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The mysterious murder that shocked 1930s Beijing and captured international attention

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Brief Case is a True Crime Channel focusing on old or lost cases that have been forgotten to history. If you have any recommendations for future cases that you would like to bring to light, feel free to reach out to me to: briefcaseuk@gmail.com

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Transcript
00:07Today we will be looking at a case from the 1930s, so sit back as we go to China.
00:16Edward Theodore Chalmers Werner was born on the 12th of November 1864 in Dunedin in New Zealand.
00:23His mother was British and his father was from Prussia and like many children who came from
00:28relatively well-off families in the 19th century. Edward was sent to boarding school in England,
00:33attending a school in Tunbridge in the county of Kent. When he was 13 years old, his father died,
00:40which left his mother in a difficult financial situation. So in 1879, Edward left his studies
00:46and started to work. He was an accomplished linguist and eventually took the civil service exams
00:52and joined the British Diplomatic Service. In the early 1880s, he was sent to work in Beijing as a
00:59trainee interpreter for the British Embassy and over the next 30 years, his career took him all
01:05across China. He worked in many major cities, as well as the major Portuguese territory of Macau.
01:11However, he often disagreed with his superiors, which resulted in several postings to remote
01:16locations. Edward eventually reached the position of Consul General in Fujio, which is a major city
01:23located on the southeastern coast of China, opposite Taiwan, and serves as capital of the Fujian province.
01:30In 1911, he married Gladys Nina Ravenshaw. She was the daughter of a British Army officer who had
01:36previously served as a diplomat in South Asia, and having been born in 1886, was 22 years his junior.
01:43Three years later, in 1914, Edward retired from diplomatic service.
01:50He was now 50 years old, but instead of returning to Britain, he decided to stay in China.
01:56He moved to Beijing, where he studied Chinese history and culture. During this time, he also served on the
02:02board of a medical college, gave lectures at local universities, wrote for the government's
02:07historical research team, and joined the Royal Asiatic Society. In 1919, Edward and Gladys adopted
02:14a two-year-old girl from an orphanage ran by Portuguese nuns at Beijing's Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.
02:21They named the child Pamela, and although the little girl's biological parents were unknown,
02:26her fair complexion and grey eyes led them to believe that she may have been the daughter of Russian
02:31refugees, as seven other children at the orphanage were believed to have come from Russian families.
02:36For the next three years, Edward's life was fulfilled, but in 1922, tragedy struck when Gladys
02:43died, after complications arose during treatment for meningitis. Following this, Edward raised Pamela
02:50alone. While most diplomats and wealthy foreigners resided in a legation quarter, a heavily guarded,
02:56self-controlled enclave shielded by foreign troops and extraterritorial immunity. Edward chose to live
03:03outside its walls among the local population. Him and Pamela settled in a traditional Chinese courtyard
03:09house, where he ensured that his daughter became fluent in Chinese and integrated into the daily life
03:15of the city. She liked to speak to the local people, and when she was a teenager, she would often
03:21go out
03:21alone on her bicycle. During the 1930s, bicycles were a common sight on the streets of Beijing, serving as a
03:28popular
03:29mode of transport for Western expats, foreign diplomats, university students, and middle-class residents.
03:36They were mostly imported from Europe, and offered a level of independence that hand-pulled rickshaws and trams
03:42could not match. This made them a favourite among young people, who wanted to navigate through the city.
03:48Although Pamela seemed to be quite confident when travelling throughout Beijing, by late 1936,
03:54her father had concerns over her active social life. She had returned home on break from a boarding
04:00school in Tianjin, and there had been allegations that the headmaster, a man named Sidney Yeats,
04:05had made unwanted advances towards her. Edward had also previously turned away a young Chinese man who
04:12had called upon his daughter. And due to all of this, and the fact that Pamela was becoming too
04:16independent for his liking, he decided that it may be best to send her to England to finish her
04:21schooling. On the 7th of January 1937, Pamela, who was by now 19 years old, went ice skating with her
04:29friend Gurevich, arriving at the ice rink at around 6pm. The two girls also met up with another friend,
04:35named Lillian Marinovsky, but at around 7.30, Pamela said that she had to leave, as she had promised to
04:41be
04:42home for dinner. She then got on her bicycle, and cycled in the direction of her house. She never
04:47arrived. Edward Werner soon became concerned for his daughter, and instructed his house servant,
04:55named Ho Ying, to go to the ice rink and look for her. Ho Ying returned 90 minutes later, to
05:01say that
05:01there had been many people skating that night, and as it was late, the ice rink was now closed.
05:06Mr. Werner was very worried. He knew that disappearances were common in 1930s Beijing,
05:12as years of civil conflict, warlord struggles, and the threat of an impending Japanese invasion,
05:18had thrown the city into deep instability, and the streets had many displaced Chinese civilians,
05:24and Russian exiles, many of whom had vanished, especially around the Badlands district,
05:29which was a maze of narrow alleyways, filled with opium dens, unlicensed bars and brothels,
05:35and was a place where law enforcement rarely went. He decided to go and search for her.
05:40He did this until the early hours of the morning, but without success.
05:46Shortly after 8am on the 8th of January, two rickshaw drivers near the Fox Tower,
05:51a large 15th century grey brick corner fortress, that marked the southeastern boundary of Beijing's
05:58old city walls, noticed seven wild dogs gathering around a bundle. One of the drivers went down to
06:04investigate, and was horrified to discover the badly beaten and stabbed body of a young European woman.
06:10He immediately hurried to the nearest police box, and reported what he had found.
06:14The rickshaw drivers remained at the scene, keeping the dogs away, and covering the body with a bamboo
06:20mat, to prevent crowds from gathering. When the police arrived, Colonel Hand took charge of the
06:26investigation. At first, he suspected that the young woman might have been Russian,
06:31and had died by her own hands. However, after he had seen the extent of the injuries,
06:36he realised that this cause of death seemed very unlikely. Because the discovery had been made close
06:41to the legation quarter, Colonel Hand contacted its police commissioner, W.P. Thomas, who also
06:47attended the scene. The victim's identity, however, was only established when Mr. Edward Werner arrived.
06:54He had been looking for his daughter, and had been told that a young woman had been found dead near
06:58the
06:58old city walls. The moment he saw the body, he cried out,
07:03Pamela, and clapped beside her. For some time he remained there, sitting beside his daughter,
07:09struggling to come to terms with what had happened. Later that day, a foreign constable who had known
07:14Pamela personally, confirmed the identification. Investigators started to piece together what could
07:20have happened. One of the most significant details, was that her jewellery was still on
07:25her body. The platinum pieces were valuable, yet nothing had been taken. This meant that theft could
07:30not explain the murder. Her watch offered another possible clue. It had stopped just after midnight,
07:36which gave the authorities the approximate time of death. The scene itself raised further questions.
07:42Despite the severity of her injuries, there was virtually no blood on the ground, apart from what
07:48remained on her clothes. This pointed to the possibility that she had been attacked elsewhere,
07:52and that her body had subsequently been brought to the place where it had been found.
07:57A skating rink membership card was discovered nearby, and this too was marked with blood.
08:02However, there was no sign of her bicycle, or her ice skates.
08:06By the evening, the scene had been examined and secured, and Pamela's body was taken to the Beijing
08:12Union Medical College, where an autopsy was carried out. The autopsy revealed that she had
08:18died between 10pm and 2am from a blunt force head trauma. However, after she had died, blood had been
08:25drained from her body, her pelvic area had been repeatedly stabbed, and several organs, including her heart,
08:31were missing. There was partially digested Chinese food in her stomach, which confirmed that she had
08:36eaten after she had left the ice rink. Detectives now believed that the perpetrator had been distracted
08:42when removing the organs, and probably panicked, so dumped the body near the old city walls.
08:47Although the murder of a teenage Westerner caused much interest from the press, Colonel Han would not
08:53release details of the autopsy. The case was not solely the responsibility of Chinese law enforcement,
08:59and Colonel Han was joined in the investigation by Detective Chief Inspector Richard Dennis, who was
09:05representing the British interests in the case. The two men began speaking with Pamela's friends, and her
09:11grieving father, Edward Werner, described his daughter as a beautiful young woman, but admitted that she had
09:17sometimes been more independent than he would have liked. He also recalled the earlier altercation with a young
09:23Chinese man, who had come to the house to see Pamela, during which he struck the man with a stick.
09:28Edward also spoke about the incident at her boarding school. When retracing Pamela's movements on the day
09:34of her disappearance, detectives discovered that she had inquired about renting a room at the Wagon
09:39Litz Hotel between 3 and 4 pm, though her motive for this was unclear. Meanwhile, the lack of official
09:46news about the murder fuelled intense speculation, and as the investigation continued, several theories
09:52began to emerge. Suspicion fell upon Edward Werner, with some members of the expatriate community
09:58wondering whether his notorious temper had led him to attack his own daughter during an outburst of anger.
10:05Detective Dennis, however, eventually became convinced that Mr. Werner had not been responsible.
10:10Another theory came from Mrs. Helen Foster Snow, who lived near the Werner family. She told Chief Inspector
10:16Dennis that Pamela's resemblance to her could have resulted in a case of mistaken identity. She
10:22believed that supporters of the Chinese Nationalist Party might have intended to target her instead.
10:27She explained that both herself and her husband had been openly critical of the government,
10:32while writing favourably about the communists, something she believed had made them unpopular.
10:38All of these, however, were just theories, and investigators had yet to find any solid evidence
10:43that could reveal who was responsible for Pamela Werner's murder.
10:49Inspector Han ordered officers to focus on the Badlands area, which was a rough and lawless district,
10:55filled with bars and brothels. It was an area in which the police had little influence,
11:00and many of the people who lived and worked there were reluctant to cooperate with the authorities.
11:06Officers remembered that when they'd interviewed Pamela's friends,
11:09they said that she always tried to avoid the Badlands area at night. However, Colonel Han thought
11:14that she may have passed through there on January 7th, as it offered the most direct route to her home.
11:20A potential lead emerged when a local landlady reported finding a bloodstained dagger and bloodstained
11:26clothing inside the room of one of her tenants. The tenant was a registered military deserter named
11:32Pinfold, who had lived a chaotic life on the margins of society. He was located and arrested by police,
11:39and was taken to the Morrison Street police station for questioning. He was interrogated by both
11:44Inspector Dennis and Colonel Han, and told them that he worked sporadically as a day labourer,
11:49while at night worked as a bodyguard in the Badlands. Although Pinfold did not reveal much,
11:54officers were able to find out that before he arrived in China,
11:57he had deserted the Canadian army and fled to the United States, where he became involved in criminal
12:03activity. The police searched Pinfold's living quarters and the two establishments where he was
12:09known to work, but they found nothing to connect him with Pamela's murder. They then spoke to the
12:14manager of a venue where Pinfold had worked at night. He was a former US Marine named Joseph Knauth,
12:21and he revealed that Pinfold frequently attended weekend nudists and hunting retreats in the
12:26western hills, though he stressed that these gatherings were becoming increasingly difficult,
12:30due to the fact that there were now imperial Japanese troops in the area. With this new information,
12:36Pinfold was re-interviewed, and admitted to working as bodyguards at the retreats,
12:40and helping recruit female dancers. Yet he adamantly denied knowing Pamela,
12:45and offered no explanation for the blood on his knife and clothes. Forensic tests later revealed
12:51that the blood was animal rather than human, so with no direct physical evidence connecting him to
12:56the crime, Pinfold was released. His time in custody, however, had led officers to a Harvard-trained American
13:02dentist named Wentworth Prentiss, who was the main organiser of the nudist retreats. Mr. Prentiss lived near
13:10the ice rink where Pamela was last seen, and his wife and children had returned to the USA in 1932,
13:16apparently due to unexplained safety concerns. Chief Inspector Dennis and Commissioner Howard
13:21interviewed Mr. Prentiss at his apartment. Despite the cold weather, his windows were strangely open,
13:28and when he was questioned about this, he blamed it on the fresh paint in the hallway. When asked where
13:33he had been on the night Pamela was murdered, he said that he was at the cinema. He also said
13:38that
13:38Pamela had never been his patient. The next day, an Irish reporter named George Gorman, who supported
13:44the Japanese, publicly defended Mr. Prentiss, claiming that the people who had killed Pamela Werner
13:50must have been Chinese. However, when Inspector Dennis looked into the background of Mr. Gorman,
13:56he soon discovered that he also attended the retreats, and that Pamela had visited Mr. Gorman's
14:01wife at their house for tea on the 6th of January. Chief Inspector Dennis also looked into
14:06allegations at the grammar school, where Pamela had previously reported receiving unwanted advances
14:11from the headmaster, Sidney Yeats, fearing the scandal could damage the British reputation in the
14:17region. Embassy officials instructed him to keep the matter quiet. Frustrated by the lack of official
14:23progress, Edward Werner took matters into his own hands by holding an impromptu press conference on the
14:29steps of the British legation. Drawing on his decades of experience in the British council,
14:34he publicly dismissed rumors of Chinese involvement, saying that local folk traditions contained no
14:41rituals involving removing the organs of a murder victim, and pointed directly towards Western
14:46perpetrators. To incentivize witnesses, he offered a staggering 5,000 Chinese gold dollars
14:52from his personal savings as a reward. The British authorities were annoyed by his public outburst, and in the
14:59press referred to him as a grieving father, who was overcome with emotion, and pursuing wild conspiracy
15:05theories. They asked investigators to no longer contact him, and maintain the stance that local
15:10Chinese men were responsible. On the 29th of January, the inquest into the death of Pamela Werner was
15:17formally reconvened behind closed doors, and produced a final verdict of unlawful killing by unknown assailants.
15:24Following the inquest, and despite the authorities' efforts to keep the autopsy findings private,
15:30details were linked to the local press. The next day, newspapers published the shocking details of
15:36Pamela's injuries, which sent a wave of fear through the foreign community. With crucial evidence now in
15:42the public domain, there were concerns that securing a conviction would be almost impossible. With no new leads,
15:48Chief Inspector Dennis returned to Tianjin, and Colonel Han moved on to other cases. By late June, the case
15:55was officially closed, and a few weeks later, the Japanese took full military occupation of Beijing.
16:01While many foreign residents left the city, or took refuge in the legation quarter, Mr. Werner remained
16:08in his home, spending his life savings to hire unemployed former police officers, to continue searching for
16:14the people who had murdered his daughter. Operating in an occupied city, his private investigation
16:21uncovered several critical clues that official investigators had missed or ignored. He discovered
16:27that one of the brothels that had been searched following the Pinfold arrest had been closed down,
16:32and the owners had left the city the morning after Pamela's murder. Pinfold too had left Beijing after
16:37being released from police custody, and had travelled to Tianjin, where he had sought legal advice,
16:42and made inquiries as to whether the dentist, Wentworth Prentiss, had been arrested.
16:48As well as this, Mr. Werner located a physical receipt that showed that Mr. Prentiss had performed
16:54dental work on Pamela, which directly contradicted his claim to the police that he had never treated her.
16:59A local rickshaw puller had also told Mr. Werner's investigators that he had picked up two Western
17:05men and a young European woman, wrapped in a sheet that was covered in blood, outside the brothel that
17:11had closed on the night of the crime. Edward Werner himself also announced that when reading his
17:17daughter's diary, he discovered that the journalist George Gorman had made unwanted advances towards
17:22Pamela in 1936. Mr. Werner's persistent claims alienated British officials, and for a while he was
17:29banned from entering the legation quarter. Undeterred, however, he sought assistance elsewhere. The
17:35American consulate provided criminal records on the brothel operators, while Japanese authorities
17:40briefly shared information, which they thought may embarrass British diplomats. However, with the
17:46increasing geopolitical tensions, the cooperation ended. With all these pieces of information, Edward
17:52Werner started to see the possible connections between the people and places that had featured in
17:57the investigation. He now believed that the dentist, Wentworth Prentiss, the former US Marine, Joseph
18:04Knauf, and the Irish journalist George Gorman, along with other associates, lured Pamela to the brothel in
18:11the Badlands. When she then resisted their sexual advances, a violent struggle erupted, resulting in
18:17her being hit in the head. He concluded that the men wrapped her body, transported her to the unpatrolled
18:22Fox Tower, and used their hunting knives to mutilate her, before leaving the area and coordinating their
18:29alibis. During the war, Edward was forced to live in the legation quarter, but despite this, he continued
18:35to send reports about the case to the foreign office. In addition to Edward's theory, several
18:41other theories were considered. Some believed the killer may have been someone Pamela had known at
18:45school, while others suggested the murder may have been carried out by the Japanese, in retaliation for
18:51the Sasaski incident. This was an incident that happened in May 1936, when a Japanese army officer named
18:57Sasaski was found dead in the street in Beijing, and the Japanese authorities accused members of the
19:03British Embassy Guard of killing him. A British investigation found no evidence that British
19:07soldiers had been responsible, and the Japanese allegations were never proven. The theory, however,
19:13was revived in 1938 by Sir Edmund Blackhouse, a British scholar and linguist, who had lived in the
19:19city for many years, and claimed that his Japanese contacts had told him that two Japanese men had
19:25murdered Pamela as an act of revenge for the Sasaski affair. Despite these and several other theories,
19:31no evidence has ever conclusively established who killed Pamela Werner, and officially her murder
19:36remains unresolved. When the war ended, Edward made a final but unsuccessful attempt to persuade the
19:42Foreign Office to reopen the case. He remained in Beijing through the communist takeover in 1949,
19:481969, but eventually returned to England in 1951, and he died there in 1954. Pamela's murder then faded
19:55into historical obscurity. When she died in 1937, she was buried in the British Cemetery. However,
20:02this was paved over in the 1960s, and her body now lies beneath Beijing's Second Ring Road.
20:09Hello everyone, and thank you so much for listening. As usual, please leave any comments or feedback you may
20:16have, and I hope to see you all again in the next briefcase.
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