September 15, 2025 • 40 mins
Tina Wong finds herself in handcuffs in the Brooklyn office of a new federal prosecutor, Beryl Howell. Beryl’s goal is to get Tina to tell her everything she knows about the people who recruited her. But Chinatown is a dangerous place in the 1980s, and few low-level suspects want to talk. We hear from Chinatown author Henry Chang and former gang members Mike Moy and Peter Chin about the violence and impossible choices Chinatown residents faced in those days.
For more, check out:
Henry Chang’s series Detective Yu Investigations.
Mike Moy’s Chinatown Gang Stories channel on YouTube.
Peter Chin’s book, In the Ghost Shadows.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Hey everyone, before we get into this episode, I wanted
to let you know that you can listen to the
full season of The Chinatownstang add free right now.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
By signing up for Pushkin Plus.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
You'll also get bonus episodes, full audiobooks, and other true
crime binges from your favorite Pushkin hosts and authors. Find
Pushkin Plus on the Chinatownstaning Show page on Apple Podcasts.
We're at pushkin dot fm, slash plus. Previously on The Chinatownsting,
(00:51):
I was.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Talking through a customs agent in California who says, hey, well,
just got three shipments of heroin. Do you guys want
the case?
Speaker 4 (01:01):
It was like the first time we've ever seen anything
like that.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Really, Basically, you're stay at home moms. We're picking up
these these law chamansa heroin.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
We don't have that kind of money. So to have
that kind of money, you take a chance.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Federal authorities arrested Tina Wong on March first, nineteen eighty eight.
She was accused of receiving packages of heroin in the mail.
They took Tina to a jail in Long Island, miles
away from her home outside of Manhattan's Chinatown.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
And at this moment, the gravity must be hitting you.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
Yeah, especially when they tell you twenty five years to life,
which I didn't think was fair. But I don't make
the rules.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Tina was put in a cell. She doesn't remember much else.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Are you crying?
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Yeah, because I was mad, not at yourself, not at
the rule.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Well, the whole thing everything.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
The next day, Tina was taken in a van with
a whole bunch of other prisoners the US Attorney's office
in Brooklyn. Agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency met her
out front, put her in handcuffs and took her into
a small office. They handcuffed her to a chair, and
she found herself face to face with Beryl Howell, the
lead prosecutor in the case, the person who could argue
(02:28):
that Tina should be put away for decades for heroin smuggling.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
She's got this look, you know, like and no expression.
I thought she didn't like us, but you know, I
know she had a job to do, so I'm not
gonna be hating on her for that. But I just
thought that she really wanted us to go away for
a long time.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
And at the same time that Tina was sizing up Beryl,
Beryl was sizing up Tina.
Speaker 5 (03:01):
You know, to find out like, who was she, what
was her background, what was her how smart was she,
what was her educational background? How did she get this business?
And to see how much of her story all hung
together and made sense on details before we even started
talking about any evidence she might have about other people.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
They were both about the same age.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Beryl was thirty one at the time Tina was thirty,
but the similarities pretty much ended there. Tina grew up
on the outskirts of Chinatown, the same apartment where she
still lived. She never finished college, neither did her parents.
Beryl's mom nearly completed a PhD in biology. Her dad
had been a colonel in the army, and she had
(03:45):
grown up all over the US and abroad in Germany
and the Netherlands. She had a law degree from Columbia University.
So yes, she and Tina came from very different worlds
and met under not the best of circumstances, but each
needed the other person's trust. Recently, I showed up at
Tina's apartment to get an interview. I told her the
(04:08):
truth that Barrel Howell is my boyfriend's mom. I was
worried she'd close the door as soon as I said that.
But now I think that's actually why she let me in.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
Beryl, have you seen her.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
I hope she retired, because yeah, she's retired from chief
judge them. But then it's like you just become like
a regular judge. That Tina sounds lighthearted now, but she's
still keeping tabs on what Beryl is up to because
Beryl once held Tina's future in her hands, and in
a way, Tina held Beryl's future in her hands as well.
(04:45):
I am Lydia Jean Kott and this is the China
Townsting Episode two Onion Head. Beryl is now a federal
judge in Washington, d C. She's overseen a lot of
(05:08):
high profile cases. When was a defamation case brought against
former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The case was
brought by Georgia election workers, and they won.
Speaker 6 (05:19):
It was a rejection of what Judge Beryl Howell called
Giuliani's quote significantly tardy request for a bench trial and
one of his latest art givens to dodge a jury
that Howell called simply nonsense.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Also, Beryl's overseeing dozens of cases related to the January
sixth Capitol riot.
Speaker 7 (05:38):
Following President Trump's sweeping clemency for January sixth, defendants, federal
judges who presided over cases are letting their discontent be heard.
US District Judge Beryl Howell rebuke the President's claim of injustice,
writing quote this quote cannot let stand the revisionist myth
relate in this presidential pronouncement.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
And she ruled on Donald Trump's revenge on certain law firms.
Speaker 8 (05:59):
The federal judge tonight has just permanently blocked the president's
executive order that targeted a law firm which represented Hillary
Clinton in twenty sixteen, and the ruling from Judge Beryl
Howe is scathing.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
So yes, this is the person that I know on
a first name basis as Beryl. When I asked her
if I could do a story about her earliest major case,
I was pretty confident she would say no. Judges rarely
give interviews, and Beryl has been under more pressure and
scrutiny than ever before. Not only did Beryl agree to
be interviewed, she told me that she'd saved her notes
(06:32):
from the Chinatown case. What about legoes?
Speaker 5 (06:38):
Oh my god, we have so many legos.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
She my boyfriend and I searched all over her house
for them.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
The more under meet these things. Oh my god, I
can't believe we found this.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Before she let me have the goods, Beryl first went
through all of the material to make sure it was
all things that the public's allowed to see. She's a
stickler for the law. My co reporter Shiru Wang's also
a lawyer. She hasn't had a chance to meet Beryl,
but one day we sat down and talked about her
about how it feels to see Beryl through the eyes
of the people she once encountered as a federal prosecutor,
(07:14):
people like Tina won't.
Speaker 9 (07:16):
Does anything that Tina described about Beryl match what your
personal perception or understanding of Beryl, or like, does it
reflect anything that you have known about Beryl at that point?
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Well, Tina talked about what it was like the first
time that she met Beryl, and she said she was
expressionless and seemed kind of scary. I've definitely experienced being
very intimidated by her. When my boyfriend was little and they,
you know, if they were in trouble, it was it
was their dad that they would go to.
Speaker 9 (07:45):
What does barrel look like?
Speaker 1 (07:47):
She's blonde.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
She has very expressive eyebrows, so if she's feeling skeptical
of you, her eyebrows.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Go very very high.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
There is once this tweet by a court reporter. I
think that said the way that Beryl raised her eyebrows,
any kid would feel like they have to clean their
room if they saw that face.
Speaker 9 (08:05):
Oh my god, that's funny.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
So yeah, I've known Beryl since I was an a
elementary school. I grew up down the street from her,
but I really got to know her after I graduated
from college.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
By that point, she was a federal judge.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
And you know, when I started talking to her about
it over time, it was really cool to hear her
talk about the law. It felt like she was pulling
back a curtain and really showing me how the law works.
And that's actually kind of why I decided I wanted
to be a reporter who reports about the law because
I wanted to share what I learned.
Speaker 9 (08:37):
Basically, does she talk about work naturally at all of
these family friends gathering or she's more like, if you
have questions, come to me out answer that.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
I mean, there's a lot about work that she can't
talk about. But she's passionate about the law, and she
does talk about it.
Speaker 9 (08:54):
It comes up all the time, including this case.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Definitely.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
I think when I first heard about this case, and
I think it was an evening after dinner, and it
was one of those stories where everyone else had already
heard it, but they were really happy to hear it again,
kind of like a family legend where you love to
tell it over and over again.
Speaker 9 (09:15):
By the time she got involved in this case, where
was Berrow in her career.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
So she had actually just become a federal prosecutor. I
think she had had the job for about six months. Okay,
you know, you know, as a lawyer, it's a very
big deal job. It was kind of a dream job
for her.
Speaker 5 (09:32):
I felt like I was living a story every single
day with every single investigation, and you know, it was
all still fairly new to me and still very exciting
to me.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
It was in the spring of nineteen eighty eight, and
if you think about the eighties, you know, most people
you think about the crack epidemic, but heroin was a
really big deal at the time too, especially in New York.
I think one out of forty people in New York
were addicted to heroin.
Speaker 9 (10:03):
That's crazy ratio.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Yeah, it's actually really a lot.
Speaker 9 (10:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
You know, for a long time, heroin was coming into
New York through the mafia, but then in the mid eighties,
the criminal underworld was going through a shift.
Speaker 10 (10:19):
Federal law enforcement officials are celebrating what they considered to
be a major victory in their war against organized crime.
A former head of the Sicilian mafia and sixteen other
reputed organized crime figures convicted yesterday running one of the
biggest heroin smuggling rings ever uncovered.
Speaker 11 (10:34):
The government says the operation was masterminded by Sicilians and
brought one billion, six hundred and fifty million dollars worth
of heroin into the United States over the past five years.
The alleged American kingpin was Salvator Toto Catalano, linked by
the government to organized crime and owner of this bakery
and pizza restaurant in Queens. In fact, so many of
the dealings in this case took place in pizza parlor's
(10:57):
that federal officials have dubbed it the Pizza Connection.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Federal law enforcement agents realized that heroin was coming into
the States through these pizza.
Speaker 9 (11:05):
Parlors, Unite sent pizzas.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
I don't actually know what type of pizza parlors they were,
but yeah, it was a huge bust and I think
like twenty one mobsters were arrested. But after the pizza connection,
believe it or not, heroin was still making its way
into New York City. That's when the Senate started to
have these hearings and investigations.
Speaker 12 (11:31):
Asian criminal groups are emerging on the American landscape in
the sense they're becoming more powerful, may become an alternative
to traditional organized crime. Law enforcement authorities, particularly federal cannot
afford to wait until these organizations have fully emerged.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
So yeah, in nineteen eighty three, Chinese dealers accounted for
a three percent of the heroin that was coming into
the city, and then three years later, according to these hearings,
they counted for a twenty five percent, and.
Speaker 9 (12:04):
That's a big jump, and the number was going up.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
It was getting, you know, higher and higher. Of course,
when Beryl started as a federal prosecutor, she was briefed
and knew about this.
Speaker 5 (12:15):
Was I aware of Chinatown gangs, absolutely, But did I
immediately think that these boxes being shipped through JFK were
related to Chinatown gangs that wasn't the first thing on
my mind.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
I didn't really know.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
You generally had no idea what was going to happen
where these boxes, where this control delivery was going to
lead you.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Yeah, not at all.
Speaker 9 (12:38):
What was Barrow's impression about Chinatown before she took on
his case.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
So Beryl lived in Chelsea, which is not that far
from Chinatown. It was a place that she walked through
a lot. But through working on this case, Beryl also
started to see that Chinatown was a more complicated place
than she knew, and that also what she was asking
from these women was really a lot.
Speaker 5 (13:06):
They gave me an insight into all the you know,
sort of the complexities and loyalties and pressures that were
all unseen to a mere visitor from Chelsea going to
Chinatown not that far but world's away.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
So it was clear to Beryl that she had to
understand more about Chinatown and the pressures her witnesses were
under if she wanted to get any useful information from
them about those mail packages and who was really in charge.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Beryl Howell's goal as a federal prosecutor was not to
put a bunch of low level drug smugglers in prison.
She wanted to make an actual difference by building a
case against whoever was at the top of the scheme,
whoever was bringing millions of dollars worth of drugs and
New York through Chinatown.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
To do that, she needed.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
The lower level people like Tina Long to tell her
everything they knew. But as I look through Beryl's notes,
it seemed like she was getting one word answers and
a lot of evasion. Clearly, something was scaring these women
more than prison, and that's something was in Chinatown. So
my producer and I did what we imagine Beryl might
have done. We headed downtown to do some investigating. We
(14:36):
found three people who could talk to us about how
criminal networks in Chinatown worked back in the nineteen eighties.
When these women agreed to receive packages of heroin in
the mail.
Speaker 13 (14:45):
Henry walked around the shave with two white girls.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Henry Tann grew up in Chinatown and is now an author.
He's written five detective novels, all set here, and a
little reluctantly, he's agreed to give us a tour of
the neighborhood.
Speaker 13 (14:57):
The building looks better than it did then. We lived
there on the dirt floor. There was a railroad flat.
My brother and I had beds in the middle of department.
We were here for five years and maybe six.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
We're on Pell Street. It's a street so short it's
almost an alleyway.
Speaker 13 (15:20):
During the holidays, we'll be crowded. Hip Sing would come
out with their lion dancers and the street will be
packed and it'll be fireworks.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
The Hip Singh is a community organization. The name roughly
means cooperating for success. They're buildings on the opposite end
of the street from the apartment that Henry grew up in.
Speaker 13 (15:38):
Further down the block on the right side, you see
the golden doors and the official Hip Sing Organization.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
In the eighteen hundreds, organizations called Tongs first formed in
Chinatown's across the US. They supported and protected residents. Henry
writes about the Tongs in his first novel, Chinatown Beat.
The Hip Singh was considered the working class Hong, and
around the corner on Maud Street, the onl Tong was
for merchants. Henry slightly changes their names in his book.
Speaker 13 (16:13):
The One was a businessman's benevolent association. The number one
high roller in America a coast to coast secret society
no working man was able to join. They sneered at
the ship jumpers, the waiters and dishwashers, the laundrymen who
joined their arrival hip chains.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
By the time Henry was growing up, lots of people
were ping dues to one tong or another. They were
doing this in exchange for the kind of help that
they couldn't get or didn't know how to get from
the US government way back.
Speaker 13 (16:47):
They will receive the mail for their members because a
lot of their members who lived in buildings didn't have mailboxes.
Because when people came here, you know, they were strangers
in a foreign land, and they didn't speak the language,
they didn't read English, and so this was the one
place they could go to for any kind of assistance.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
And the reason that the hip saying matters so much
to our case is because the organization had another building,
one right across the street we're now standing in front of.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
It doesn't make you nervous to be here? Should we
go someplace else?
Speaker 13 (17:21):
No, Well, I'm the one that looks shady, you guys. Obviously,
I'm being an interview only saying good things.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Henry's directed that last comment to a security camera that's pointing.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Straight at us. He's joking. I think.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
In the nineteen eighties this was a gambling parlor. Henry
tells us that when he was a kid, he would
watch men head down the basement stairs here it was
off limits to children. One day, when he was finally
old enough, he followed those men inside.
Speaker 13 (17:55):
You step into a cloud of cigarette smoke. You could
barely breathe, and all these men, mostly men, smoking and gambling,
and they would play thirteen cards, Subsam Jam, seven cards,
chuck Jam, majong here and there.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
What was the vibe? Was the vibe lighthearted? Was it serious?
How did it feel down there?
Speaker 13 (18:17):
Well, it was all of that. I mean, you know,
if you're winning, you know you're giddy. If you're losing,
your grumpy. But twice on these men they have with
this very guttural way of like being loud, and because
of the dialect, sounds like they're always cursing, even when
they're not cursing.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Henry already knew by then that he wanted to be
a writer, and he knew he wanted to write about
this world.
Speaker 13 (18:43):
You can't whip out a pad and pencil and start
taking notes. So I would go in the bathroom and
I would roll up my sleeves and I would write
things on my arm up and down my own and
then when I get home and I wake up the
next morning, I would remember.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
This gambling parlor was operated by one of the most
powerful gangs in Chinatown, the Flying Dragons. It was also
their main hangout, kind of like their HQ, and this
gang would come to matter a lot to Baryl. Part
of the reason the Flying Dragons were so powerful is
because they reported to the Hip sing that influential community
(19:22):
organization with the Golden Pagoda across the street.
Speaker 13 (19:26):
They had their glorious building where they took care of
their business and where they funded the gang kids.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
They kept that out of sight.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Because while the Tongs helped families, they also exploited them.
In the nineteen eighties, the leaders of the Hip Singh
didn't just earn money from collecting member dues. They also
earned money from this gambling parlor and other gambling parlors
all over Chinatown. To help with the seedier parts of
their operations, they recruited teenagers. Teenagers like Mike Moy.
Speaker 14 (20:01):
Because I grew up being bullied, not being bullied by
fellow Asians. I was being bullied by the whites, blacks, Hispanics.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Was physically beat up.
Speaker 15 (20:12):
Oh, everything, everything, everything.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Mike moy was also born in Chinatown. He says that
many tongues were connected to youth gangs. It was kind
of like an open secret.
Speaker 14 (20:23):
The Hipsyng Tongue Association they affiliated with the Flying Dragons,
the Online was affiliated with the gold Shadows, and then
you have the Somezing Association, the dun Lawn Associations associated
with the dun Lawn Gang. So these were three major
gangs in Chinatown during that time, from the seventies into
(20:44):
the mid eighties. These were the Flying Dragons, the Gold Shadows,
and the dun Lag.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Like many people we've spoken with, Mike points out something important,
the whole gang system of Chinatown did not arise in
a vacuum.
Speaker 14 (20:56):
If I had to summarize why these gangs exist, I
can summarize it in one word. Racism. That is the core.
The root of the issue is racism. Okay, what does
racism it created these gangs.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
When Mike was fifteen, he was approached by an older
gang member in a pool hall. The man had seen
him there before. He had been watching him, and he
knew exactly what to say to a lost Chinese American teenager.
Speaker 14 (21:25):
Bullying was it was pretty bad, you know which. It
was constantly every day, it was something new, and I'm.
Speaker 15 (21:33):
Just sick and tired of it. So that hit a
chord with me.
Speaker 14 (21:37):
And since I joined a gang, I can tell you
I never got bullied of it again.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
How did people know not to billy you?
Speaker 14 (21:45):
It's the way you carry yourself. I mean, once you
join a gang, you feel like you have the whole
gang behind you.
Speaker 15 (21:53):
You think you're invincible.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Mike didn't join the Flying Dragons. He joined a gang
called the Fox Chang. But all the gangs worked pretty similarly,
he says. When teens joined them, they often moved in
and lived with other gang members.
Speaker 14 (22:09):
They supply us with the safe house. When we move
from safe house to safe house, we can live five
to ten fifteen per apartment. We don't go home to
mom and dad. So in a way, there's a special
bond there. It's like family, a family.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Whose members were loyal to each other no matter what.
Speaker 15 (22:31):
It's different in Chinatown because that's all you have. Who's
going to back you up, who's going to who's going
to help you.
Speaker 14 (22:38):
It is your fellow brothers who's going to help you.
I mean, nobody did anything for us back in those days.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
But to stay in this family, teams like Mike had
to fulfill us some pretty severe requirements.
Speaker 14 (22:51):
They recruit the young kids to do the shooting because
it's a slap on the risk for them. They get
caught with a gun, it's a slap on the risk.
So anyone who's doing all the shootings, most of the
shootings are under the age of fifteen or maybe even sixteen,
so they recruit them to carry the guns.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Through Mike, I met another former gang member named Peter Chin.
He actually joined a gang at thirteen. That was shortly
after his family immigrated to the US from the outskirts
of Hong Kong.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
Oh was the youngest guy. That's why how my name
came about.
Speaker 15 (23:31):
Kid.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
They called me Kit. They kid, come here, come on,
come with kid, So they called me Kid Jai.
Speaker 12 (23:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Kid Jai went on to become the leader of the
Ghost Shadows, the main rival to the Flying Dragons.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
The gang headquartered on Pell Street.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Kijai wound up serving twenty years in prison under the
Rico Act. Later, he co wrote a book about his experiences.
It's called In the Ghost Shadows. Pretty Much all the
gangsters in his book have nicknames. There's Potato spha rib
I asked him and his co writer Everett Dumourier about that.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Were there people who hated their nicknames?
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Who hated their their names?
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Thank you book, Spinky, Yeah, he goes, no way it.
She is gonna be proud of that.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Can you can you change your nickname? Or are you
stuck with it?
Speaker 12 (24:18):
No?
Speaker 3 (24:19):
You can't change one, just stuck. You stuck with it.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Now.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Kidji can laugh about this time, but the truth is
he barely survived it. As a teenager, he remembers one
time being in a nightclub when an ex cop from
Hong Kong showed up. That man had been involved in
a dispute with the gang. He walked in and just
started shooting.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
He turned about, he saw me. He pointed a lot
for it, then hesitated for a second. I'm not gonna shoot.
Speaker 15 (24:47):
You, okay. He left.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
After the X cop left, Kidji looked around the bar,
trying to make sense of what happened. Two people had
been killed, people he knew. He started to count the
spent bullets so.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
I walk over a knee wulm spot. I counted his bullet.
Nine ship and then the girl got one in the head.
Speaker 15 (25:10):
That's ten.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
One was on the wall, and one just shot somebody
behind the neck. Scraped it all right. That's that's one,
and one on the one's wall, the one that he said,
not gonna shoot this jack. Gays don't have a bullet
at him because the fight.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
It's whoa back then.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Shootings like this happen often, but they only really made
the news when they're particularly bloody or if someone from
outside of Chinatown got caught in the crossfire.
Speaker 16 (25:36):
In the last six month, Chinese street gang activity is
erupted in violence throughout parts of the city.
Speaker 10 (25:41):
There have been at least eight known Chinese gang related homicide.
Speaker 17 (25:45):
Threats from gangs are phrased in the worst way imaginable,
the way that leaves it all up to your own imagination.
For example, we know who your wife is, we know
what she looks like, we know who your children are,
we know where you live.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
In nineteen seventy seven, a restaurant owner named Mann Bundley
partnered with the police on a campaign to convince people
to report gang violence in extortion. He was a respected
voice in the community, known as Chinatown's unofficial mayor, but
not long into the campaign, someone came into man Bundley's restaurant,
pulled a knife out from a Manila folder, and stabbed
(26:23):
him five times. Mc moy said the stabbing sent a
clear message. No one who speaks out against the gangs
is safe.
Speaker 15 (26:33):
They can get to any resident in Chinatown.
Speaker 14 (26:35):
So that's why the fear is there, because there's no
place for the residents to go.
Speaker 15 (26:40):
The resident of.
Speaker 14 (26:41):
Chinatown will not move over to Staten Island in those days.
They're not going to move to Jersey. They're trapped in
Chintown because they don't speak the language where they're going
to go.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
This fear seems to be a thing of the past
to mcmoy. Now, he hosts a YouTube channel about his
former life and interviews other former gang members.
Speaker 14 (27:01):
Welcome to Chintown Gang Stories to they have a special guest.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
And he wanted to make extra sure that I gave
his channel a shout out. It's called Chinatown Gang Stories
and you should really check it out. So that's Mike
moy's way of handling what he's been through the past
seems to weigh much heavier on the writer Henry Chang.
He never joined a gang, but when he was a teen,
a friend of his was stabbed because his friend's older
(27:27):
brother defied a gangster. The guys who stabbed his friend
were never.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Caught after that night.
Speaker 13 (27:33):
I never walk around unarmed, really, so I'm armed right now.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Henry Chang's novels are all set in the Chinatown that
he grew up in, and they follow a character named
Jack Yu, also from the neighborhood, who works there as
a police detective.
Speaker 13 (27:51):
What do you get over there, Jack, thirty five forty
g's what all the time that would it costs to
turn you against people who used to be your friends.
Jack's face tightened. We only bust the bad ones. Bullshit.
We take care the bad ones. You guys just come
for the money to count the bodies. Jack looked up
(28:13):
from the courtyard. So the oyster colored sky above the
rooftops they used to run across. It's not about money,
Jack said, Lucky sneered. It's all about money and damn
thing funny.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
So this was the state of things in the mid
nineteen eighties with gangs in Chinatown. They were a protection
racket connected to powerful community organizations, and for decades law
enforcement officials had pretty much looked the other way. But
now they were suddenly paying attention because one gangster had
figured out a way to make a lot more money.
(29:06):
While I was reporting this story, I found a Justice
Department memo from the nineteen eighties. It was for law
enforcement officials and it listed the names of Asian gangs
and their leaders, including one gang leader named Johnny Yang.
The memo called Ang the leader of the Flying Dragons.
That's that gang that had its headquarters on Pell Street.
There is a little asterisk next to his name with
(29:28):
a note that said Aang is believed to be one
of the most important heroin distributors in New York.
Speaker 18 (29:35):
Machine Gun Johnny Yang became a full fledged gangster in
March of nineteen eighty three when his boss was found
full of bullets and scores of Flying Dragons became his
drug minions.
Speaker 9 (29:49):
I forgot how dramatic the narration yeah in that documentary
was you have.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
To love it.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
It's from a TV series called Gangsters America's Most Evil
Machine Gun Johnny and it was broadcast on Cable TV
in twenty twelve.
Speaker 9 (30:03):
I still feel like it's being a little bit exaggerating.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
Oh, this documentary is.
Speaker 7 (30:13):
He's taking his fellow flying dragons, driving them from New
York to his spot in Pennsylvania as a farm, and
they're doing machine gun practice.
Speaker 16 (30:22):
He's copying the Hollywood movies about Chinese gangsters with the
overcoat hanging off his shoulders, buying luxury goods. You know,
it's what every Chinese gangster thinks they should look like.
Speaker 15 (30:34):
That's machine gun Johnny.
Speaker 9 (30:37):
It's just funny because like somehow people have met Johnny
in real life and when they described him, it doesn't
feel like how they portrayed it in the documentary.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
And to that point, I realized that it's only law
enforcement who called them machine gun Johnny. The people who
you know lived in Chinatown. For example, Mike moy knew
him by another nickname.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
That's not so badass. Why was he called onionhead?
Speaker 14 (31:07):
All right, So here's the mission out there.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
People.
Speaker 14 (31:11):
I've seen some documentaries on YouTube saying that he was
nicknamed onion head because if you cause him, you know,
he'll make you cry.
Speaker 15 (31:22):
That is not true.
Speaker 14 (31:23):
That is absolutely not true. He's called onion head because
of his hairstyle and the shape of his head.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
It's like a spring onion.
Speaker 9 (31:32):
I guess yeah, it's kind of like the mini mohawk
that you just have, like some here on top of
the head.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Oh, all this time I thought it was just sticking
up by accident.
Speaker 10 (31:42):
Well, we'll never know.
Speaker 9 (31:44):
Has any of these people described what Johnny was like
even before he became the head of the gang.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
Yeah, he immigrated from Hong Kong to the United States
when he was twelve years old, and he joined this gang,
the Flying Dragons, pretty soon after. Because he usually joined
as a teenager, you know, he didn't really make much
of an impression. He just kind of seemed like, you're
in the background gang member. In fact, I couldn't really
find much about him in the media until around the
time of the Pizza connection trials.
Speaker 10 (32:13):
I think the impact on the mafia of these cases
and the convictions today have been devastating. The efforts by
the DA and the FBI and Custom Service and the
US Attorney's offices. If it continues, it's not going to
be in mafia.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
I think Johnny then realized that there was sort of
a vacuum this big group, the Italian mob, that had
been bringing in heroin had been busted, and now people
in New York, you know, they still wanted heroin. And
at the time, there was a lot of really high
grade heroin that was being processed in this area around
(32:45):
Burma Laos, Thailand. It was called the Golden Triangle, and
heroin would be smuggled from there into various places, including
Hong Kong and China. So Johnny started going to Hong Kong.
And I know this because actually Kidjai, one of the
gangsters that we talked to earlier, he saw him on
(33:07):
one of the strips to Hong Kong.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
It was the best club in Hong Kong. And so
when I was walking in with one of the the
data the movies start right yep, we passed by him
and I saw him sitting with another man that I
don't recognize.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
So looking back, Kidji thinks he might have actually witnessed
Johnny trying to secure connections to start importing heroin into
New York.
Speaker 9 (33:28):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
On his YouTube channel, Mike moy talked to this guy
Cowboy who was in the Flying Dragons under Johnny aka Onion.
Speaker 19 (33:36):
Onion must like a different regime. He was like, go on,
make money everyone. It was like the Soviet Union when
they disbanded. You give a freedom, they gonna say to yourself,
what the follow one would do with it?
Speaker 18 (33:48):
We don't know how to.
Speaker 19 (33:48):
Make money except distributing drugs.
Speaker 18 (33:51):
So that was the new era.
Speaker 9 (33:54):
Interesting. If there's a way for them to make a
lot of money in a short time, why not.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
Later Mike Mooy told me that this moment in the
late eighties is when Chinatown really started to change.
Speaker 14 (34:06):
The money started pulling in, and you can actually see
and feel it because everyone was benefiting woman, including all
the way down to the cab drivers, the waiters, the
restaurant owners, the gambling houses. So when you have a
billion dollars in drug money coming in and the circulating
(34:27):
within those couple of block radius, everyone was benefiting from it.
Speaker 15 (34:32):
Everyone.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
According to later court documents and news articles, Johnny owned
a two hundred acre estate in Pennsylvania, a house in
Long Island, a mansion basically, a Jaguar, a Mercedes Benz,
a Lotus, just a tip of car, twelve black Nissan pathfinders,
twenty two snowmobiles and eighteen three wheeled all terrain vehicles.
Speaker 9 (35:00):
Twenty two snowmobiles is crazy maybe he's buying up for
the whole game.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
I heard that he would bring them out to a
shooting range she had in Pennsylvania. If a gangster won
the shooting competition, he would give them like a pathfinder
or a snowmobile or something.
Speaker 9 (35:14):
It's like Jeopardy at Johnny's house.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
To me, it seems like Johnny was flashy, but the
reason what made him stand out wasn't that he was
particularly violent, like the documentary paints, it was that he
was very good at business.
Speaker 14 (35:31):
There were a lot of dangerous gangsters out there in
the Asian on the will who made a name for themselves,
and Onionhead wasn't one of them as far as you know,
being dangerous.
Speaker 15 (35:42):
He didn't have the reputation of a shula a killer.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
So that's who Beryl Howell was after Johnny Ing her
target came into focus as she tried to figure out
what connected the woman she had in custody these mageng
players with the heroin trade they had.
Speaker 5 (36:04):
Through their gambling at gambling parlors, accumulated debt to the
gambling parlor, and to pay off the debt they could
accept these boxes of heroin.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Beryl started to make some progress getting people to talk
to her at least about which Majong parlors they were
going to, and that was actually a huge clue.
Speaker 5 (36:25):
When the information came in through interviews with the cooperating
witnesses that they were paying off debts to the particular
gambling parlor that was operated by the Flying Dragons. The
agents and I knew immediately that this was a Flying
Dragons operation and had a I think it was very
(36:48):
well known that Johnny Ang was head of the Flying
Dragons and that he had to have known were these
and approved of these very valuable shipments being shipped.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
Beryl was interviewing these women who had been arrested, but
each played what seemed like only a tiny role. They
might receive a package or remove it from one place
to another. It all seemed very well designed to protect Johnny.
He was still out of reach.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
He was our ultimate target, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
But Beryl did start to figure out that there was
one woman who seemed to be overseeing the whole package
moving side of the operation. Her name was Wah and
she was a well known person in the Majong parlors.
Beryl actually gave her a nickname, although only in her
own mind. Wicked Wall.
Speaker 5 (37:38):
She was recruiting them to get involved with something with
very serious penalty consequences, and they had children and families,
so yes, what she had been doing was wicked.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
Beryl thought that this recruiter Wah, she might be her
link to Johnny Wall was also Tina Wong's childhood best friend.
So Beryl wanted Tina to tell her everything she knew
about Wall. And all of that brings us back into
that small office in Brooklyn, with Tina handcuffed to a
chair looking at Beryl's face, which to her seemed expressionless.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Now Tina had to weigh her options. On the one side,
it isn't that good to ride out a friend.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Were you thinking about like the dangers like that you
could maybe get killed because you were cooperating?
Speaker 4 (38:38):
Yeah, I was telling them that, I says, you know,
if I do.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
This aside to you don't cooperate, Yeah, what happens then.
Speaker 4 (38:49):
A chance to twenty five years to life and then
don't get to see my door to grow up. So
you got to weigh out the choices.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Despite all of her research, all of her investigation, Beryl
still didn't know the full import of what she was
asking Tina to do you or the price that Tina
would pay.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
But maybe that's because Tina wasn't telling her.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
Coming up on the next episode of The Chinatown Sting,
how do you get people to do whatever you.
Speaker 12 (39:36):
Want for you?
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Because I'm swat I could convince them.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
You know. The Chinatown Sting is written and produced by
Me Liddy Jeene Cott and reported by Me and Shoe
Yu Wang. Our senior producer is Emily Martinez, additional production
by Sonya Gerwit. Our editor is Julia Barton, with additional
(40:02):
editing by Karen Schakerji. Our story consultant is Wrong shout Ching,
Our executive our producer is Jacob Smith. Our music was
composed by John Sung, sound design and additional music.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
By Jake Gorski.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Our fact checker is Kate Ferby, and our show art
was designed by Sean Carney. All voiceover work by Tally Leong.
For more information about this episode, check out our show
notes or visit Pushkin dot fm slash Chinatown. The Chinatown
Stag is a production of Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
To find more Pushkin
Speaker 2 (40:39):
Podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you like to listen to podcasts.
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Hey everyone, before we get into this episode, I wanted
to let you know that you can listen to the
full season of The Chinatownstang add free right now.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
By signing up for Pushkin Plus.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
You'll also get bonus episodes, full audiobooks, and other true
crime binges from your favorite Pushkin hosts and authors. Find
Pushkin Plus on the Chinatownstaning Show page on Apple Podcasts.
We're at pushkin dot fm, slash plus. Previously on The Chinatownsting,
(00:51):
I was.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Talking through a customs agent in California who says, hey, well,
just got three shipments of heroin. Do you guys want
the case?
Speaker 4 (01:01):
It was like the first time we've ever seen anything
like that.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Really, Basically, you're stay at home moms. We're picking up
these these law chamansa heroin.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
We don't have that kind of money. So to have
that kind of money, you take a chance.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Federal authorities arrested Tina Wong on March first, nineteen eighty eight.
She was accused of receiving packages of heroin in the mail.
They took Tina to a jail in Long Island, miles
away from her home outside of Manhattan's Chinatown.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
And at this moment, the gravity must be hitting you.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
Yeah, especially when they tell you twenty five years to life,
which I didn't think was fair. But I don't make
the rules.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Tina was put in a cell. She doesn't remember much else.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Are you crying?
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Yeah, because I was mad, not at yourself, not at
the rule.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Well, the whole thing everything.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
The next day, Tina was taken in a van with
a whole bunch of other prisoners the US Attorney's office
in Brooklyn. Agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency met her
out front, put her in handcuffs and took her into
a small office. They handcuffed her to a chair, and
she found herself face to face with Beryl Howell, the
lead prosecutor in the case, the person who could argue
(02:28):
that Tina should be put away for decades for heroin smuggling.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
She's got this look, you know, like and no expression.
I thought she didn't like us, but you know, I
know she had a job to do, so I'm not
gonna be hating on her for that. But I just
thought that she really wanted us to go away for
a long time.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
And at the same time that Tina was sizing up Beryl,
Beryl was sizing up Tina.
Speaker 5 (03:01):
You know, to find out like, who was she, what
was her background, what was her how smart was she,
what was her educational background? How did she get this business?
And to see how much of her story all hung
together and made sense on details before we even started
talking about any evidence she might have about other people.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
They were both about the same age.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Beryl was thirty one at the time Tina was thirty,
but the similarities pretty much ended there. Tina grew up
on the outskirts of Chinatown, the same apartment where she
still lived. She never finished college, neither did her parents.
Beryl's mom nearly completed a PhD in biology. Her dad
had been a colonel in the army, and she had
(03:45):
grown up all over the US and abroad in Germany
and the Netherlands. She had a law degree from Columbia University.
So yes, she and Tina came from very different worlds
and met under not the best of circumstances, but each
needed the other person's trust. Recently, I showed up at
Tina's apartment to get an interview. I told her the
(04:08):
truth that Barrel Howell is my boyfriend's mom. I was
worried she'd close the door as soon as I said that.
But now I think that's actually why she let me in.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
Beryl, have you seen her.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
I hope she retired, because yeah, she's retired from chief
judge them. But then it's like you just become like
a regular judge. That Tina sounds lighthearted now, but she's
still keeping tabs on what Beryl is up to because
Beryl once held Tina's future in her hands, and in
a way, Tina held Beryl's future in her hands as well.
(04:45):
I am Lydia Jean Kott and this is the China
Townsting Episode two Onion Head. Beryl is now a federal
judge in Washington, d C. She's overseen a lot of
(05:08):
high profile cases. When was a defamation case brought against
former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The case was
brought by Georgia election workers, and they won.
Speaker 6 (05:19):
It was a rejection of what Judge Beryl Howell called
Giuliani's quote significantly tardy request for a bench trial and
one of his latest art givens to dodge a jury
that Howell called simply nonsense.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Also, Beryl's overseeing dozens of cases related to the January
sixth Capitol riot.
Speaker 7 (05:38):
Following President Trump's sweeping clemency for January sixth, defendants, federal
judges who presided over cases are letting their discontent be heard.
US District Judge Beryl Howell rebuke the President's claim of injustice,
writing quote this quote cannot let stand the revisionist myth
relate in this presidential pronouncement.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
And she ruled on Donald Trump's revenge on certain law firms.
Speaker 8 (05:59):
The federal judge tonight has just permanently blocked the president's
executive order that targeted a law firm which represented Hillary
Clinton in twenty sixteen, and the ruling from Judge Beryl
Howe is scathing.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
So yes, this is the person that I know on
a first name basis as Beryl. When I asked her
if I could do a story about her earliest major case,
I was pretty confident she would say no. Judges rarely
give interviews, and Beryl has been under more pressure and
scrutiny than ever before. Not only did Beryl agree to
be interviewed, she told me that she'd saved her notes
(06:32):
from the Chinatown case. What about legoes?
Speaker 5 (06:38):
Oh my god, we have so many legos.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
She my boyfriend and I searched all over her house
for them.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
The more under meet these things. Oh my god, I
can't believe we found this.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Before she let me have the goods, Beryl first went
through all of the material to make sure it was
all things that the public's allowed to see. She's a
stickler for the law. My co reporter Shiru Wang's also
a lawyer. She hasn't had a chance to meet Beryl,
but one day we sat down and talked about her
about how it feels to see Beryl through the eyes
of the people she once encountered as a federal prosecutor,
(07:14):
people like Tina won't.
Speaker 9 (07:16):
Does anything that Tina described about Beryl match what your
personal perception or understanding of Beryl, or like, does it
reflect anything that you have known about Beryl at that point?
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Well, Tina talked about what it was like the first
time that she met Beryl, and she said she was
expressionless and seemed kind of scary. I've definitely experienced being
very intimidated by her. When my boyfriend was little and they,
you know, if they were in trouble, it was it
was their dad that they would go to.
Speaker 9 (07:45):
What does barrel look like?
Speaker 1 (07:47):
She's blonde.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
She has very expressive eyebrows, so if she's feeling skeptical
of you, her eyebrows.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Go very very high.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
There is once this tweet by a court reporter. I
think that said the way that Beryl raised her eyebrows,
any kid would feel like they have to clean their
room if they saw that face.
Speaker 9 (08:05):
Oh my god, that's funny.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
So yeah, I've known Beryl since I was an a
elementary school. I grew up down the street from her,
but I really got to know her after I graduated
from college.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
By that point, she was a federal judge.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
And you know, when I started talking to her about
it over time, it was really cool to hear her
talk about the law. It felt like she was pulling
back a curtain and really showing me how the law works.
And that's actually kind of why I decided I wanted
to be a reporter who reports about the law because
I wanted to share what I learned.
Speaker 9 (08:37):
Basically, does she talk about work naturally at all of
these family friends gathering or she's more like, if you
have questions, come to me out answer that.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
I mean, there's a lot about work that she can't
talk about. But she's passionate about the law, and she
does talk about it.
Speaker 9 (08:54):
It comes up all the time, including this case.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Definitely.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
I think when I first heard about this case, and
I think it was an evening after dinner, and it
was one of those stories where everyone else had already
heard it, but they were really happy to hear it again,
kind of like a family legend where you love to
tell it over and over again.
Speaker 9 (09:15):
By the time she got involved in this case, where
was Berrow in her career.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
So she had actually just become a federal prosecutor. I
think she had had the job for about six months. Okay,
you know, you know, as a lawyer, it's a very
big deal job. It was kind of a dream job
for her.
Speaker 5 (09:32):
I felt like I was living a story every single
day with every single investigation, and you know, it was
all still fairly new to me and still very exciting
to me.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
It was in the spring of nineteen eighty eight, and
if you think about the eighties, you know, most people
you think about the crack epidemic, but heroin was a
really big deal at the time too, especially in New York.
I think one out of forty people in New York
were addicted to heroin.
Speaker 9 (10:03):
That's crazy ratio.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Yeah, it's actually really a lot.
Speaker 9 (10:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
You know, for a long time, heroin was coming into
New York through the mafia, but then in the mid eighties,
the criminal underworld was going through a shift.
Speaker 10 (10:19):
Federal law enforcement officials are celebrating what they considered to
be a major victory in their war against organized crime.
A former head of the Sicilian mafia and sixteen other
reputed organized crime figures convicted yesterday running one of the
biggest heroin smuggling rings ever uncovered.
Speaker 11 (10:34):
The government says the operation was masterminded by Sicilians and
brought one billion, six hundred and fifty million dollars worth
of heroin into the United States over the past five years.
The alleged American kingpin was Salvator Toto Catalano, linked by
the government to organized crime and owner of this bakery
and pizza restaurant in Queens. In fact, so many of
the dealings in this case took place in pizza parlor's
(10:57):
that federal officials have dubbed it the Pizza Connection.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Federal law enforcement agents realized that heroin was coming into
the States through these pizza.
Speaker 9 (11:05):
Parlors, Unite sent pizzas.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
I don't actually know what type of pizza parlors they were,
but yeah, it was a huge bust and I think
like twenty one mobsters were arrested. But after the pizza connection,
believe it or not, heroin was still making its way
into New York City. That's when the Senate started to
have these hearings and investigations.
Speaker 12 (11:31):
Asian criminal groups are emerging on the American landscape in
the sense they're becoming more powerful, may become an alternative
to traditional organized crime. Law enforcement authorities, particularly federal cannot
afford to wait until these organizations have fully emerged.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
So yeah, in nineteen eighty three, Chinese dealers accounted for
a three percent of the heroin that was coming into
the city, and then three years later, according to these hearings,
they counted for a twenty five percent, and.
Speaker 9 (12:04):
That's a big jump, and the number was going up.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
It was getting, you know, higher and higher. Of course,
when Beryl started as a federal prosecutor, she was briefed
and knew about this.
Speaker 5 (12:15):
Was I aware of Chinatown gangs, absolutely, But did I
immediately think that these boxes being shipped through JFK were
related to Chinatown gangs that wasn't the first thing on
my mind.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
I didn't really know.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
You generally had no idea what was going to happen
where these boxes, where this control delivery was going to
lead you.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
Yeah, not at all.
Speaker 9 (12:38):
What was Barrow's impression about Chinatown before she took on
his case.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
So Beryl lived in Chelsea, which is not that far
from Chinatown. It was a place that she walked through
a lot. But through working on this case, Beryl also
started to see that Chinatown was a more complicated place
than she knew, and that also what she was asking
from these women was really a lot.
Speaker 5 (13:06):
They gave me an insight into all the you know,
sort of the complexities and loyalties and pressures that were
all unseen to a mere visitor from Chelsea going to
Chinatown not that far but world's away.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
So it was clear to Beryl that she had to
understand more about Chinatown and the pressures her witnesses were
under if she wanted to get any useful information from
them about those mail packages and who was really in charge.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Beryl Howell's goal as a federal prosecutor was not to
put a bunch of low level drug smugglers in prison.
She wanted to make an actual difference by building a
case against whoever was at the top of the scheme,
whoever was bringing millions of dollars worth of drugs and
New York through Chinatown.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
To do that, she needed.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
The lower level people like Tina Long to tell her
everything they knew. But as I look through Beryl's notes,
it seemed like she was getting one word answers and
a lot of evasion. Clearly, something was scaring these women
more than prison, and that's something was in Chinatown. So
my producer and I did what we imagine Beryl might
have done. We headed downtown to do some investigating. We
(14:36):
found three people who could talk to us about how
criminal networks in Chinatown worked back in the nineteen eighties.
When these women agreed to receive packages of heroin in
the mail.
Speaker 13 (14:45):
Henry walked around the shave with two white girls.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Henry Tann grew up in Chinatown and is now an author.
He's written five detective novels, all set here, and a
little reluctantly, he's agreed to give us a tour of
the neighborhood.
Speaker 13 (14:57):
The building looks better than it did then. We lived
there on the dirt floor. There was a railroad flat.
My brother and I had beds in the middle of department.
We were here for five years and maybe six.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
We're on Pell Street. It's a street so short it's
almost an alleyway.
Speaker 13 (15:20):
During the holidays, we'll be crowded. Hip Sing would come
out with their lion dancers and the street will be
packed and it'll be fireworks.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
The Hip Singh is a community organization. The name roughly
means cooperating for success. They're buildings on the opposite end
of the street from the apartment that Henry grew up in.
Speaker 13 (15:38):
Further down the block on the right side, you see
the golden doors and the official Hip Sing Organization.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
In the eighteen hundreds, organizations called Tongs first formed in
Chinatown's across the US. They supported and protected residents. Henry
writes about the Tongs in his first novel, Chinatown Beat.
The Hip Singh was considered the working class Hong, and
around the corner on Maud Street, the onl Tong was
for merchants. Henry slightly changes their names in his book.
Speaker 13 (16:13):
The One was a businessman's benevolent association. The number one
high roller in America a coast to coast secret society
no working man was able to join. They sneered at
the ship jumpers, the waiters and dishwashers, the laundrymen who
joined their arrival hip chains.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
By the time Henry was growing up, lots of people
were ping dues to one tong or another. They were
doing this in exchange for the kind of help that
they couldn't get or didn't know how to get from
the US government way back.
Speaker 13 (16:47):
They will receive the mail for their members because a
lot of their members who lived in buildings didn't have mailboxes.
Because when people came here, you know, they were strangers
in a foreign land, and they didn't speak the language,
they didn't read English, and so this was the one
place they could go to for any kind of assistance.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
And the reason that the hip saying matters so much
to our case is because the organization had another building,
one right across the street we're now standing in front of.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
It doesn't make you nervous to be here? Should we
go someplace else?
Speaker 13 (17:21):
No, Well, I'm the one that looks shady, you guys. Obviously,
I'm being an interview only saying good things.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Henry's directed that last comment to a security camera that's pointing.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Straight at us. He's joking. I think.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
In the nineteen eighties this was a gambling parlor. Henry
tells us that when he was a kid, he would
watch men head down the basement stairs here it was
off limits to children. One day, when he was finally
old enough, he followed those men inside.
Speaker 13 (17:55):
You step into a cloud of cigarette smoke. You could
barely breathe, and all these men, mostly men, smoking and gambling,
and they would play thirteen cards, Subsam Jam, seven cards,
chuck Jam, majong here and there.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
What was the vibe? Was the vibe lighthearted? Was it serious?
How did it feel down there?
Speaker 13 (18:17):
Well, it was all of that. I mean, you know,
if you're winning, you know you're giddy. If you're losing,
your grumpy. But twice on these men they have with
this very guttural way of like being loud, and because
of the dialect, sounds like they're always cursing, even when
they're not cursing.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Henry already knew by then that he wanted to be
a writer, and he knew he wanted to write about
this world.
Speaker 13 (18:43):
You can't whip out a pad and pencil and start
taking notes. So I would go in the bathroom and
I would roll up my sleeves and I would write
things on my arm up and down my own and
then when I get home and I wake up the
next morning, I would remember.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
This gambling parlor was operated by one of the most
powerful gangs in Chinatown, the Flying Dragons. It was also
their main hangout, kind of like their HQ, and this
gang would come to matter a lot to Baryl. Part
of the reason the Flying Dragons were so powerful is
because they reported to the Hip sing that influential community
(19:22):
organization with the Golden Pagoda across the street.
Speaker 13 (19:26):
They had their glorious building where they took care of
their business and where they funded the gang kids.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
They kept that out of sight.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Because while the Tongs helped families, they also exploited them.
In the nineteen eighties, the leaders of the Hip Singh
didn't just earn money from collecting member dues. They also
earned money from this gambling parlor and other gambling parlors
all over Chinatown. To help with the seedier parts of
their operations, they recruited teenagers. Teenagers like Mike Moy.
Speaker 14 (20:01):
Because I grew up being bullied, not being bullied by
fellow Asians. I was being bullied by the whites, blacks, Hispanics.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Was physically beat up.
Speaker 15 (20:12):
Oh, everything, everything, everything.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Mike moy was also born in Chinatown. He says that
many tongues were connected to youth gangs. It was kind
of like an open secret.
Speaker 14 (20:23):
The Hipsyng Tongue Association they affiliated with the Flying Dragons,
the Online was affiliated with the gold Shadows, and then
you have the Somezing Association, the dun Lawn Associations associated
with the dun Lawn Gang. So these were three major
gangs in Chinatown during that time, from the seventies into
(20:44):
the mid eighties. These were the Flying Dragons, the Gold Shadows,
and the dun Lag.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Like many people we've spoken with, Mike points out something important,
the whole gang system of Chinatown did not arise in
a vacuum.
Speaker 14 (20:56):
If I had to summarize why these gangs exist, I
can summarize it in one word. Racism. That is the core.
The root of the issue is racism. Okay, what does
racism it created these gangs.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
When Mike was fifteen, he was approached by an older
gang member in a pool hall. The man had seen
him there before. He had been watching him, and he
knew exactly what to say to a lost Chinese American teenager.
Speaker 14 (21:25):
Bullying was it was pretty bad, you know which. It
was constantly every day, it was something new, and I'm.
Speaker 15 (21:33):
Just sick and tired of it. So that hit a
chord with me.
Speaker 14 (21:37):
And since I joined a gang, I can tell you
I never got bullied of it again.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
How did people know not to billy you?
Speaker 14 (21:45):
It's the way you carry yourself. I mean, once you
join a gang, you feel like you have the whole
gang behind you.
Speaker 15 (21:53):
You think you're invincible.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Mike didn't join the Flying Dragons. He joined a gang
called the Fox Chang. But all the gangs worked pretty similarly,
he says. When teens joined them, they often moved in
and lived with other gang members.
Speaker 14 (22:09):
They supply us with the safe house. When we move
from safe house to safe house, we can live five
to ten fifteen per apartment. We don't go home to
mom and dad. So in a way, there's a special
bond there. It's like family, a family.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Whose members were loyal to each other no matter what.
Speaker 15 (22:31):
It's different in Chinatown because that's all you have. Who's
going to back you up, who's going to who's going
to help you.
Speaker 14 (22:38):
It is your fellow brothers who's going to help you.
I mean, nobody did anything for us back in those days.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
But to stay in this family, teams like Mike had
to fulfill us some pretty severe requirements.
Speaker 14 (22:51):
They recruit the young kids to do the shooting because
it's a slap on the risk for them. They get
caught with a gun, it's a slap on the risk.
So anyone who's doing all the shootings, most of the
shootings are under the age of fifteen or maybe even sixteen,
so they recruit them to carry the guns.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Through Mike, I met another former gang member named Peter Chin.
He actually joined a gang at thirteen. That was shortly
after his family immigrated to the US from the outskirts
of Hong Kong.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
Oh was the youngest guy. That's why how my name
came about.
Speaker 15 (23:31):
Kid.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
They called me Kit. They kid, come here, come on,
come with kid, So they called me Kid Jai.
Speaker 12 (23:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Kid Jai went on to become the leader of the
Ghost Shadows, the main rival to the Flying Dragons.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
The gang headquartered on Pell Street.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Kijai wound up serving twenty years in prison under the
Rico Act. Later, he co wrote a book about his experiences.
It's called In the Ghost Shadows. Pretty Much all the
gangsters in his book have nicknames. There's Potato spha rib
I asked him and his co writer Everett Dumourier about that.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Were there people who hated their nicknames?
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Who hated their their names?
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Thank you book, Spinky, Yeah, he goes, no way it.
She is gonna be proud of that.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Can you can you change your nickname? Or are you
stuck with it?
Speaker 12 (24:18):
No?
Speaker 3 (24:19):
You can't change one, just stuck. You stuck with it.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Now.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Kidji can laugh about this time, but the truth is
he barely survived it. As a teenager, he remembers one
time being in a nightclub when an ex cop from
Hong Kong showed up. That man had been involved in
a dispute with the gang. He walked in and just
started shooting.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
He turned about, he saw me. He pointed a lot
for it, then hesitated for a second. I'm not gonna shoot.
Speaker 15 (24:47):
You, okay. He left.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
After the X cop left, Kidji looked around the bar,
trying to make sense of what happened. Two people had
been killed, people he knew. He started to count the
spent bullets so.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
I walk over a knee wulm spot. I counted his bullet.
Nine ship and then the girl got one in the head.
Speaker 15 (25:10):
That's ten.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
One was on the wall, and one just shot somebody
behind the neck. Scraped it all right. That's that's one,
and one on the one's wall, the one that he said,
not gonna shoot this jack. Gays don't have a bullet
at him because the fight.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
It's whoa back then.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Shootings like this happen often, but they only really made
the news when they're particularly bloody or if someone from
outside of Chinatown got caught in the crossfire.
Speaker 16 (25:36):
In the last six month, Chinese street gang activity is
erupted in violence throughout parts of the city.
Speaker 10 (25:41):
There have been at least eight known Chinese gang related homicide.
Speaker 17 (25:45):
Threats from gangs are phrased in the worst way imaginable,
the way that leaves it all up to your own imagination.
For example, we know who your wife is, we know
what she looks like, we know who your children are,
we know where you live.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
In nineteen seventy seven, a restaurant owner named Mann Bundley
partnered with the police on a campaign to convince people
to report gang violence in extortion. He was a respected
voice in the community, known as Chinatown's unofficial mayor, but
not long into the campaign, someone came into man Bundley's restaurant,
pulled a knife out from a Manila folder, and stabbed
(26:23):
him five times. Mc moy said the stabbing sent a
clear message. No one who speaks out against the gangs
is safe.
Speaker 15 (26:33):
They can get to any resident in Chinatown.
Speaker 14 (26:35):
So that's why the fear is there, because there's no
place for the residents to go.
Speaker 15 (26:40):
The resident of.
Speaker 14 (26:41):
Chinatown will not move over to Staten Island in those days.
They're not going to move to Jersey. They're trapped in
Chintown because they don't speak the language where they're going
to go.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
This fear seems to be a thing of the past
to mcmoy. Now, he hosts a YouTube channel about his
former life and interviews other former gang members.
Speaker 14 (27:01):
Welcome to Chintown Gang Stories to they have a special guest.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
And he wanted to make extra sure that I gave
his channel a shout out. It's called Chinatown Gang Stories
and you should really check it out. So that's Mike
moy's way of handling what he's been through the past
seems to weigh much heavier on the writer Henry Chang.
He never joined a gang, but when he was a teen,
a friend of his was stabbed because his friend's older
(27:27):
brother defied a gangster. The guys who stabbed his friend
were never.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Caught after that night.
Speaker 13 (27:33):
I never walk around unarmed, really, so I'm armed right now.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Henry Chang's novels are all set in the Chinatown that
he grew up in, and they follow a character named
Jack Yu, also from the neighborhood, who works there as
a police detective.
Speaker 13 (27:51):
What do you get over there, Jack, thirty five forty
g's what all the time that would it costs to
turn you against people who used to be your friends.
Jack's face tightened. We only bust the bad ones. Bullshit.
We take care the bad ones. You guys just come
for the money to count the bodies. Jack looked up
(28:13):
from the courtyard. So the oyster colored sky above the
rooftops they used to run across. It's not about money,
Jack said, Lucky sneered. It's all about money and damn
thing funny.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
So this was the state of things in the mid
nineteen eighties with gangs in Chinatown. They were a protection
racket connected to powerful community organizations, and for decades law
enforcement officials had pretty much looked the other way. But
now they were suddenly paying attention because one gangster had
figured out a way to make a lot more money.
(29:06):
While I was reporting this story, I found a Justice
Department memo from the nineteen eighties. It was for law
enforcement officials and it listed the names of Asian gangs
and their leaders, including one gang leader named Johnny Yang.
The memo called Ang the leader of the Flying Dragons.
That's that gang that had its headquarters on Pell Street.
There is a little asterisk next to his name with
(29:28):
a note that said Aang is believed to be one
of the most important heroin distributors in New York.
Speaker 18 (29:35):
Machine Gun Johnny Yang became a full fledged gangster in
March of nineteen eighty three when his boss was found
full of bullets and scores of Flying Dragons became his
drug minions.
Speaker 9 (29:49):
I forgot how dramatic the narration yeah in that documentary
was you have.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
To love it.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
It's from a TV series called Gangsters America's Most Evil
Machine Gun Johnny and it was broadcast on Cable TV
in twenty twelve.
Speaker 9 (30:03):
I still feel like it's being a little bit exaggerating.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
Oh, this documentary is.
Speaker 7 (30:13):
He's taking his fellow flying dragons, driving them from New
York to his spot in Pennsylvania as a farm, and
they're doing machine gun practice.
Speaker 16 (30:22):
He's copying the Hollywood movies about Chinese gangsters with the
overcoat hanging off his shoulders, buying luxury goods. You know,
it's what every Chinese gangster thinks they should look like.
Speaker 15 (30:34):
That's machine gun Johnny.
Speaker 9 (30:37):
It's just funny because like somehow people have met Johnny
in real life and when they described him, it doesn't
feel like how they portrayed it in the documentary.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
And to that point, I realized that it's only law
enforcement who called them machine gun Johnny. The people who
you know lived in Chinatown. For example, Mike moy knew
him by another nickname.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
That's not so badass. Why was he called onionhead?
Speaker 14 (31:07):
All right, So here's the mission out there.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
People.
Speaker 14 (31:11):
I've seen some documentaries on YouTube saying that he was
nicknamed onion head because if you cause him, you know,
he'll make you cry.
Speaker 15 (31:22):
That is not true.
Speaker 14 (31:23):
That is absolutely not true. He's called onion head because
of his hairstyle and the shape of his head.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
It's like a spring onion.
Speaker 9 (31:32):
I guess yeah, it's kind of like the mini mohawk
that you just have, like some here on top of
the head.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Oh, all this time I thought it was just sticking
up by accident.
Speaker 10 (31:42):
Well, we'll never know.
Speaker 9 (31:44):
Has any of these people described what Johnny was like
even before he became the head of the gang.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
Yeah, he immigrated from Hong Kong to the United States
when he was twelve years old, and he joined this gang,
the Flying Dragons, pretty soon after. Because he usually joined
as a teenager, you know, he didn't really make much
of an impression. He just kind of seemed like, you're
in the background gang member. In fact, I couldn't really
find much about him in the media until around the
time of the Pizza connection trials.
Speaker 10 (32:13):
I think the impact on the mafia of these cases
and the convictions today have been devastating. The efforts by
the DA and the FBI and Custom Service and the
US Attorney's offices. If it continues, it's not going to
be in mafia.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
I think Johnny then realized that there was sort of
a vacuum this big group, the Italian mob, that had
been bringing in heroin had been busted, and now people
in New York, you know, they still wanted heroin. And
at the time, there was a lot of really high
grade heroin that was being processed in this area around
(32:45):
Burma Laos, Thailand. It was called the Golden Triangle, and
heroin would be smuggled from there into various places, including
Hong Kong and China. So Johnny started going to Hong Kong.
And I know this because actually Kidjai, one of the
gangsters that we talked to earlier, he saw him on
(33:07):
one of the strips to Hong Kong.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
It was the best club in Hong Kong. And so
when I was walking in with one of the the
data the movies start right yep, we passed by him
and I saw him sitting with another man that I
don't recognize.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
So looking back, Kidji thinks he might have actually witnessed
Johnny trying to secure connections to start importing heroin into
New York.
Speaker 9 (33:28):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
On his YouTube channel, Mike moy talked to this guy
Cowboy who was in the Flying Dragons under Johnny aka Onion.
Speaker 19 (33:36):
Onion must like a different regime. He was like, go on,
make money everyone. It was like the Soviet Union when
they disbanded. You give a freedom, they gonna say to yourself,
what the follow one would do with it?
Speaker 18 (33:48):
We don't know how to.
Speaker 19 (33:48):
Make money except distributing drugs.
Speaker 18 (33:51):
So that was the new era.
Speaker 9 (33:54):
Interesting. If there's a way for them to make a
lot of money in a short time, why not.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
Later Mike Mooy told me that this moment in the
late eighties is when Chinatown really started to change.
Speaker 14 (34:06):
The money started pulling in, and you can actually see
and feel it because everyone was benefiting woman, including all
the way down to the cab drivers, the waiters, the
restaurant owners, the gambling houses. So when you have a
billion dollars in drug money coming in and the circulating
(34:27):
within those couple of block radius, everyone was benefiting from it.
Speaker 15 (34:32):
Everyone.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
According to later court documents and news articles, Johnny owned
a two hundred acre estate in Pennsylvania, a house in
Long Island, a mansion basically, a Jaguar, a Mercedes Benz,
a Lotus, just a tip of car, twelve black Nissan pathfinders,
twenty two snowmobiles and eighteen three wheeled all terrain vehicles.
Speaker 9 (35:00):
Twenty two snowmobiles is crazy maybe he's buying up for
the whole game.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
I heard that he would bring them out to a
shooting range she had in Pennsylvania. If a gangster won
the shooting competition, he would give them like a pathfinder
or a snowmobile or something.
Speaker 9 (35:14):
It's like Jeopardy at Johnny's house.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
To me, it seems like Johnny was flashy, but the
reason what made him stand out wasn't that he was
particularly violent, like the documentary paints, it was that he
was very good at business.
Speaker 14 (35:31):
There were a lot of dangerous gangsters out there in
the Asian on the will who made a name for themselves,
and Onionhead wasn't one of them as far as you know,
being dangerous.
Speaker 15 (35:42):
He didn't have the reputation of a shula a killer.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
So that's who Beryl Howell was after Johnny Ing her
target came into focus as she tried to figure out
what connected the woman she had in custody these mageng
players with the heroin trade they had.
Speaker 5 (36:04):
Through their gambling at gambling parlors, accumulated debt to the
gambling parlor, and to pay off the debt they could
accept these boxes of heroin.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Beryl started to make some progress getting people to talk
to her at least about which Majong parlors they were
going to, and that was actually a huge clue.
Speaker 5 (36:25):
When the information came in through interviews with the cooperating
witnesses that they were paying off debts to the particular
gambling parlor that was operated by the Flying Dragons. The
agents and I knew immediately that this was a Flying
Dragons operation and had a I think it was very
(36:48):
well known that Johnny Ang was head of the Flying
Dragons and that he had to have known were these
and approved of these very valuable shipments being shipped.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
Beryl was interviewing these women who had been arrested, but
each played what seemed like only a tiny role. They
might receive a package or remove it from one place
to another. It all seemed very well designed to protect Johnny.
He was still out of reach.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
He was our ultimate target, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
But Beryl did start to figure out that there was
one woman who seemed to be overseeing the whole package
moving side of the operation. Her name was Wah and
she was a well known person in the Majong parlors.
Beryl actually gave her a nickname, although only in her
own mind. Wicked Wall.
Speaker 5 (37:38):
She was recruiting them to get involved with something with
very serious penalty consequences, and they had children and families,
so yes, what she had been doing was wicked.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
Beryl thought that this recruiter Wah, she might be her
link to Johnny Wall was also Tina Wong's childhood best friend.
So Beryl wanted Tina to tell her everything she knew
about Wall. And all of that brings us back into
that small office in Brooklyn, with Tina handcuffed to a
chair looking at Beryl's face, which to her seemed expressionless.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Now Tina had to weigh her options. On the one side,
it isn't that good to ride out a friend.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Were you thinking about like the dangers like that you
could maybe get killed because you were cooperating?
Speaker 4 (38:38):
Yeah, I was telling them that, I says, you know,
if I do.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
This aside to you don't cooperate, Yeah, what happens then.
Speaker 4 (38:49):
A chance to twenty five years to life and then
don't get to see my door to grow up. So
you got to weigh out the choices.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Despite all of her research, all of her investigation, Beryl
still didn't know the full import of what she was
asking Tina to do you or the price that Tina
would pay.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
But maybe that's because Tina wasn't telling her.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
Coming up on the next episode of The Chinatown Sting,
how do you get people to do whatever you.
Speaker 12 (39:36):
Want for you?
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Because I'm swat I could convince them.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
You know. The Chinatown Sting is written and produced by
Me Liddy Jeene Cott and reported by Me and Shoe
Yu Wang. Our senior producer is Emily Martinez, additional production
by Sonya Gerwit. Our editor is Julia Barton, with additional
(40:02):
editing by Karen Schakerji. Our story consultant is Wrong shout Ching,
Our executive our producer is Jacob Smith. Our music was
composed by John Sung, sound design and additional music.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
By Jake Gorski.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Our fact checker is Kate Ferby, and our show art
was designed by Sean Carney. All voiceover work by Tally Leong.
For more information about this episode, check out our show
notes or visit Pushkin dot fm slash Chinatown. The Chinatown
Stag is a production of Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
To find more Pushkin
Speaker 2 (40:39):
Podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you like to listen to podcasts.
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