jamastro-blog

[jamastro-blog]

The Golden Dragon Massacre

San Francisco Chinatown is a fun place to be - with its an annual Chinese new year parade, delicious dim sum, and a rich cultural history. It’s the oldest Chinatown in the US! In its many years of existence, SF Chinatown has inevitably had some dark moments in its history. 

According to Bob Calhoun of SF Weekly, two main gangs were involved with the massacre in 1970s Chinatown: The Wah Ching and The Joe Boys. There was another gang, the Hop Sing Tong, that involved themselves with the Wah Ching.

At 2:40am, the Joe Boys arrived at a restaurant called The Golden Dragon, a restaurant which Calhoun describes as a popular late-night destination for people to eat after a night of drinking. (According to Kevin J. Mullen, The Hop Sing Tong actually owned The Golden Dragon restaurant.) Calhoun says that when the Joe Boys got there, they found who they they were looking for:  Wah Ching chief Michael “Hot Dog” Louie and Frankie Lee of the Hop Sing Boys.

According to Mullen, the Wah Ching and Hop Sing Tong members saw the shooters coming and immediately hit the floor. But many other people were not so lucky:

The shooters sprayed the restaurant with fire from shotguns and semi-automatic weapons, killing five innocent bystanders and wounding 11 more in the fusillade.

According to Eve Batey of SFist, the Golden Dragon massacre led the SFPD to create the “Chinatown Squad” to get rid of gang activity in the area, which led to the disbanding of the Joe Boys.

Above: A picture of the Golden Dragon Restaurant, from Kevin Mullen’s historical essay on FoundSF, photograph by Chris Carlsson

[jamastro-blog]

Patty Hearst

Pictured above is Patty Hearst posing for her mugshot. Image Source: Psychology Today 

This case is a little different from the serial killers I have previously covered.

According to the FBI website, Patty Hearst was just your everyday student at UC Berkeley when she was captured by a group called the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) in 1971. The SLA’s goal was to start a guerilla war against the USA, which they referred to as “the capitalist state.” 

The FBI believes that Hearst was kidnapped to get the country’s attention. She came from a wealthy and influential family. Her grandfather, William Randolph Hearst, was a famous businessman in the newspaper industry. According to Kevin Fagan and Katie Dowd of the SFGate, Patty Hearst was, “kept locked away in a closet in an apartment near the University of San Francisco.”

But the SLA didn’t just kidnap Ms. Hearst. They made her part of their army.

Fagan and Dowd describe how she came out from hiding in April 1971 and assisted her captors in holding up the Hibernia Bank. The group made over $10,000 and shot two people.

According to Fagan and Dowd, Hearst was found and arrested for participating in the robbery in 1976. Neel Burton M.D. of Psychology Today describes the way Hearst was acting upon arrest:

When eventually she was arrested, she listed her occupation as ‘urban guerrilla’ and asked her attorney to “tell everybody that I’m smiling, that I feel free and strong and I send my greetings and love to all the sisters and brothers out there”. 

Fagan and Dowd explain how Hearst was initially found guilty, despite her legal team’s argument that her captors had brainwashed her and that she was a victim of Stockholm’s Syndrome, a disorder that causes hostages to feel attached to their captors. 

By a stroke of luck, President Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence and she was pardoned in 1979 and released! 

According to Leah Marilla Thomas from the Bustle magazine, Patty Hearst is now living a normal life. She’s married with children, has authored two books, and has a successful acting career. 

[jamastro-blog]

The Doodler

cw: contains descriptions of violence, specifically toward LGBTQ+ victims

According to Katie Dowd of SF Gate, The Doodler Killer was a murderer who was believed to kill 5-14 men in San Francisco from January 1974-September 1975. He would specifically target gay men, frequenting gay bars to find targets. He most likely lured them into sexual encounters before killing them. He would leave their bodies on benches and in parks around San Francisco. The Doodler got his nickname because he would often draw doodles of his victims before killing them (super creepy).

The Doodler is a cold-case murderer.

Dowd points out that many of his victims who survived close-calls with the murderer refused to testify because they were not open with their sexual orientation and didn’t want to be outed. The investigation could never advance because of this, and many of the victims whose lives were taken never got justice. Dowd cites Harvey Milk, a famous, openly gay, San Francisco politician’s opinion on the matter:

Harvey Milk defended their refusal to testify. "I understand their position," he told the Associated Press in 1977. "I respect the pressure society has put on them."

Fortunately, Ryan W. Miller of USA Today reported last year that the SFPD relaunched the search for the killer. They are offering a $100,000 reward for tips from the public. They have also released a sketch of what the suspect might have looked like (see image below), and an audio recording of a call to the police by an unknown caller after the first killing near Ocean Beach. There’s still hope to find The Doodler!

Image source: The San Francisco Chronicle, (originally provided by the San Francisco Police Department)

[jamastro-blog]

The Zodiac Killer

My first post is about one of the most famous serial killers of all time, and probably the first that comes to mind when it comes to San Francisco: The Zodiac Killer.

In July 1969, a letter arrived to the SF Examiner with a set of cryptic symbols (see the header of my blog.) He sent a similar letter to multiple newspapers in San Francisco. According to Eve Batey, once decoded, the chilling letter read:

I LIKE KILLING PEOPLE BECAUSE IT IS SO MUCH FUN IT IS MORE FUN THAN KILLING WILD GAME IN THE FORREST BECAUSE MAN IS THE MOST DANGEROUE ANAMAL.

The Zodiac Killer claimed to have taken 37 lives, but only 7 of these killings were connected to him - he was able to anonymously testify to details of the killings that only the killer would have known. 

According to Batey, his first known victims were a couple of high schoolers parked in a car on Lake Herman Road in Benicia, at a “lover’s lane” location. 

Kevin Fagan describes how in another killing near Lake Berryessa, the killer wrote with a pen on the victims’ car door, giving dates of his attacks and drawing his symbol, a circle with a cross in it.

The scariest part? The Zodiac Killer has not been identified. To this day, investigators are still trying to figure it out.