A Death in Peking: Who Really Killed Pamela Werner - Blog

Pamela in that black dress ...

12/31/2018

The striking studio photographs of Pamela, above and right, were reportedly taken only a few days before her murder. They show, surely, a fashion conscious young woman with a certain confidence in her own image.

The black dress in these shots is of the period - the 1930s. It was an age when young people still aped their elders; there was no "teenage" fashion.

Peking may have been a long way from Europe, but its foreign residents kept right up to date with the day's styles (as did also many wealthy Chinese).

1930s fashion for ladies.

The writer admits that 1930s fashion is not his forte (I think ladies did best in the much earlier Belle Epoque). Nonetheless, pictured here are some pretty smart 1930s outfits of a type that would not have escaped Pamela's notice.

No prizes for spotting two of Bette Davis.

1937 ... an eventful year

12/23/2018

The Hindenburg airship explodes over New Jersey

1937. In January, Pamela's body was found beneath the city wall. It was the start of an eventful year across the world, for good and bad.

Right. July, and Peking saw the start of the war between China and the invading Japanese, in which millions were to die.

Pictured are a few other 1937 world events while police in Peking investigated the Werner murder.

Roosevelt begins second term as US President

Amelia Earhart disappears over the Pacific Ocean

Slaughter continues in the Spanish Civil War

The Windsors marry after the abdication

Neville Chamberlain becomes UK Prime Minister

USSR: a young execution victim of Stalin's great purge

JRR Tolkein publishes The Hobbit

Daffy Duck first appears on the big screen

Pamela's China ... people and faces of the time

12/17/2018

A medley of photographs giving a flavour of the people and faces the young Pamela would have been familiar with among the streets and scenes of pre-communist China. Rich and poor, costumes and fashion, eastern and western.

All images from Historical Photographs of China (Bristol Uni), unless stated.

image from Weihsien Paintings website

Pamela Werner, the Peking orphan

12/9/2018

Pamela was adopted by the childless Edward and Gladys Werner when she was an infant.
ETC Werner described next to nothing about her adoption, the legal process for which was far less formal than that of today.
If her (given) birthday was correct, Pamela was born in January 1917. There is no trace of the Werners travelling abroad during the immediate years thereafter so the likelihood is that Pamela was adopted locally. It is also likely that she was born to a "White Russian" mother, which may have been another reason for silence on the matter.

White Russian refugees in China

China had long been home to many Russians. After the 1917 revolution it became home to tens of thousands more as White Russian opponents of the Bolsheviks flooded into the country as refugees.
Though some were of aristocratic background, the great majority soon found themselves poor white immigrants in poor country. They were destitute. Adoption for Pamela may have been the best option for her.

Bolshevik troops

White Russian refugees

The Werners

Japanese internment camp where Werner was imprisoned ... with suspects Wentworth Prentice & Fred Knauf

11/26/2018

image Weihsien Paintings website

Above. Weihsien Internment in northern China where in 1943 some 1500 Allied nationals were imprisoned by the Japanese for the remainder of the war. Among the internees were E.T.C. Werner and his murder suspects US dentist, Wentworth Prentice, and former US Marine, Fred Knauf.

The camp was a former missionary school. The Japanese claimed the best accommodation for themselves, leaving the lesser buildings for the internees: classrooms, student rooms, storerooms, etc. - within an area only 200 yards by 150 yards.
Right: the largest of the internee buildings, block 23 (in pre-war days). Converted into a series of dormitories, it was sleeping quarters for hundreds of single men. Prentice being one of them for more than two years.

Left. Where possible, families were provided with a small room of their own. Designed for one student, they sometimes accommodated a family of half a dozen.
Werner shared similar with another elderly gent in block 24 - next door to Prentice.
Werner openly and loudly accused the dentist of his daughter's murder, something that must have added to the stress of camp life for everyone.

Fred Knauf got to endure the camp for six months before being included on the only group of Weihsien internees to be repatriated.
Prentice and Werner remained for the duration.

Right: joyful internees celebrating their liberation in 1945. By this time food rations had been cut back severely. Malnutrition would have soon featured.
Werner hated his time at the camp: "A life of socialism, threatening to develop into communism ... each internee was a working ant".

image Weihsien Paintings website

image Weihsien Paintings website

Left: US aircraft dropping supplies.

Liberation day itself brought a few dramas with the uncertain Japanese guards: Brandishing two pistols, an American officer (who with his few men had parachuted nearby), marched boldly past the guards at the camp entrance, entered the commandant's office and demanded that he surrender both his command and his weapon. After a short pause, the commandant slowly opened his desk drawer and slowly handed over his samurai sword and pistol. Things might not have gone so well.

With no transport available, the internees had a long wait to leave Weihsien. Eventually the USAF flew them back to Peking - highly exciting for the many that head never before seen the inside of an aeroplane.
Even Werner found time to praise the efforts of the US troops; praise indeed.

The wall crime scene - images

11/18/2018

The wall crime scene where Pamela's body was found in January 1937.

The above grainy photograph appeared in several China-based English language newspapers within days of the murder. Pamela's body was found lying face-up in the ditch shown, her feet toward the camera. The Legation Quarter is indiscernible in the far distance. The dirt-track wall road is to the right. Pamela's home stands some 250 yards behind the camera. What look like telegraph poles were probably disused lamp or banner holders. The image shows just how isolated the spot was.

Above is a better quality image showing a different yet similar location on one of Peking's walls. Again a ditch features, the origins of which are unclear - possibly some crude form of drainage.
Very sadly nearly all of Peking's medieval walls were demolished in the 1960s, a great loss to modern Beijing.

Above: the crime scene as seen in 2018. The ditch has long gone. The precise spot is now impossible to identify, but by a combination of old and new maps, satellite images, and sketches by Werner, coupled with features on the wall's far side, it's possible to locate the scene to within about 50 meters.

By chance the above length of the city wall was one of the very few stretches that escaped demolition. Landscaped with a path and trees for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, it appears now to be being developed further into a park-come-wall-walk. It may soon be fully open to the public.

Fred Knauf - Werner's murder suspect - escapes the Japanese

11/11/2018

In 1943 the Swedish SS Gripsholm was commissioned by the US government as a internee repatriation ship.

Painted conspicuously in black & white and clearly marked, it was a dangerous undertaking in seas full of warships, submarines naval aircraft.

Above: the Gripsholm at a rendezvous for internee exchange with its Japanese equivalent, the Teia Maru, at an Indian port.

In September 1943 some 1500 Allied internees (civilians and diplomats caught up in the wrong country at the outbreak of the Pacific war) were crammed aboard the Teia Maru in Japanese occupied China. It was the first of a number of exchanges.

Former US Marine Fred Knauf was one of the lucky Weihsien camp inhabitants selected. Why the Japanese let a reserve US Marine out of their clutches is a mystery.

Right: back in Knauf's hometown of Mosinee, Wisconsin, the local newspaper got some of its facts wrong in its reporting of the ship's progress. In fact Fred Knauf was arrested in Peking immediately after the attack Pearl Harbour and was in no way involved in the conflict in the Phillipine Islands.

Left: a later edition of The Mosinee Times featured a decades old photograph of local-boy Fred.

Knauf's brothers and sisters were expecting him to arrive home soon. But they were disappointed. Knauf wrote from New York explaining that he was taking some timeout to recover. The fact was that Knauf was intent on returning to China just as soon as he could.

Back in Weihsien camp his friend and associate Wentworth Prentice remained incarcerated for the remainder of the war with their accuser, E.T.C. Werner. Pamela's adoptive father would regularly publicly accuse the dentist of her murder; Fred Knauf had done well to get onto the repatriation ship.

The Legation Quarter gate entrance: Pamela's route home

11/9/2018

Two photographs showing different views of the (eastern) entrance to Peking's Legation Quarter (there were others to the north and west).

Pamela's cycle route would have taken her from the French Club ice rink inside, out through the gate and across Hatamen Street to the Wall road.

The entrance, which post-dates the Boxer siege of 1900, was designed for defence in mind should the need arise. It was guarded round the clock, with ordinary Chinese folk excluded. The above image shows the gates closed and at maximum security in 1912 during the period of turmoil that followed the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty.

The image below shows Legation Street stretching beyond with its very European aspect. The Legation Quarter was a safe and secure island for its residents. Outside was another matter.

On the night Pamela died in January 1937, with many people passing in and out, the Chinese watchman on duty could not recall Pamela exiting, alone or otherwise.

British Police Officer murdered in armed robbery ...

11/6/2018

Foreigners living inside Peking's Legation Quarter may have felt almost immune to crime, but not so those living and working the China beyond.
All big cities suffer from violent crime, and China's were no exception.

On New Year's Eve 1936 - a week before Pamela's murder - Sergeant Eric Slater (right) of the Shanghai Municipal Police was shot to death by criminals as he attempted to prevent their escape from the armed robbery of a business premises in Shanghai's Peking Road (within the International Settlement).

The dramatic story was reported in detail by the North China Herald on January 6th.

Slater's murder illustrated only too well how 'privileged' foreigners in China could also be victim's of crime.

Hearing of a robbery in progress on an upper floor, Slater entered the building (left), only to be fired at by five armed men on their way down the stairs. He sought cover in the vestibule, returning fire with his pistol, but fell with a bullet to the forehead. He died instantly.
Two others were killed in the shoot-out: an unarmed doorman, and one of the robbers.
The use of firearms was common in Shanghai - China's 'wild-west'. Newspaper reports reveal how conditions in Peking were not far behind.

Right: the safe - opened at gunpoint - from which the robbers stole $4,500.

Sergeant Eric Slater was 23 years old. He was born in Burma, the son of a British army officer. On the father's retirement, the rest of the family had moved to Victoria in Canada. Eric, however, had stayed on in Asia, joining the Shanghai Municipal Police.

Policing the International Settlement was a dangerous role. It cost Slater his life.

A Death in Peking explores the nature of policing 1930s China through the experiences of one of Slater's colleagues, one who ended up being charged with murder himself.

Read more on Slater: www.treatyportsport.com/slater--e-m--1934---1936-.html

British Ambassador shot by Japanese dive-bomber ...

11/1/2018

British Ambassador to China at the time of Pamela's murder, Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, had a brief and life-threatening stay in the country.

Pictured, right, with his wife, he found himself caught in a war-zone when in the summer of 1937 Japan invaded China proper after years of brewing conflict.

Travelling between Nanking and Shanghai in an embassy car clearly marked with a large union flag, he and his companions were strafed by a Japanese fighter-bomber. "Snatch" was the only one among them hit.

There then followed a frantic two-hour drive to the nearest hospital where he received emergency surgery. With a bullet passing clean through him and narrowly missing his spine, he was lucky to survive.
The next day he received a hospital visit from the Japanese ambassador, who merely expressed "his sympathy". There was no apology. "Snatch" replied with some undiplomatic and colourful language.

The incident was widely reported by newspapers around the world. It was a major diplomatic incident.

The British government's response of merely "sending the Japanese a sharp note" over the matter was seen for what it was - weakness in the face of Japanese aggression.

Britain's influence in the region was waning, and Japan had no intention of apologising to a fading colonial power it intended to replace.

A recovered Knatchbull-Hugessen was later made ambassador to Turkey (during WW2). The posting marked a low point in his career. His Turkish driver, Elyesa Basna (right) took it upon himself to spy on his employer. Copying a key to Sir Hughe's dispatch box, Basna photographed confidential documents that should have been kept in a safe. Basna then sold the images to the German embassy.
It was a major breach in British security. Thankfully the Nazis were sceptical about Basna (given the code-name Cicero) and failed to appreciate the value of his product.

After the War the story eventually became public and was made into a 1952 Hollywood film "Five Fingers" with James Mason (left) playing the role of the spy.

Sir Hughe's career somehow survived the scandal - he later became ambassador to Belgium and Luxembourg, but he was forever plagued with the knowledge that he had disclosed secret documents relating to no less than Operation Overlord. He died in 1971.