Modern Reassessments of the Case

This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Mm. You're listening to the second and final part of Unexplained, Season 9, Episode 15. A haze of smoke filled the harshly lit air of the interrogation room. Pinfold sat alone as he chain smoked one three five after another. He fidgeted with the packet. He picked at a scab on his arm. bit at his nails. The man was clearly nervous, and quite possibly in the early stages of opium withdrawal. 19 year old Pamela Werner had been dead for over a week. Pinfold was the first real suspect inspectors Han Xie Jung and Richard Dennis had had to work with. Having made little progress up till then. Inspector Han's sweep of Beijing's infamous Den of Iniquity, The Ominous Badland Zone. had finally borne fruit. door to door inquiries, a Russian. clearly rattled by the discovery of Pamela's body. wasted little time in informing the attending officer that she just recently found a bloodstained dagger, shoes, and cloth. In the room of a tenant of hers. The man was on further investigation. revealed to be a Canadian call Harold Pinfold. Pinfold was a deserter from the Canadian Army, who'd acquired a criminal record in the United States before fleeing to China. where he scratched a living, working various low-paid jobs. He was quickly apprehended and taken into custody for questioning. One officer at the Beijing police station. recognized him immediately as one of the rubber neckers that he'd seen at the crime scene the day they found the body. But I was Pinfold refused to answer inspectors Hahn and Dennis's questions. What was he doing at the crime scene, they asked? What did number 27, on a street in the Badlands, named Chuan Ban mean to him? Place was a known brothel. They'd found a business card for it, among Pinfall's possessions. Harold Pinfold, feigned ignorance of it all. But they'd already spoken to Joseph now for The manager of number twenty seven. It was Nauf who told them that Pinfold was a regular customer at the brothel. And at the establishment next door, too. And it was Nauf who told them that Pinfold had a side hustle working as a security guard for what he described as a nudist retreat. Nalf claimed not to know too much about it. Only that it took place in the western hills. A secluded area of wooded mountainous terrain on the western side of the city. Eventually, under sustained questioning. Probably when he'd run out of cigarettes. Pinfold finally dropped his guard. Pinfold admitted to having worked security once or twice at the so-called nudist retreats. and that on occasions, he'd even been paid to recruit women to dance naked for the attendees there. Inspectors Hahn and Dennis had good reason to suspect that these women were recruited more than just dancing. Was Pamela one of these dancers, they asked. Pinfold said he couldn't tell them, because he'd never heard of Pamela before her body was found. He also claimed that he'd only been at the crime scene because he happened to be passing the area at the time. And was just curious to know what was going on. And as for the blood on his possessions, it wasn't human, he told them. So they needn't concern themselves with that, either. According to Pinfall. He sometimes went hunting in the woods, whenever he worked at the nudest retreat. Blood he said. Was from his latest kill. Inspectors Hahn and Dennis wanted to know more about these nudist retreats, as Pinfold and Nauf called them. but Pinfold refused to be drawn any further into it. Other than to say if they really wanted to know what went on there. They should speak to Wentworth Prentice. Pinfold had apparently met him at the brothel next door to 27. twenty eight Chuan Ban. But declined to say any more. As it happened. pathology report on the bloody knife seemed to confirm Pinfold's story. and the man was released. They should have known that he would go to ground immediately. But it didn't matter. By then, they had everything they needed. Worth apprentice was a debonair, mustachod American dentist, whose patients were mostly wealthy expats and diplomats. Although on first impressions he seemed to be entirely respectable. A little digging revealed something darker, lurking underneath the facade. He first came to China with his wife in 1917, after graduating from Harvard's dental school. The pair had children while living in Beijing. and by all accounts plan to make a permanent base there. was until June 1926 when Prentice's wife left the country abruptly. Taking the children with her. They would never go back. A strange note on his file at the US consulate. suggested that at some point there had been concern for the safety of one of Prentice's children, without specifying why. Since he was a foreign national of some local repute, It fell to inspector Dennis to interview him. which he did, alongside Legation Quarter Police Commissioner Edward Howard, at the Commissioner's own home. The dentist presented himself as an upstanding member of the expat community. Unlike Pinfault. claimed never to have heard of Pamela before. But more to the point, he'd been at the cinema on the evening she disappeared, so couldn't have had anything to do with her murder. Inspector Dennis had little choice but to take him at his word for the time being. But it hadn't gone unnoticed that Wentworth Prentice just so happened to live right next door to the French club's new ice rink. Pamela had last been seen. The day after Wentworth Prentice was interviewed the police, an article appeared in Beijing's English language newspaper, written by an Irish reporter named George Gorman. In it, Gorman criticised the authorities for considering Prentice a possible suspect and unfairly tarnishing his reputation. The real killers were Chinese, not Westerners, Gorman insisted. Many had already begun to speculate that the reason Pamela's organs had been removed was so they could be sold for medical purposes on the Chinese. Which we're track with Gorman's assessment. Intriguingly, George Gorman did know Pamela Werner. As Inspector Dennis found out when he went to speak with him shortly after the article was published, It was Gorman's wife that told Dennis that Pamela had even been to their house, visiting their daughter, only the night before her murder. The potential connections demanded to be followed up. time was running out for the two detectives. Inspector Dennis had only been given enough leave to stay until February, just before Chinese New Year. It wasn't nearly long enough. Not only had they failed to find any verifiable suspects, They hadn't even established where Pamela was murdered in the first place. The inquest into Pamela's death was held on january twenty ninth. After hearing testimony from Pamela's friends and some of the investigating officers, Coroner Nicholas Fitz Morris, a British consul. Concluded rather redundantly that Pamela's death was an unlawful killing. But that it would be up to a later hearing to decide who might have committed the crime. The following day, much to the dismay of inspectors Hans and Dennis, Details of the autopsy were published in the papers, having been secretly leaked to the press. It was an unmitigated disaster, but also led to Fitz Morris' demotion. Now, with so much key information in the public domain, the culprit or culprit could use it to stay a step ahead of the investigators. But by then, it would have made little difference in any case. Because inspectors Hahn and Dennis had reached the end of the road. As the raucous celebrations of Chinese New Year began, many in Beijing were convinced it would be the last such holiday for them and their city for some time. Dennis was forced to return to Tianjin. while Inspector Hahn was moved on to other cases. After all, there were far more pressing concerns now than an unsolved murder. Least of all, the impending invasion of the city. March nineteen thirty seven. The Japanese government was becoming increasingly bold with their military provocations. They began driving tanks through parts of the city, and flying their fighter planes overhead at low altitudes, feeling out the Chinese government's appetite for pushing back. Meanwhile, the Japanese army's presence outside the city grew ever bigger and more threatening. It was only a matter of time before they mounted a full scale occupation. On the night of July 7, 1937, near the Marco Polo Bridge, just outside of Beijing, Japanese and Chinese nationalist army troops clashed during what had begun as a routine military exercise. When a Japanese soldier was reported missing. Demands were made to search the nearby town of Wan Ping. which were refused by the Chinese army. Shots were fired. What followed became the opening act of a wider war as reinforcements poured into North China, and the fragile balance that had been in place since the Boxer Rebellion finally gave way. Beijing fell with little sustained resistance. By the end of July, it was completely occupied by the Japanese military. The old order gave way to something far harsher and more uncertain. any lingering hope that the truth behind Pamela Werner's death might be uncovered. Quietly slipped away. There was only one man left to keep investigating Pamela's murder. her dogged and heartbroken father. Edward Werner had been extremely disappointed with the lack of progress on his daughter's case. British authorities in Beijing had offered a reward of 1,000 Chinese silver dollars. Roughly ten times what the average Chinese family would spend in a year. For information that would help resolve the case. but the reward flyers had only been printed in English. Werner's plea for them to be printed in Mandarin 2 fell on deaf ears. Since many Chinese citizens distrusted their own authorities and those of foreign countries, Werner also argued unsuccessfully to allow useful informant to claim the money. And when he finally got the Beijing police to return Pamela's clothes and her other personal effects, it appeared the items had not been properly stored, or even checked for fingerprints. Convinced that the authorities weren't doing enough, Werner decided to hold a press conference on the steps of the British legation headquarters. He criticised the decision to let Canadian suspect Harold Pinfold go. Despite the fact he clearly had some crucial information that they failed to follow up on. He also drew on his considerable knowledge of Chinese culture to dispute any suggestion that his daughter's organs had been harvested for traditional practices. Werner firmly believed that his daughter's killer or killers were Westerners. and offered an extra $5,000 Chinese gold dollars. three times what an average Chinese family could earn in their lifetimes and a sum that constituted most of his life savings for any vital information. But still, no informant came forward. after the official inquest, Edward Werner was still living in his courtyard house. but due to the Japanese occupation, was no longer free to roam around the city, as he had once been. Nonetheless, he stubbornly kept up the search to find his daughter's killer. repeatedly pleading with the Foreign Office to reopen the case. He also used his considerable financial resources to encourage former Beijing police officers to share whatever they knew with him. Like the two inspectors before him, Werner's investigations led him to the brothels at 27 and 28 Chuan Ban. Although by then, their owners appeared to have closed the establishments and fled the city. Werner became fixated with number 28 especially, where it seemed dentist Wentworth apprentice was a regular. and where he was introduced to Harold Pinfort, and potentially many of the other men, who were near discovered, also attended his secret nudist retreats in the Western Hills. But there was far more to come. When Edward Werner went through his daughter's diary, he claimed to find evidence which detectives Hahn and Dennis had overlooked. namely, entries his daughter had apparently written about how she'd gone on a weekend visit to the Western Hills with the Irish reporter George Gorman and his family. Six months before her murder. And that while on that trip Gorman had made sexual overtures to her. Wait, she drabuff. This, of course, being the same George Gorman who had so stoutly defended the reputation of his friend Wentworth Prentice in the newspaper the day after he was taken in for questioning. Gorman, also a regular at number twenty eight. It was around this time that Werner apparently heard a rumor that Canadian suspect, Harold Pinfold, on his release from questioning, had gone straight to the city of Tianjin, where he was heard asking someone if Prentice had been arrested yet. And that wasn't all that Werner had on Wentworth Prentice. When he was interviewed back at the start of the year. Apprentice claimed never to have met Pamela before. This wasn't true. Werner tried to impress upon anyone that would listen to him. Pamela had actually once been a patient apprentices. And he had the receipt to prove it. which he said was dated from only five weeks before the murder. And in case it had gone unnoticed. Though it wasn't Prentice that Pamela had seen the morning before she disappeared. She had been to the dentist that day. Could that have been linked to anything at all? Some point. Edward Werner learned that a Rickshaw puller had been brought in for questioning after he was seen washing a bloody seed cushion near to where Pamela's body was found. Not long after she was killed. time he told Inspector Hahn that the blood was the result of a fight between a Russian expat and an American Marine. Werner hired agents to track down the ritual puller so he could speak to him himself. The man alleged told Werner a very different story to the one he gave to Inspector Hahn. According, the Rickshaw Puller claimed that on the night Pamela went missing, He was called to the Barcomb at number 28, Juan Bann. There he picked up two men. and what appear to be a young European woman wrapped in a white sheet. It wasn't moving. It was her blood that had got on the Rickshaw cushion, he said. Werner again took his findings to British diplomats, pleading with them to reopen the case. Rick Schwarpula, who Werner likely paid some considerable money for his apparent confession. Throughout 1938 and into 1939, Werner continued investigating. But all his efforts to get British officials to reopen the case failed. In fact, they became so annoyed with him, he was eventually banned from entering the legation quarter. So keen were they to draw a line under it all. Werner would not be deterred. Eventually he also discovered that Joseph Nauf, who it turned out ran the brothels at 27 and 28 Juan Ban. Despite what he told police back in nineteen thirty seven. had in fact not only known more about the Western Hills nudist weekends, He was a regular participant. It was all becoming glaringly obvious to Werner. that Wentworth Prentice and all his fellow frequenters of number twenty eight. knew far more about his daughter, and possibly what had happened to her, than they were letting on. Well his own theory was this. Over a period of months, Pamela had been essentially groomed by Prentice and his associates. Then, possibly under the pretext of a Christmas party. They had finally made their move and invited her to meet them at number 28. Perhaps she'd even met one of them first for a secret dinner. Which would explain the food that was later found in her stomach. Werner surmised that the men plan to have sex with his daughter that night. But having realized the truth about why she'd been invited out, Pamela refused their advances, and a struggle ensued. During that struggle, Pamela was likely struck with a chair. Werner had in fact spot a wooden chair with a broken leg when he visited the brothel as part of his own investigations. Having been killed inside, Werner surmised that the assailants had then taken Pamela's body to the fox tower. Because it was unlit and unpatrolled. There the men Some of whom, if Werner's theory was to be believed, were hunters and medical professionals, mutilated the corpse with a combination of crude stabs and cuts. as well as clinical incisions to remove her organs. But nobody else bought it. Or at least didn't want to know about it. Despite it all. Werner continued pursuing the case and was still doing so in late 1941 when the Japanese Air Force attacked Pearl Harbor. Japan, now formally at war, with many of the nations represented in the legation quarter. Things only became even more intense for expats in Beijing and across China. Edward Werner was forced to flee his home and move into the relative safety of the quarter. whose right to diplomatic and legal immunity was getting more and more fragile by the day. All the while, he continued to write long requests to the Foreign Office to have the killers he'd singled out brought to justice. In March 1943, the Japanese government finally took over the legation quarter. and removed all its remaining European residents, including Edward Werner and Wentworth Prentice. All were marched to the train station and sent to an internment camp in Shandong, 250 miles away to the south. Ironically, Edward Werner would spend the rest of the war as a prisoner of the Shandong internment camp, alongside many of the men he believed had been involved with Pamela's death. Prentice even became the camp's de facto dentist, earning a measure of respect from fellow inmates, something that could only have deepened Werner's sense of grievance toward him. Survivors of the camp later said that the by then seventy five year old Werner periodically confronted Prentice, yelling, You killed her. I know you killed Pamela. You did it. Well and it Edward Werner remained in China. It had after all been his home for most of his life. But more than that. It was where he felt closest to his daughter. To leave would have felt like abandoning her and giving up on her case. Old age and ill health. Finally convinced him to return to England in nineteen fifty one. On his death three years later. The British Times newspaper. published a lengthy obituary, containing only a brief mention of Pamela's murder. It would be several decades before the mysterious, unsolved case would surface in print again. One rainy day in London. In the early two thousands. A writer named Paul French sat at a desk in the National Archives. French had studied Chinese at the University of London and had become interested in the career of a journalist who'd been working in Beijing just prior to the Second World War. A woman by the name of Helen Foster Snow. The dismal wet weather that day led to French staying a little longer at his desk than normal. And as he read on, a footnote in Snow's biography suddenly caught his attention. In the note, Snow alluded to her fears in the wake of Pamela Werner's murder. that it was herself and not the young woman who'd been the intended target. When he woke the next morning, he had to find out more about the story. His curiosity led him back to the archives. where he searched a box of nineteen forties records from the British Embassy in China. He was not disappointed. There were numerous documents on the case, including a 150 page letter from Edward Werner setting out his own private efforts to solve the case. Concluding with the accusation that Wentworth Prentice and his fellow nudists had been the killers. French wrote a book about the case called Midnight in Peking, in which he concurred with Werner's theory. The book became a bestseller. Won many awards. But like the original investigations. French's conclusions were dogged by counter-claims and controversy. Several critics, including two descendants of individuals who featured in the case, Cast doubt on French's presentation of Werner's conclusions. They posted photograph of many original documents referred to in the book. which drew Werner's reliability into question. Edward Werner was not a credible source, the critics said. claiming that French had downplayed the man's violent temper. They drew attention to an incident in 1913, while Werner was the British consul in Fuzhou, When he struck a customs official with a whip. An incident which led to Werner being forcibly retired from the diplomatic service. The critics also said that Werner's assertions were hard to substantiate, and not mentioned in any other accounts of the investigation. In foreign office correspondence or newspaper articles. They also showed that the receipt for the dental work that Prentice had carried out on Pamela was in fact dated six years before her death. Not five weeks, as her father had claimed. and at the time of the cinema performance that Prentice said he'd been at the night Pamela was murdered. By newspaper records from the time. French's reconstructions relied too heavily on Werners letters, they said. while it was likely that more accurate police records had not survived the war. In twenty eighteen. The Death in Pee King, Who Killed Pamela Werner, was published. Its author, Graham Shepard, openly admitted that he was not a fan of true crime books, or writing, but he'd become intrigued by the case after reading Paul French's book. Partly because his wife's grandfather was Nicholas Fitz Morris, who'd presided over the inquiry into Pamela's death. but also because he was a retired British police officer with over thirty years on the force. For the former detective, Pamela Werner's Killing presented an intriguing cold case. Using his policing skills, Shepard methodically drew up a full list of possible suspects. which included not just Wentworth Prentice and his fellow nudists, But Chinese and Japanese agents and some previously unexamined suspects and leads. Shepard found the gory nature of the murder especially curious. Why had her chest been opened and her heart taken out for one? At first, Shepard didn't discount the possibility that Edward Werner himself might have murdered his daughter. Indeed, he considered the father, with his history of violence and controlling insecure nature, to be a stronger candidate than many of the other suspects. Shepard noted how Werner seemed aware of every detail of Pamela's movements on the day that she died. He was known to have disapproved of her boyfriend, and to have had an explosive temper. Not only that. He turned up at the crime scene the following morning, as offenders are often known to do. But in his final analysis, Shepard came to believe that Werner didn't kill his only child. He felt from his policing perspective. But there was someone else much more likely to have been the murderer. Han Xiao Ching. Pamela's classmate. been so brutally beaten off by her father when he attempted to call on Pamela's home a week before she died. conclusion was that the loss of face, so important in Chinese culture, prompted the young man to exact an extreme form of revenge, of which the removal of Pamela's heart. Was it symbolic climax? The former detective noted that the crime scene was just around the corner from Pamela's home, on her route there from the ice rink. Which to him was highly suggestive of a lone offender. Lust and rejection. Determined to exact revenge on Pamela's father. According to Edward Werner, Han Shuqing was murdered by Japanese military police sometime in the 1940s. As for Inspector Richard Dennis. He was relieved of his position as police chief in Tianjin when the Japanese military took over. and immediately put in prison. Where he was subjected to months of solitary confinement and torture. He was only released after he signed a forced confession to crimes he didn't commit. Returning to China after the war. He assisted with the war crimes trials of some of the very people who'd imprisoned him. before returning to England, where he lived until his death in 1977. The fate of Inspector Han She Chong. It was also forced out by the Japanese occupying forces. It's unknown. As for Pamela Werner. She was laid to rest in what at the time was Beijing's English Cemetery. Today, it lies under the pavement of Beijing's second largest ring road. There is a walking tour there, which retraces Pamela's steps the night she went missing. The Werner's home, which she left mid-afternoon on that fateful day. Is now a print shot. The Fox Tower. Dong Bian Men, as it's known locally. Pamela's mutilated body was found. is today home to a contemporary Chinese art space. As Beijing's traffic thunders over her remains, It seems the identity of Pamela Werner's killer, or killers, Will very likely remain forever. I'll explain. This episode was written by Diane Hope. Richard McClain Smith. Thank you as ever for listening. Unexplained is an AV Club production podcast created by Richard McLean Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music. are also produced by me. Richard McClain Smith. Unexplained the book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble. Waterstones and other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts. and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation or a story of your own you'd like to share. 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