The Mug Book
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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On June 3rd, 1973, a gang leader named Yip Yee Tak was gunned down at a very busy intersection in Chinatown.
Julie Ha is a journalist and a filmmaker.
This murder was actually witnessed by probably dozens and dozens of people.
When police arrived, they found a .38 caliber revolver. But they couldn't find any witnesses. Julie Ha says the locals in San Francisco's Chinatown were too afraid of gang retaliation to speak with the police. There were more than a dozen unsolved murders in Chinatown attributed to gang warfare.
It started to become actually quite a serious problem for the city of San Francisco because tourism in Chinatown was really like a main lifeblood of San Francisco's revenue. The police interviewed the only people willing to talk. The police were only able to get these white tourists who saw the killer for mere seconds from quite a distance away to come down to the station and look through mug books.
Mug books full of photographs of Asian men. The white tourists were asked to point out anyone who looked like the shooter. A couple of people stopped on the same photo of a young Korean man. His name was Chol Soo Lee.
Chol Soo Lee was involved in a gun accident at his place the day before the murder.
According to the police, Chol Soo Lee had accidentally fired a gun in his apartment, and they questioned him about it. When police looked at the type of gun, it was a .38 caliber revolver. They did a ballistics test on the bullet from his apartment.
When their ballistics expert did a test, they said it was a match, that the bullet that Chol Soo Lee fired from his gun came from the murder weapon.
Chol Soo Lee was charged with first-degree murder. An all-white jury found him guilty, and he was sentenced to life in prison. When the verdict was read, a reporter from the Sacramento Union wrote that Chol Soo Lee, quote, spat at the prosecutor and lunged toward him as jurors were filing out of the courtroom.
Later, after he was restrained and put in a holding cell, that same newspaper reporter described Chol Soo Lee as having tears welling in his eyes.
Chol Soo Lee insisted he was innocent, but no one believed him for years. until a journalist heard about his story and wrote an article that would change both of their lives. This story comes from our friends at Side Door, a history podcast from the Smithsonian. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Here's Side Door's host, Lizzie Peabody.
It was a lazy summer afternoon in 1973 when Ronko Yamada was killing time at her friend's apartment. She was lying on the floor, flipping through the San Francisco Chronicle, when she saw an article that snapped her out of her summer haze.
There was an article about all the killings in Chinatown, all the people arrested. And this person named Chosu Lee had been arrested for murder.
Ronko knew Chol Soo Lee as the Korean kid hanging around her sister's jewelry shop in San Francisco's Japantown. He was sweet, and they were friends. But she knew him as Charles Lee.
I thought, this sounds like a Korean name. Is this the Charles that I know?
So she made a few calls and confirmed that, yes, Charles Lee was in fact Chol Soo Lee, and he was being charged with murder.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–5:05
2
What happened in Chinatown on June 3rd, 1973?
5:05–9:32
3
Why were tourists the only witnesses to the murder?
9:32–11:32
4
Who is Chol Soo Lee and what was he accused of?
11:32–15:30
5
What flaws existed in the prosecution's case against Chol Soo Lee?
15:30–33:31
6
How did K.W. Lee become involved in Chol Soo Lee's story?
33:31–48:59