 0:07:29.120 medical purposes on the Chinese black market, which were tracked 0:07:29.200 --> 0:07:35.080 with Gorman's assessment. Intriguingly, George Gorman did know Pamela Werner, 0:07:35.360 --> 0:07:38.120 as Inspector Dennis found out when he went to speak 0:07:38.160 --> 0:07:42.080 with him shortly after the article was published. It was 0:07:42.160 --> 0:07:45.960 Gorman's wife that told Dennis that Pamela had even been 0:07:46.000 --> 0:07:49.800 to their house visiting their daughter only the night before 0:07:49.840 --> 0:07:54.200 her murder. The potential connections demanded to be followed up, 0:07:54.480 --> 0:07:58.400 but time was running out for the two detectives. Inspector 0:07:58.440 --> 0:08:01.800 Dennis had only been given enough leave to stay until 0:08:01.840 --> 0:08:06.200 February seventh, just before Chinese New Year. It wasn't nearly 0:08:06.240 --> 0:08:09.360 long enough. Not only had they failed to find any 0:08:09.520 --> 0:08:14.000 verifiable suspects, they hadn't even established where Pamela was murdered 0:08:14.040 --> 0:08:18.280 in the first place. The inquest into Pamela's death was 0:08:18.320 --> 0:08:22.640 held on January twenty ninth. After hearing testimony from Pamela's 0:08:22.640 --> 0:08:27.920 friends and some of the investigating officers, the coroner, Nicholas Fitzmorris, 0:08:28.200 --> 0:08:32.800 a British consul, concluded rather redundantly that Pamela's death was 0:08:32.880 --> 0:08:35.400 an unlawful killing, but that it would be up to 0:08:35.440 --> 0:08:38.520 a later hearing to decide who might have committed the crime. 0:08:39.800 --> 0:08:43.320 The following day, much to the dismay of Inspectors Hans 0:08:43.360 --> 0:08:47.520 and Dennis, details of the autopsy were published in the papers, 0:08:47.559 --> 0:08:50.520 having been secretly leaked to the press. It was an 0:08:50.640 --> 0:08:55.960 unmitigated disaster that also led to Fitzmorris's demotion. Now with 0:08:56.120 --> 0:08:59.920 so much key information in the public domain the culprit 0:09:00.160 --> 0:09:02.920 or culprits could use it to stay a step ahead 0:09:02.960 --> 0:09:06.240 of the investigators, but by then it would have made 0:09:06.280 --> 0:09:10.120 little difference in any case, because Inspectors Hahn and Dennis 0:09:10.320 --> 0:09:13.720 had reached the end of the road. As the raucous 0:09:13.840 --> 0:09:17.920 celebrations of Chinese New Year began, many in Beijing were 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:20.800 convinced it would be the last such holiday for them 0:09:20.840 --> 0:09:24.959 and their city for some time. Inspector Dennis was forced 0:09:25.000 --> 0:09:28.800 to return to Tianjin, while Inspector Hahn was moved on 0:09:28.880 --> 0:09:32.760 to other cases. After all, there were far more pressing 0:09:32.800 --> 0:09:36.680 concerns now than an unsolved murder, not least of all 0:09:36.840 --> 0:09:50.880 the impending invasion of the city. By March nineteen thirty seven, 0:09:51.280 --> 0:09:56.600 the Japanese government was becoming increasingly bold with their military provocations. 0:09:56.720 --> 0:09:59.800 They began driving tanks through parts of the city and 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:03.840 flying their fighter planes overhead at low altitudes, feeling out 0:10:03.880 --> 0:10:08.360 the Chinese government's appetite for pushing back. Meanwhile, the Japanese 0:10:08.480 --> 0:10:12.840 army's presence outside the city grew ever bigger and more threatening. 0:10:13.440 --> 0:10:16.000 It was only a matter of time before they mounted 0:10:16.040 --> 0:10:20.120 a full scale occupation. On the night of July seventh, 0:10:20.280 --> 0:10:24.360 nineteen thirty seven, near the Marco Polo Bridge just outside 0:10:24.400 --> 0:10:29.520 of Beijing, Japanese and Chinese Nationalist Army troops clashed during 0:10:29.520 --> 0:10:33.079 what had begun as a routine military exercise. When a 0:10:33.160 --> 0:10:37.440 Japanese soldier was reported missing, demand's weight to search the 0:10:37.520 --> 0:10:41.960 nearby town of Wuanping, which were refused by the Chinese Army, 0:10:42.760 --> 0:10:46.520 shots were fired. What followed became the opening act of 0:10:46.559 --> 0:10:50.600 a wider war, as reinforcements poured into North China and 0:10:50.679 --> 0:10:53.560 the fragile balance that had been in place since the 0:10:53.600 --> 0:10:59.880 Boxer rebellion finally gave way. Beijing fell with little sustained resistance. 0:11:00.640 --> 0:11:03.720 By the end of July, it was completely occupied by 0:11:03.760 --> 0:11:07.880 the Japanese military. The old order gave way to something 0:11:08.000 --> 0:11:12.360 far harsher and more uncertain. Any lingering hope that the 0:11:12.400 --> 0:11:17.160 truth behind Pamela Werner's death might be uncovered quietly slipped away. 0:11:18.160 --> 0:11:22.240 There was only one man left to keep investigating Pamela's murder. 0:11:22.800 --> 0:11:28.239 Her dogged and heartbroken father, Edward Werner, had been extremely 0:11:28.320 --> 0:11:31.559 disappointed with the lack of progress on his daughter's case. 0:11:32.400 --> 0:11:36.080 British authorities in Beijing had offered a reward of one 0:11:36.160 --> 0:11:40.960 thousand Chinese silver dollars roughly ten times what the average 0:11:41.080 --> 0:11:44.920 Chinese family would spend in a year for information that 0:11:45.000 --> 0:11:48.400 would help resolve the case. But the reward fliers had 0:11:48.400 --> 0:11:51.720 only been printed in English. Werner's plea for them to 0:11:51.720 --> 0:11:56.040 be printed in Mandarin too, fell on deaf ears, since 0:11:56.160 --> 0:12:01.559 many Chinese citizens distrusted their own authorities those of foreign countries. 0:12:01.960 --> 0:12:06.640 Werner also argued unsuccessfully to allow useful informant to claim 0:12:06.679 --> 0:12:10.200 the money anonymously, and when he finally got the Beijing 0:12:10.240 --> 0:12:14.160 police to return Pamela's clothes and to other personal effects, 0:12:14.520 --> 0:12:17.560 it appeared the items had not been properly stored or 0:12:17.600 --> 0:12:22.559 even checked for fingerprints. Convinced that the authorities weren't doing enough, 0:12:22.800 --> 0:12:26.080 Werner decided to hold a press conference on the steps 0:12:26.080 --> 0:12:30.360 of the British legation headquarters. He criticized the decision to 0:12:30.440 --> 0:12:34.760 let Canadian suspect Harold Pinfold go, despite the fact he 0:12:34.800 --> 0:12:38.240 clearly had some crucial information that they failed to follow 0:12:38.320 --> 0:12:41.720 up on. He also drew on his considerable knowledge of 0:12:41.840 --> 0:12:46.320 Chinese culture to dispute any suggestion that his daughter's organs 0:12:46.400 --> 0:12:51.480 had been harvested for traditional practices. Werner firmly believed that 0:12:51.559 --> 0:12:55.520 his daughter's killer or killers were Westerners, and offered an 0:12:55.559 --> 0:13:00.120 extra five thousand Chinese gold dollars, three times what an 0:13:00.160 --> 0:13:03.600 average Chinese family could earn in their lifetimes and a 0:13:03.600 --> 0:13:07.160 sum that constituted most of his life savings for any 0:13:07.240 --> 0:13:19.679 vital information, But still no informant came forward. Months after 0:13:19.720 --> 0:13:23.200 the official inquest Edward Werner was still living in his 0:13:23.280 --> 0:13:27.160 courtyard house, but due to the Japanese occupation, was no 0:13:27.240 --> 0:13:30.040 longer free to roam around the city as he had 0:13:30.080 --> 0:13:34.320 once been. Nonetheless, he stubbornly kept up the search to 0:13:34.360 --> 0:13:38.280 find his daughter's killer, repeatedly pleading with the Foreign Office 0:13:38.320 --> 0:13:42.640 to reopen the case. He also used his considerable financial 0:13:42.679 --> 0:13:46.920 resources to encourage former Beijing police officers to share whatever 0:13:46.960 --> 0:13:50.400 they knew with him. Like the two inspectors before him, 0:13:50.559 --> 0:13:54.320 Werner's investigations led him to the brothels at twenty seven 0:13:54.440 --> 0:13:58.480 and twenty eight chuan Ban, although by then their owners 0:13:58.520 --> 0:14:01.520 appeared to have closed the establishishments and fled the city. 0:14:02.320 --> 0:14:06.439 Werner became fixated with number twenty eight, especially where it 0:14:06.520 --> 0:14:10.440 seemed dentist Wentworth Prentice was a regular, and where he 0:14:10.559 --> 0:14:13.960 was introduced to Harold Pinforlt, and potentially many of the 0:14:14.000 --> 0:14:18.440 other men whom Werner discovered also attended his secret nudest 0:14:18.520 --> 0:14:22.200 retreats in the Western Hills. But there was far more 0:14:22.240 --> 0:14:26.520 to come. When Edward Werner went through his daughter's diary, 0:14:26.760 --> 0:14:30.120 he claimed to find evidence which detectives Hahn and Dennis 0:14:30.160 --> 0:14:35.120 had overlooked, namely entries his daughter had apparently written about 0:14:35.160 --> 0:14:37.720 how she'd gone on a weekend visit to the Western 0:14:37.800 --> 0:14:41.640 Hills with the Irish reporter George Gorman and his family 0:14:42.200 --> 0:14:45.880 six months before her murder, and that while on that trip, 0:14:46.120 --> 0:14:51.160 Gorman had made sexual overtures to her, which she'd rebuffed, this, 0:14:51.320 --> 0:14:54.320 of course, being the same George Gorman who had so 0:14:54.440 --> 0:14:59.000 stoutly defended the reputation of his friend Wentworth Apprentice in 0:14:59.080 --> 0:15:02.560 the newspaper the day after he was taken in for questioning. 0:15:03.560 --> 0:15:07.880 Was Gorman also a regular at number twenty eight. It 0:15:07.960 --> 0:15:11.400 was around this time that Werner apparently heard of rumor 0:15:11.520 --> 0:15:16.040 that Canadian suspect Harold Pinflt, on his release from questioning, 0:15:16.320 --> 0:15:19.080 had gone straight to the city of Tianjin, where he 0:15:19.200 --> 0:15:22.960 was heard asking someone if Prentice had been arrested yet, 0:15:23.760 --> 0:15:28.320 and that wasn't all that Werner had on Wentworth Prentice 0:15:28.480 --> 0:15:30.760 when he was interviewed back at the start of the year. 0:15:31.120 --> 0:15:34.920 Prentice claimed never to have met Pamela before, but this 0:15:35.240 --> 0:15:39.360 wasn't true, as Werner tried to impress upon anyone that 0:15:39.360 --> 0:15:42.200 would listen to him, Pamela had actually once been a 0:15:42.240 --> 0:15:45.440 patient apprentices and he had the receipt to prove it, 0:15:45.720 --> 0:15:48.760 which he said was dated from only five weeks before 0:15:48.800 --> 0:15:52.880 the murder and in case it had gone unnoticed. Though 0:15:52.880 --> 0:15:56.400 it wasn't Prentice that Pamela had seen the morning before 0:15:56.440 --> 0:15:59.840 she disappeared, she had been to the dentist that day. 0:16:00.640 --> 0:16:10.200 Could that have been linked to anything at all? At 0:16:10.240 --> 0:16:14.000 some point Edward Werner learned that a rickshaw puller had 0:16:14.040 --> 0:16:17.120 been brought in for questioning after he was seen washing 0:16:17.120 --> 0:16:20.320 a bloody seat cushion near to where Pamela's body was 0:16:20.360 --> 0:16:24.000 found not long after she was killed. At the time, 0:16:24.280 --> 0:16:27.520 he told Inspector Hahn that the blood was the result 0:16:27.560 --> 0:16:31.840 of a fight between a Russian expat and an American marine. 0:16:32.040 --> 0:16:35.240 Werner hired agents to track down the ritual puller so 0:16:35.320 --> 0:16:39.120 he could speak to him himself. The man allegedly told 0:16:39.160 --> 0:16:42.160 Werner a very different story to the one he gave 0:16:42.200 --> 0:16:47.280 to Inspector Hahn. According to Werner, the rickshaw puller claimed 0:16:47.440 --> 0:16:50.440 that on the night Pamela went missing, he was called 0:16:50.480 --> 0:16:54.040 to the Barcum brothel at number twenty eight Juan Ban. 0:16:54.760 --> 0:16:57.680 There he picked up two men and what appeared to 0:16:57.720 --> 0:17:00.880 be a young European woman wrapped in a white sheet 0:17:01.200 --> 0:17:04.920 who wasn't moving. It was her blood that had got 0:17:04.960 --> 0:17:09.000 on the rickshaw cushion, he said. Werner again took his 0:17:09.080 --> 0:17:12.840 findings to British diplomats, pleading with them to reopen the case, 0:17:13.200 --> 0:17:16.920 but the rickshaw puller, who Werner likely paid some considerable 0:17:16.960 --> 0:17:20.080 money for his apparent confession, was not regarded as a 0:17:20.080 --> 0:17:26.120 credible witness. Throughout nineteen thirty eight and into nineteen thirty nine, 0:17:26.440 --> 0:17:30.760 Werner continued investigating, but all his efforts to get British 0:17:30.840 --> 0:17:34.840 officials to reopen the case failed. In fact, they became 0:17:34.920 --> 0:17:38.080 so annoyed with him he was eventually banned from entering 0:17:38.280 --> 0:17:41.520 the Legation quarter. So keen were they to draw a 0:17:41.600 --> 0:17:46.719 line under it all, but Werner would not be deterred. Eventually, 0:17:46.760 --> 0:17:50.240 he also discovered that Joseph Nuf, who had turned out 0:17:50.359 --> 0:17:53.960 round the brothels at twenty seven and twenty eight. Juan Ban, 0:17:54.400 --> 0:17:57.359 despite what he told police back in nineteen thirty seven, 0:17:57.880 --> 0:18:01.000 had in fact not only known more about the Western 0:18:01.080 --> 0:18:06.040 Hill's nudest weekends, he was a regular participant. It was 0:18:06.080 --> 0:18:11.320 all becoming glaringly obvious to Werner that Wentworth, Apprentice and 0:18:11.400 --> 0:18:15.360 all his fellow frequenters of Number twenty eight knew far 0:18:15.440 --> 0:18:18.840 more about his daughter and possibly what had happened to her, 0:18:19.040 --> 0:18:22.720 than they were letting on. Werner's own theory was this, 0:18:23.400 --> 0:18:26.880 over a period of months, Pamela had been essentially groomed 0:18:26.920 --> 0:18:31.080 by Prentice and his associates. Then, possibly under the pretext 0:18:31.119 --> 0:18:34.200 of a Christmas party, they had finally made their move 0:18:34.480 --> 0:18:37.480 and invited her to meet them at Number twenty eight. 0:18:38.240 --> 0:18:40.600 Perhaps she'd even met one of them first for a 0:18:40.680 --> 0:18:43.639 secret dinner, which would explain the food that was later 0:18:43.720 --> 0:18:47.679 found in her stomach. Werner surmised that the men planned 0:18:47.680 --> 0:18:50.520 to have sex with his daughter that night, but having 0:18:50.560 --> 0:18:54.320 realized the truth about why she'd been invited out, Pamela 0:18:54.400 --> 0:18:59.760 refused their advances and a struggle ensued. During that struggle, 0:19:00.040 --> 0:19:03.639 Pameler was likely struck with a chair. Werner had in 0:19:03.640 --> 0:19:06.800 fact spotted a wooden chair with a broken leg when 0:19:06.800 --> 0:19:10.080 he visited the brothel as part of his own investigations. 0:19:10.960 --> 0:19:14.480 Having been killed in sight, Werner surmised that the assailants 0:19:14.520 --> 0:19:17.800 had then taken Pamela's body to the Fox Tower because 0:19:17.840 --> 0:19:22.600 it was unlit and unpatrolled. There, the men, some of whom, 0:19:22.640 --> 0:19:25.680 if Werner's theory was to be believed, were hunters and 0:19:25.800 --> 0:19:30.240 medical professionals, mutilated the corpse with a combination of crude 0:19:30.240 --> 0:19:34.280 stabs and cuts, as well as clinical incisions to remove 0:19:34.359 --> 0:19:38.640 her organs, but nobody else bought it, or at least 0:19:38.720 --> 0:19:42.920 didn't want to know about it. Despite it all, Werner 0:19:43.000 --> 0:19:46.159 continued pursuing the case, and was still doing so in 0:19:46.240 --> 0:19:50.280 late nineteen forty one when the Japanese Air Force attacked 0:19:50.320 --> 0:20:03.960 Pearl Harbor. With Japan now formerly at war with many 0:20:04.080 --> 0:20:08.160 of the nations represented in the Legation Quarter, things only 0:20:08.160 --> 0:20:12.479 became even more intense for expats in Beijing and across China. 0:20:13.560 --> 0:20:16.560 Edward Werner was forced to flee his home and move 0:20:16.640 --> 0:20:19.840 into the relative safety of the Quarter, whose right to 0:20:19.920 --> 0:20:23.760 diplomatic and legal immunity was getting more and more fragile 0:20:23.800 --> 0:20:26.920 by the day. All the while he continued to write 0:20:27.000 --> 0:20:29.719 long requests to the Foreign Office to have the killers 0:20:29.760 --> 0:20:33.199 he'd singled out brought to justice, all of which was 0:20:33.240 --> 0:20:37.600 in vain. In March nineteen forty three, the Japanese government 0:20:37.720 --> 0:20:41.240 finally took over the Legation Quarter and removed all its 0:20:41.280 --> 0:20:47.480 remaining European residents, including Edward Werner and Wentworth Apprentice. All 0:20:47.560 --> 0:20:49.840 were marched to the train station and sent to an 0:20:49.880 --> 0:20:53.480 interment camp in Shandong, two hundred fifty miles away to 0:20:53.560 --> 0:20:58.199 the south. Ironically, Edward Werner would spend the rest of 0:20:58.240 --> 0:21:01.399 the war as a prisoner of the Shandong interment camp, 0:21:01.640 --> 0:21:05.240 alongside many of the men he believed had been involved 0:21:05.280 --> 0:21:09.960 with Pamela's death. Wentworth Prentice even became the camp's de 0:21:10.080 --> 0:21:14.280 facto dentist, earning a measure of respect from fellow inmates, 0:21:14.320 --> 0:21:17.800 something that could only have deepened Werner's sense of grievance 0:21:17.880 --> 0:21:21.840 toward him. Survivors of the camp later said that the 0:21:21.920 --> 0:21:26.359 by then seventy five year old Werner periodically confronted Prentice, 0:21:26.720 --> 0:21:30.760 yelling you killed her. I know you killed Pamela. You 0:21:30.880 --> 0:21:36.040 did it. When the war ended, Edward Werner remained in China. 0:21:36.880 --> 0:21:39.280 It had, after all, been his home for most of 0:21:39.320 --> 0:21:42.399 his life, but more than that, it was where he 0:21:42.480 --> 0:21:46.000 felt closest to his daughter. To leave would have felt 0:21:46.040 --> 0:21:50.280 like abandoning her and giving up on her. Case. Old 0:21:50.320 --> 0:21:53.439 age and ill health finally convinced him to return to 0:21:53.520 --> 0:21:57.800 England in nineteen fifty one. On his death three years later, 0:21:58.200 --> 0:22:03.040 the British Times newspaper published a lengthy obituary containing only 0:22:03.080 --> 0:22:06.880 a brief mention of Pamela's murder. It would be several 0:22:06.960 --> 0:22:12.000 decades before the mysterious unsolved case would surface in print again. 0:22:19.359 --> 0:22:22.840 One rainy day in London in the early two thousands, 0:22:22.880 --> 0:22:25.840 a writer named Paul French sat at a desk in 0:22:25.880 --> 0:22:30.679 the National Archives. French had studied Chinese at the University 0:22:30.720 --> 0:22:33.440 of London and had become interested in the career of 0:22:33.480 --> 0:22:36.719 a journalist who had been working in Beijing just prior 0:22:36.760 --> 0:22:39.720 to the Second World War, a woman by the name 0:22:39.800 --> 0:22:44.359 of Helen Foster Snow. The dismal wet weather that day 0:22:44.640 --> 0:22:47.200 led to French staying a little longer at his desk 0:22:47.320 --> 0:22:50.720 than normal, and as he read on a footnote in 0:22:50.800 --> 0:22:55.639 Snow's biography, suddenly caught his attention. In the note, Snow 0:22:55.800 --> 0:22:58.720 alluded to her fears in the wake of Pamela Werner's 0:22:58.760 --> 0:23:01.840 murder that it was her and not the young woman 0:23:01.920 --> 0:23:06.639 who'd been the intended target. French was intrigued. When he 0:23:06.720 --> 0:23:09.400 woke the next morning, he had to find out more 0:23:09.440 --> 0:23:13.760 about the story. His curiosity led him back to the archives, 0:23:14.040 --> 0:23:17.200 where he searched a box of nineteen forties records from 0:23:17.200 --> 0:23:20.480 the British embassy in China for any mention of the killing. 0:23:21.240 --> 0:23:25.800 He was not disappointed. There were numerous documents on the case, 0:23:26.160 --> 0:23:29.439 including a one hundred and fifty page letter from Edward 0:23:29.440 --> 0:23:33.080 Werner setting out his own private efforts to solve the case, 0:23:33.800 --> 0:23:37.800 concluding with the accusation that Wentworth, Prentice and his fellow 0:23:37.880 --> 0:23:41.920 nudists had been the killers. French wrote a book about 0:23:41.920 --> 0:23:44.960 the case called Midnight in p King, in which he 0:23:45.080 --> 0:23:49.000 concurred with Werner's theory. The book became a best seller 0:23:49.280 --> 0:23:54.440 and won many awards, but like the original investigations, French's 0:23:54.480 --> 0:24:00.560 conclusions were dogged by counterclaims and controversy. Several critics, including 0:24:00.640 --> 0:24:04.439 two descendants of individuals who featured in the case, cast 0:24:04.600 --> 0:24:09.840 doubt on French's presentation of Werner's conclusions. They posted photographs 0:24:09.840 --> 0:24:13.240 of many original documents referred to in the book, which 0:24:13.320 --> 0:24:18.119 true Werner's reliability into question Edward Werner was not a 0:24:18.160 --> 0:24:22.360 credible source, the critics said, claiming that French had downplayed 0:24:22.520 --> 0:24:26.360 the man's violent temper. They drew attention to an incident 0:24:26.440 --> 0:24:30.600 in nineteen thirteen while Werner was the British consul in Fujo, 0:24:31.240 --> 0:24:34.200 when he struck a customs official with a whip, an 0:24:34.200 --> 0:24:37.800 incident which led to Werner being forcibly retired from the 0:24:37.800 --> 0:24:42.440 diplomatic service. The critics also said that Werner's assertions were 0:24:42.480 --> 0:24:46.080 hard to substantiate and not mentioned in any other accounts 0:24:46.119 --> 0:24:51.080 of the investigation in Foreign office correspondence or newspaper articles. 0:24:51.920 --> 0:24:54.600 They also showed that the receipt for the dental work 0:24:54.680 --> 0:24:57.800 that Prentice had carried out on Pamela was in fact 0:24:57.960 --> 0:25:02.080 dated six years before her death, not five weeks as 0:25:02.119 --> 0:25:04.840 her father had claimed, and that the time of the 0:25:04.920 --> 0:25:08.480 cinema performance that Princess said he'd been at the night 0:25:08.560 --> 0:25:12.200 Pamela was murdered was backed up by newspaper records from 0:25:12.200 --> 0:25:17.600 the time. French's reconstructions relied too heavily on warness letters, 0:25:17.640 --> 0:25:20.919 they said, while it was likely that more accurate police 0:25:20.960 --> 0:25:31.960 records had not survived the war. In twenty eighteen, a 0:25:32.080 --> 0:25:35.960 death in p King Who Killed Pamela Werner was published. 0:25:36.480 --> 0:25:40.159 Its author, Graham Shephard, openly admitted that he was not 0:25:40.240 --> 0:25:43.720 a fan of true crime books or writing, but he'd 0:25:43.720 --> 0:25:47.439 become intrigued by the case after reading Poor French's book, 0:25:48.000 --> 0:25:52.680 partly because his wife's grandfather was Nicholas Fitzmorris, who'd presided 0:25:52.720 --> 0:25:56.359 over the inquiry into Pamela's death, but also because he 0:25:56.440 --> 0:25:59.720 was a retired British police officer with over thirty years 0:25:59.720 --> 0:26:04.720 on them. For the former detective, Pamela Werner's killing presented 0:26:04.760 --> 0:26:10.000 an intriguing cold case. Using his policing skills, Shepherd methodically 0:26:10.080 --> 0:26:13.679 drew up a full list of possible suspects, which included 0:26:13.800 --> 0:26:18.119 not just Wentworth, Prentice and his fellow nudists, but Chinese 0:26:18.160 --> 0:26:22.680 and Japanese agents and some previously unexamined suspects and leads. 0:26:23.440 --> 0:26:27.480 Shepherd found the gory nature of the murder especially curious. 0:26:28.119 --> 0:26:31.320 Why had her chest been opened and her heart taken out? 0:26:31.400 --> 0:26:36.400 For one? At first, Shepherd didn't discount the possibility that 0:26:36.600 --> 0:26:41.080 Edward Werner himself might have murdered his daughter Indeed, he 0:26:41.200 --> 0:26:45.040 considered the father, with his history of violence and controlling, 0:26:45.160 --> 0:26:48.399 insecure nature, to be a stronger candidate than many of 0:26:48.440 --> 0:26:52.919 the other suspects. Shepherd noted how Werner seemed aware of 0:26:53.000 --> 0:26:56.480 every detail of Pamela's movements on the day that she died. 0:26:57.160 --> 0:27:00.159 He was known to have disapproved of her boyfriends and 0:27:00.240 --> 0:27:04.280 to have had an explosive temper. Not only that he 0:27:04.400 --> 0:27:07.120 turned up at the crime scene the following morning, as 0:27:07.160 --> 0:27:12.000 offenders are often known to do, but in his final analysis, 0:27:12.280 --> 0:27:16.040 Shepherd came to believe that Werner didn't kill his only child. 0:27:17.000 --> 0:27:20.159 He felt, from his policing perspective that there was someone 0:27:20.160 --> 0:27:24.080 else much more likely to have been the murderer. Han 0:27:24.119 --> 0:27:28.560 Shao Ching, Pamela's classmate who had been so brutally beaten 0:27:28.560 --> 0:27:31.000 off by her father when he attempted to call on 0:27:31.040 --> 0:27:36.040 Pamela's home a week before she died. Shepherd's conclusion was 0:27:36.080 --> 0:27:39.800 that the loss of face, so important in Chinese culture, 0:27:40.160 --> 0:27:43.760 prompted the young man to exact an extreme form of revenge, 0:27:44.200 --> 0:27:48.560 of which the removal of Pamela's heart was its symbolic climax. 0:27:49.800 --> 0:27:53.199 The former detective noted that the crime scene was just 0:27:53.280 --> 0:27:56.440 around the corner from Pamela's home on her route there 0:27:56.480 --> 0:28:00.000 from the ice rink, which to him was highly suggest 0:28:00.000 --> 0:28:04.520 festive of a lone offender, full of obsessive resentment, lust 0:28:04.560 --> 0:28:16.520