Ep. 8: The Murder of Chong Yang

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
The crime scene in the murder of Chung Wai Yang
didn't just look wrong. It looked intentional. No warning, no struggle,
just a single shot to the back of the head,
footprints leading nowhere, and the hunter's gear stripped away like
a trophy. For the Yang family, the question started immediately

(00:23):
for investigators. The answers would point toward a pair of
hunters who claimed it was all just a joke. That's
next on Blood Trails. When Maivu Yang got a text

(00:49):
from her mother one evening in the fall of twenty eighteen,
she wasn't too concerned to read that her father hadn't
come home from deer hunting.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
When it first happen, it felt like a normal thing
that happens every year. Every year. My mom always freaks
out when my dad doesn't come home right.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
Chung Wa Yang had been chasing whitetail at the Rose
Lake State Wildlife Area, about ten miles northeast of Lansing, Michigan.
It was a place he'd hunted dozens, maybe hundreds of times.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Before, So when my mom started blowing all of our
phones November sixteenth, we just assumed it was the same
thing she does every year. We were not alarmed. We
were like, mom, Dad probably got a deer and that's
why he does not picking up on you, like, stop overreacting.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
But Maivu's mother refused to be mollified, and as the
darkness deepened on that cold November evening and Chung still
hadn't responded to calls and messages, the Yang family began
to realize that something was wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
You know, they're married, so she has that I guess feeling.
She's just like, no, this time is different, and like,
your dad always calls me when he comes down from
the tree.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
The Yang family is a big one, so there were
plenty of volunteers to help scour the woods. Chung's brother
had been hunting on a different price property that day
with his son Meng, so the pair drove to Rose
Lake to put missus Yang's mind at ease. They were
joined by Thani Yang, another of Chunk's nephews, along with
Thani's friend, a.

Speaker 3 (02:10):
Guy named Lucas Braun.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
The Rose Lake wildlife area is heavily wooded and it's
easy to get turned around, especially in the dark, but
the Yang family knew Cheng's usual hunting spots, so it
didn't take long for their worst fears to be realized.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
My niece texted me and said, they found grandpa. Someone
shot him, and I just remember like blacking out and
just screaming and crying because it was just kind of like,
you know, we're supposed to have thingsgiving, like, what do
you mean they found grandpa.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Chong Yang was found lying face down in the two
inches of snow that blanketed the forest floor. The sixty
eight year old hunter had been shot in the back
of the head and the bullet had exited his left eye.

Speaker 4 (02:55):
So during their funeral, his face had to be reconstructed
for that because his whole left cheek pretty much the
meat was blown out. It was just kind of the
skin left over there.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
That's Joseph Yang, an attorney who helped the family navigate
the grueling legal process in the years that followed. He
also acted as the family spokesperson, and he told me
Chong's brother and nephews could tell right away that this
wasn't some kind of innocent mistake.

Speaker 4 (03:19):
Chong hunted with a gun with his backpack as well
as a traditional mom hunting knife. His backpack was missing
as well as his hunting knife was missing, and the
gun was missing as well.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
Chong hadn't just been shot in the back of the head.
His gun and backpack had also been stolen, which told
investigators that whoever had done this had walked up to
the body, grabbed the nearest valuables within reach, and walked away.
As Mavu's eight brothers and sisters gathered their family for
the week's long morning process, she knew she had to
do something.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
So I remember, like my sister's everybody's coming in and
just crying, and I just had to like sit down
and be like, Okay, as much as sadness as I'm
feeling right now, someone has to be the rational one.
Someone has to ask the right questions. So I just
remember that night we were there and just watching everybody cry.
I was just like, no, I'm going to try to
be the rational one and find out who did this.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
True to her word, Mavu became the tip of the
spear advocating for her father's murderer to be brought to justice,
but she had no idea how long or how much
of a roller coaster the next six years would be.
Chong's murder baffled the greater Lancing community as locals wondered
how such a quiet, peaceful suburb could experience such a
cruel and apparently racist crime. The case teetered on a

(04:37):
knife's edge between hot and cold until GPS coordinates, a
can of scent killer, footprints in the snow, and a
serious blunder by one of the suspects blew the case
wide open. But what happened next has been contested even
to this day, as investigators have tried to parse fact
from fiction, truth from lies, and humor from homicide. I'm

(05:02):
Jordan Sillers and this is Blood Trails the Murder of
Chung Yang, Part one. Chung Chung Wa Yang was born
in Laos in nineteen fifty and it's safe to say
he lived a fascinating life.

Speaker 2 (05:23):
So my dad was a Girlla soldier, and then once
the US pulled out, he came in. I believe eighty
eight is when they officially came.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
Chung was a member of the Mung community, a group
of people originally from Laos whose history with the Americans
began in the nineteen sixties during the Vietnam War.

Speaker 5 (05:40):
I think everybody knows the Vietnam War, but what they
know is what happened in Vietnam. During that same time,
there was what's called a Secret War.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
That's Yavang, who you might remember from his appearances on
the Meat Eater podcast. Yeah, is a chef in Minneapolis
where he owns a restaurant that specializes in Mung cuisine.
He sat down with me alongside his friend and another
regular Meter guest, Ya Yang. Together they helped me understand
the history of the Mung in the US and how
that history intersects with the outdoor community.

Speaker 5 (06:09):
And in the Secret War in the northern part of
Laos in the mountains, communists regime was kind of coming
down from that route, and the US sent into Cia
and special forces in to train hill people, these mountain peoples,
which were the Mung peoples, and they became a paramilitary troops.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
That's what Maivu means when she says her father was
a guerrilla soldier. He joined as many as one hundred
thousand Mung men who fought alongside the American special forces
during the Vietnam War. They fought the ground war, flew
combat missions, directed airstrikes, rescued downed American pilots, fought behind
enemy lines, and gathered intelligence on the movements of North

(06:50):
Vietnamese troops. The problem was, as you know if you
were paying attention in history class, the Americans eventually pulled
out of Vietnam. When they did, among people were in
serious trouble.

Speaker 5 (07:03):
And then there was kind of a genocie of the
Monk people, and so when the communist troops came through,
they just went to the villages of the Mung people
and they killed them off.

Speaker 1 (07:12):
This was, he explained, an incredibly difficult time for the
Monk not only because their people were being killed, but
also because they felt betrayed by the US after signing
on to the vision and values of the American Dream.

Speaker 5 (07:26):
The reason why they joined up was the promise was
made and no matter what, when loser draw, your people
can come to the United States and have freedom and
be citizens. So you had to realize that for a
lot of these among veterans who were part of the
SGU the Special Guerrilla Unit, they're true patriots. They fought
for a country that they never stepped foot in before,

(07:46):
and they fought for a country knowing that there was
a promise made, but the promise itself wasn't fulfilled until
many years later.

Speaker 1 (07:53):
Chung was one of those patriots like Yah and Ya's fathers.
He joined the war when he was just a teenager
in the late nineteen sixties, but was forced to flee
Laus when it fell to the Communists in nineteen seventy five.

Speaker 3 (08:04):
Here's yeah, and.

Speaker 6 (08:06):
That was the beginning of the among people's journey to
several different countries, mainly Australia, France, and the United States.
But that was kind of the start of the refugee
camps and among People's journey to the US.

Speaker 1 (08:23):
Congress passed a new Refugee Act in nineteen eighty that
increased the number of refugees allowed into the country each
year and helped many mong resettle in the US. Many
made homes in California and North Carolina, but thousands ended
up in the Upper Midwest states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and
like Chung's family, Michigan.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
When he first got here, he took a few construction jobs.
He knows how to do a little construction, so he
did more like handyman work. He did janet herhor work.
So he worked for like Franchina Mold, he worked for Peckham.
He worked for Grand River North Corporation, so he don't
basically janitary work, maintenance work. My dad was very handy.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
Through hard work and perseverance, Chong cobbled together a comfortable
living for his growing family. That work included what Mavu
just described, but Chung also took advantage of the grocery
store in the woods and on the water.

Speaker 2 (09:18):
My dad is the eldest grandson of the family. He's
always been a provider. He is like hunting has always
been a way to provide for everyone. He took his
cousins that didn't have dads hunting like he literally always
been like teaching people to how to hunt. So he's
always been a strong provider for not only in the
nine children in our family, he also provided for everybody.

(09:41):
He just took care of everyone.

Speaker 1 (09:43):
Mavu said that part of the reason Chong was hunting
the day he died was to harvest some venison to
distribute to all his kids when they came home for Thanksgiving.
But hunting wasn't just about filling the freezer.

Speaker 2 (09:54):
Hunting was his way of reliefing stress. You know, all
the stress that is on his shoulder. So he used
to fish. But then my mom started fishing, and then
you know, she's his stress. So he was like, no,
I'm not fishing no more. Because he was just like,
I gotta take her with me, and I'll try to
go away from her. So he stopped fishing for a
while because like he loved it until my mom started

(10:17):
and then he hang up with his fishing pole and
continue hunting. Hunting was his stress relievers, so he tended
to do it by himself places that my dad has hunted.
He's been hunting for over twenty nine years. He's very
comfortable with the environment that he hunts at, so all
the public state lands around Lansing area was like my
dad's playground. So we mushroom hunt, we forge, and he

(10:38):
goes hunting for squirrel.

Speaker 1 (10:40):
For dare Chung wasn't alone in his love of hunting,
as Yah and Ya explained that among people have a
long and proud heritage of living off the land that
extends well beyond their time in the US.

Speaker 5 (10:52):
The Chinese caused the meou. The word miao literally translates
the sons of the soil. Our people have constantly, constantly
been the people of the land. We are people of
the land, so we use the land around us for survival,
to build, to grow, hunting and fishing is like in

(11:13):
our blood. I mean, if you talk to any mon
grandpa or uncles who came in from Laos, Thailand, you
know area, they will tell you stories of Yep, this
is how you hunt, this is how you set traps,
this is how you set snares, this is how you fish.
This is what you do. You use the land around you,
and so it's such ingrain in our lives.

Speaker 3 (11:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:34):
I use the word subsistence to describe how the among
people lived in Laos. He doesn't mean they lack necessities,
but that they lived their whole lives close to the land.

Speaker 7 (11:44):
If you live your entire life in Laos, you wake
up and you farmed, and you hunted and you fished
like that was your life. I mean outside of that,
you probably got married and raised a family to ork
the land and hunt and fished, right, because that's how
you live.

Speaker 1 (11:59):
Many monk took advantage of the plentiful opportunities to hunt
and fish in the US, but while some were able
to navigate the complexities of the North American model of
wildlife management, others struggled to adapt to a world where
you need to buy a hunting license and observe bag limits.

Speaker 3 (12:15):
But I also.

Speaker 5 (12:16):
Knew cousins and uncles who are like, well why not
you can, like, if we can gather this, and then
you know, we can take all this panfish, take it home,
we clean it up, we freeze them. Now we have
food for the next you know, two to three weeks,
and it was no difference than harvesting from a farm.
I think the problem that we had in our culture
was there were elders who were saying, well, I don't

(12:38):
get this. I'm just going to do my own thing,
you know, which, Dude, tell me that's not a mom thing.
That's just an old person thing, right, you know.

Speaker 1 (12:46):
Both Yeah and Yeah were quick to point out that
many of their parents and grandparents were extremely conscientious of
wildlife regulations. He has said his father would ask his
kids to explain the rules to him to make sure
he understood them, and Mavus said Chung was always careful
to follow hunting laws and etiquette. But even Native born
Americans have trouble keeping track of all the rags. So

(13:08):
you can see how there would be an adjustment period
for that first generation of Mung hunters.

Speaker 3 (13:13):
Who settled in the US.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
The reason this is relevant to Chung's case is that
during those early years, the mon whether they deserved it
or not, earned a reputation for skirting wildlife laws.

Speaker 5 (13:25):
And then what does that do, man? It builds on
more bias than, which builds on more bias, which then
turns into racism than, which turns to the sentence, you
know that sentence. They all are blaw da da da da.
They are those people do this, Those people do this.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
As investigators started getting tips in the weeks and months
after Chung's death, they found those who expressed versions of
this anti Asian bias. Members of Chung's family reported him
having run ins with white hunters in the woods, and
they couldn't help but wonder if racism could have been
one of the motivating factors.

Speaker 3 (13:58):
Behind Chung's death.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
Maivu made a point to say that the vast majority
of people in the Lansing area were anything but racist.
She says the community came together around the search for
Chong's killer, and most of her memories of her dad
in the woods are positive.

Speaker 2 (14:13):
All the times I did go hunting with my I'm
a social butterfly, so like every person might pass, I
always had that hiker etiquette where I said, hi, hey,
you know, like just to make sure you're you know,
you always want to be people to remember that. Oh yeah,
I saw this little asia go work in the woods.
You know.

Speaker 1 (14:27):
Chong's decision to take his daughter on his excursions wasn't
a light one. Maivu says that it was taboo for
girls to hunt, and so she especially appreciates her father's
willingness to include her in what was traditionally a male activity.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
I never wanted to do garden with my mom, so
I was like, can I go with you guys? And
my dad would like, hurry up, go hiding the car.
So he always took me fishing and hunting with them,
you know, even like when we were like Lettle and
my dad will go hunting and then he'll take me
my little brother, and then we'll be like cause little puppy.
When he shot a squirrel, we'll go and grab a stick, poke,
make sure he's dead, and then we pick it up.

(15:02):
So that's great memories we have of hunting with my dad.
He wanted to go hunting, but he had to watch us,
so he took us with him.

Speaker 1 (15:09):
After Chunk passed, Mava was going through his things and
found that he kept her hunter's education certificate and.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
I didn't even know that he kept it in there,
and I found it like after he passed away, and
then we're going through all his stuff. So to be
able to like have my dad like allow me to
join with them, even though I was a girl. It
was like a great experience growing up. Like I remember,
like when we were younger, we'll go mushroom forging. And
for this particular year, I decided to wear my white

(15:38):
Air Force to go out into the woods. Okay, yes,
during mushroom season. It's really wet out there, right, did
not think of it. So my dad piggybacked me through
the swamps so my white Air Forces wouldn't get dirty.
And I was like a teenager, you know, my dad
was piggyback me through these swamps just because my smart
but decided to wear my white Air Force to go

(15:58):
mushroom hunting.

Speaker 1 (16:01):
Chong's death was a major blow to the Yang family,
and not just because they lost a kind hearted father
who would carry his daughter through the woods so her
new shoes wouldn't get dirty. As Mavu explained, Chung was
the oldest male in the family. As such, she had
a special role as a provider, a mediator, and a mentor.

Speaker 2 (16:21):
My brothers lost the mentors. A lot of my uncles
they you know, my dad was the oldest one, so
my dad was always the one like they all went
to talk to. Because my dad's he's very soft spoken,
he doesn't like confrontation. He likes to, you know, be
very reasonable. So he always is the level headed one.
Where he tried to gap the bridges. That's just all
he's done. His whole life was gap bridges between the

(16:44):
new generation and the old generation, make sure that everybody
is taken care of. So it was really hard to
see my brothers, my uncles, all his friends, everybody just
changed after my dad died, you know what I mean.
Like at my wedding, you know, like all the uncles
were like, you know, if your dad was here, this
is what your dad would have said, because this is
what he said to our daughters. You can definitely see

(17:07):
the depression that everybody had in my family home. Hunting
was different for everyone too, Like everything has been a
lot different without my dad, you know, because you know,
even though like he was level headed, he also had
this like choker mentality where he will like make a
situation a little bit better with a joke here and there,
so we never really got to drown and sorrow. He

(17:29):
was like some ray of sunshine, some ray of reasoning
for everyone. So to lose that sunshine and ray for
everyone it was. It's still very difficult.

Speaker 1 (17:39):
Unless you've experienced something like this yourself. It's tough to
imagine what the Yang family went through as they tried
to pick up the pieces after finding Chong lying on
that forest floor. But as they work to fill the
unfillable gap Chong had left, detectives with the Bath Township
Police Department began to piece together what had happened to
the father, grandfather, and lifelong mong hunter.

Speaker 3 (18:04):
That's next after the Break Part two.

Speaker 1 (18:13):
The crime scene detective Brian Miller had been with the
Bath Township Police for about six years when Chung was
killed in twenty eighteen. He took the lead on the
investigation because the incident happened within the township's jurisdiction, but
he'd only been a detective for about eleven months. This
was also his first homicide investigation as the case officer

(18:33):
in charge, which turned out to be a pretty raw deal.
That's because as I've mentioned before, homicides in a rural,
wooded area are some of the most difficult to solve.
Evidence can be easily hidden or destroyed, witnesses are few
and far between, and it's impossible to say exactly how
large the crime scene is. The two inches of fresh

(18:54):
snow on the ground might have been a big help,
but by the time detective Miller arrived at the scene,
it was it was tough to tell one print from another.

Speaker 4 (19:02):
Yes, there's bootprints all over the place. I mean, if
you can imagine somebody either family responding, and then you
add on the emergency personnel, there's don't be bootprints everywhere,
but there's only one unique set that goes that way.

Speaker 1 (19:14):
That's Joseph Yang, again, the family attorney. Detective Miller was
not permitted to speak on the record since this case
is still in the appellate process, but Joseph knows as
much about Chung's investigation as anyone who wasn't in the
police department. I was able to obtain the entire case
file from the bath Township Police that included incident reports,

(19:35):
tips received, emails between detectives and prosecutors, and screenshots of
phones and other electronic evidence. One of the first things
Miller noticed is what you've just heard. While the Yang
family had left their own bootprints around Chung's body as
they ran to check on their uncle and brother, there
was one set of prints that walked off by itself.

(19:56):
Whoever had left them had walked back and forth between
Chung's body and a nearby log, and then traveled north
away from the body towards a larger footpath. The only
other set of prints that could be distinguished was Chung's,
which led back to his tree stand. Chung was wearing
camel clothing and a hunter's orange vest, and investigators found

(20:16):
a flashlight underneath his body, along with a headlamp battery
pack near his head. It was obvious to investigators that
the sixty eight year old was shot while walking home
after climbing down from his tree stand. Sunset was at
five oh nine that evening, which means legal shooting hours,
ended at five thirty nine, assuming about twenty minutes to
pack up his stuff, climb down, and start walking out.

(20:38):
Miller estimated that Chung was shot around six pm. He
also spoke to at least two neighbors in the area
who reported hearing a shot around that time, which they
noted because it was obviously after legal hunting hours.

Speaker 4 (20:52):
To kind of hear something like this, this type of tragedy,
you know, at first you think, oh, was it a
hunting asding and you hear about that stuff all the time. Right,
something moved, they thought it was the animal they shot.
It happens, Unfortunately it does, and for hunters that's kind
of a risk. But when we started hearing more details
and starting to give more information for protective Miller kind
of explaining what happened, it was a shot to the

(21:12):
system because we couldn't imagine such a mild man or
man being shot in that way.

Speaker 1 (21:18):
Those details were more about what wasn't at the crime
scene than about what was actually found.

Speaker 4 (21:24):
Chung hunted with a gun with his backpack as well
as a traditional mom hunting knife. His backpack was missing
as well as his hunting knife was missing, and the
gun was missing as well. And you know, the defense
trys to said, well, he maybe he was scouting or
something like that.

Speaker 3 (21:38):
No, he went hunting.

Speaker 4 (21:40):
He told his family he went to hunt, and nobody
hunts without a gun, especially during gun season. His family
hunted with him all the time. They said, whenever he went.
He had his gun, his hunting knife, and his backpack
with just kind of miscellaneous things that he might need,
and his ammal bag and stuff like that, so all
that was gone.

Speaker 1 (21:55):
The theft of Chung's gun, backpack, and knife didn't totally
rule out accident, but it definitely gave what happened a
far more sinister.

Speaker 4 (22:04):
Edge normal accident hunting accident. You shoot, you realize in
that a deer, you try to help, you call authorities.
I mean, that's your fellow brother, hunting brother, right. You
would never want that to happen to you. If you're
a hunter out there, If something happens, you go out there,
you go help them. You don't take their gun, their backpack,
in their knife and lead them out there in the

(22:25):
cold to die alone.

Speaker 1 (22:26):
The wound in Chong's head was a grizzly one, but
it didn't offer as much information as you might think.
Medical examiners concluded that the wound was made by a
caliber larger than a twenty two, But even though they
were able to extract two pieces of bullet fragment, they
weren't able to determine a more specific caliber.

Speaker 4 (22:46):
They really couldn't get any evidentiary value of like is
this manufacture or something of that nature the metal which
is kind of a generic medal, and so they couldn't
get anything specific from that. I mean, based on the bullet,
it looks kind of like a rifle just because of
the size of it all. But they couldn't even say
what it was because the bullet was so mangled and

(23:06):
it's just generic metal that they couldn't really say specifically
what it was. It's kind of a theory that it
might have been a rifle, definitely not bugshot or anything
of that nature.

Speaker 1 (23:16):
The forensic pathologist, a woman named doctor Alisha Wilson, said
the two pieces of metal found near Chung's eye appeared
to be quote parts of a jacket copper in other words,
as opposed to the lead found inside a copper jacketed bullet.
This might suggest a rifle bullet, like Joseph said, and
it would indeed exclude the kind of all lead slug

(23:38):
commonly used in shotguns. But it's also possible that the
projectile was what's called a sabo slug sometimes pronounced Sabbath slug.
These copper jacketed bullets are most commonly used in shotguns
and muzzleloading rifles, and they feature the conical shape we
associate with modern projectiles. They also have a plastic base

(23:59):
designed to ter face with a barrel's rifling to spin
the bullet and increase accuracy. In other words, while Detective
Miller knew he wasn't looking for a rim fire rifle
or someone using buckshot, he couldn't narrow things down much
beyond that. It could have been someone using a shotgun
or a muzzleloader with a Sabo slug, or any rifle

(24:19):
chambered in a caliber larger than a twenty two. He
also couldn't know for sure which way the shot came
from or how far away the shooter was. The shot
entered through the back of Chunk's head, but the hunter
could have been looking to one side or the other.
There was also no way to know whether or how
much he'd moved around after being hit. Doctor Wilson testified

(24:40):
that she ruled out a close proximity shot due to
the lack of soot on the wound, but she couldn't
narrow the distance much beyond that. Though long and short
of it was, the crime scene didn't offer Detective Miller
or his colleagues much information. They didn't find anyone else's
belongings on the ground, and they weren't able to match
the foreign DNA found on Chung's body to anyone else.

Speaker 3 (25:01):
That DNA could have been.

Speaker 1 (25:03):
From a relative, coworker or the murderer. The only evidence
that anyone else had even been at the scene were
those bootprints.

Speaker 4 (25:12):
There's a path, there's a main artery that goes through there,
and of course the investigation happens, the family goes out
to find them. There's bootprints everywhere in that area, but
there's one unique set of bootprints that kind of loops
up and it comes back down, and that unique set
of bootprints is where that spray is found.

Speaker 1 (25:30):
That spray was a can of scent killer, and it
was found in a plastic grocery bag next to the
same kind of bootprints that had walked next to Chung's body.
But while police did eventually collect it, they didn't realize
at first that it was connected to the crime scene.

Speaker 4 (25:46):
And with the police officer when they scanned the area,
they found it and they marked it, but it wasn't
even anything. They thought it was just a litter, just
kind of trashed.

Speaker 3 (25:55):
The night Chung was killed.

Speaker 1 (25:56):
Sergeant Patrick McPherson found the can of Scent Killer about
three hundred yards to the south of the body. He
was scouring the woods in search of evidence, and he
noticed a set of prints that matched those found near Chung.
These prints led away from the main trail to the
west and towards some private property. The prince led him
to the can of sent spray, but he wasn't sure

(26:16):
whether it was connected to the crime scene. That's because
when he followed those prints back to the main trail,
he couldn't distinguish them from the other bootmarks on the trail.
He didn't pick up the bag and can that night,
but the next day Detective Miller asked him to go
back and retrieve it. It's possible that whoever had killed
Chong had walked back to the main trail and then

(26:37):
veered off to the west towards private property, dropping the
scent spray on the way. They couldn't say for sure,
but the fact that those prince matched the ones found
near Chung suggested that two could be linked. Detective Miller's
instincts turned out to be correct. They wouldn't know it
for another six years, but that can of scent killer
became one of the most crucial pieces of evidence in

(27:00):
the prosecution of Chung's murderer Part three, Tips and leads.
With the crime scene failing to produce any solid leads,
Detective Miller turned to the general public for help. The
police department put out press releases asking to speak with
anyone who had been near Rose Lake that day or

(27:22):
who might have heard something relevant about what happened. My
vow was a big part of this campaign. She launched
a Facebook page to raise awareness about her father's case.
She also organized yearly events commemorating his death and put
flyers around town soliciting leads.

Speaker 2 (27:39):
When the first happened, everybody in Cammell was a potential suspect.
So it was very scary to like because at that
time I was making flyers, I was going to Roselake
into other public state land, and I was putting flyers
on people's card askinglake if they know anything, you know
what I mean. So it was scary to be in

(28:01):
that position where you don't know, is this the potential
car of the person who kill my dad? Like you
just didn't know.

Speaker 1 (28:07):
Some of the tips they received were more helpful than others.
One tip, for example, came in through crime Stoppers and
claimed that Chong was murdered by a CIA agent carrying
badge number four thirty five. The tipster said Cheng was
with a group of eight people at the time he
was killed, but didn't explain who those other people were
or why the CIA would want Chung dead. It is

(28:29):
true that the spooks ran the Mung operation in Laos,
but there was no evidence that Chong had maintained any
kind of connection with the agency, and the bit about
him being with eight other people was obviously false, so
the tip was deemed not credible. Many of the tips
that came in revolved around hunters who had expressed anti
Asian or anti Mung bias. The Yang family told investigators

(28:51):
that Chong had experienced this bias in the past, and
investigators looked at several hunters for this reason. One man,
for example, post did a Facebook comment that said quote,
I hunt right there. People kill half year old deer,
especially the walking white rice and soy sauces that hunt
out there opening day at nine am, walking out the

(29:12):
woods to the Kia or Honda with a squirrel. This
fellow's name was Matthew Mattney, and investigators were obviously interested
in hearing more about his views on the case. He
told detectives that he hadn't hunted at Rose Lake in
the last two years, but he did remember meeting someone
he believed was Chung. He said Chong had interrupted his hunt,

(29:32):
but when he tried to talk to him, Chung just
turned around and walked away. Detectives asked Mattney if they
could search his cell phone, and he said they could,
But in what turned out to be an odd bit
of foreshadowing, Mattney admitted that there was a text on
his phone to his cousin in which he was quote
joking about killing Chong. This could have ended very poorly

(29:53):
for Mattney, but he ended up being exonerated by the
same phone that could have put him in jail. When
detectives pulled the location information from Mattney's device, they found
that it hadn't been to bath Township in over a month.
On the day of Chong's murder, Mattney had been in
lancing at a scrap metal junkyard, which was verified by
another detective. Investigators received dozens of other tips over the

(30:16):
subsequent months and years.

Speaker 3 (30:18):
Many were little more than rumors.

Speaker 1 (30:19):
Though they had to track down each and every one
of them. But reading through the case file, there's one
name that comes up more than any other in the
first two years of the investigation.

Speaker 3 (30:30):
Jack Kuhn.

Speaker 2 (30:33):
The first person that kind of was like on the
radar as of the person in interest was mentioned as
Jack Kuhn. I guess he had this bendet against Asian
people because his dad was died in the Vietnam War.

Speaker 1 (30:46):
Detective Miller received his first tip about Kuhn in December
of twenty eighteen, just a few weeks after Chong's death.
This tipster said that Kuhn used to live in a
trailer park he owned, and Kuhn would complain that his
father was killed by a quote foreigner during the war. Then,
just about a month later, Miller caught Kuhn at the
scene of the crime. The detective had placed trail cams

(31:10):
looking at the spot Cheng had been found. Those cameras
took photos of Kun walking past that spot on November
twenty second and twenty fifth, about a week after Chung
was murdered. In the photos, you can see Kun looking
down at the spot where Chung had fallen, and a
pool of blood was still frozen on the ground. This
was obviously suspicious, so Detective Miller got in touch with

(31:31):
Kuhn and asked to have a chat. During their initial
phone conversation, Kun admitted that he'd been hunting at Rose
Lake for the last twenty years, but denied having been
out in.

Speaker 3 (31:42):
The woods the knight Chong was killed.

Speaker 1 (31:44):
However, he described the general area of the crime scene
as being near one of his usual spots. Later, when
he met detectives at Rose Lake to show them where
he'd set up his tree stand, he led them directly
past the crime scene. He explained that there was only
one way in an out from his tree stand, and
that route took him past where Cheng had been hunting.

(32:04):
This wasn't enough to arrest mister Kuhn, but it did
make him suspect number one, though it was never verified
and Kuhn denied it. Detective Miller also received a tip
that Kuhn had used a racial slur against Southeast Asians
while at a DNR chech station.

Speaker 4 (32:20):
He's one of the many people that they interview to
make sure and check off the list, and yes, because
of those remarks, he was a suspect while he's a
person of interest and they interviewed him.

Speaker 1 (32:29):
But what was perhaps the most damning piece of evidence
against Kuhn is that he was seen wearing the same
kind of boots that had made those prints around Cheng's body.
After a lengthy back and forth with Dick's Sporting Goods,
Detective Miller confirmed that the boot tread found at the
crime scene was most likely made by field and stream
swamp tracker rubber hunting boots. This was a common type

(32:53):
of hunting boot at the time, though that particular model
appears to have been discontinued. One of Chong's nephews actually
had several pairs of this kind of boot, so he
was one of the first suspects detective Miller had to
rule out. Miller told other law enforcement officers to be
on the lookout for this type of boot, and almost
exactly a year after Chung's death, d n R officer

(33:14):
Katie Stewara looked down and saw them on Jack Kuhn's feet.
She was talking to Kuhn about a separate enforcement issue
when she noticed the pair of swamp trackers, and she
informed detective Miller right away. Kuhn had remained on Miller's radar,
but this new information prompted another call down to the station.
Khon maintained his innocence throughout the course of this second

(33:35):
interview and didn't offer any further information, but what Detective
Miller had was enough to obtain a search warrant. An
officer seized three cell phones, three iPads, two laptop computers,
one USB drive, and one pair of hunting boots from
the trailer home where Kuhn lived.

Speaker 3 (33:51):
With his wife.

Speaker 1 (33:53):
Miller received a few additional tips from Kuhn's coworkers at
home depot, describing how the man would sometimes joke about
killing someone and became quote paranoid after finding out he
was being investigated for Chong's murder, But none of those
tips turned into hard evidence, and none of the items
seized from Kuhn's house yielded anything either. In fact, detective

(34:14):
Miller eventually determined that Kuhn probably wasn't the guy he
was looking for.

Speaker 4 (34:20):
The timeline didn't fit for him. He was working, he's
traveling back and forth, and so the timeline didn't fit
for the kind of that six to nine period there,
and then his cell phone data really didn't hit in
that area. Either though he lives in the area.

Speaker 1 (34:34):
Detective Miller confirmed that on the day of the murder,
Kuhn had left the Okamas home depot in East Lansing
at four eighteen PM. Then his phone received a text
message from his bank at four twenty two that indicated
he'd withdrawn some money from an ATM near that home depot. Next,
he went across the street to Dick's Sporting Goods and
purchased a tree stand at four thirty four. After that,

(34:57):
he drove up to bath Township and made a debit
card with at a gas station at four fifty one,
and bought something else at a grocery store at four
fifty six. Finally, at six ten PM, right around the
time Chong was likely killed, his phone received another text
from his bank indicating he'd used his debit card again
at the same gas station in bath Township. When detective

(35:20):
Miller reviewed the location data from Kuhne's cell phone, it
correlated with the text messages he'd received. He was in
the bath Township area between five and seven PM on
the night of the murder, but the cell tower that
showed his phone's location also covered his home. What's more,
when that location data was transferred onto a map. The
circle of possible locations didn't extend very far into.

Speaker 3 (35:43):
The state wildlife area.

Speaker 1 (35:46):
There is a margin of error with location information, but
it seemed unlikely that Kun had been hunting that night.
He just didn't have enough time to be at all
those locations and get out to the wildlife area on
the same evening. Of course, someone else could have had
Kuhn's phone and debit card. If he planned to kill
Cheng that night, he could have used an accomplice to

(36:06):
make it look like he was in areas where he
actually wasn't. Detective Miller tried to obtain surveillance footage from
the gas station and grocery stores Kuhn had visited.

Speaker 3 (36:15):
But they had already deleted it.

Speaker 1 (36:18):
Fortunately for Old Jack, this wasn't the only evidence that
eventually made investigators look elsewhere. Shortly after Chung died, Kun
texted his wife to inform her that Chung was killed
quote right by my stand, which is a weird thing
to say if you're the one who killed him. Kuhn
and his wife were also texting about him going to

(36:38):
the gas station and the store, which indicated he was
indeed at those locations. When Kuhn went out with Detective
Miller to show him his tree stand, Miller also noticed.

Speaker 3 (36:48):
That Kun walked with a limp.

Speaker 4 (36:50):
He had a sir walk to him where he would
drag his foot so like he would walk and drag,
And that day there was snow on the ground and
there were no prints that looked like that the area
where the way that he walked would create a drag.

Speaker 1 (37:03):
Finally, and this information wasn't in the case report, but
did come out at the trial, the health app on
Kun's phone only showed him having walked thirteen hundred feet
between four pm and nine pm on the day of
the murder. I used on X to map the distance
from the parking lot to where Chung's body was found,
and it's just under a mile. This means that even

(37:24):
if Kun flew from his job at home depot to
the wildlife area, he couldn't have gotten out to Chung's
body and back without walking eight times farther.

Speaker 3 (37:33):
Than his phone indicated.

Speaker 1 (37:35):
None of this is entirely exonerating, but creating all these
false trails and fake evidence would have required an elaborate scheme.
And while I haven't met mister Kuhn myself, I can't
help but wonder if detectives doubted his ability to pull
off something like that. In my mind, the family's opinion
of the investigation carries a lot of weight. I asked

(37:57):
Mavu what her experience was like working with Detective Miller,
and here's what she said.

Speaker 2 (38:03):
At first, it was frustrating because I didn't understand why
they couldn't tell me everything. Like I was really angry
at first because again, my dad just got murdered. But
along the way, I started to understand why he was
treating everything the way he did. He was very professional
about everything. He did his best, you know what I mean,
Like he didn't want us to give our hopes up.

(38:23):
He was a hunter like all the police officers are
all hunters too, So this is not only a loss
to my family, but it was a loss to the
hunting community too.

Speaker 1 (38:32):
As for Miller's decision to move on from Jack Kuhn,
Mavu thinks he made the right call.

Speaker 2 (38:37):
I was definitely say, like bath Township, they did investigate him.
You know, everybody did their part because, like I said,
for a long period of time, that was the first
name that was kind of on my radar too. During
the investigation, I feel like bath Township did their diligent
job of eliminating him as a suspect or a person
of interest.

Speaker 1 (38:56):
Jack Kun may have been suspect number one, but he
wasn't the only person the bath Township.

Speaker 3 (39:01):
Police were looking at.

Speaker 1 (39:03):
Two years into the investigation, two more names appeared on
Detective Miller's radar.

Speaker 3 (39:08):
These individuals had.

Speaker 1 (39:09):
Escaped scrutiny for a long time, but thanks to some
help from the FBI and a shocking interview all the
way down in Miami, their luck was about to run out.
That's next after the break Part four the comedians. Modern

(39:37):
technology makes our lives easier, but if you're a criminal,
that little device in your pocket can also be your
worst enemy.

Speaker 4 (39:45):
The number one thing I learned from this case and
begging in all the core hearings is your phone has everything,
Like your cell phone has everything. And so basically what
happened was they did a search of phones that were
in the area, and then they kind of did process
of elimination, Right have we talked to this person, that person?

Speaker 3 (40:02):
This person.

Speaker 1 (40:03):
Not long after Chung's murder, Detective Miller and his team
sent a search warrant to Google asking for information on
the devices in the Rose Lake area the afternoon and
evening of the incident. First, they requested device IDs and
location data. They eliminated devices that were just traveling along
the road or appeared to belong to people living in
nearby houses. Then they sent another search warrant to Google

(40:27):
requesting personal information associated with those device IDs, but this
process took time. In fact, it wasn't until July of
twenty twenty, nearly two years after Chung's death, that Google
finally provided contact information for the owners of the devices
in question. One belonged to a woman who lived north
of the state wildlife area. She said she didn't hunt,

(40:49):
and none of the people living at her house did either,
but she drove through the wildlife area on her way
to work every day, which is why her phone was
inside those boundaries in the relevance timeframe.

Speaker 3 (41:01):
The other device.

Speaker 1 (41:02):
Belonged to a man named Thomas Olson, a thirty two
year old who had been the Clinton County Parks and
green Space coordinator from twenty fifteen until January of twenty twenty.
Clinton County includes Bath and most of the Rose Lake
Wildlife Area, so Miller knew that Olson lived locally, or
at least he used to. Miller soon discovered that in

(41:22):
February of twenty twenty, Olson had moved to Costa Rica
with his wife, who was a citizen of that country.
He was supposed to return in March of that year,
but never boarded the flight. Instead, he stayed in the
country and was in the process of securing residency in
Costa Rica while working remotely as a personal trainer. Miller
also discovered that Olson had obtained a hunting license in

(41:44):
twenty eighteen, and the GPS data showed that he was
within six hundred yards of Chung's body on the night
of the murder. There's also a twelve minute gap in
Olson's location data from six oh six to six eighteen
that evening, so it's possible he traveled even closer. I
should say here that the data investigators obtained from Google

(42:07):
was much more precise than the cell tower data they
got on Jack Coon's phone. This data is derived from
Google apps that have GPS enabled. This can be more
or less precise depending on the signal strength, and it
can sometimes cut in and out. But anyone who's used
on X to navigate through the Forest knows it's usually
pretty accurate. When Miller interviewed Olsen's coworkers, they remembered Olson

(42:30):
saying he went hunting on the night of the incident
with a friend of his named Robert Roadway. Olson had
said it was his first time hunting, and he had
to borrow a Remington eight seventy Express shotgun from his boss.

Speaker 8 (42:43):
Like, I said, that was my first time, and I
believe it was Rob's first time hunting anything.

Speaker 9 (42:49):
So we're kind of like going to know what we're doing.

Speaker 3 (42:51):
That's Olsen.

Speaker 1 (42:52):
He agreed to sit down for an interview with Miller
and FBI Special Agent Rhys McIntyre. Miller had asked for
the FBS help with some of the more technical aspects
of the investigation, such as analyzing the bullet fragments and
tracing cell phone data. As a federal agent, McIntyre was
also in a position to know that Olsen was planning

(43:12):
to fly back to Miami in June of twenty twenty
one to get a COVID shot. Miller had already been
in touch with Olsen via email, so he asked if
he could see Olson in person during his trip to Miami.
Olsen showed up to a Border Patrol office without a lawyer.
He signed a Miranda waiver and said he was happy
to help with whatever they needed. He started by giving

(43:34):
investigators a summary of what happened on the night of
November sixteenth, twenty eighteen.

Speaker 8 (43:39):
We met out at one of little lass to the
south of Clark Clark Road in the statement, so, I
think I took work off that day, maybe of what
day was a Thursday or Friday on Pavey Friday, I
believe a.

Speaker 10 (43:52):
Friday, So I think I took workoffs.

Speaker 8 (43:53):
We could get out there, you know before because the
sundown happened so quick after work. So we're going to
get out there, you know, like midafternoon. Like I said,
We hung out a little bit and we're like, maybe
it's better if we separate. But again I have no
idea what we're doing. So Rob sort of went up
on this hill and then I said, Okay, well I'm
gonna push north and I'll tell you if I see something,
I'll text you. You see something, me just heading towards me,

(44:14):
let me know. And but it was really there was nothing.
I mean, we sat there, I think I maybe moved twice,
and I was like all R I forget this, you know,
so I started to trek back. I didn't We didn't
see anyone. I didn't see ayone else. I'm not sure
if Rob so that guy or what.

Speaker 1 (44:28):
Like I mentioned, Olsen was hunting with a buddy of
his named Robert Roadway. About a week after Miller and
McIntyre spoke to Olson, McIntyre caught up with Roadway at
the Battle Creek Police Department, which is about fifty miles
south of Lansing.

Speaker 11 (44:43):
Tom and I waited till they got dark out there.
Tom came back. He was trying to I don't know
if he's trying to call me or text me, but
I waited where it was. He came to me, and
then we were walking out towards where we're going to
leave the woods.

Speaker 1 (44:55):
The pair were interviewed almost three years after they went
hunting at Rose Lake, but they tell remarkably similar stories.
Rob said he saw a dough but it was too
dark to shoot and it soon ran away. Tom took
the lead trying to get back to their cars, but
both he and Rob claimed they got turned around and
it took them a while to find the road.

Speaker 8 (45:14):
That's like I said in the statement when we heard
a shot and it sounded like to the north of
where we work as we were tracking back south.

Speaker 9 (45:20):
But you know, we didn't think anything of it.

Speaker 8 (45:22):
Somebody in their backyard or you know, it was just
weird because we were already thinking about these shooting hours, like, oh,
that was weird.

Speaker 9 (45:28):
And then that was it.

Speaker 11 (45:29):
That's all we thought that night when we were walking
out we heard a gunshot. We looked at each other
and both said, damn, somebody's poaching.

Speaker 10 (45:34):
Is there any other reason why I stuck with you?
Was had you thought somebody was poaching?

Speaker 12 (45:37):
Or no?

Speaker 11 (45:38):
Just cause well, yeah, because we come back and back staying.
Somebody's dead. Yeah, you know, Tom, and I look at you.
Any damn somebody's poaching. Guess what twenty four hours later,
wasn't it could have not been a poacher.

Speaker 1 (45:47):
They had parked in a lot off Clark Road and
then walked north into a section of the wildlife area,
but because they got lost in the woods, they came
out farther west than they intended, so they had to
walk back down the road to get to the parking lot,
where they saw they weren't the only ones with a
car still in the lot.

Speaker 11 (46:05):
We saw the car and we said, damn, that guy's
lost more than us. We saw the silver cameray.

Speaker 1 (46:11):
That silver Camra was Chung's car, and Olson and Broadways
say they both noted it before getting into their own
cars and leaving. They came back the next morning, Saturday,
and Rob says he arrived before Tom.

Speaker 11 (46:23):
And I saw police officers around the road, and I'm like,
what a bunch of dicks. Sorry, because you're trying to
give us speeding tickets. It's like Opening weekend. You're giving
up speeding tickets.

Speaker 1 (46:32):
Right. Rob called Tom to tell him about all the
commotion and that he'd spoken to a police officer. When
Olsen got out of his car, he says he spoke
to the same man.

Speaker 8 (46:42):
I gave him my phone number and address and everything.
Basically the recounting of the night before.

Speaker 1 (46:48):
The problem was there wasn't any evidence that either Rob
or Tom had spoken to anyone that morning.

Speaker 3 (46:55):
Here's Detective Miller.

Speaker 13 (46:56):
Rob made it clear that it was a Bad Township
police officer.

Speaker 14 (46:59):
Specifically, I gotta tell you, Tom, it's not true he
had talked to.

Speaker 13 (47:03):
A police officer.

Speaker 1 (47:04):
The Bath Township Police Department isn't a large one, so
it wasn't difficult for Detective Miller to track down the
officers who were there that day, and none of them
recalled speaking with either Rob or Tom. What's more, neither
man could recall the officer's name or provide a definite description.

Speaker 13 (47:21):
Remember what he looked like.

Speaker 9 (47:23):
I think he was taller, I mean, like I said, taller,
wet guy. But I'm not.

Speaker 8 (47:27):
I can't give you the exactly I mean, it was
so quick, it was like a five minute thing, and
then I went out to be Rob.

Speaker 14 (47:32):
So all that had information is recorded, though, Like there's
no way it could have happened with without it being recorded,
and it wasn't recorded, Like that's just something that it
didn't happen.

Speaker 13 (47:41):
Tom, I spoke, I'm not.

Speaker 10 (47:45):
I mean, I'm not. I don't want to lie.

Speaker 9 (47:47):
Nothing to lie about had nothing to do with it.

Speaker 14 (47:49):
I know, I know you had said before that you
had talked to I can't remember if you said a
police officer, but Rob said specifically a Bath Township police officer,
a white man, and they can of a vague description
that could be any one of us us. The fact
matter is there was only two guys out there, and
it wasn't them like it doesn't make sense, and that's
we're just never going to be able to get over that.

Speaker 1 (48:11):
This point is important beyond the fact that it might
indicate a willingness to lie to a police officer. Both
Rob and Tom admitted that they were aware of Chung's murder.
So why didn't they come forward to tell investigators what
they knew? Is it because they were trying to hide
their presence in the woods that night, or was there
a more innocent explanation Their story about talking to a

(48:33):
police officer wasn't the only indication that they might be
trying to hide something. When Tom had driven to Rose
Lake that afternoon, he took a direct route, exiting Highway
sixty nine at the Bath exit and then taking Clark
Road east to the wildlife area, but Tom's phone indicated
that he'd take it a much more circuitous route on
his drive home. Here's Special Agent McIntyre walking him through it.

Speaker 15 (48:57):
But then all the way back that night, he took
a lot of off roads and cut through a lot of neighborhoods.

Speaker 9 (49:02):
No, I mean, not that I remember.

Speaker 15 (49:04):
Because I mean, this is definitely not one of those
direct paths, you know, because this is.

Speaker 10 (49:08):
The lake area right here, and so oh, I see.

Speaker 15 (49:13):
You know, when I zoom in and kind of like
follow the ant trail, there's a lot of you know,
smaller roads taken and cutting through a lot of neighborhoods.

Speaker 10 (49:20):
So I was just curious why you took that sort
of route to get home.

Speaker 8 (49:23):
And I don't even remember doing that the best of
my knowledgy, I just went right home.

Speaker 15 (49:29):
If you weren't, by any chance, like you know, worried
about somebody seen you in that area or law enforcement
or anything, no.

Speaker 9 (49:35):
Definitely not.

Speaker 8 (49:36):
And we didn't know anything. We're just so I was
just gonna go home, or I didn't go home, I'm assuming.

Speaker 1 (49:41):
The next morning, November seventeenth, Tom's phone indicated that he
drove the more direct route he'd taken the previous afternoon
after hunting. That morning, he took the same direct route home.
Tom wasn't able to offer an explanation for his driving
decisions the night of Chum's murder, so Miller and McIntyre
moved dawn to other relevant topics.

Speaker 13 (50:02):
What kind of boots were you were?

Speaker 9 (50:03):
It was just like I said, part of that it
was a brown waiter.

Speaker 13 (50:07):
Then have you held onto those hunt clothes.

Speaker 9 (50:10):
No, probably not, since I moved. Probably not.

Speaker 8 (50:13):
I may have maybe gave it and given them to somebody,
but I kind of just got rid of everything when
I moved.

Speaker 9 (50:18):
I can't take a whole lot.

Speaker 1 (50:19):
Tom had taken a photo of himself the day of
that first hunt, and he appeared to be wearing brown
waiters with boots attached, not the swamp tracker boots investigators
were looking for. Both Tom and Rob admitted to carrying
shotguns that day, but neither could remember what kind of
ammunition they used.

Speaker 11 (50:37):
I don't know for sure what I used.

Speaker 13 (50:40):
I didn't use buckshot.

Speaker 11 (50:41):
It would have probably been a slug, which is the
ball at the end of the cartridge. I started to
get in sabot rounds for more like a rifle round.

Speaker 13 (50:50):
Did you buy your own animal?

Speaker 9 (50:52):
I believe I bought my own.

Speaker 13 (50:55):
Do you remember what kind of.

Speaker 8 (50:58):
I think I bought a couple different guinds. I think
one was a slug type and another one was like
a bug shot. Well, like I said, I don't remember
the one for aug I'm leaning towards the slug.

Speaker 1 (51:12):
Just as an aside here, this is a great example
of why investigators don't release crime scene information to the public.
If Rob and Tom had known the forensic pathologists had
found two pieces of copper jacket and Chung's wound, they
would have known to say they used buckshot or an
all lead slug. Instead, Rob mentioned SABO slugs and Tom
calls what he used a slug type. This assumes they're

(51:35):
guilty and wanted to deceive investigators, which might not be true,
but it's still interesting how they described their ammunition given
what investigators knew at the time. Tom's interview wound its
way around many of these same topics, with Miller and
McIntyre repeating some questions over the three hour interview to
see if Tom would give the same response. Tom denied

(51:56):
knowing anything about Chung's gun, backpack, and knife and didn't
think Rob knew anything either.

Speaker 15 (52:02):
Do you think there's any chance that Rob did something
out there that like maybe you weren't aware of or.

Speaker 9 (52:09):
Rob, there's no way, it's just not Yeah, it's just
not him at all.

Speaker 14 (52:13):
Evin, in the realm of that, I understand you're saying
that it's not him, and I mean it wouldn't be
any of us. But I think what happened is an accident.

Speaker 13 (52:26):
Which can happen. To believe me, I know very well.
You know, accidents happen and people make mistakes. I've done
it too many times.

Speaker 8 (52:34):
I get it, I understand. But no, I mean there's
just no I cannot see Rob. You know, like you said,
you're not yourself if you do something like that. But
you know, the only shot that we heard that day
was when we were back and packing up.

Speaker 1 (52:49):
The pair had hunted in separate locations, so they couldn't
have known for sure what their hunting partner was doing.
But when the same question was posed to Rob, he
was even more adamant that his friend had nothing to
do with Chung's death.

Speaker 15 (53:01):
Is there any possible way when y'all separated that he
could have got into an accident like this?

Speaker 11 (53:07):
That is like such a that's not even appropriate question
to ask, because I mean, I mean, I'm not trying
to sound like an idiot or an asshole. Sorry, just where,
but like I could say that, Okay, is it possible
the neighbor came out of their house and did it,
or is it possible that somebody sat there in cancer
for two weeks? I strongly believe from the bottom of
my heart. No, Like I'm comming accidentally shoot somebody.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
Another thing investigators wanted to know was whether Tom or
Rob held any kind of racial animus.

Speaker 3 (53:36):
Towards among people.

Speaker 1 (53:38):
None of their public social media posts indicated a bias,
but Miller wanted to make sure you ever heard Rob.

Speaker 13 (53:45):
Make any kind of racist statements?

Speaker 14 (53:49):
Not want me, No, No, I don't know if you've
kept how much, how much you've kept up with it,
what you know about this.

Speaker 13 (53:56):
But this guy was among and a lot of people.

Speaker 14 (54:01):
I think kind of hence FBI being involved to think
this was a hay crime, Okay, And I'm just wondering
if there was something there if I don't know enough.

Speaker 13 (54:10):
About Rob to say whether or not.

Speaker 14 (54:11):
And that's why I ask you, But could there be
bad blood for one reason on another from him?

Speaker 12 (54:17):
No?

Speaker 9 (54:17):
Rob's a friendly guy, okay, I can't.

Speaker 12 (54:19):
I mean.

Speaker 8 (54:21):
Not race is not going to go out of his
way to do anything. Yeah, even to the lesser cent.
You don't even say anything.

Speaker 1 (54:28):
So both Tom and Rob claim to be using different
phones from the ones they had in twenty eighteen. Tom
said he still had his old phone and was willing
to surrender it, but he claimed it no longer held
a charge and was still in Costa Rica. When asked
if he had any text message history with Rob on
his current phone, he denied it.

Speaker 8 (54:46):
No, it's on the other phone, which is like, you
can't even turn it on, but that's in the ghost.

Speaker 9 (54:52):
But no, I don't have any texting history with him.

Speaker 1 (54:55):
But Detective Miller refused to be put off.

Speaker 13 (54:58):
I just I have this feeling Tom something else here. Look,
I'm totally and I appreciate it. I just I just
keep getting this feeling.

Speaker 14 (55:05):
You know, I've taken hundreds of hours of courses to
interviews and detecting deception and help people act when they're
when they're not being truthful the words they choose, And
I'm seeing that in you.

Speaker 13 (55:19):
Man, I have.

Speaker 9 (55:20):
Nothing at all to hide. I'm trying. I've told you
everything that I know.

Speaker 1 (55:25):
At this point, they'd been talking with Tom for almost
two hours. It was getting later in the evening, and
Miller figured he'd try one more thing while they had
Tom in the room.

Speaker 14 (55:34):
Can I look in that phone just to verify that
there are no messages between you and Rob?

Speaker 8 (55:39):
Well, you know, there may be WhatsApp messages between us.
I don't know if I have him on what's that
on me particular, but you're asking from that time those
text messages will be.

Speaker 14 (55:49):
And yeah, just so look, we came all the way here,
we gotta I was only able to obtain the audio
recording of this interview, so I can't tell you anything
about the body language of the three men in the room,
but Detective Miller noted in his report that Tom's hand
was visibly shaking as he handed over the phone.

Speaker 1 (56:10):
Detective Miller went silent for several minutes while Tom and
Agent McIntyre continued discussing various aspects of the case.

Speaker 3 (56:18):
But then, dude, it's Sully.

Speaker 1 (56:22):
Detective Miller doesn't answer, and the next twenty seconds are
filled with what you might call a pregnant pause. You
can honestly feel the tension coming through the microphone. Agent
McIntyre continues the interview as Miller scrolls through Tom's phone
for another eight minutes, until dude.

Speaker 13 (56:39):
The racist stuff is concerning the.

Speaker 14 (56:44):
Racist stuff, Yeah, Hal Hitler and the Jews, And I.

Speaker 9 (56:50):
Mean it's just a kind of a dark sense of humor.

Speaker 13 (56:54):
Man, you think that's what at all?

Speaker 8 (56:57):
Yeah, I mean, if you know rot those jokes are common,
but none of it's like I don't even know what's
in there.

Speaker 10 (57:05):
But it's common for him to have said dark kind
of racist jokes.

Speaker 8 (57:08):
Well just yeah, I mean jokes that are gonna get
out there on the edge a little bit.

Speaker 15 (57:12):
So well, I guess what specific mess it is like
in a course of the racist jokes, you know that
he makes us that's you know, obviously everybody does jokes
and whatever else.

Speaker 8 (57:21):
But yeah, well what you said earlier is Rob a
racist makes those jokes. But I don't believe that he
honestly thinks any of that. I mean, he does it
for a reaction.

Speaker 1 (57:33):
It was a tough pill to swallow. Olsen had sent
a text that read, quote efing Jews up the ticket prices,
so I bought one. Another text said efing and then
racial slur for Chinese people, while another said Hyle Hitler.
In another text, Olsen complained about there being quote too
many minorities here not enough.

Speaker 3 (57:54):
Whites makes me sick.

Speaker 1 (57:56):
Rob's side of the conversation was equally racist, but a
legal perspective, talking about putting Jews in ghettos was the
least of their problems. The pair had talked not just
about minorities in general, but about Chung Yang in particular,
So what.

Speaker 14 (58:12):
Do you mean what does it mean by I'm hoping
civilization collapses and we got basic hunter gatherers right to
bath to hunt more people.

Speaker 8 (58:23):
Who said robson then, like I said, I mean, it's
a sense of humor thing China, your reaction boys mean.

Speaker 15 (58:32):
By to hunt more people though, especially and even specifically
a saying Bath.

Speaker 9 (58:37):
I mean playing on on this as a joke.

Speaker 10 (58:40):
And you didn't feel that that was relevant to you.

Speaker 14 (58:44):
I mean it's there's another one where you guys are
parked at a D N R range there a lot
and it says.

Speaker 13 (58:50):
Going back to the crime scene.

Speaker 9 (58:52):
Like I said, it's a joke.

Speaker 13 (58:56):
This isn't a fucking joke.

Speaker 9 (58:58):
I understand.

Speaker 13 (58:59):
You gotta kidding me with.

Speaker 8 (59:00):
This shit, I understand, But these are just jokes. I mean,
this is dark humor.

Speaker 14 (59:06):
I hope you're one hundred percent sure by that, because
you know what it looks like a hate crime now, man.

Speaker 9 (59:12):
There's no they have no reason to do that, absolutely not.
Look he's making jokes, that's all it is.

Speaker 1 (59:19):
It's worth pointing out here that just a few minutes
before Tom had said there weren't any text messages on
the phone between him and Rob. He backtracked later and
said there might be what that messages, but he wasn't
even sure about that.

Speaker 14 (59:32):
So everybody knows that Rob just makes racist jokes about
murdering people.

Speaker 10 (59:37):
Rob's gonna take anything and make.

Speaker 14 (59:39):
A joke reward for him, No way, LMAO. Haven't caught
yet us. One suspect has fled the country.

Speaker 13 (59:49):
It's a joke?

Speaker 12 (59:50):
Is there?

Speaker 13 (59:50):
All jokes once in a while as a joke. This
is a freaking joke, man.

Speaker 9 (59:55):
I'm just That's what I'm saying. I mean, these are
all jokes. You're lying. I'm not lying about anything.

Speaker 10 (01:00:00):
I don't know what you mean, Tom, who shot this guy?

Speaker 9 (01:00:03):
Look, I don't know. I'm telling you the truth. Everything
that's said in there is just in ingest as a
dark joke. I do not know any that other than
what I've already told you.

Speaker 13 (01:00:16):
Was it you? Was it?

Speaker 3 (01:00:17):
Rob?

Speaker 13 (01:00:19):
Is that something we we just?

Speaker 8 (01:00:21):
I mean, I know it wasn't me for sure, and
I'm almost one hundred.

Speaker 9 (01:00:25):
Percent positive that how could it have been robbed?

Speaker 14 (01:00:28):
I mean, this is we should choot cups over here
as a protest and then put Jews and ghettos goddamn jews.
I mean, we killed that guy. You don't see us
crying about it. The joke, Tom, this isn't a joke,
this is this is over man.

Speaker 13 (01:00:44):
I'm sorry. You need to see the fucking light here.

Speaker 10 (01:00:47):
Look it's it's These are all jokes.

Speaker 16 (01:00:49):
I mean, this is just the sense of h So
you were the only two out there in the woods
when this guy was killed, and then you talk about
it constantly and how you murdered him, and it's just
that's the joke.

Speaker 9 (01:01:00):
It's all jokes.

Speaker 12 (01:01:01):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:01:02):
When Rob was asked about these text messages about a
week later, he said pretty much the same thing.

Speaker 13 (01:01:08):
It's a complete joke.

Speaker 11 (01:01:09):
I know that you guys look at that and say, oh,
we're gonna go chase this league as these guys did
as our sick human.

Speaker 9 (01:01:16):
Yeah, I understand the past mesage you.

Speaker 11 (01:01:19):
Guys have seen, if you've got from his film between
him and us do not look good.

Speaker 5 (01:01:22):
But there's nothing behind it.

Speaker 13 (01:01:24):
Okay, So that usier than just.

Speaker 11 (01:01:25):
Two close friends being idiots.

Speaker 1 (01:01:28):
In some of these texts, Tom and Rob joke about
Detective Miller's investigation. You can see why they'd be talking
about being investigated for murder. But Agent McIntyre points out
that they were talking about Chung long before they came
under any kind of legal scrutiny. In one text from
September of twenty twenty, they shared an image of one
of the reward posters Maivu had made. In another text

(01:01:51):
from April of that year, Tom sent Rob a picture
of the pair of them and hunting gear standing in
a DNR parking lot. The text under the photo said,
a couple of cold blooded killers revisiting the crime scene.

Speaker 11 (01:02:04):
We have different humor than other people. It is a
not tasteful joke. It's not taste well, I understand it
just got released to the public. These guys are complete
asshole as I understand it.

Speaker 3 (01:02:16):
But we are close friends.

Speaker 11 (01:02:18):
If there's any questioning about the tax messages, that's a
blankest nayment for it. We can go into each taxt
message and say, I'm sure there's plenty of stuff you
guys can say, I know what we've texted each other.
People could look at it like all of these guys
freaking it.

Speaker 12 (01:02:31):
We're joking.

Speaker 9 (01:02:32):
We were joking, that's it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:39):
Detective Miller was clearly not buying Rob's excuse. He had
the pair near the crime scene on the night of
the murder, they appeared to be lying about speaking to
a police officer. Tom had taken a suspiciously meandering route
back home, and now they'd been caught either joking about
murdering Chong or actually confessing to the crime. It would

(01:03:00):
only take two more pieces of evidence, one nearly overlooked
item from the crime scene and one digital trail that
couldn't be laughed away to finally push this investigation out
of the shadows.

Speaker 3 (01:03:11):
And into a courtroom.

Speaker 1 (01:03:13):
That's next after the break, Part five the trial. Things
didn't look good for Rob Broadway and Tom Olsen, but
it was about to get even worse, especially for Tom.

(01:03:38):
Remember that bottle of scent killer detectives had collected about
three hundred yards from the crime scene, the one they
found by following the same kind of bootprints discovered around
Chung's body. They compared the DNA on that bottle to
Tom's and it.

Speaker 3 (01:03:53):
Was a match.

Speaker 1 (01:03:55):
This didn't prove definitively that Tom had been to the
crime scene, but it did provide yet another piece of
evidence linking Tom to the murder.

Speaker 13 (01:04:03):
What did you drop in the woods at a water bottle?

Speaker 8 (01:04:07):
And I think I don't know if it fell out
or not, but I had deer spray in the bag.

Speaker 13 (01:04:12):
Where do you think that fell out at them? I
don't know.

Speaker 9 (01:04:14):
Back there somewhere.

Speaker 14 (01:04:16):
There was only two sets of footprints there, okay, and
one of them didn't return.

Speaker 9 (01:04:23):
I don't always tell me. I've told you.

Speaker 13 (01:04:24):
Come on, mabe, I neck the bats.

Speaker 9 (01:04:26):
There's nothing more that I can say. I mean, I've
told you everything than that.

Speaker 1 (01:04:31):
Detective Miller hadn't confiscated either man's phone by the time
of this interview, but after some haggling, Tom agreed to
surrender his phone. That day, Rob also had his phone confiscated,
and what they found provided the final piece of evidence
they needed before going to trial. Rob's Google account search
history only went back to twenty twenty one, so that

(01:04:52):
wasn't much use to investigators, but Tom's history went back
to the days surrounding Chong's murder, and, much like the
text message, it told a concerning story. Remember, Chang was
murdered on November sixteenth, which was a Friday. The local
news didn't start reporting that a hunter had been killed
at Rose Lake until November eighteenth, but on November seventeenth,

(01:05:14):
Tom searched for bath Township Police Twitter four times, Clinton
County Sheriff twice, and the term missing hunter twice. The
next day, he searched bath Township Police Twitter another four times,
the term hunter killed once, and he read five different
articles about Chong's death, all on.

Speaker 3 (01:05:34):
The same day.

Speaker 1 (01:05:36):
He continued this pattern of search history over the next week,
but he also looked up roth IRA, early withdrawal penalty
and deferred comp withdrawal, along with queries like United States
and Costa Rica extradition treaty and US lawsuit living in
Costa Rica. On March nineteenth, twenty twenty, Tom searched how

(01:05:57):
to delete WhatsApp group messages and if I delete a
message from WhatsApp group chat, will they get deleted? On
July second, twenty twenty, he searched discarding Sabo and Sabo round.
All these searches were conducted prior to him knowing about
being under investigation for Chong's murder. Now, you might argue

(01:06:20):
that those searches just proved that Tom was interested in
a local crime story. Tom said he'd seen police cars
at Rose Lake the morning after their first hunt, and
he'd even spoken to an officer. If his story is true,
it makes sense that he'd search for bath Township's Twitter
feed to find out what had happened. But as Detective
Miller said about the text messages, one or two searches

(01:06:41):
make sense. Tom and Rob seemed to be obsessed with
this case, and that, combined with the other evidence, convinced
prosecutors with the Michigan Attorney General's Office to move forward
with charges. On December twenty second, twenty twenty two, the
Michigan AG's Office announced that Tom and Rob had both
been arrested one count of felony murder and one count

(01:07:02):
of felony firearm.

Speaker 3 (01:07:05):
I asked my.

Speaker 1 (01:07:05):
Vou what it was like after four years of waiting
to see someone arrested for the murder of her father, all.

Speaker 2 (01:07:12):
The years that we've been trying to find answers to
my dad. You know, everybody always asks me, like, if
you've ever seen these two individuals, what would you say
to them? And I always say, like, I don't know
what I will say. I just want to look them
in the eyes and see they're human, you know what
I mean? Like, how could you leave an elderly sixty
year eight year old man shot in the back of
the head, lying in the cold snow and just let

(01:07:35):
him die. I just wanted to see if they were human,
you know, So to see that they both were very human,
it just made it a lot harder, I guess. And
just to know like they were not that much older
than I am. We're like in the same age group.
It just kind of like it was really hard to
believe like that this is happening, but.

Speaker 3 (01:07:56):
It was happening.

Speaker 1 (01:07:57):
And as my vow explained, it was like closing one
child in a book and opening another. Detective Miller had
sent all the evidence he collected to the AG's office
and it was up to them to put it all
together in a way that would convince a jury. Based
on what you've heard so far, that might not sound
like a heavy lift.

Speaker 3 (01:08:14):
But nine months.

Speaker 1 (01:08:16):
After they'd arrested Rob Broadway, and one day before his
trial was set to begin, the AG's office made a
shocking announcement.

Speaker 17 (01:08:24):
A man charged with the murder of a hunter in
bath Township five years ago is free tonight. The charges
against Robert Rodway and Clinton County were dropped this morning.
Roadway's attorney tells News ten he was released from jail
this morning. The case was dismissed without prejudice, which means
those charges can be refiled in the future.

Speaker 1 (01:08:44):
This is one part of the case I'm still trying
to wrap my head around. I asked Joseph Yang about it,
and he explained that the decision was largely due to
the fact that investigators were able to scrape more information
from Tom's phone than from Rob's.

Speaker 4 (01:08:58):
They do not have the text messages directly off of
Rodway's phone. It's just off of Olsen's phone, and so
that's where the judge created that barrier, because Olsen's phone
was here, you go, do what you want, look at
what you want. Rodway's phone was a search warrant and
they were not able to get that information off of
his phone, and so because of that, judge felt like

(01:09:20):
only Olsen can have one hundred percent, whereas if they
want to use those text messages for Roadway, they can,
but only Rodway's words and not Olsen's words.

Speaker 1 (01:09:31):
You can see how important those text messages were for
the prosecution. While prosecutors acknowledged that some of the messages
could have been made in jest, Joseph takes them more seriously.

Speaker 4 (01:09:42):
To me, it was tantamount to a confession two cold
blood killers going back to the scene of the crime.
We killed that guy. You don't see us crying like
to me, that's cant amount to a confession, And the
defense tried to blame it as kind of dark humor
and stuff. You know, dark humor is a one off comment,
not a continuous conversation continuously going back to the scene

(01:10:05):
of the crime.

Speaker 1 (01:10:06):
It's a strong argument, but it's not bulletproof, as prosecutors
discovered during Tom Olsen's trial. The trial began with opening
arguments on Tuesday, February thirteenth, twenty twenty four, and ended
nine days later. Tom's father is an attorney, and so
he was able to hire a team of lawyers to
defend his son. On the other side of the case,

(01:10:27):
Michigan Assistant Attorney General Richard Cunningham argued for the people,
Cunningham had a steep hill to climb. Most of the
evidence against Tom was circumstantial. They hadn't found Chung's gun, backpack,
or knife. Tom's DNA wasn't found anywhere on Chung's body,
and they'd never found boots in Tom's possession that matched

(01:10:47):
the prince at the crime scene. They had never found
the murder weapon or even identified the caliber or projectile.
The texts and Google searches were damning, but if you
squint and tilt your head could be explained. One of
Tom's lawyers, a man named Michael Manly, argued that the
evidence wasn't strong enough to dispel all reasonable doubt, which

(01:11:09):
is the standard for convicting someone of murder.

Speaker 18 (01:11:12):
There is zero evidence linking mister Olson to this crime.
There is no eye witness, none that says mister Olson
did this. There is zero DNA that links mister Olson
to this crime.

Speaker 1 (01:11:30):
One of the most important pieces of evidence the defense
submitted was a photo Tom took the day of Chong's death.

Speaker 3 (01:11:36):
It showed the top of the boot he.

Speaker 1 (01:11:38):
Was wearing, and an FBI analysis confirmed that they weren't
swamp tracker boots.

Speaker 18 (01:11:43):
You knew exactly what boat he was wearing on the sixteenth,
So to say we didn't know what boot he was
wearing is mistaken. It's mistaken, it says eleven, sixteen, twenty eighteen.
And in my opening I said that picture might have
saved his life. Given the arguments that are being made,

(01:12:05):
that picture may have saved his life.

Speaker 1 (01:12:08):
Now this isn't exactly true either. The FBI determined that
Tom wasn't wearing a swamp tracker boot, but they couldn't
positively identify an exact make and model of the boot
he was wearing. The Olsons claimed the frog tog waiters
that they had supposedly found in Tom's car several years
later were the same ones he was wearing that day.
That could be true based on the photo, but the

(01:12:30):
fact is no one could prove one way or the
other what the tread on Tom's boot looked like on
the day of the murder. The prosecution also submitted evidence
to suggest the swamp tracker pattern had been copied and
ripped off by other companies, so even if Tom's boot
wasn't a field and stream, it could have used the
same tread pattern. What we do know is that the

(01:12:51):
Sen spray found in the woods was Tom Olsen's, and
there was only one set of prints leading to and
from that plastic bag. Either Tom dropped it there, which
would suggest he was also walking around Chung's body, or
the murderer picked it up somewhere else in the woods
and dropped it on the other side of the ledger.
The prosecution called a witness who said he'd seen two

(01:13:14):
men walking along Clark Road on the night of the murder.
They matched the description of Tom and Rob, and crucially,
one of them was carrying two firearms and wearing sneakers.

Speaker 3 (01:13:25):
Remember Tom and Rob.

Speaker 1 (01:13:27):
Both said that they'd had to walk back down Clark
Road that night to get to their cars. Here's Agent
McIntyre asking Tom about that witness testimony.

Speaker 15 (01:13:36):
Tom, we've smote to somebody who said that they saw
two individuals at night walking on the side of the.

Speaker 10 (01:13:41):
Road and with three guns.

Speaker 9 (01:13:43):
I mean I had mine and Rob had his.

Speaker 8 (01:13:47):
He only had one four and I can recollect. Yeah,
I mean I think it would be weird if he
had an.

Speaker 14 (01:13:51):
Extra night Do you remember what the victim's car was,
but you don't remember if he had two guns? Oh,
you don't remember if like the details't match up.

Speaker 8 (01:14:00):
Tom, Okay, let me, to the best of my alledge,
drop ahead one gun and it would be weird to
me if he had an extra gun.

Speaker 1 (01:14:08):
Unfortunately for the prosecution, the defense was able to poke
some holes in that testimony. The witness who claimed to
have seen the two men had initially said he saw
them around nine pm, but Tom's phone showed him driving
home well before this. The witness later changed his statement
to say he was driving home about two hours after sunset,

(01:14:29):
which would have been around the right time, but his
shifting timetables likely didn't play well with the jury and
gave Tom's defense a leg to stand on when they
said there were no witnesses to the crime. The defense
also spent a long time pointing out the lack of
ballistic evidence in this case.

Speaker 18 (01:14:47):
Zero ballistics in this case zero Now, we did it.
First time the detective ever saw the ballistics was when
we showed it to him.

Speaker 1 (01:15:00):
What mainly is referencing here is a video that was
played during the trial that shows a ballistic dummy head
being shot with a twelve gage shotgun slug from about
fifty feet away.

Speaker 18 (01:15:10):
These are sophisticated ballistic dummy heads. He sought for the
first time of what a twelve gage shotgun I thought of? Unfortunately,
it reminded me of President Kennedy in the Zapruder film.

Speaker 1 (01:15:25):
The defense argued that if Tom had shot Chung, it
would have caused a much larger wound. They also used
the opportunity to bring up the fact that Jack Kuhn
had a forty five caliber muzzleloader at his home, which
the defense said would have caused a wound more consistent
with the one found in Chung's head. The problem was,
as the forensic pathologist pointed out, this experiment relied on

(01:15:49):
a lot of assumptions. First, there's nothing to say the
slug had been fired from fifty feet away. Chong was
shot in a wooded area, but there's a large open
space about one hundred yards to the west and clearings
to the south and east. Second, as doctor Wilson testified,
and as most hunters know, it's incredibly difficult to predict

(01:16:10):
what a bullet will do once it makes contact with skin, muscle,
and bone.

Speaker 3 (01:16:15):
The wound can.

Speaker 1 (01:16:16):
Change based on the elasticity of the skin, whether the
bullet hits a bone, the structure of that bone, and
of course, how fast the bullet is traveling.

Speaker 3 (01:16:25):
Here's assistant A. G.

Speaker 19 (01:16:27):
Cunningham to have some indication of some off the wall
demonstration that scientifically unreliable would not be something to be
follow up on. How do we know it's scientifically not reliable,
doctor Wilson, Jesus, there's no way in the world you

(01:16:47):
can tell what kind of caliber made that whole.

Speaker 1 (01:16:52):
The boots, the witness, and the ballistics were important parts
of the trial, but what everyone really wanted to hear
was how each side would handle the text messages.

Speaker 18 (01:17:02):
Text messages jokes, they weren't even funny, and when it
started to get serious, they're like, hey, we need to
tell the truth. Cooperate. Detective Miller read it and said, hey,
don't worry, they're going to do ballistics.

Speaker 13 (01:17:15):
It'll clear us. We'll we're fine. And then they don't
do ballistics, and here we are.

Speaker 1 (01:17:20):
The defense acknowledged that Tom and Rob sent disgusting racist texts,
but they claimed that the men were joking and as
you just heard manly reference. They also submitted other texts
between the pair that seemed to suggest their innocence. One
text from Tom to Rob said, quote, but after calling
my dad, we decided not to as it sounded like

(01:17:41):
they were doing ballistics anyway, which is what will clear
us regardless. Another read quote, I gave them everything since
we have nothing to hide anyway. In another, Rob tells
Tom that he's quote shocked that the investigation is real,
and Tom responds, just be open with them. It's easy
to just be honest obviously for us, since we already.

Speaker 3 (01:18:03):
Told them the truth.

Speaker 1 (01:18:05):
At one point, Rob tells Tom that he's been contacted
by the police, and Tom says, quote, what the hell
that's weird. Rob responds, this is how people get wrongly convicted,
to which Tom replies, they're probably following up from last year.

Speaker 3 (01:18:20):
My dad will bring the hammer down. Lol.

Speaker 1 (01:18:24):
All of those exchanges happened after both men knew they
were being investigated, So depending on how smart you think
they are, it's plausible they could be laying the groundwork
for exactly this defense. But if that's not the case,
these messages do indeed point towards innocence. The prosecution mostly
just allowed Tom's words to speak for themselves. However, they

(01:18:45):
also use those texts and his defense of them as
a joke to construct a crucial part of this story.
We still haven't mentioned motive. What exactly happened in those woods.
If Tom did what the prosecution says he did, what
motivated him to pull the trigger? Here's ag Cunningham.

Speaker 19 (01:19:07):
I don't think there's an intent to kill. I don't
think there's an intent to do great Baley harm. I
think that the evidence shows and the reasonable influences coming
from the odens is that there was an intent to
create this high risk of death or great bardlet harm
because he's gonna be with his fat humor steer the
double all this little chinaman boone, that's what he's all about.

(01:19:31):
I think he was more surprised than ever. Was it
an accident?

Speaker 7 (01:19:35):
Of course it not.

Speaker 19 (01:19:36):
Wasn't an accident. If there was an accident, you would
have hurt a nine to eleven call, Hey, my gun
went off accidentally. We're not talking about an accident here.
We're talking about intentionally firing in a certain direction, creating
a high risk of death or great barley harm.

Speaker 1 (01:19:56):
Notice the needle that Cunningham is trying to thread. They
could argue for a first degree murder since there was
no evidence that Tom had planned Chung's death, but the
theft of the gun indicated that it wasn't an innocent mistake,
so Cunningham aimed instead for second degree murder, which someone
can be convicted of if they act with extreme indifference

(01:20:17):
for human life. The example that's often used is firing
a gun into a crowd of people without intending to
kill anyone in particular. That's the scenario. The prosecution put forward,
and they used Tom's texts as evidence.

Speaker 19 (01:20:32):
Depraved indifference is a term we often use. I just
don't care. He's just a chime man. He's just a chink,
as he called, I'll scare the double on. This is
gonna be great, great fun. Go and tell my frat boys, Hey,
I scared the double out of this guy. He's out there.
I can see him. He's wearing his head lamp, but
he's got this flashlight. He's pretty easy target, you know.

(01:20:55):
I'm just shoot him on buff his head on the ranch.

Speaker 13 (01:20:58):
Law.

Speaker 19 (01:21:01):
Just wan what happen?

Speaker 1 (01:21:02):
Tom, the prosecution said, killed Chung for a laugh. He'd
been joking about the man's death for the last six years,
and that joke started on November sixteenth, twenty eighteen. The
jury deliberated for a day and a half and came
back with a verdict on February twenty second of last year.

Speaker 20 (01:21:22):
All right, jury jur number five four person, did the
jury reaching verdict?

Speaker 12 (01:21:29):
Yes, that we have.

Speaker 2 (01:21:31):
Is the verdict unanimous?

Speaker 13 (01:21:33):
Yes it is.

Speaker 2 (01:21:34):
Please read the verdict.

Speaker 20 (01:21:37):
On count one, we find the defendant guilty a second
degree murder, and on count two we find the defendant
guilty of a possession of a firearm during the condition
of the foundment.

Speaker 2 (01:21:48):
All right, thank you for person.

Speaker 12 (01:21:50):
Is that your verdict?

Speaker 10 (01:21:52):
Yes, it is?

Speaker 3 (01:21:52):
You may be seated At a hearing.

Speaker 1 (01:21:55):
A few months later, Tom was sentenced to twenty two
and a half to sixty years in prison. He is
currently being held at the Oaks Correctional Facility in Manistee, Michigan,
and his earliest release date is October nineteenth, twenty forty seven.

Speaker 12 (01:22:10):
Was that your verdict?

Speaker 9 (01:22:11):
Yes?

Speaker 12 (01:22:12):
Juring number two? Was that your verdict?

Speaker 5 (01:22:14):
Yep?

Speaker 2 (01:22:14):
Juring number three?

Speaker 12 (01:22:16):
Was that your verdict? Yes? Juring number four? Was that
your verdict?

Speaker 1 (01:22:32):
Part six? What happens next? Olsen's family is hoping to
get him out of prison much earlier than that. They
maintain his innocence and they've launched a crowdfunding campaign to
help pay for his legal fees. They hired a new
team of lawyers, and earlier this year they submitted a
motion for a retrial. In the motion, Olsen's attorneys argue

(01:22:54):
that there wasn't enough evidence to convict their client, but
they also submit new evidence they say is exonerating. They
say they found the all led twelve gage slugs. Olsen
hunted with on the day of the murder. They submitted
a purchase receipt from a sporting good store, and Olson's
father signed an affidavit claiming that his son stored that
box of slugs at his house. He also says none

(01:23:18):
of the slugs had been used. If those are indeed
the slugs Olsen was using that day, the lack of
copper jacket would mean they probably weren't the projectiles that
killed Chong. Olson's attorney also submitted a purchase receipt from
Dunham's showing that Tom bought frog tog Waiters prior to.

Speaker 3 (01:23:37):
The day of the incident.

Speaker 1 (01:23:39):
The judge issued her decision just a few weeks ago,
but she said there was ample evidence to convict Tom.
She also didn't think the new evidence was convincing enough
to justify a retrial. Tom may have purchased those all
led slugs prior to the incident, but that doesn't mean
he used them on that day. She denied his motion
for a re trial, and his attorneys have already filed

(01:24:02):
their case in the Court of Appeals.

Speaker 2 (01:24:05):
Yeah, they already filed with the Court of Appeals. The
ag and the VICTI navigate. They're gonna keep us updaused
so again, like that's why I'm just like, I guess
it's not the words celebrated. I can't even like live
knowing like we still got this to go through, Like
I'm not done yet. We still have Court of Appeals
to go to, and every time you sit in the

(01:24:25):
same room as him is nerve wracking. And to be
around his family members is nerve racking too, just because
of the way some of them treated us in court
was like really not nice.

Speaker 1 (01:24:35):
I reached out to Sam Olsen, Tom's brother and the
one who organized his crowdfunding efforts, but he declined.

Speaker 3 (01:24:42):
To be interviewed for this episode.

Speaker 1 (01:24:44):
Tom's case isn't over, and technically Robs could restart at
any time.

Speaker 4 (01:24:49):
There's no statute of limitations in Michigan for murder. You know,
if additional evidence comes out and they're able to charge again,
they will. I've talked to the prosecutor about that, and
I've explained to the family about that, Like, no statue
of limitations. So if additional evidence comes out, did the
prosecutors feel like they can that's actionable on the they
will take action on it.

Speaker 1 (01:25:08):
I reached out to Rob for comment, but didn't receive
a response. I'm not sure rob still lives in the
Lancing area, but my vou remains concerned for her family safety.

Speaker 2 (01:25:18):
You know, I did send a low alert to everybody's
like hey, be careful, like Rodbery's still out there hunting.
You know, she husedn't be around a gun, and so
it does bother me. And when Robay was out, you know,
because Rabbi was no longer going to trial, it always
worried me, like if him and Olsen was gonna still
contact each other. And you know that was also another

(01:25:40):
very like thing that scared me too, like well, he's
out here, and also it's in there, could they be
doing something to us.

Speaker 1 (01:25:47):
Despite her fears of the two men she believes killed
her father, Mavu told me she appreciates everyone in the
Lancing community for coming around her and her family and
supporting them through the most difficult thing any family can
go through.

Speaker 2 (01:26:00):
I would say, like in Lancing, you know, you don't
have everybody's really friendly with each other. You know, there's
plenty of times where white hunters will help my dad,
And there were times when my dad helped white hunters
or any color hunters, like I think that's the problem
we had in Lancing was because the community is like
so loving that when this happened, it was kind of
like shocking that these guys are being really racist towards

(01:26:23):
my dad with their text messages, because all the years
that we were there, we really encounter any of that.

Speaker 1 (01:26:29):
For Yah, and Yeah, Chong's story hits extremely close to home.

Speaker 5 (01:26:34):
In this case. We're talking about around twenty and eighty
and that I've been I remember too. It's still kind
of like the same message right out, you know, like
through social media, you're among person if you're hunting whatever,
stay out of the woods.

Speaker 1 (01:26:45):
Fortunately, that very understandable fear failed to keep either man
out of the woods very long. Yeah, I was planning
a deer hunt the evening we spoke, and Ye had
texted me a photo of a squirrel hunt a few
days after. Even though Chung's case highlight it's the potential
for violence and division, he has said he sees the
larger arc of the Monk's story in the US as

(01:27:07):
trending towards unity.

Speaker 5 (01:27:09):
What the Mongk people have gone through and what the
Monk people are looking for. It's not exclusively to among people.
It's a human thing. Mom and Dad really showed me
that at a young age. All the hurt and all
the pain that our people have gone through, our family
have gone through, it just it's not us, it's everybody
goes through this. And if somehow we can use this
as the way to connect what we can use pain

(01:27:30):
and hurt and suffering to connect to others who are
hurt and suffering and they might not look like us,
maybe we get to see them as the same as us.
And so what I guess what I want to get
out of all this is saying, hey, look, there's a
lot of bias stuff from both sides. But I think
that fear begets fear, that begets more fear. And this
is one of the things I love about the outdoors

(01:27:52):
and hunting. It's not like, oh, this is a white
man thing or a Black man thing, or a Mexican
man thing. Like hunting outdoors, that's a human thing. There's
something in natan nature in us.

Speaker 1 (01:28:09):
Thanks for listening to this episode of Blood Trails. If
you'd like to see images from this episode, including photos
of Chong, maps of the Roselake Wildlife Area, and screenshots
of Tom and Rob's text messages. Head over to the
meeater dot com slash blood Trails. Big thanks to Mavu Yang,
Joseph yang Ya Yang Yavang, and Christy Colby, who is

(01:28:31):
a saint among office managers over at the bath Township
Police Department. I am sorry to say that this is
our final episode in season one. I can't thank you
enough for all the kind emails and messages. It's an
honor to bring you these stories, and I don't do
it alone. Jake Birch is the genius behind the sound design,

(01:28:52):
Nick Glenn is the Spielberg behind the video version of
the podcast, and Riva Hansen is the wizard who orchestrated
the rollout of Blood Trails and just generally brings order
to the chaos. Another big thanks to Currn Schneider for
green lighting Blood Trails and supporting it from the very beginning,
and to Steve Ranella for his advice and direction throughout.

(01:29:13):
If like me, you're disappointed that season one is ending,
I do have some good news, thanks in part to
all the incredible tips you sent in too blood Trails.

Speaker 3 (01:29:21):
At the meaeater dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:29:22):
I'm happy to say that season two is already in
the works. We'll release more episodes next spring, and I
can't wait to bring them to you. We'll also release
standalone episodes if there are any updates on any of
the cases we covered this season, if Detective pointing here's
back about the John Wayne Gacy DNA test, if Sheriff
Larsen makes an arrest for the murder of Terry Brisk,

(01:29:45):
or if law enforcement finds more victims of Paul Hutchinson.

Speaker 3 (01:29:49):
Will be sure to let you know To make sure.

Speaker 1 (01:29:52):
You're notified as soon as a new episode drops. Remember
to follow Blood Trails on iHeart Apple Podcasts, or wherever you.

Speaker 3 (01:29:59):
Get your pop casts.

Speaker 1 (01:30:01):
See you next time. Stay safe out there,

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