Speaker 1: Pushkin previously on the Chinatown stand.
Speaker 2: First of all, you didn't think of nothing back then.
Speaker 2: You're just thinking, oh, seize it to make money.
Speaker 1: That was it.
Speaker 3: There were a lot of dangerous gangsters out there in
Speaker 3: the Asian on the world who made a name for themselves,
Speaker 3: and Onion Head wasn't one of them.
Speaker 4: This is therefore to command you, the said members of
Speaker 4: the Royal Hong Kong Police, to deliver the body of
Speaker 4: the said Johnny Ang known as Sweet Hung Eng Chung
Speaker 4: Tau and Onion Head, into the custody of the Commissioners
Speaker 4: of the Correctional Services and be there safely kept.
Speaker 1: After spending over two years fighting extradition from Hong Kong,
Speaker 1: Johnny Angle flown back to New York City in the
Speaker 1: company of US marshalls. It was November one, nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 1: They took him to the MCC that's the Imposing Jail,
Speaker 1: not too far from Chinatown. He would be held there
Speaker 1: while he awaited his trial. It had taken a lot
Speaker 1: of time and money to get Johnny Ng back to
Speaker 1: the States. It looked like a victory in the country's
Speaker 1: war on drugs, an effort that had been in the
Speaker 1: works for years. The week Johnny was flown back to
Speaker 1: the US, Congress held yet another hearing on Asian organized
Speaker 1: crime and noted Johnny's return.
Speaker 4: The hip Sing controls the Flying Dragons gang, located on
Speaker 4: Pell and Doyle Streets. Johnny Aang aka Onion Head was
Speaker 4: the main leader until two years ago when he fled
Speaker 4: to Hong Kong. As a result of federal narcotics charges,
Speaker 4: onion Head was extradited to the US.
Speaker 1: But the reason this hearing stood out to me is
Speaker 1: because of two wisinesses who testified at it. They both
Speaker 1: owned or ran small businesses in Manhattan's Chinatown. They're among
Speaker 1: the few figures I've been able to find from this
Speaker 1: time who dared to make any public statements against the gangs,
Speaker 1: and reading over their testimony, it doesn't seem like the
Speaker 1: arrests of people like Onionhead made them feel much safer.
Speaker 5: So this is from witness number one.
Speaker 1: I went over the transcripts of my co reporter Shi Yuang.
Speaker 1: This witness testified not only using a false name, but
Speaker 1: from behind a screen because he was so worried about retaliation.
Speaker 5: I am a Chinese businessman who has owned two businesses
Speaker 5: in New York city in a Chinatown area, I have
Speaker 5: had the experience of being victimized by more than one gang.
Speaker 5: I reported the incident to the police. Very few merchants
Speaker 5: in Chinatown ever do this because they fear retaliation against
Speaker 5: themselves and their families. Many also feared the police because
Speaker 5: they are in the country illegally and they're hesitant to
Speaker 5: have any contact with the author. The gang scared us,
Speaker 5: and we always pay because we know that they have
Speaker 5: the ability to ruin our businesses. I am testifying here
Speaker 5: today under a false name and behind a screen because
Speaker 5: I will likely be injured or killed if the gangs
Speaker 5: find out I am here.
Speaker 1: I was really shocked at the end when he said
Speaker 1: that he's testifying behind like not only is he's using
Speaker 1: a false name, he's also testifying behind a screen because
Speaker 1: he's so worried about retaliation.
Speaker 5: As a very small community rate like back then, Chinatown
Speaker 5: was only a few blocks, so by testifying, the business
Speaker 5: owners basically put themselves at hetre risk.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The second witness also testified behind a screen. He said,
Speaker 1: I'm a manager at a restaurant located at the heart
Speaker 1: of Chinatown, New York City. Because my business location is
Speaker 1: controlled by a gang named the Flying Dragons. I'm constantly
Speaker 1: threatened and intimidated by them. As a manager, I have
Speaker 1: to try to show them a very respectful manner, otherwise
Speaker 1: I put myself in danger.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the leak for people to really try to settle
Speaker 5: down and support your family, just to earn himself a life,
Speaker 5: like a safe life to live around the area. It's like,
Speaker 5: you don't know what will happen to you to your family,
Speaker 5: true business. You don't even know what mistake quote unquote
Speaker 5: mistake that you would make when you were interacting with
Speaker 5: these gang people.
Speaker 1: And that's why I think going to Washington and speaking
Speaker 1: out about what was going on was like a huge
Speaker 1: leap of faith, right right.
Speaker 5: But would that lead to real safety? They don't know,
Speaker 5: But they choose to take the step and just try
Speaker 5: to break the cycle that the gangs have created in Chinatown.
Speaker 1: Congress clearly wanted to put a stop to the gangs,
Speaker 1: and so did people like Beryl Howell, the prosecutor who
Speaker 1: had been working on the Johnny In case for four years,
Speaker 1: and when he finally came to the US to stand trial,
Speaker 1: the moment of truth had arrived. Beryl was now preparing
Speaker 1: to bring down Johnny the head of the powerful Flying
Speaker 1: Dragons Gang for good. I'm Litty Jane Cott, and this
Speaker 1: is the Chinatown Sting, Episode five, The Mastermind. As it happens,
Speaker 1: Beryl wasn't the only prosecutor trying to bring Johnny Yang
Speaker 1: to justice. The prosecutor in another part of the city
Speaker 1: had been doing the same thing. Her name is Karen Seymour.
Speaker 6: I had flown to Hong Kong for extradition hearings, and
Speaker 6: so this was the case I really really cared about,
Speaker 6: and I wasn't about to give it away for someone
Speaker 6: else to try.
Speaker 1: Karen had been pursuing a separate case against Johnny based
Speaker 1: on events that happened in the spring of nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: eight after federal authorities had disrupted the mail package scheme.
Speaker 1: Johnny did not lie low. Instead, he responded, allegedly by
Speaker 1: looking for new ways to bring drugs into the country.
Speaker 1: And this is where we need to take a side
Speaker 1: journey into the world of restaurant equipment. According to the government,
Speaker 1: Johnny had asked a friend of his, a guy nicknamed
Speaker 1: Fat Qualk, if he had any ideas for smuggling heroin,
Speaker 1: and Fat Quok did he had a cousin named six
Speaker 1: finger Loo, who had six fingers on one hand and
Speaker 1: a noodle shop in Boston. Six Fingerlo said he had
Speaker 1: ordered bean sprout washers from Hong Kong and the machines
Speaker 1: had arrived without being searched by customs, so why not
Speaker 1: just had heroin in one of those.
Speaker 6: And so that was what Johnny Ing was approached, and
Speaker 6: he said, okay, yeah, let's use it. Let's load up heroin.
Speaker 1: Courtdox would later say, Fat Quock and six finger Loo
Speaker 1: flew to Hong Kong. Once they got there, they procured
Speaker 1: a bean sprout washing machine. It's about the size of
Speaker 1: a large and narrow bathtub. Inside it has these spinning
Speaker 1: cylinders that moved the water around to remove the debris
Speaker 1: from the bean sprouts. Six Fingerloo spent all night welding
Speaker 1: these cylinders so he could hide one hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: pounds of heroin inside of them.
Speaker 6: So what Johnny Ing was able to do on like
Speaker 6: before where he was sending small packages, is do this
Speaker 6: sort of mother load shipment of this Southeast Asian heroin,
Speaker 6: which was very, very valuable.
Speaker 1: This shipment worth millions of dollars made it out of
Speaker 1: Hong Kong all the way to Logan Airport in Boston,
Speaker 1: but then.
Speaker 6: The DEA intercepts it. They replace the heroin with you know,
Speaker 6: a fake, and they deliver it. It goes to this guy,
Speaker 6: six finger Lou. He picks up the machine and they
Speaker 6: arrest him. But they didn't really want just to get
Speaker 6: six finger looed because they knew that he's the lowest
Speaker 6: to blow the real goals to get up the chain,
Speaker 6: and so they flipped him, so to speak. They basically
Speaker 6: cut a deal with him immediately.
Speaker 1: The plan had been for six Fingerloo to drive from
Speaker 1: Boston to Newark to deliver the bean sprout washing machine
Speaker 1: to his cousin fat Quock, and that trip went ahead,
Speaker 1: except now six Fingerloo was escorted on this drive by
Speaker 1: undercovered DEA agents. When Lou arrived in mid tam Manhattan,
Speaker 1: he met up with his cousin and this other guy
Speaker 1: who was also involved in the scheme. Six Fingerloo claimed
Speaker 1: he was too tired to take the bean sprout machine
Speaker 1: out of his car, so they did, or began to,
Speaker 1: because as soon as they touched the machine, they were
Speaker 1: ambushed by DEA agents.
Speaker 6: And then that led to the case against Johnny A.
Speaker 1: Karen was a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York,
Speaker 1: a federal prosecutor's office in Manhattan. She was working on
Speaker 1: the sprout washer case because that's where the bust happened.
Speaker 1: Howell was a prosecutor in the Eastern District of New York,
Speaker 1: a federal prosecutor's office in Brooklyn. She was working on
Speaker 1: the mail package case because the successful bust by federal
Speaker 1: authorities on that scheme happened in Brooklyn. But now Judge
Speaker 1: hold both prosecutors that since these cases were against the
Speaker 1: same defendant, they should combine their efforts. All cases against
Speaker 1: Johnnyang would be tried together in the Eastern District of
Speaker 1: New York, which seems logical except for one thing.
Speaker 7: I mean, you know, because the Eastern and Southern District
Speaker 7: New Yorker were, you know, great rivals.
Speaker 1: The rivalry between the Eastern District and the Southern District
Speaker 1: is sometimes compared to another rivalry between the Mets and
Speaker 1: the Yankees. The Southern District in Manhattan is like the Yankees.
Speaker 1: It was created first under President George Washington. Many famous
Speaker 1: financial fraud cases are tried in the SDN Y The
Speaker 1: Eastern District in Brooklyn is like the It was founded
Speaker 1: later under President Lincoln's administration. To this day, the ED
Speaker 1: and Y is still perceived to be the scrappier office.
Speaker 1: Now the Yankees and Mets were being asked to play
Speaker 1: on the same team on the Mets home turf. Beryl
Speaker 1: remembers hearing that they're going to be working together, and
Speaker 1: she wondered how her rival prosecutor would take it.
Speaker 7: Probably a fight Ben and Karen's shoes. She probably wouldn't
Speaker 7: be a little bit nervous, you know, like trying.
Speaker 5: A case in photo Dutchess.
Speaker 7: She didn't know in a courthouse, she didn't know.
Speaker 1: Beryl had partnered with Kathy Palmer, another prosecutor in the
Speaker 1: Eastern District of New York, and Karen Seymour says she
Speaker 1: had no idea how this was going to work out.
Speaker 6: But they couldn't have been more fun and more lovely,
Speaker 6: and we all became very fast friends, and we together,
Speaker 6: you know, not knowing each other very well before, just
Speaker 6: joined forces. And it was three women against Johnny Ang.
Speaker 1: Johnny Yng's lead defense attorney was Gerald Chargell. Chargell was
Speaker 1: a big deal in New York City. He'd been the
Speaker 1: lawyer of Italian American mobster John Goudie, nicknamed the Teflon
Speaker 1: Dawn because no criminal charges ever seemed to stick to him,
Speaker 1: at least for a while. After multiple high profile trials,
Speaker 1: he did eventually get life in prison. Chargell has since died,
Speaker 1: but he's interviewed in the documentary America's Most Evil Machine Gun, Johnny.
Speaker 5: You're smart, privileged to represent Johnny Yng when you're fighting
Speaker 5: for someone's liberty or for someone's life.
Speaker 6: A very weighty and heavy responsibility, but one that I welcome.
Speaker 1: While Chargell welcomed his new client, three women prosecutors prepared
Speaker 1: their case. They'd surmounted international boarders, institutional rivalries, and reluctant
Speaker 1: witnesses to build an argument that Johnny was a major
Speaker 1: heroin smuggler and a mastermind. Still, the prosecutors knew their
Speaker 1: case had one major weakness and it was going to
Speaker 1: be the hardest obstacle of all to overcome. Before in
Speaker 1: a trial, there are pre trial motions. In Johnnyng's case,
Speaker 1: the pre trial phase dragged on and on. I was
Speaker 1: able to reach two defense lawyers on Johnny's team about
Speaker 1: what it was like to work for him. One didn't
Speaker 1: want to talk to me on the phone, but she
Speaker 1: sent me an email saying, quote, he was a nice guy.
Speaker 1: Something I remember because I'm a dog person, is that
Speaker 1: he trained his two Kane Corso dogs to meet his
Speaker 1: kids at the school bus stop and accompany them home.
Speaker 1: Johnny's other attorneys said she didn't want to be recorded
Speaker 1: because she like how defense lawyers are usually represented in
Speaker 1: the media. But she told me that Johnny paid for
Speaker 1: his defense team in cash. He told her that the
Speaker 1: money came directly from gatherings in Chinatown to support his defense.
Speaker 1: It was in small, crumpled bills. She had to spend
Speaker 1: hours counting them. He was either very loved or very feared.
Speaker 1: She said. I told Beryl about that.
Speaker 7: Was it in five tens and twenties? Yeah, And he
Speaker 7: told them that it was not drug proceed money, but
Speaker 7: it was instead five tens in twenties that he'd collected
Speaker 7: at parties from friends who believed in him.
Speaker 5: And that's what she told you.
Speaker 1: Beryl looked at me skeptically, her eyebrows raised, and I
Speaker 1: got a sense of how intense this pre trial back
Speaker 1: and forth might have been between the prosecution and the defense.
Speaker 1: Beryl thinks that at one court appearance or another, Johnny
Speaker 1: may have noticed something about her she was pregnant.
Speaker 3: It just seemed like he was, you know, seeing my
Speaker 3: shape change as time went on and thinking, hmmm, yes,
Speaker 3: this might be very helpful if the prosecutor who'd been
Speaker 3: living with this case for a number of years wasn't
Speaker 3: able to try this case.
Speaker 1: Beryl thought Johnny and his team might be creating delays
Speaker 1: on purpose. All told, Johnny spent almost a year in
Speaker 1: pre trial attention. His trial was finally scheduled to begin
Speaker 1: on November sixteenth, nineteen ninety two, and for Beryl.
Speaker 7: It was sort of a race against time.
Speaker 1: This was going to be a big trial. It was
Speaker 1: expected to last a few weeks, and Beryl's baby was
Speaker 1: expected in a few weeks as well. Have you been
Speaker 1: to the crehouse in Brooklyn?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I made super close to office.
Speaker 1: My impression was like wood everywhere, like it had like yeah,
Speaker 1: like wood paneled ceilings and like a wood floor, and
Speaker 1: and then you know there was like also.
Speaker 5: Fully, you're doing a trial within the cabinet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was like within a small cabinet, Like there's
Speaker 1: not even that many seats for people to watch the trial.
Speaker 1: But I talked to this one reporter, Gerald Posner, who
Speaker 1: was there at the time.
Speaker 8: I was only there for like three probably three days,
Speaker 8: but it was packed. It was a great New York
Speaker 8: City trial.
Speaker 1: He had written a book about the international heroin trade,
Speaker 1: so that's why he was at this trial. And he
Speaker 1: was particularly interested in what Johnny looked like because he
Speaker 1: could see Johnny sitting at the defense table.
Speaker 8: One of the things that was so amazing to me
Speaker 8: about Johnny, and he looks so young. You know, we've
Speaker 8: seen pictures of him and everything else, but until you
Speaker 8: seem in person, you forget what a baby faced gangster
Speaker 8: could look like. I expect him to come back from
Speaker 8: this extradition battle of three years.
Speaker 6: And having run.
Speaker 8: This is one of the largest hair when rings around
Speaker 8: and becoming a leader of the Fine Dragons and everything
Speaker 8: else is going to prematurely age him.
Speaker 5: But it didn't.
Speaker 1: So Yeah, So Johnny was thirty six years old, very young. Oo,
Speaker 1: he was actually young at the time of the trial.
Speaker 1: And I have a photo of him from the time.
Speaker 5: Okay, his mugshot. Yeah, like people could mistaken him as
Speaker 5: like a like a late twenty year old in this photo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he has like a little mustache and a goateee.
Speaker 1: He's wearing these big, like gold rimmed aviator glasses. And
Speaker 1: what stood out to me is he does have a
Speaker 1: little puff of hair. He's just looking straight ahead. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like driver's licensed photo vibes. But that was
Speaker 1: not his vibe in court during the trial. He didn't
Speaker 1: take the stand. It's usually not smart to do that
Speaker 1: as a defendant, and Johnny seems like he was a
Speaker 1: pretty smart guy. But he was apparently pretty expressive during
Speaker 1: the trial. Yeah, I heard that, you know, according to
Speaker 1: newspaper articles and stuff at the time, he was smiling
Speaker 1: all throughout. Johnny's actually known for always smiling. But his
Speaker 1: smile it's kind of hard to tell whether it's like
Speaker 1: a friendly smile or like the passive aggressive smile, like
Speaker 1: a threatening smile.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so we're in a trial. What was the opening statement? Like,
Speaker 5: how did they start the case?
Speaker 1: Like the mail package trial, Beryl started this one, and
Speaker 1: she began by talking about these mail packages that had
Speaker 1: tea and stuffed animals and also heroin. Then she described
Speaker 1: how the bean sprout washing machine was intercepted by a
Speaker 1: customs agent in Boston, and then this is what she
Speaker 1: said to the jury.
Speaker 7: Now, these two huge shipments of heroin were discovered months apart,
Speaker 7: opposite ends of the country by two different customs inspectors.
Speaker 7: But you were going to learn during the trial that
Speaker 7: these schemes had one thing in common. The mastermind behind
Speaker 7: both of these heroin shipments was one man, the defendant,
Speaker 7: Johnny Yang, the man sitting at the defense table.
Speaker 1: I have Beryl's notes from the trial and on one
Speaker 1: page she has the word mastermind. It's written in all caps.
Speaker 1: She wanted to prove that Johnny was the quote principal, administrator,
Speaker 1: organizer or leader of the enterprise, right right. This was
Speaker 1: the first charge against him, and it was also the
Speaker 1: most serious charge because you know, if Johnny was found
Speaker 1: guilty of this, he was facing a lifetime in prison
Speaker 1: without parole.
Speaker 5: I mean, she spent years obviously investigating and collecting evidence
Speaker 5: and information, talking to witnesses, trying to get them to
Speaker 5: turn their back against Johnny.
Speaker 1: Well, the truth is, the case was going to be
Speaker 1: tough because Johnny was so good at insulating himself from
Speaker 1: both of these schemes. So there's very little material evidence.
Speaker 1: They had some and some of it they were saving
Speaker 1: till the end of the trial. But really the whole
Speaker 1: trial depended on the testimony of these cooperating witnesses, right.
Speaker 1: And one of the prosecutors, the one from the Southern
Speaker 1: District of New York, Karen Seymour, she talked to me
Speaker 1: about this.
Speaker 6: It was so cooperat or dependent. This is a case
Speaker 6: where there was very clear evidence about the drug deals,
Speaker 6: but it wasn't so clearly linked to Johnny Ing, And
Speaker 6: so it was a case that truly if you didn't
Speaker 6: believe the cooperators, you didn't have enough evidence to convict
Speaker 6: the defendants.
Speaker 1: Tina Wong wasn't testifying at this trial right after she
Speaker 1: was shot. Beryl felt like she was hiding something and
Speaker 1: she didn't trust her enough to put her on the stand.
Speaker 1: So Beryl had two main cooperating witnesses, Waw and Michael
Speaker 1: u are Fox. They had been in jail for years now,
Speaker 1: waiting for their own trial, waiting for Johnny's extradition, and
Speaker 1: then waiting for Johnny's trial to start. They really didn't
Speaker 1: want to testify against him, but doing so was their
Speaker 1: only way out.
Speaker 5: True.
Speaker 1: Remember, Waugh told us that even now she's still worried
Speaker 1: about being viewed as a snitch.
Speaker 2: I will you come out to the street. People know
Speaker 2: you Smith, you know you talked about you gave him mouth.
Speaker 5: Uh huh, would be bad.
Speaker 2: It's like you're gonna have people that don't like you,
Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying, And you don't want that.
Speaker 2: So that's what I'm saying, in fact, is something would honor. Okay,
Speaker 2: come on, come on interview with me.
Speaker 5: That it sounds like a very difficult decision to make
Speaker 5: in face of something that's so huge that's going to
Speaker 5: change your life. Where do you choose to protect yourself
Speaker 5: or to honor something that you hold high values of,
Speaker 5: like your friendship, like your connection with other people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Foxbolt the same way. He wrote a letter
Speaker 1: to Beryl, literally begging not to have to take the stand.
Speaker 1: I asked Beryl to read a little bit of what
Speaker 1: that letter said.
Speaker 7: I'm writing to you because I started having panic and
Speaker 7: feel the pressure is coming from both inside and outside.
Speaker 7: So if it's possible, please exclude me from testifying at
Speaker 7: Johnny Ng's trial because I'm just a small figure in
Speaker 7: his case was the one. I'm only her puppet from
Speaker 7: the beginning to the end. I have to run and
Speaker 7: hide from place to place, just like a wreck to
Speaker 7: stay alive. So please do a little consideration for me.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, this whole case, it basically rested on these
Speaker 1: witnesses who really did not want to be testifying, and
Speaker 1: you know, they'd also been convicted of crimes. And so
Speaker 1: that meant that Johnny's lawyer, Gerald Chargell, he only had
Speaker 1: to do one thing. He had one simple task.
Speaker 5: To attack the testimonies, like their credibility.
Speaker 1: Exactly, because all you need is reasonable doubt, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean that's true, because jury they're all humans.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I feel like people love to think they're
Speaker 1: very good at like catching liars.
Speaker 5: Yeah, being like a true detective.
Speaker 1: So one of the first witnesses to take the stand
Speaker 1: was one of the women who received the heroine packages
Speaker 1: for Johnny, So some one pretty low down in the scheme.
Speaker 6: I think those women largely who testified who received packages
Speaker 6: didn't really most of them have that much to say
Speaker 6: about Johnny ing. But they set the stage really well
Speaker 6: and I thought they had a lot of credibility.
Speaker 5: And then who came next.
Speaker 1: Waw, she took the stand and on direct you know,
Speaker 1: Beryl asked her questions and she said that she gave
Speaker 1: these women's addresses to Johnny, and she did the scene
Speaker 1: in Johnny's direction, and john even was pressuring her to
Speaker 1: get him more and more addresses. And he was the
Speaker 1: quote boss of this heroin ring. And I spoke to
Speaker 1: another reporter who was there at the trial. His name
Speaker 1: is Frederick Dannon, and he was writing for the New Yorker.
Speaker 1: He actually still remembers law's cross examination.
Speaker 9: The moment cross would begin, Chargao would start projecting his
Speaker 9: question before he even left the defense table. And he
Speaker 9: used the tall guy and he used his body. It
Speaker 9: was almost like a charging line. It's like a boxer
Speaker 9: coming out of ringsight, like the round begins and he's
Speaker 9: already on his feet. He wants to get into the fight.
Speaker 1: Here is a little segment of how it went. Do
Speaker 1: you want to play sharkeel because you're a.
Speaker 5: Lawyer, Sure, I will try to be as intimidating as poise.
Speaker 1: Yeah, try and leap at me across the table like
Speaker 1: a lion.
Speaker 5: You so drugs, right?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 5: And you did drugs? Yes? You work in the gambling parlors. Yes,
Speaker 5: you cheated on your texas didn't you probably did? Yes?
Speaker 5: Would you lie to get out of jail?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 5: Never no, because you wouldn't stoop to something like that,
Speaker 5: would you. No, no further questions. He didn't even give
Speaker 5: her any time to think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it's like bang bang bang bing bang.
Speaker 5: I've seen that before. It's kind of like the defense
Speaker 5: they would be like just answer yes or no. I'm
Speaker 5: not asking for more. But like in that way, they're
Speaker 5: leading the witness to say something that they might not
Speaker 5: admit to.
Speaker 9: Chargelle definitely rattled her. I mean you could see from
Speaker 9: her body language that like he unnerved her a little bit.
Speaker 1: It's crazy to think about WAW going through this while
Speaker 1: Johnny is sitting at the defense table. Here she was
Speaker 1: betraying him and then being attacked by this lawyer.
Speaker 5: So that was bad for a while. Then who's next
Speaker 5: to get put on the stand?
Speaker 1: Her ex boyfriend Michael Yu Fox, even though he begged
Speaker 1: not to do this, he did have to take the stand,
Speaker 1: and that DA agent Peter Mattesser. She remembers things going
Speaker 1: even worse for Fox than they did for Wall.
Speaker 5: I think, Michael, you really took a meeting from Chargo.
Speaker 1: So the trial took some time, right, yeah, like three weeks.
Speaker 5: Do we know anything about people outside of trial? Reacting
Speaker 5: to it like from the gangs from Chinatown.
Speaker 1: According to the trial transcript, there was a guy who
Speaker 1: was sought to be Johnny's brother, and he approached one
Speaker 1: of the jurors when they were walking out of the
Speaker 1: courtroom and he said, do you believe in the witnesses?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 1: And then he said, God bless you.
Speaker 5: Oh, I feel like there's like some violations.
Speaker 1: It's like you shouldn't really do that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you shouldn't do that. What was the part that
Speaker 5: Beryl remembered most from all of this?
Speaker 1: So for her, the most memorable part is actually like
Speaker 1: an administrative part of the trial, the charging conference. You
Speaker 1: probably know it comes after all the evidence has been
Speaker 1: presented and it's before the summations and the verdict. So
Speaker 1: basically the to you know, posing sides meet with the
Speaker 1: judge and they go through the language for every single
Speaker 1: charge and the instructions that they're going to give to
Speaker 1: the jury. And Beryl was the one who was going
Speaker 1: to present at this charging conference, and she was nine
Speaker 1: months pregnant at the time, and there were seventeen charges
Speaker 1: against Johnny.
Speaker 7: So this charging conference was very long. In my recollection,
Speaker 7: it was about three to four hours and I stood
Speaker 7: for the whole time well low heels, and when you're
Speaker 7: nine months pregnant, you've got so much compression on your lungs.
Speaker 7: It's hard to do public speaking in the normal way
Speaker 7: because you can't fill your lungs with enough air to
Speaker 7: give your normal delivery.
Speaker 5: So it was hard to catch my breath.
Speaker 7: And I stood through the whole charging conference in questions
Speaker 7: that Judge Reggie had for me, and she never invited
Speaker 7: me to be seated to respond to her questions. And
Speaker 7: I went into labor that night.
Speaker 1: When we come back, the jury gets to hear about
Speaker 1: a piece of material evidence and it relates to Tina Wong.
Speaker 1: Right before Johnny Ying's trial ended, Beryl gave birth to
Speaker 1: a baby girl. She weighed seven pounds twelve ounces, so
Speaker 1: she wasn't there when the prosecution gave its final bit
Speaker 1: of evidence to the jury, and it had to do
Speaker 1: with Tina Wong. When she and I interviewed Tina, she
Speaker 1: told us a lot about that trip she took in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight to Asia. It was with her childhood
Speaker 1: friend Wah and WA's boyfriend Fox, among others. She told
Speaker 1: us about visiting Indonesia and how they.
Speaker 10: Went to the beach and see these little crabs. There's
Speaker 10: like a thousand in them, so it looked like the
Speaker 10: rock is black. But when you go there, it's white.
Speaker 10: Because all the crabs look white. Walk away, it's like thousands.
Speaker 1: But Tina had spent the first part of this vacation
Speaker 1: in Hong Kong. That portion of the trip, she was vague.
Speaker 11: Me and this other girl, we go shopping and while
Speaker 11: we'll go off, So I don't know what she was doing,
Speaker 11: and I didn't want to know.
Speaker 1: That trip to Asia it turned out to be very
Speaker 1: important for the government's case. Kathy Palmer, the other prosecutor
Speaker 1: from the Eastern District of New York, talked about it
Speaker 1: during her closing arguments. Remember, this case hinged on the
Speaker 1: testimony of cooperating witnesses, and Johnny's lawyer had done a
Speaker 1: pretty good job of making those witnesses seem untrustworthy. Johnny
Speaker 1: had been very careful to work through a web of
Speaker 1: intermediaries so no one could trace anything directly back to him,
Speaker 1: but he'd made a slip. Federal authorities had phone records
Speaker 1: of calls in and out of Johnnyng's Hong Kong apartment,
Speaker 1: and one of those phone calls from way back in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight went from that apartment to the New
Speaker 1: York home of someone associated with the trade, Tina Wong.
Speaker 1: The call happened on Tina and WA's last day in
Speaker 1: Hong Kong before they all went to Indonesia. It was
Speaker 1: a two minute phone call. The prosecutor speculated that maybe
Speaker 1: Tina was in Johnny's apartment and made that call to
Speaker 1: tell her husband that they were going to Indonesia. Who knows.
Speaker 1: But what's important is this, that phone call was material
Speaker 1: evidence linking Johnny directly to Tina, and therefore to Wall
Speaker 1: and Fox, who are all convicted of heroin smuggling. The
Speaker 1: prosecution presented this evidence at the end of the trial.
Speaker 1: Take a look at the records, the prosecutor told the jurors,
Speaker 1: and that was close to the last thing they heard
Speaker 1: other than the jury instructions before they filed out to
Speaker 1: begin deliberating. Tina Wong wasn't at Johnny's trial, but she
Speaker 1: still played a role. Unwittingly. She said she doesn't remember
Speaker 1: either being in Johnny's apartment or calling home.
Speaker 11: I don't remember any phone call, so now I kind
Speaker 11: of feel bad that I get somebody in trouble. You do, yeah,
Speaker 11: I mean, if you want to get in trouble, get
Speaker 11: in trouble on your own.
Speaker 10: I don't want to be the close of it.
Speaker 5: Would he get in trouble.
Speaker 1: The jury went off to deliberate all the counts against
Speaker 1: Johnny Yng, including the biggest one, whether or not he
Speaker 1: was the mastermind of these schemes to smuggle in millions
Speaker 1: of dollars worth of heroin from Asia. But Beryl, after
Speaker 1: years of fighting to get to this moment, was beyond reach.
Speaker 1: She was still in the hospital with her new baby.
Speaker 7: We both came down with a fever, and that's very
Speaker 7: very serious for a newborn. And so that next week,
Speaker 7: when the verdict was coming in and the summations and
Speaker 7: rebuttals were happening, I was in intensive care with the
Speaker 7: new baby. So I had my mind done very very
Speaker 7: different things from the outcome of the trial.
Speaker 1: While Beryla was with her baby in intensive care, the
Speaker 1: rest of the prosecution team and the defense team hung
Speaker 1: around the courthouse waiting. The hours turned into days, and
Speaker 1: the days dragged on. At some point, prosecutor Karen Seymour says,
Speaker 1: she started to get nervous.
Speaker 6: We felt good about our case. We believed it. We
Speaker 6: believed our witnesses, but you just never know when it
Speaker 6: comes to the jury way. It was a little bit
Speaker 6: of a millbiter. Johnny Ing and his counsel, they were very,
Speaker 6: very cocky. We had learned that Johnny Ing had booked
Speaker 6: the Peaking Duckhouse in Chinatown for a big party and
Speaker 6: a big celebration, and he invited all of his Flying
Speaker 6: Dragon buddies to join him. They thought they were winning
Speaker 6: this case.
Speaker 1: Coming up on the final episode of The Chinatown Sting.
Speaker 12: We're talking about each camp. The big thing that caused
Speaker 12: the most conversation, the most deliberation, was he the mastermind.
Speaker 1: The Chinatown Stang is written and produced by Me, Buddy
Speaker 1: Eugenekott and reported by me and Shu Yu Wang. Our
Speaker 1: senior producer is Emily Martinez. Additional production by Sonya Gerwit.
Speaker 1: Our editor is Julia Barton, with additional editing by Karen Schakerji.
Speaker 1: Our story consultant is wrong shau Ching. Our executive producer
Speaker 1: is Jacob Smith. Our music was composed by John Sung,
Speaker 1: sound design and additional music by Jake Gorski. Our fact
Speaker 1: checker is Kate Furby and Our show art was designed
Speaker 1: by Sean Karney, all voiceover work by Telly Leong. For
Speaker 1: more information about this episode, check out our show notes
Speaker 1: or visit pushkin dot fm, slash Chinatown to find more
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