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Pamela's route home from the ice rink (map)

10/30/2018

The ice rink where Pamela was last seen alive was located at the French club, opposite the entrance to the French barracks (shown above on a 1939 "Poplar Press" map of Peking). The club is not shown here, but was it was behind St Michael's Catholic church.
The barracks is now a government trades union building, but the original stone gate still exists. A junior school now occupies the site of the club opposite.

The black line shows Pamela's most direct cycle-route home to 1 Kuei Chia Ch'ang, about a mile to the East.
X marks the spot where Pamela's body was found the next morning. It represents an approximation, but it is probably accurate to within fifty meters. The square buttresses (large and small) on the south side of the wall help identify the stretch on maps and satellite images today.

A modern rail station has replaced the Methodist compound and parts of Kuei Chia Ch'ang, but it is nonetheless possible to walk to the crime scene itself (see photographs on earlier blog page).

The map image illustrates how the location of the crime scene was very much on Pamela's direct route home. A Death in Peking explains the significance.

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Fred Knauf: China Marine & Werner suspect

10/28/2018

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Fred Knauf, an early passport image

China Marines

Fred Knauf was one of ETC Werner's prime suspects for the murder of his daughter.
In 1937 Knauf was a United States Marine Corps reservist, having retired from the regulars in 1931.
Born in Mosinee, Wisconsin, Knauf joined the USMC in 1915 and soon found himself posted to China, where the United States maintained a military presence largely in order to safeguard American citizens post the Boxer rebellion.

Men serving there called themselves "China Marines".

China was a plum posting; a marines's pay went a long way: servants, cheap food & entertainment, bars, local women.

Knauf was a natural sportsman, excelling at ice hockey, basketball, baseball, athletics. He played in all the China Marine teams. It made him popular with his superiors and a valued member of the Peking company - so much so that he achieved the rare honour of posting after posting to China, and always in Peking.

The unmarried Knauf stayed on in China after leaving the regulars. Peking had become his home.

(Images largely from ChinaMarine.org)

Life for Marine in Peking was good

Post retirement Knauf's choice of employment in Peking became opaque. As a reservist his occupation would need approval by the USMC. Knauf was decidedly coy on the subject.

The likelihood is that he was involved in running a bar for the benefit of his former colleagues.

Bars: alcohol, drugs, prostitutes, brawls, arrests.

USMC Peking Ice Hockey team

Image ChinaMarine.org

Rickshaws were a cheap form of transport

Life in Peking

Colonel Marston

Colonel John Marston was the China Marine commanding officer in 1937. Reports reveal how he held a very dim view of Knauf and wanted him removed from China. He did not get his way. Knauf remained and that January played hockey for a civilian team at the same rink where Pamela was last seen alive.

ETC Werner believed Fred Knauf was involved in the murder. A Death in Peking reveals the how and why.

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Ugo Cappuzzo and fighting China's typhus

10/15/2018

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Ugo Cappuzzo was a young doctor to the Italian Embassy in Peking, where he had arrived in the early 1930s with his new wife.

After Pamela Werner's murder in 1937, Cappuzzo became one of her father ETC Werner's chief suspects: Cappuzzo was an accomplished surgeon and lived near the French ice rink where Pamela was last seen alive.

image from the Laogai Research Foundation

Werner may not have been aware that Cappuzzo was something of a medical hero to many Chinese.

As well as being a surgeon, Cappuzzo also specialised in parasitic diseases.

In 1936 Cappuzzo travelled to Shansi, a province where typhus epidemics annually killed thousands of peasants.

Many Shansi residents lived in traditional "cave houses", dwellings carved into the solid rock. Many still exist today.

The cave houses were warm in the winter and cool in the summer, but they also provided excellent conditions for the spread of typhus, with the poor occupants living crowded together with limited washing facilities.

Typhus is spread by human body lice. Living in hair and clothing, the adult (left) feeds on its host's blood.

At considerable risk to himself, Cappuzzo collected infected lice from the Chinese victims. He then transferred the infection to guinea pigs, from the brains of which he cultivated a vaccine on his return to Peking.

The following year Cappuzzo returned to Shansi with his vaccine where he successfully inoculated many poor residents.
It was bold and brave work by Cappuzzo, and replicated the new technique pioneered by the Polish biologist Rudolf Weigl (right).

Deservedly, Cappuzzo received a great deal of official thanks for his work. Werner, however, had him down as a conspirator in rape and murderer.
A Death in Peking explains just how and why Werner was wrong.

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Pamela's route home from the ice rink (map)

Fred Knauf: China Marine & Werner suspect

Ugo Cappuzzo and fighting China's typhus

Graeme Sheppard

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