Tag: Dong Yuzhen

Crate Ripper Case

By C.S. Hagen

TIANJIN, CHINA – Twisted love triangle stories from time immemorial outnumber the flakes of a winter’s snow, but there is one instance, especially appalling, that occurred in Tianjin.  This true story, called the “Crate Ripper Case,” takes place in the old English Concession area in October 1947, and is listed in historical records as one of the “Eight Strange Cases of the Republic.”

Gather closely. Add a log to the hearth.  Light and good jasmine tea will scare the demons away.  Listen in; you don’t want to miss a single word.

Fifteen months before Mao Zedong’s communist troops stormed into Tianjin via the Qingnian Road, the Li family lived in four identical houses at the golden corner of Hong Kong and Glasgow roads, known today as Munan and Guilin roads.  Father Li, an industrious entrepreneur, the brainchild behind the Tianjin Zhongtian Electric Factory, passed his legacy to his children, but failed to endow his fortitude to his youngest son, Li Baowu.

Baowu was a loafing playboy, most likely inbred traits inherited from Tianjin’s Dark Drifters.  He kept er nais, or concubines, in Tudor houses from the northern-most Austrian Concession all the way to the south, where the Germans and Belgians lived.   His wife of twenty years, Dong Yuzhen, daughter of the Kuomintang mayor of Tianjin at the time, Dong Zhengguo, he kept at the corner house on Munan Road with his four surviving children.

Lucky, lackadaisical Baowu, being an educated chap, a Tianjin College of Business graduate (now the Foreign Language Institute on Racecourse Road), was naturally a curious fellow, for his sexual escapades and frivolous parties were the talk of the town.

Baowu could not be tamed.  Under his stretched belt he had three wives, a host of concubines and saltwater girls who lived in boats along the Hai River.

Saltwater girls came from sampans like these, throughout history they were denied the chance to live on land and became brothels on the water

Saltwater girls came from sampans like these, throughout history they were denied the chance to live on land and their homes became brothels on the water – photo by C.S. Hagen

Not until 1945, days after the Japanese left in defeat from Tianjin, did Baowu find his perfect match and fourth wife.  A half German, half Chinese beauty named Shi Meili,  English name Marion Sze, winner of the Miss Beidaihe Beauty Pageant.  Before she met Baowu she was a secretary with round, wet eyes, a pointed chin, and eyebrows arched like silkworms, the Tianjin Republic Daily reported in 1947.

Love fell on Baowu.  Meili agreed to become his fourth wife and he bought her a house at Number 53 Dali Road, or perhaps it was the other way around: Baowu bought the house and Meili agreed to marry.  Either way, the love struck couple married in secret and Baowu spent most his nights with her in carnal comfort on Dali Road, leaving his quieter, rounder first wife alone with his children at 74 Munan Road.

Life was grand for Baowu, a notorious do nothing and mouse-hearted villain of this true story.  He spent thirteen thousand US dollars on a coat, ordered catering service from the renowned Kiesslings for lunch.  He bought Meili a Buick, hired her a chauffer, and insisted his first wife, mother of four surviving children, take rickshaws to the market.  When he was feeling especially energetic he beat his first wife, sometimes bashing her head against a coffee table or kicking in her pregnant stomach, killing his fifth and sixth unborn children.

On October 25, 1947, Yuzhen, the first wife, traveled by rickshaw to Dali Road, insisting that her husband accompany her to buy a new coat.  When he refused, they argued.

(Bad picture, only one taken from internet) Number 53 Dali Road, where the heinous murder was committed

(Bad picture, only one taken from internet) Number 53 Dali Road, where the heinous murder was committed – online sources

“You give me money so I can buy myself another day,” neighbors reportedly heard Yuzhen say.

Not wanting to disturb the neighbors more than necessary, Yuzhen accepted an invitation from the fourth wife to come upstairs and enjoy lunch and some wine.  The argument continued.  A bottle was thrown.  Baowu naturally protected himself with a hammer, striking Yuzhen across the head.  When Yuzhen fell, Meili pounced.  She held the first wife by the legs until Baowu exhausted himself by smashing her head in with the hammer.

For four hours after the heinous murder, Baowu and Meili sat and watched Yuzhen’s body, perhaps hoping she would wake, or somehow magically disappear.  When the first wife neither awoke nor vanished, they rolled her up in the bloody carpet and placed her in the bathtub.

According to the Tianjin Republic Daily later that afternoon Meili faked a loud, fond farewell out her bedroom window.  “Zou hao, zou hao, Wu Nainai,” farewell, farewell, fifth grandmother.  She called out Yuzhen’s pet name.  The loyal couple then proceeded to clean the house, taking care not to leave a trace of their bloody deeds.  Baowu made one trip outside to buy a whicker crate, which cost him ninety thousand francs.

Long after the city slept, with only the harvest moon as a silent witness, Baowu and Meili took a butcher’s knife to the first wife’s corpse.

They hacked.  Thwack, thwack!  They sawed.   Gzzz, gzzz!  Chopped her into three pieces and then burned her face so she could not be recognized.   Carpet and Yuzhen fit perfectly – a bug in a rug – into the crate.  When they finished they rested from their labors, and saw that it was good.

Now, Meili was not just a porcelain vase.  She had a head of fine brown hair and a brain to go with her pale beauty.  She contacted a Latvian friend, Naylor and Maleina, who were involved in the shipping business.  Thinking if there was no corpse there would be no crime, she asked to store the whicker crate in the Latvian’s warehouse, and equip it with an address to be shipped to Germany.

“Dearest Maleina,” Meili wrote in a note on October 26.  “I need to place with you this carpet and possessions because my husband’s number one wife is bothering me.  I am afraid and cannot live here on Dali Road any longer.  I also don’t want my husband to know about this and I will explain at another time.”

A second note quickly followed, hand carried by a servant girl.

“Beloved Maleina, sorry for the disturbance.  I will prepare the crate immediately and make sure it is wrapped securely.  I’ve already told my husband, who will come by soon to take measurements.”

When they arrived with the crate three days later on the afternoon of October 28th to Suite 16 Tai’an Road, inside the Jingming Apartment Building, the four of them carried the crate to the warehouse.  Naylor mentioned the crate was unusually heavy and had a strange, fishy smell coming from inside.

“It’s because my lazy cat peed on the rug.”  Meili tossed her auburn hair and threw a laugh into the sky, replying casually and with the lightning-fast thinking processes of a fox demon.

Read more about fox demons here:

Later that day Baowu purchased a wooden box large enough to insert the crate into and had it nailed up tight as a fish’s arse.

“Oh, by the way,” Baowu said to Naylor and Maleina.  “My first wife is missing.  Have you seen her?”

If only our villainous hero had said nothing.  If only he had one less drink the night before, one less romp in the bed to clear his head.  But he didn’t keep his mouth shut, and he couldn’t stop at one drink too many.  Villains rarely can.

The Latvian couple of course had not seen Baowu’s first wife, and according to police reports found Baowu’s remark course and extremely strange.  Not only did the Latvian couple begin to wonder why Baowu cared more for a crate than his missing wife, but their cat, a snow-white creature with a black diamond on its forehead, found the crate intriguing as well.

Usually, Maleina spent her afternoons playing with her cat, Snowball, which her husband had bought for her because he spent much of his time away from home. Snowball, however, had more important business and spent the next two days circling Yuzhen’s secret coffin.

Snowball’s wails from the warehouse drew Maleina’s attention.

Meeoow!  Yaaawww!  Meeeeooow! 

Upon close inspection a foul and sticky substance was oozing from a crack.  Maleina called the police.

After Yuzhen’s younger sister identified her sister’s legs, the investigation that followed first targeted rickshaw drivers and the local bandits.  Baowu told Tianjin Chief Superintendent Xiao that bandits had probably overheard the argument he had with his first wife and that she was robbed for money, all the while sliding a thick wad of bills into the officer’s lap.  Baowu spent hundreds of thousands bribing police, so much that it was learned later that nearly every Tianjin police officer benefited from his unreserved charity at some time during his incarceration.

On October 31st, police could no longer deny the facts and public outrage on behalf of Yuzhen and her family was threatening a riot in the streets.  Baowu and Meili were arrested while they slept.  The Crate Ripper Case rocked Tianjin with its barbarity, and became known as the “Republic’s final case.”  Baowu was sentenced to death, but spent the next two years in luxury at the Xiaoxiguan Prison in Xiqing District.  Meili was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

The couple lacked for nothing while in prison and before the communist forces overwhelmed the Republic.   Baowu wore his own clothes, slept on a soft Western bed.  He even hired his personal chef to cook his meals.

Not until May 4, 1951, was Baowu tried and sentenced a second time by a new communist court.  He was executed by firing squad twenty days later.

Meili was released in 1954 and was rumored to have opened a hotel in Hong Kong.  Local legend says she returned once to her Dali Road home in the 1960s, but no one has seen her since.

As every egg cracks when struck, so can it be said true love will never crack when struck.  Love is not selfish.  Love does not kill, or hack up a spouse to please a lover.

Love does not covet and is never jealous, for if it does it turns into more insipid things: lust and hate, to name a few.  Love is earned and given freely, and has its best results when one learns first to love his or herself.  Only then does one own the right in a romantic relationship to say those three little words “I love you” and only then can love manifest all its wondrous, sticky, tender strings.

Perhaps guided by a fox demon’s lust we all can love, but at most for a day, more likely only a minute.  For a beautiful fox demon like Shi Meili will eat your heart faster than it takes to write this sentence.

 

The Fox Poem

Author Anonymous, translated by C.S. Hagen

The fox of an old grave when in its day, into a woman of lovely features it decays.  Female coiffure, exquisite suffer, where no man dwells she abides and slowly, between rustic hamlets she strides. 

Eight or nine of ten who behold her are beguiled.  Taken in by her beauty they’re defiled.  Eater of souls, scavenger of hearts, within her arms sanity departs.

When at sunset, no human sounds are heard, she sings, she dances, wails the absurd.  Without raising her eyebrows velvety as a kingfisher, but bowing her face, she bursts into laughter, a thousand, a myriad of joys for her prey to taste. 

The vulpine enchantress brings absolute ruin.  Understand her ways and potions brewin’!  For a man’s mind she makes boil without rest.  Beware of her wiles, or forever lie trapped in her breast!

Eight or nine of ten who behold her are beguiled.  Taken in by her beauty they’re defiled.  Eater of souls, scavenger of hearts, within her arms sanity departs.

A Chinese charm for exorcising fox demons

A Chinese charm for exorcising fox demons

Crate Ripper Case Revisited

By C.S. Hagen

TIANJIN, CHINA – Sixty-seven years after the Crate Ripper Case was solved, old Tientsin hands remember the mysterious murder like it was yesterday.

Angela Cox Elliott, born in a civilian prison at the Japanese Weihsien Internment Camp, was only a child when Li Baowu and his lover, Shi Meili, otherwise known as Marion Sze, killed, beheaded and dismembered Baowu’s first wife, Dong Yuzhen, sensationally startling the world in the process, and adding its own death nail into the traditions of polygamous marriage.  She remembers it was the talk of the city until long after the communist takeover.

Time and gossip have pretzel-ed fact and fiction, but the truth – provided by eyewitnesses who still remember – proves the murder was premeditated, and is more gruesome than anything else reported on the incident since October 25, 1947, the day Dong Yuzhen died.

(Left) A movie produced in Hong Kong late 1947  called “Empty Crate Corpse” (空屋箱尸) featured the heinous crime.  (Center) Dong Zhengguo, (董政國) a Tianjin warlord, died May 20, 1947 of illness, only four months before his daughter’s grisly murder on October, 25 1947.  (Right) Dong Yuzhen (董玉贞), 35, mother of four, known in the Western press as Chaste Jade, was the victim.

Li Baowu, also known as Walter Li, was the vice general manager for the Tientsin Chung Tien Electric Factory.  He enjoyed model cars and women, so much so he kept three wives and a host of prostitutes across the city.  Marion was pale-skinned, of Sino-German blood, and a rare beauty – eyebrows arched like a kingfisher’s – who loved her furs and diamond rings.  The couple was not married, but Walter Li lived with Marion at number fifty-three Dali Road, often neglecting his first wife and children.

A telephone made by the Tientsin Chung Tien Electric Company

A telephone made by the Tientsin Chung Tien Electric Company

Dong Yuzhen, known in Western media as Chaste Jade, frequently visited her husband at the Dali Road house where arguments inevitably ensued.  If Marion received a fox fur coat, Chaste Jade naturally wanted a Siberian mink coat.  They argued loud enough to disturb the neighbors.

The Crate Ripper Case was not only reported in Tianjin, known as Tientsin in pre-liberation days, but headlined in international newspapers ranging from Massachusetts to Singapore.

The Lowell Sun splayed the story on November 14, 1937 with the headline Chaste Jade’s Murder Rocks Tientsin.

“A beautiful Eurasian girl, a socially prominent Chinese businessman, and his first wife, Chaste Jade, are the principals in one of the bloodiest triangle murders yet splashed on the front pages of the Tientsin press,” the article written by Al Wedekind began.  Dong Yuzhen is named Chaste Jade, her murderous husband’s English name is Walter Li, who was listed as thirty-eight years old, and Shi Meili was named Marion Sze, who was twenty-seven at the time.

“Li had been separated from his first wife several years,” the article continues.  “On the morning of October twenty-fifth, Chaste Jade called at his home on one of her periodic guests [visits] for money.

“She did not leave the house alive.”

Story as published by the Lowell Star in 1947

Story as published by the Lowell Star in 1947

The Indiana newspaper Tipton Tribune also published the story on the same day.  The article states Chaste Jade had been mutilated and burned and that the family with whom Marion left the crate containing Chaste Jade’s dismembered body had notified police after noticing a strange smell.

Marion left the crate at her friend’s house as she was planning on leaving, and said it was heavy because it was filled with gold bars.  She waved away concerns by blaming a strange odor emanating from the crate on cat urine.

According to foreign Tianjiners at the time, a dog found the crate several days later, and created a ruckus that could not be ignored.  Shortly before Marion’s arrest and while carving ham for dinner at a friend’s house, Marion flippantly mentioned it was much like slicing human flesh.  No one paid her any attention as their minds were on the supposed gold bars locked away in the smelly crate.

The stories scared Elliott, who was only five years old at the time.  She reflected to when she was a child sitting in Victoria Park across the street from the Astor Hotel, watching Marion’s elderly parents.

“Why is that dog sniffing around the crate?”  Elliott recalls her mother saying about the dog that wouldn’t leave the crate alone.  “You would think there was a dead body in it.”

No one would have guessed that there truly was a dead body in the crate. It wasn’t until the fishy smell became too much to bear and a sticky substance bubbled from a crack that police were notified.  After all, they were friends.

During the past decade Chinese media ranging from CCTV to the Tianjin Film Studio to the China Daily have electrified the Crate Ripper Case saying it was the “last case of the Nationalists, the first case of the communists.”  Reports differ on where Chaste Jade’s body was stored and whether the animal sniffing the crates was a cat named Snowball or a curious dog. Another differing report is that according to CCTV Walter and Marion took the body back to Chaste Jade’s house at seventy-four Hong Kong Road (now Munan Road) to dismember in her own bathtub before hauling her in a whicker crate to a friend’s apartment.

As a third generation expatriate in China, Elliott remembers watching a play about the murder before being banished with her family after nearly a century of calling China their home.  Her great grandfather Paul Splingaerd, known around the world at the time as the Belgian Mandarin, arrived in China in 1865.  Paul Splingaerd was appointed a mandarin of the imperial Qing Dynasty, working not only as a magistrate, but also as an industrialist for China before his death in Xi’an in 1906.

“There was a reenactment of the play that I went to see with Mum,” Elliott said.  “I can still picture it – the scene with Mrs. Li – he hits her, she konks out – she’s loaded into the bathroom and then him coming out and they’re discussing whether they would cut the body up.  I can’t remember from then on.  It was just a one-room act.”

In Singapore, the case was called the “Tientsin’s Torso Murder Case,” according to November 4, 1947 article in the Singapore Free Press.  Tianjin locals became enraged.  The president of the Tientsin Middle School, Lu Yi Jen, appealed in a heavily reported speech to all Chinese women demanding an end to polygamous marriages.

“Marion was a very pretty girl, a big show off,” Elliott said.  “She bragged about all the items Mister Li bestowed on her.  The story goes that his wife accepted the relationship.  In those days it wasn’t uncommon for a man to have another girl or sometimes several, except the wife stipulated that whatever he gave Marion, she wanted the same thing.

“I can’t really remember what it was the wife missed out on.  A fur coat, or a ring precipitated the final scene when the wife paid a visit to Mister Li ensuring her demise.”

Most media report Walter and Marion decapitated Chaste Jade and burned her face, wrapping her body parts in a rug.  But this is not what happened.  Not at all.

The night before the murder took place, Walter and Marion played nice with Chaste Jade, expressing a desire to make up for past mistakes.  Chaste Jade purchased a typewriter for Marion, as Marion agreed to move to Beijing.  Instead of moving, however, she invited Chaste Jade for dinner, catered by Kiesslings, inside her Dali Road house.  Wine and liquor was poured.  Conversations turned sour.  Chaste Jade threw a cup and Walter beat her head in with a hammer, breaking her left arm in the process.

According to the Tianjin Republic Daily later that afternoon Marion faked a loud, fond farewell out her bedroom window.  “Zou hao, zou hao, Wu Nainai,” farewell, farewell, fifth grandmother.  She called out Chaste Jade’s pet name.  The loyal couple then proceeded to clean the house, taking care not to leave a trace of their bloody deeds.  Walter made one trip outside to buy a whicker crate, which cost him ninety thousand francs.

After four hours waiting the necessary tools were procured.  Chaste Jade’s limp body was put into the bathtub and dismembered.  Blood pooled down the drain.  Four days later when police discovered the contents inside the whicker crate, her body parts wrapped in towels, they also noticed Chaste Jade’s head was missing.  Her severed head was found inside Marion’s oven.  Walter filed a missing person’s report on October twenty-sixth, but the couple was arrested on Halloween, October thirty-first.  Marion admitted to holding Chaste Jade’s feet, urging Walter to strike harder during the altercation.  She later recanted.

 

The bathtub in which Dong Yuzhen (Chaste Jade) was killed, according to CCTV.

The bathtub in which Dong Yuzhen (Chaste Jade) was dismembered, according to CCTV.

 

One eyewitness account reports seeing Marion the day she was arrested.  She waved helplessly as a police car pulled up next to her.  The next day Marion’s parents came asking for help, but there was no help to be had.  Marion needed a lawyer.

“Marion’s mother was a portly, old German lady, but so sweet,” Elliott said.  “Mister Shi was very thin.  It was embarrassing for me to speak with them and I felt very sorry for the old couple.  No doubt Marion must have been a spoilt child.”

Elliott was barely five years old when the Crate Ripper Case stole headlines across the world.  Having just been rescued by US Paratroopers from the Japanese Weihsien Concentration Camp only two years before, Tianjin was not how she left it and tensions were brewing.  The Japanese were gone, but the Nationalists were corrupt; the communists were coming, and Chaste Jade’s murder sparked fury not only against the culprits, but against foreigners as well.

One rumor was that Walter had hired a foreign surgeon to carve up his wife.  Another story is that the couple had purchased tickets for Hong Kong to escape, but cold weather and ice floes on the Hai River delayed their route.  Most international transportation started on passenger and trading ships navigating the Hai River in pre-liberation days, and then traveled south to Shanghai or Hong Kong. Another story, and possibly the strangest, was written in a short story by Tientsin-native Alex Auswaks, a Jerusalem-based crime fiction writer.  He reports in 1994 that Marion was a breath taker, had olive skin, high cheekbones, long, straight, jet-black hair from her father and a curvaceous figure from her mother, a German woman named Josefa Hoffman.  She was fluent in German, Chinese and English, and had a large crowd of suitors.

At school, Marion was a tomboy, but her mother said she was simply high spirited.  When Marion came home once from an opium party, her mother said she had a fever.  No matter her curiosities, Mrs. Hoffman, better known as Frau Shi, said her daughter was loyal.  Loyal to the bitter end when she helped Walter cover up a murder he committed by himself – perhaps – going as far as to contact a German friend, Adolf Fleischmann, a lover or would-be suitor who would have done anything to help.

She was a model prisoner, adapting readily to the communist’s reeducation programs.  Her loyalty is questioned, however, when she was released early from Xiqing District’s Xiaoxiguan Prison to shack up with the warden.  Auswaks’ rendition of the story leaves more questions than answers.

Crate Ripper houses

(Left)  The Dali Road House (25 Dali Road, 大力道25号) where Marion Shi (施美丽) and Walter Li (李宝旿) resided and where Dong Yuzhen (Chaste Jade) was killed.  (Middle) The Jing Ming Apartments(景明大楼)on Tai’an Road (泰安道) where the whicker crate with Chaste Jade’s body was kept and later found. (Right) The Hong Kong Road (74 Munan Road 睦南道74号) Li family house where Chaste Jade lived with her family. 

For days Walter and Marion avoided the truth and police inspectors.  The investigation that followed first targeted rickshaw drivers and the local bandits.  Walter told Kuomintang Tianjin Chief Superintendent Xiao that bandits had probably overheard the argument he had with his first wife and that she was robbed for money, all the while sliding a thick wad of bills into the officer’s lap.  Walter spent hundreds of thousands bribing police, so much that it was learned later that nearly every Tianjin police officer benefited from his unreserved charity at some time during his incarceration.  He eventually cracked under twelve hours of Kuomintang police interrogation, however, and was later sentenced to death, but spent the next two years in luxury at the Xiaoxiguan Prison.  Marion was sentenced to life in prison without parole. The couple lacked for nothing while in prison and before the communist forces overwhelmed the Republic.   Walter wore his own clothes, slept on a soft Western bed.  He even hired his personal chef to cook his meals.

Not until May 4, 1951 was Walter tried and sentenced a second time by a new communist court.  He was executed by firing squad twenty days later.

Eliott and her family stayed in Tianjin until 1956, nearly seven years after the communist takeover.  The years between 1949 and her departure were bleak.  The sparkling clubs lost their luster and once colorful parades down Victoria Street (now Liberation Street) disappeared.  Meat, oil and rice were rationed.  Coffee was brewed with chicory.  Communist officials squeezed remaining families and factories until payrolls could not be met.

Angela Cox Elliott, great granddaughter of the Belgian Mandarin, Paul Splingaerd

Angela Cox Elliott

Elliott’s father worked for the Credit Foncier d/extreme Orient at the corner of Rue de France and Victoria Road, and held out against communist demands as long as he could.  Eventually, his company was forced to shut down, its property given up, and her family boarded the Heinrich Jessen ship to Hong Kong.

Elliott waited more than thirty years to return to Tianjin, which she now considers her home.  As a child, however, she couldn’t wait to leave and go abroad where English was spoken and the streets were clean and filled with lights.  In 1999 Elliott visited the Dali Road house and found the old bathtub.  The house was in decent condition, and people still spoke of the gruesome murder.  Marion was released in 1954 and was said to be working at the Ambassador Hotel in Hong Kong.  Local legend says she returned once to her Dali Road home after the Cultural Revolution and then begged the Li family for forgiveness.

None was given.

 

The Dainish ship Heinrich Jessen, photographed 1974 in the South China Sea - courtesy of Global-Mariner

The Danish ship M/S Heinrich Jessen, photographed 1974 in the South China Sea – courtesy of Global-Mariner

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