This episode was originally released in Septemebr 2021, and is one of seventeen episodes from the archives we’ll be bringing you every Thursday, now through top of next year... for good reason! ;) We highly recommend you listen to each episode and follow us on Instagram @crimejunkiepodcast so you're the first to know what's coming next! One woman’s promising career in Washington, D.C. is cut short when she mysteriously vanishes one night on her way home from work. Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit: crimejunkiepodcast.com/mysterious-death-joyce-chiang/ Did you know you can listen to this episode ad-free? Join the Fan Club! Visit crimejunkie.app/library/ to view the current membership options and policies. Don’t miss out on all things Crime Junkie!Instagram: @crimejunkiepodcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @CrimeJunkiePod | @audiochuckTikTok: @crimejunkiepodcastFacebook: /CrimeJunkiePodcast | /audiochuckllc Crime Junkie is hosted by Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat.Instagram: @ashleyflowers | @britprawatTwitter: @Ash_Flowers | @britprawatTikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkieFacebook: /AshleyFlowers.AF Text Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more!
Chapter 1: Who is Joyce Chang and what happened to her?
Hey, Crime Junkies, it's Britt. And have you heard? The wait is over and tickets are now officially on sale for our 2025 Crime Junkie Tour. So make sure you head to our show notes and grab tickets to a show near you. Maybe one of the shows is Fairfax, Virginia? That's our next stop today.
Now, technically, a majority of the story took place in Washington, D.C., but as you may remember, investigators found their biggest lead along the river in Fairfax. So let's go back specifically to 2021 when we first told you this story.
Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And the story I have for you today takes us right to the heart of the nation's capital. People come to Washington, D.C. from all over the country to look for opportunity to advance their careers and to get a taste of shaping the future. One woman came to D.C. to take her place in the grand scheme of American politics.
And while she found success, she also learned that the city has a dark side. and the darkness may have cost her her life. This is the story of Joyce Chang. On the night of January 9th, 1999, a man named Roger Chang is at home in Washington, D.C. in the apartment he shares with his older sister, Joyce. They're both politically active and work in government.
Roger's done work for like Beau Clinton's campaign and Joyce interned with a congressman from their home state of California before retiring. She took her current job with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. So D.C. is really like the perfect place for them to call home. Since it's Saturday night, Joyce is out with one of her friends from work.
And she told Roger they're going to have dinner. They're going to go see a movie. And as the night wears on and Joyce doesn't come home, Roger doesn't think too much of it. He knows that she's been battling a cold since New Year's. So in his mind, it's totally possible that she decided to just like crash over at her friend's house instead of
trekking all the way home in that cold, crappy weather that night. And honestly, besides, she's 28 years old. She doesn't need her baby brother's permission to switch up her plans if that's what she decided to do. Joyce isn't back by the next morning. But it's not until Monday that Roger really starts to worry because that's when he learns that Joyce was a no-call, no-show to work that day.
According to an article in the Capitol newspaper, Joyce is a staff attorney at the INS. And no one knows better than Roger how hard she's worked to get where she is. He knows there is no way she jeopardized her career by just ghosting on her workplace like this. She's not answering her calls. She's not answering her emails.
And there's nothing around their apartment to suggest that she's even been there at all since Saturday. Nothing's been moved. None of the food in the fridge has been eaten. Like, everything is as Roger left it. But Roger doesn't report his sister missing. Why not?
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Chapter 2: What were the circumstances of Joyce's disappearance?
According to another NBC News 4 broadcast, she clarifies that she found it near the park, on the banks of the Anacostia River, not the park itself. Armed with this new information, law enforcement brings out dive teams, radar boats and cadaver dogs to focus on this particular area of the river. On January 21st, 1999, 12 days after Joyce was last seen, is when they finally hit on something.
But it's not in the water. According to the Capital newspaper piece I mentioned earlier, Joyce's green jacket is found in a traffic circle near a service entrance to the Anacostia Naval Station, near where her ID was actually found. They also find her Safeway card, her house keys, her Blockbuster card, and her gloves.
And that's not all they find, because it turns out there is something in the water after all. A body. But it's clear right away that the body belongs to a man. So obviously it's not Joyce. With that body on its way to the D.C. medical examiner and all of Joyce's things sent off for analysis, law enforcement resumes their search throughout the area.
They go back to the Anacostia Park area to scan the region with helicopters and volunteers braving the bitter cold in their efforts to find Joyce. Police call off the river search around noon the next day after their efforts don't turn up anything else.
The FBI is still hopeful that they'll be able to pull something like a fingerprint or some fibers off of Joyce's thing, something, anything to give their investigation a direction to go in. In addition, they're hoping some national TV coverage from America's Most Wanted will help the investigation. So they work with that TV team to get some coverage for the case.
Once they get their lab results back a couple of weeks later, it looks promising. According to another report from NBC News 4, the FBI manages to pull some clues that they believe could lead them to DNA samples. The FBI is playing coy and trying really hard not to show their hand to the media. But the reporters in this news piece basically tell the FBI, like, we already know what it is.
Like, don't bother dancing around it because their sources had told them that they got hairs off of Joyce's stuff. So law enforcement collects some samples of Joyce's hair for comparison against what they've pulled from Joyce's belongings. Analysis shows that the hairs found on her stuff belonged to two different people, one white person and one black person.
Now, since Joyce is Taiwanese-American, those hairs can't belong to her. Around the one-month mark of Joyce's disappearance, the FBI makes a statement where they tell everyone they don't believe that she left the area of her own free will, that she was taken by a stranger or even by someone she knew. So... Between that statement and, you know, finding these hairs on her things.
Then they know something went really wrong here. Right. And they know that they need to find Joyce and they need to find her now. But they don't have any leads on suspects, right? No, no. The FBI says they're not ruling out any potential suspects, including Joyce's roommate and little brother, Roger Chang.
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Chapter 3: What evidence was found after Joyce went missing?
And then, at the start of spring, a grisly discovery changes everything. At around 6.30 p.m. on the evening of March 31st, 1999, a woman named Leslie Brown is having a peaceful night at her home in Fairfax County, Virginia, when suddenly she hears this commotion coming from outside.
She can't quite make out the words, but the tone is more than enough to hammer home that something is very, very wrong. Leslie rushes outside and she finds a canoeist there on the Potomac River gesturing wildly and yelling that they found a body washed up on shore and they're begging for someone to call for help. Leslie runs back inside and dials 911 immediately.
According to a piece in the Los Angeles Times, when the police arrive at the scene, they find a woman's body laying face down on a rocky part of the shoreline, still wearing blue jeans and a black turtleneck. Now, the body's pretty badly decomposed, way beyond any hope for a visual identification. But it doesn't take long for police to start forming a theory about who their Jane Doe might be.
Because, you see, the clothes she's wearing match their description of Joyce Chang to a T. And officers also note that their unidentified woman matches Joyce's height and weight. So is this close to where Joyce's stuff was found? Not really. It's actually over eight miles downriver. It's south of where Anacostia River flows into the Potomac.
The body is taken back to the medical examiner's office there in Virginia for autopsy. And their tentative ID gets validated even more when they look inside the socks that are still on this victim and find something surprising. Right there, tucked away in one of the socks, is Joyce's missing debit card.
To do a formal DNA comparison and confirm what they're now, like, 99% sure of, law enforcement collects some blood from Roger Chang while also comparing Joyce's dental records with their Jane Doe. Now, all of this is pretty standard, nothing out of the ordinary, right? But once the results from the autopsy come back, things start to get weird.
According to an article in the Leaf Chronicle, her cause of death is inconclusive, with no marks on her skeleton to indicate a gunshot wound or a stabbing or anything like that.
So since she was found in the river, what about water in her lungs to tell them if she had drowned?
Apparently, they can't even tell that. It's inconclusive. I know there's this common view that autopsies always hold the answers about how someone died. And I mean, it's true that more often than not, they do. And more often than not, law enforcement learns something from the autopsy, even if it's not like a black and white, you know, this is how it was done and whatever.
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