The Little Old Murder From Pasadena
A retired police sergeant and a historian discuss history and true crime in the City of Roses.
The Little Old Murder From Pasadena
A Killing at Chapman Ranch
In 1899, Pasadena Police and LA County Sheriffs exhaust all leads in the bloody slaying of Moy Jung, a Chinese immigrant in East Pasadena.
And we are back with another Little Old Murder from Pasadena. I'm the historian Elise, and I'm here with my co-host.
SPEAKER_01:Victor Cass, retired police sergeant with over 30 years experience all with the Pasadena-California Police Department.
SPEAKER_00:And today we are going all the way back to November of 1899. And to a part of Pasadena that is today Pasadena, but was considered like on the fringes of Pasadena.
SPEAKER_01:Well, it's it has a Pasadena address. Technically, it's unincorporated county territory. It's a neighborhood called Chapman Woods, which straddles um Rosemade Boulevard over there near California Boulevard. But why was it called Chapman Woods?
SPEAKER_00:It was actually originally called Chapman Ranch because of Alfred B. Chapman, uh, who came in the 1800s and he bought 1,786 acres of Rancho Santa Anita. And then in 1879, he built his home, Chapman Ranch, on the corner of California Boulevard, um, near Ivy Dale Court.
SPEAKER_01:Right. These two streets, obviously, California Boulevard is a very prominent street that cuts all across Pasadena east through west, and Ivy Dale Court still exists. It's a little small street kind of just off Rosemead, north of there.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, but it was a big ranch though, so it looked very different then.
SPEAKER_01:And apparently on this ranch, um he subdivided some little lots which he rented to some people.
SPEAKER_00:He did. There were two or three Chinese companies that leased plots of land on the ranch so that they could grow uh vegetables and stuff like that. And it was on one of these little plots of land where a secretary treasurer of one of these Chinese companies was found dead on November 18th, 1899.
SPEAKER_01:Not just dead, but murdered.
SPEAKER_00:Murdered and very bloody, too.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, this was a very gruesome killing and definitely would have shocked uh the sensibilities of uh people in the area. Um let's talk about who this poor victim was.
SPEAKER_00:So he was 52-year-old Moi Jung, as I said, a secretary treasurer. They found him inside this um I don't know, do I want to call it a shack? It's yeah, but it's it's like a four-room small home.
SPEAKER_01:Kind of a shack. It was kind of a shack. It had dirt floors, and they found him in the kitchen portion.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, and he was stretched out on his back on this dirt floor, as you said. Um, his arms were extended, and there was a giant butcher's cleaver lying at his side. His head was split open in the back, and they said that he had gaping wounds about his head and neck. The fatal wound was the blow under his ear, which was about two inches deep.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:He was basically nearly beheaded, and there was blood all over this uh kitchen.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Um, these kind of wounds would have definitely like sprayed blood everywhere. This guy was clearly fighting for his life in a struggle uh with maybe what the police believed at the time were maybe two to three suspects.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think that he did have defensive wounds on him and his clothes were torn.
SPEAKER_01:Right. So why did they kill poor Moi Jung? What did they find out was taken, or what were they after?
SPEAKER_00:So they think that they came for the money that he had there. It was about$70, which was like a week's worth of sales money, they said. So quite a bit for them. And so not finding the$70, they think that was the reason why he was killed.
SPEAKER_01:Right. Or that Moy fought them off in an effort to prevent them from taking the$70, which he's in charge of.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, you know, which is a lot of money.
SPEAKER_01:Sure, absolutely. Um now, interesting, let's talk about the jurisdictional issues regarding law enforcement at this time in 1899. So the first department that was notified of this gas leak killing was actually passing a PD. But they would have then enlisted the aid of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department to come handle the investigation because of where this was located, which would have been kind of considered like county territory even then in 1899, even though it's like a part of it would have like a pasadena basically address, quote unquote. Um and who was the sheriff of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department back in those days?
SPEAKER_00:That was Sheriff Hamill. William, they called him Billy.
SPEAKER_01:William Billy Hamill.
SPEAKER_00:With a pretty nice mustache, I must say.
SPEAKER_01:He was an interesting-looking character, wasn't he? Like some Wild West movie.
SPEAKER_00:He was. He was definitely a character.
SPEAKER_01:And I understood he served two terms as sheriff.
SPEAKER_00:He did, but not back to back. So that was a little gap.
SPEAKER_01:That was another sheriff in between. But this was during his first term. Sheriff Hamill would have been the head of the investigation.
SPEAKER_00:And the newspapers say that the first report was telephoned. They called it in headquarters. Um don't know what telephone they were using in 1899. Yeah, the little on the little cup to your ear.
SPEAKER_01:I think it was a little more advanced than that.
SPEAKER_00:Um so yes, the report was telephoned to police headquarters at 7 p.m. And Constable Wallace responded. I don't know if uh Sheriff Hamill was called in yet. But then later, an LA Times reporter shows up at the ranch and uh sees the scene, the murder scene basically, with Moi Jung, the bloody corpse, as he called him, laid out on a sort of stretcher. And he embellishes the scene for us. Um this case, as I was commenting to Victor, it's like they just went from one immigrant encampment to another, like staying and doing a whole bunch of racist shit.
SPEAKER_01:Definitely the terminology they used back in 1899 Pasadena would not be what we would consider like politically correct today.
SPEAKER_00:Like they called Moe Zhang a Mongol, like they called them Mongolians or Orientals, the Chinamen. Right.
SPEAKER_01:Um homeless persons were referred to as tramps or hobos.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Um, and so this LA Times reporter seeing this scene at Chapman Ranch describes it saying, quote, six Chinamen were burning incense and muttering incantations around it in a dim light. Not a white man was in sight. Dun dun dun.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. So, you know, naturally the police are gonna maybe at first think the Chinese kind of was the inter inter-group struggle and murder.
SPEAKER_00:Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_01:You know.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Because some stuff was taken.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. So they find that some guns were taken. Three revolvers, a shotgun, and also like an overcoat and a hat.
SPEAKER_01:Well, yeah, but I mean, let's talk about these guns for a second. I mean, uh I remember when I was reading, you know, one of the articles about this case, this guy Moy Jung had like a 38 Bulldog revolver, 244 Smith Wesson double action revolver. I mean, this is like a quite a little arsenal in a shotgun.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, that's my question is what are these um farmers doing with this whole arsenal in their little shack out on Chapter?
SPEAKER_01:I'm starting to get a little jealous. I would have liked to see those guns. Okay, let's calm down. But yes, uh, there were some prominent little firearms that this guy had there and uh some other items. Um and it's interesting, like culturally, what Zheng's fellow Chinese brethren said or talked about the way that a Chinese person would have done this or not done this, and how it couldn't have been Chinese suspects.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. They basically said, like, Moizheng was friends with everyone, no one hated him, he had no enemies, and also it doesn't really seem like the work of a Chinese person because they took the guns.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, so their their their story is that the Chinese would not have taken the guns, and also I thought was interesting that the Chinese person wouldn't have murdered him this way. Like it would have been done a different way, which I thought was kind of unusual. Yeah, that was unusual. Yeah, which doesn't really jibe with like history and the facts. Um, but okay, we'll go with that.
SPEAKER_00:Um something else was left behind, though. There were these shoes wrapped in a copy of the Pomona Progress newspaper.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, and apparently the police recognized that as a homeless technique to preserve or carry shoes around, was to wrap them in this paper. And so whoever did this killing left that crucial piece of evidence behind, like, oh, they dropped their wrapped shoes.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_01:So that was an interesting clue C-L-E-W, which we saw again in this article.
SPEAKER_00:But it begs the question why someone would want to leave behind evidence of yeah, in the struggle, maybe it fell out of their knapsack or something.
SPEAKER_01:You know, but that also tends to point to for the police. I you know, a heads-up policeman would say, hey, this might have been the work of like some homeless people.
SPEAKER_00:Like it's what they called tramps or a whole, or if you are Constable Wallace, it is the work of vicious tramps, to use his words.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. Um, and so that's kind of the direction this case started to go for the police was hey, these are possibly some homeless suspects.
SPEAKER_00:And but also let's mention where Chapman Ranch was located because it was not far from the Southern Pacific station and also the Santa Fe Railroad Station.
SPEAKER_01:So there were often, I mean, they called them tramps, but uh what's a Yeah, so the everybody back in those days would know that these two railroad stations, uh not far from this location, would have been major areas that vagrants uh itinerant and then they speculated that they probably took the freight train at the Lamonda Park station and they called it the tramp's accommodation. Right. Travelers would use these trains and hang out near these stations um for multitude of reasons. Um, but yes, that's kind of also what drove their belief that, you know, some homeless, you know, vagrants were involved.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Um, and so from investigating the scene at Chapman Ranch, sheriffs think that the killers probably came from a Royal Grande and then passed through the Sunny Slope Winery, which is an uh interesting part of this part of Pasadena at the time. Sunny Slope Winery, and like all of that Lamonda Park area was filled with a whole bunch of wineries.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, so for those of you who aren't familiar with Pasadena, Lamonda Park today is a very large neighborhood in Pasadena. It still exists with that name. This would be like on the south central part of town, going toward the east, from Colorado Boulevard south to the southern limits, right around. I mean, you could even say like from Allen going east is like this whole Lamonda Park neighborhood. Yeah, it's a very large area, very large part of Pasadena. Um, and yeah, we had some wineries. That was LB Rose's winery, wasn't it? It was Sunny Slope.
SPEAKER_00:And it and I think it was on the outskirts of Pasadena because Pasadena itself was a dry town.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:No alcohol unless you were like rich and could get away with it.
SPEAKER_01:Right. Or with the hotel green uh during the celebration. That's what I mean. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um so um, yes, LJ Rose was actually born in Germany, and then he came and he bought 1,300 acres near the eastern boundary of the San Pascual Grant. And um Sunny Slope, they started to produce their first wine in 1864, but they were famous by 1870, and the winery was listed in all of these like excursion lists and all these tourist brochures and stuff. And if you read the book written by, I think it was LJ Rose's granddaughter. Yes. Uh, she's talking about how she remembered like two, three hundred people would come to visit the winery in a day.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, this was a very, very popular tourist attraction. Very famous, prominent people would come to this winery, stay at the house.
SPEAKER_00:Including Rutherford B. Hayes, president, Helen Hunt Jackson, the author of Ramona. Wrote Ramona, um, and the famous big four railroad guys, Stanford, Crocker, Hopkins, Huntington, they all made a visit.
SPEAKER_01:This is like the who's who of Pasadena robber barons at this time.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So California robber barons. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So law enforcement is thinking that whoever the killers were, they went through the wash house and sunny slope winery and through to Chapman Ranch.
SPEAKER_01:Right. And there's a at the time, there's a wash that comes down there, you know, straight down from the area, uh, all the way kind of in the Eaton Canyon area, uh, that was coming south through there. That they believe one of the killers or the poet of the killers kind of fled through the wash. That wash is still there today, by the way. It's a concrete, like a river channel that has all the power. Uh the lines over there. You can see the power lines over. Yeah. Um, but yeah, so the police are kind of, you know, they're they're going in that direction. Um they even brought out a bloodhound.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, he was such a good boy. He came all the way from Sarah Madre. They rented this bloodhound from Sarah Madre. And um he worked really hard, but the scent was too stale. He couldn't.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, they probably should have bought the bloodhound out on day one when they found the body. Yeah, I know. I don't know why they didn't. Uh Pastania PD uh will still utilize bloodhounds today. Um there's some there's some bloodhounds that we call. I remember, you know, a murder that I was on. Uh we had to pull the bloodhound out and we're going walking them all over Kingdom Come looking for this dude. But yes.
SPEAKER_00:Um, where do these bloodhounds live when they're not working?
SPEAKER_01:They stay in special homes and cages and places. They're these are worker dogs, so they're very like detectives, they have work to do.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know about that.
SPEAKER_01:Anyway, so yeah, so they use the bloodhound, and uh some also some prominent people became interested in this case, right? And naturally because of the Chinese element.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. George Lem. They called him like the mayor and the king of Los Angeles' Chinatown. He was, I think originally he was once a foreman of the Chinese workers for Lucky Baldwin.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:He came to LA when he was only 11 in 1874, and um he became this prominent figure in the Chinese community. He was a member of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, and he also owned uh a home, but also a restaurant in Chinatown.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, this arguably George Lim was the most prominent, wealthy uh businessman in Chinatown in Los Angeles. And any any LA history buff or historian will recognize the name, um, especially in that neighborhood. Um, but he took an interest in this case uh here in Pasadena, obviously because there were Chinese people involved in it. Um, and you know he did have ties to that area, um being a former foreman.
SPEAKER_00:It's interesting. I I read about George Lem that he once risked his life by intervening in the Tong Wars.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:Thought that was an interesting detail.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. He was married and lived a long time in the world. Yeah, he had several children.
SPEAKER_00:Uh-huh. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But I understand that the police kind of like started to come go away from the homeless theory and circle back to So they go to Pomona and they talk to Constable Gilbert of Pomona, says that three hobos, to use their lingo, passed through Pomona and bought shoes just like the ones left behind.
SPEAKER_00:Um, because law enforcement back at Chapman Ranch think it was probably not one guy. It was probably at least two men that was doing it.
SPEAKER_01:Maybe three.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, maybe three. They also found that the killers did not take that$70. They found it still like safely hidden up in the rafters where Moi Zhang usually kept the money hidden. Right. Um, and so it turns out no money was taken. Basically, all that was taken was that whole arsenal of guns.
SPEAKER_01:And a couple of watches.
SPEAKER_00:And a couple of watches, yes.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:They also found some tobacco that was dropped by a fence between uh the wash and a hut, and there were some like blood stains on this fence. That's when they were um, they decided that's the path that they took through to get to Chapman Ranch.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Um and the interesting thing is that the Chapman ranch house, like the big house that the White family lived in. I'm not talking about the farmer's shack, those living in that big Chapman ranch house didn't see or hear anything, despite the fact that it kind of faces these huts. And the murder was in, they think took place between 1 and 4 p.m. So, like in the afternoon when there should have been people around to see it. Because the sheriffs heard from the Pomona sheriff information about those homeless men that were passing through. That's when they decided to go the next day on the 20th. Sheriff Hamill leads everyone to the Santa Anita Ranch. And this is where they had this Mexican encampment there. And so they're speaking to like the locals who live there, and they are saying that they had seen men walking around with like bloody torn clothes just after the murder, and also pointing to the fact that there were several tough characters who were hanging around the vicinity. So they start looking into these, thinking that maybe it's not like these tramps or you know, these homeless people, but quote, drunken Mexican prowlers. End quote.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, they're definitely running the gamut of uh immigrant suspects here, went from Chinese to hobos to uh uh Latinos.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:Um but they don't have they don't linger with them long.
SPEAKER_00:No, they don't. I think what was sticking in their head is the same thing that was sticking in our heads, which is all those guns that were taken, and the fact that the money was not taken.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Um, and so by December 2nd of 1899, the police are like, we've been fooled.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. Uh they think that they've been kind of given the runaround by witnesses, and that it's possibly fellow Chinese that did the keeper. Because some things start turning up back near the scene of the crime. Come to find out that uh the quote unquote stolen revolver and the shotgun and some watch, some items that were taken.
SPEAKER_00:A coat, I think.
SPEAKER_01:A coat, yeah. It all turns up again back near the scene in places they weren't there before.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. So people are starting to put them back, like, oh, you know, the old Yeah, like they had searched the premises completely, and then they reappeared in these places that they knew they already checked before. Right. And so they said, quote, these have been found by Chinamen in the ranch in places where the officers previously searched. The officers are quite sure that they have been fooled.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:Officers have been lured on false trails, and that the crime was committed by Chinese hatchetmen after all. Right. And at the end of this, all I don't think anyone was arrested.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's uh it was another unsolved case. It's like a who dun it. You know, they because they couldn't, you know, you can't pin it on anybody, and it was multiple people, and no one talked. So I think that poor uh Moy Jung did not, the murder of Moy Jung uh did not get any justice from this case. Yes.
SPEAKER_00:In my opinion, we'll see what you think. It was probably someone back at Chapman Ranch that did the deed, and then just everyone decided to stay quiet about it, and that's how no one got caught.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I can I can go with that theory. Um, you know, I'm also it's interesting. I'm kind of surprised that the police put this much effort into this case when you think about the history of like, you know, racial minority victims, especially if it's like the same race, crime on crime.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um in the late 1800s, that you know, these things, you know, you like to think the police always gonna they're gonna do their job and they're gonna do well, but it's please they really followed all the leads and did a good job on this case, you know.
SPEAKER_00:I do have a quote saying the officers are putting as much energy into the pursuit as if the assassin's victim had been a man of means and influence instead of a poor Chinaman. And all through the valley, people are hoping that the butchers may be caught.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. Obviously, because of the nature of how Moe Jung was killed, it was shocking to Afghanistan sensibilities. This is a prominent ranch. Um, there are prominent people, you know, um, from Los Angeles interested in the case. So obviously there were reasons why the Sheriff's Department would, you know, take this case a little more seriously and try to bring the perpetrators to justice.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Everyone was horrified when they read of this happening at Chapman Ranch, and everyone wanted the killers to be caught, but they weren't, unfortunately. Yeah. So that was the 1899 murder of poor Moi Jung at Chapman Ranch.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And we're gonna do a go back to a modern one for next week, huh?
SPEAKER_00:Yes, we will. You're up.
SPEAKER_01:I'll come up with a good one for us.
SPEAKER_00:All right, yeah. And we will be back next week with another little old murder from Pasadena.