Murder, They Wrought 4/4 | Asian American Features

MURDER, THEY WROUGHT
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"The former honors student had seen his grades plummet, grown frightened of the dark and became convinced strangers were stalking him. He had refused to bathe and, though once a sharp dresser, started wearing soiled and fraying clothes."
     By late summer in 1991, Lisa had grown suspicious. Her husband was receiving too many cute gifts, crafting too many hand-written letters and dialing too often a particular Shanghai telephone number. True, Jim had attempted to hide the letters and explain that the new shirts were from clients, but the thrill of the affair made him sloppy.
     By that Fall Lisa was convinced her husband was harboring a mistress. Once while Jim was traveling on business, Lisa, lonely and impulsive, flew to Shanghai to seek out the other woman. She questioned her husband's employees, searched the after-work watering-holes and stalked the streets of neighborhoods that could have housed the mistress, although Lisa had no idea what the woman looked like. Naturally, the trip was a failure, and Lisa returned to Taipei without evidence to support her suspicions.
     By summer 1993, however, Lisa had no doubt a mistress existed. After her husband undertook a series of extended business trips to California, she was struck by seething fits of jealously. The thought of another woman sleeping in their king-sized Rancho Santa Margarita bed enraged her.
     One hot July day, in a fit of anger, Lisa boarded a plane to Los Angeles and arrived unannounced in Rancho Santa Margarita. Though her husband was away on business, Lisa caught the mistress in the house and found her clothes in the closet. Ruthlessly, she bounced Jennifer into the street, and grabbing a pair of scissors, she dashed to the closet and slashed up all the mistress' garments. The murders occurred shortly after.

he murder of Stuart Tay, say Asian community leaders, may have been prevented if the community and school officials had been more attune to Robert Chan's degenerating mental condition. In the months before the murder, Chan had been demonstrating classic signs of paranoid schizophrenia.
     The former honors student had seen his grades plummet, grown frightened of the dark and became convinced strangers were stalking him. He had refused to bathe and, though once a sharp dresser, started wearing soiled and fraying clothes.
     His parents persuaded Chan to visit the high school psychotherapist, who after four sessions determined that Chan needed advanced psychiatric help. Before it could be arranged, the murder took place. In court Chan asserted he was driven to murder by a fear that Tay had rigged his home with explosives and would destroy his family.
     "I think a lot of Asians have been surprised by all the violence," says Sue, the mental health expert. "The community leaders have known that violence in our community exists, but people outside the community, that had little contact with the community, would never know it until recently."

     Sue hopes the high-publicity violence "won't result in another stereotype-that all Asians are in gangs and are violent."
     However, some Asians believe that the killings, though tragic, have shown non-Asians the true complexity of the Asian character. There is nothing wrong in the Asian community, they say. There are only the same passions and struggles found in any other community. Only now, the media is covering it.
     "I don't like saying this, but I read the papers, and I think something like this makes people aware of all sides of us," says Jean Kim, a Korean American accountant. "You have the model minority line, but this shows a very human side, a fragile side, as well."
     This fragility may become more pronounced in years to come. A recent study on Asian Americans conducted by UCLA and distributed to all major news media stressed the Asian community's complexity. It found that though healthy rate of affluence exists, the bulk of Asians face formidable economic and social struggles.
     The report found that the poverty rate for Asian Americans in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York is twice that of Caucasians. For every Asian household with an annual income of $75,000 or more exists one with an annual income of less than $10,000. The report also disclosed that Asian American reliance on welfare is climbing, especially in Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian communities.
     Clearly, all this publicity demonstrates that Asians Americans, like any other racial group, possess the red-blooded passions, frustrations and delusions that drive human beings to tragic acts-but also, if channeled properly, to great deeds. Hopefully, the rest of American will see it this way.

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