Criminal - The Mug Book

Episode Date: February 27, 2026

After a gang leader was murdered in San Francisco’s Chinatown, the only witnesses who would talk with the police were tourists. They looked through so-called “mug books” filled with photographs of Asian men - and pointed out a man named Chol Soo Lee. Years later, a journalist decided to investigate his case, and described it as an “unreal, Alice-in-Chinatown murder case." Today’s episode comes from the Smithsonian’s Sidedoor podcast. Julie Ha's documentary is Free Chol Soo Lee. Say hello on ⁠Facebook⁠, ⁠Instagram⁠ and ⁠TikTok⁠. Sign up for our ⁠occasional newsletter⁠. Follow the show and review us on ⁠Apple Podcasts⁠. ⁠Sign up for Criminal Plus⁠ to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, invitations to virtual events, special merch deals, and more. We also make ⁠This is Love⁠ and ⁠Phoebe Reads a Mystery⁠. Artwork by ⁠Julienne Alexander⁠. Check out ⁠our online shop⁠. Episode transcripts are posted on ⁠our website⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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We're talking about the U.S. women Olympians taking home more medals than the men, the U.S. women's national team roster heading into the She Believes Cup, and the latest on the WMBA-CBA negotiations. Check out the latest episode of A Touchmore, wherever you get your podcast and on YouTube. On June 3rd, 1973, a gang leader named Yip You Tak was Gunned Down at a very busy intersection in Chinatown. Julie Haugh 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 Haugh 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 mugbooks. 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 Suu Lee. Chol Su Lee was involved in a gun accident at his place the day before the murder. According to the police, Chol Su Lee had accidentally fired a gun in his apartment and they'd 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 Suli fired from his gun came from the murder weapon. Chol Suli 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 Suli, quote, spad 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 Suli as having tears welling in his eyes.

Chol Suli 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 Sanford's 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 Chol Su Lee had been arrested for murder. Ronko knew Chol Su Lee as the Korean kid hanging around her sister's jewelry shop in San Francisco's Japan town. He was sweet, and they were friends. But she knew him is Charles Lee.

And 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 Su Lee, and he was being charged with murder. I really didn't think that he had done this, but I wasn't 100%. I didn't know. Ronko did know one thing for sure, though. Chol Su could not afford a defense attorney. Ronko was a college student, so she couldn't afford one either.

But she figured she could at least support her friend during his trial. So she drove to the courthouse in Sacramento. And while she was sitting there in the courtroom, a young Chinese man approached her. And he was from Chinatown, San Francisco. And he said, you know, Chil Su didn't do that. and he knew who had killed Yip Yitok. He said, we all know that Chouzu didn't do that murder. That was the first time that someone told me that he was actually innocent.

Three years later, in 1977, a journalist named K.W. Lee caught wind of Chol Su's story. He was talking to a social worker in Chinatown named Tom Kim. when Tom happened to mention. He was really saddened by the fact that there was this young Korean immigrant who was in prison for a crime that he didn't commit. Sojin Kim is a curator at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. This social worker felt like he hadn't had the means to be able to do anything to help or support him. KW. was working as an investigative reporter for the Sacramento Union. the largest paper in California's capital.

And he could tell right away that something smelled fishy. And I followed this smell. And things shouted at me. KW said that the first thing that failed his sniff test was the court record. The arresting officer, while he was on the stand, kept referring to Chol Su Lee as Chinese. Calling a Korean a Chinese,

anybody who has a smattering of understanding of Asian culture would find it very unreal. Tolsu Lee's story resonated with K.W. Lee, who both have the same last name because they both immigrated from Korea. KW was a generation older, though. And before we go any further, there's something you need to know about KW. He's a character. He cursed every other word.

I was like, wow, I didn't realize you could use the F word in so many different parts of speech. KW. is one of those people. You remember meeting. The first time I saw him in person was at a community forum that was held in the L.A. Times building in downtown Los Angeles. Sojin is one of KW's unofficial biographers. And KW got up there and were like foaming at the mouth and like yelling. And I was at the back of the room and I could see like the saliva like, gathering at the size of his mouth as he yelled into the mic. KW had a reputation for absolutely hating, corruption, and wrongdoing.

For him, it was personal. See, KW. Lee had left Korea for the United States in 1950. His full name is actually Kyeong-Wan Lee, and he was born in 1928, and he first, he comes to the United States as a student to study after World War II and right on literally the eve of the Korean conflict. KW despised the political corruption that had taken hold in his native South Korea. His plan was to get a degree in the United States and then returned to Korea to speak out against authoritarianism.

But he soon found himself in Tennessee, writing about lunch counter sit-sit-ins and protest of racial segregation. Then he moved to West Virginia, the heart of coal country. He's a corrupt political system, and it really, like, really angered him because he thought, in this country, You know, I'm seeing this thing that, you know, I wanted to go back to Korea and fight against through, you know, an independent press. And so I think he dives into that here in his new home.

Whether it was coal miners struggling to put food on the table, politicians personally profiting from their office, or entire systems that seem to favor the powerful over the vulnerable. He really was like a champion or an advocate for the underdog. And if he sniffed out injustice, he was going to write about it. He was going to expose it. In 1970, K.W. left Appalachia and headed to California to work for the Sacramento Union. That would be when, for the first time, he said, he would get to write about a fellow Korean immigrant,

like himself, in the story of Chol Su Lee. It was 1977 when K.W. Lee heard of Chol Su Lee. And his interest was peaked. What if this young Korean American was innocent? But KW was a Sacramento reporter. The murder of Yip Yeh Talk had happened in San Francisco. His city editor is like, you're my chief investigative reporter. You're supposed to be working on like capital exposés.

And so KW had to sort of make a deal with his city editor. You know, he said, okay, let me work on this on my own time at first. Let me see if I can uncover enough evidence to show that this guy may be innocent. So off the clock, KDUKDG. got to work. KW actually was quietly investigating this without even contacting

Cholsouli at first. He said because he didn't want to get this guy's hopes up because if in fact he uncovered evidence to show that this guy was guilty of this murder, he was just going to drop it and quietly walk away. Instead, he

was uncovering evidence, you know, that was quite alarming to him and that was proving that the guy was likely innocent. But this evidence wasn't the only thing that was alarming. During his investigation, a news report flashed on KW's TV screen. Inmate Chosuli is charged with murder in the stabbing death of a fellow prisoner. Chosuli said that he killed this man who was a member of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang in self-defense,

but authorities charged him with murder. Because this was his second murder charge, this would become a death penalty case. The guy KW suspected to be falsely accused of murder had just appeared to commit another murder while in prison. But KW did not stop his investigation. Instead, he wrote a letter to Chol Su in prison. Dear Charso Lee, my name is Kyungwan Li, and I am a Korean who came to America in 1950

at the age of 20 to study. I attended universities and have been working as a newspaperman since 1957. I have been a reporter with the Sacramento Union since 1970. A few months ago, I met Tom Kim of San Francisco's Korean Community Service Center. He said his gut feeling was that you got a raw deal in a San Francisco shooting case and that you couldn't have done it. Tom Kim feels, and I feel the same way,

that nobody has given a damn about troubled Korean boys trying to make a go in their adopted country. Also, recently I was shocked to learn that you were being. charged with slaying an inmate at Tracy. It may be late, but never too late. I can do one thing at least. I want to write about the problems you have run into as a bewildered and helpless Korean boy in America. And maybe society will listen.

Sincerely, Kyeongwon Li. When Chol Su Lee got the letter, he wrote to his friend, Ronko Yamada. Dear Ronko, what I'd like to know right now is as much as I can about Kien Wan Li, because I want to be sure to know if he is for me or against me. Mr. Lee told me he's known Tom Kim for some time, and I would like for you to talk with Tom Kim

and let me know his views on Mr. Lee. And is Mr. Lee sincere in wanting to be an aide to me? Love, Cholsu. Ever since she'd sat in that courtroom at his trial, Ronko hadn't stopped working to free her friend, Chol Su. She even started going to law school to learn every legal option available. She became Cholsu's person on the outside.

So after he wrote that letter to Ronko, he fired off another one to KW, saying, You should get to know this woman, Ronko Yamada, who's my friend and who has been helping me. And so finally, KW and I were able to get together. That's how we met. It was a dark and stormy night in Sacramento when Ronko met KW. Really? She said the rain was blowing sideways as she looked out the window of the coffee shop and told him everything she knew about Chol Su Lee.

After the meeting, KW would spend the next few months interviewing Chol Su in prison, going to Chinatown to talk to sources and diving deep into court documents. And on January 29, 1978, people in Sacramento opened their Sunday edition of the Union to see the headline, The Americanization of Chol Su Lee, Part 1, Lost in a Strange Culture, by K.W. Lee. Deepened volatile Tracy Prison for young convicts, a 25-year-old Korean man waits in a maximum security cell

facing a possible death penalty. Convicted killer Chorsu Lee stands accused of fatally stabbing a fellow inmate last October 8, a first-degree murder offense with special circumstances calling for capital punishment. At the time of the prison slaying, Lee was serving a life term for the 1973 street corner killing

of a reputed gang leader as a hired gun in San Francisco's Chinatown. This was the first in a two-part series. You might expect that this story would go into detail about the killing in Chinatown, but that's not what KW did. The first story actually just delves deeply into Chol Su Lee's background.

his personal story, his biography. Cholsu Lee was born in South Korea. He never knew his father and spent most of his childhood with his aunt and uncle and Seoul. When he was 12 years old, he moved to San Francisco to join his mother there. He said that he thought she must be rich because she had hot water and a gas stove. But really, she was living in poverty, working two jobs.

And while she struggled to pay the bills, Cholsu struggled at school. He didn't speak English, so the school placed him in a bilingual class for Chinese students. He did not speak Chinese either, and they didn't differentiate between a Korean kid and a Chinese one. The article goes on. In classrooms, he found himself in regular lessons in a sink or swim situation. In schoolyards or on hallways, he was constantly picked on because he was very short for his age, and he didn't know English except how to say his name and age.

At school, he's bullied because he doesn't know the language. He doesn't know how to speak English. Chelsu actually fights back against the bullies and is often disciplined. In one of these cases of bullying, a vice principal accused Chol Su of being the aggressor. This made him so angry he kicked the vice principal. Instead of getting help, he was arrested, convicted of battery, and sent to juvenile hall. Later, he was sent to a mental institution. The doctors diagnosed him with schizophrenia, and then later a Korean-speaking nurse talks to him, and they realize that he just can't speak English.

It must have been just such a nightmare for him, quite alone. Thus began the Americanization of Charzuli, with good intentions and benign ignorance, paving the road to a private hell for the bewildered boy. from Seoul Korea. I feel like in retrospect, in KW, probably be like it sounds like psychological babble, but it's also about him. It's also about KW. KW later said he saw himself in Chol Su-Lee.

He told journalist Sandra Jin in the 1994 interview. It was just by the grace of God, I have eluded the faith that fell on him. Because there is a very thin line between him and me. I was lucky. He was not lucky. Part two of KW's story on Chol Su Lee came out the next day. This one was a deep dive into the case against Chol Su.

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Right now, MintMobil is offering 50% off 3, 6, or 12-month plans of unlimited premium wireless. You can bring your own phone and even your own number. They say you can activate with ESM in minutes and start saving immediately. And if you change your mind, they offer a seven-day money-back guarantee. Our friend uses MintMobile, and he says, it couldn't be easier and he's already saved a bunch of money. Ready to stop paying more than you have to. New customers can make the switch today and for a limited time, get unlimited premium wireless for just $15 a month. Switch now at mintmobile.com slash Phoebe. That's mintmobile.com slash Phoebe. Up front payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for

$12 month plan required, or $15 a month equivalent, taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Over 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. Capable device required. Availability, speed, and coverage varies. Additional terms apply. Seamintmobile.com. In a Sunday edition of the Sacramento Union in 1978, journalist K.W. Lee had introduced the people of Sacramento, California, to Chol Su Lee, a young Korean immigrant facing a death sentence. The next day, K.W. ran the second part of his two-part story. posing a question to his readers. Did Cherso Lee assassinate Yip Yitok in 1973

on a contract from the Wathing gang amid a rash of gangland murders in San Francisco? This is an excerpt from that article, which he titled Alice in Chinatown Murder Case. The Sacramento jury believed that Lee was the hired gun who cold-bloodedly pumped three bullets into the 32-eat, year old talk at the intersection swarming with Sunday tourists and inhabitants. KW, in his investigation, he went into Chinatown in San Francisco many times to just

do the legwork, to talk to people in the community. And they said it defied common sense for this Chinatown gang to hire Cholso Lee, a Korean, to kill this very high-profile China-Tang leader. The prosecution's thrust, based on intelligence reports that the Korean acted as a trusted Chinatown gang enforcer for money, defies the common sense and experiences of the Asian community. KW's article lays out a detailed outline for why Chol Su Lee was unlikely to have committed the Chinatown murder. And he found that the biggest flaws in the city's case against Chol Su boiled down to two things, the murder weapon and the witnesses.

To refresh, the police uncovered a 38-caliber gun near the crime scene, and they had matched it with the bullet Chol Suli had accidentally fired into his own wall the day before the murder. Before the murder trial took place, though, this was challenged by Chol Su's then defense attorney. They challenged that ballistics test, and they discovered that, it was not a match and that this was a mistake. The police department actually admitted it was a mistake before the murder trial. But still, the police and the DA, they still went ahead with the prosecution of Chil Suu Lee. The gun wasn't actually a match.

And the police knew it. But they thought they still had a case against Chol Suu Li because of the witnesses. But remember, nobody who lived in Chinatown came forward as a witness. They were too afraid of the gangs. So the only eyewitnesses were out of towners. And the IDs made by these witnesses were not as rock solid as jurors were made to believe. Ronko says after the shooting, six witnesses had been brought to the police station. There, officers handed them a photo book full of Asian men's faces, or mugs.

And they were told, oh, just pick anything that's similar. Pick any similarities with the person that you saw. Some of the witnesses picked Cholsu because his hair looked similar to the killer, or maybe his eyes. But they told the police they weren't actually identifying the person in the photo as the suspect. They were pointing out similar facial features. And some people even said, I'm picking this because something looks similar, but I know for a fact it wasn't him.

This is not the person I saw. They chose a total of five mug photographs, having characteristics similar to the man they saw shoot the victim. They made no identification of the suspect. What's more, the witnesses noticed that the person who shot Yipyi Tok was about the same height. So when they described the killer, they said, It was a person who was between 5'6 and 5'10.

Chol Su was actually quite short. People often describe him as around 5 foot 2. At most, he was 5 foot 4. By no stretch of the imagination, would you imagine him being between 5'6 or 5'10? The witnesses also described the shooter as being clean-shaven, and Chol Su had a mustache at the time of the murder. But even though Chol Su Lee didn't fit the description, he was the only person from the mug book that police brought to the station for a physical lineup.

up. Chol Su was marched into a room, stood shoulder to shoulder with a handful of random men, and the witnesses were asked to make an ID of the shooter. And they choose Chol Su Lee, but it's not even that this is the person that they saw in Chinatown, Kiyipi, Tak. This is the person that they remember, really, from the mug book. Ronko and KW argued that police had been pushing the witnesses toward Chol Su Lee, entire time. You almost can't fault the witnesses. The police slowly, over time, persuade them to believe that the person they have chosen is,

in fact, the one. But even if the police hadn't steered the witnesses toward Chol Suu Lee, there was another problem with their IDs, one that's explained in this TV news investigation of the case. Now, what would be the problem, say, with the witnesses who were standing over on that corner why couldn't they make a positive identification well if you take a if you look over there there's an Asian couple standing over there now look away because you only had no more than three or four seconds suppose that you're looking at a book with hundreds of Asian faces in it and asked to pick out a few faces a few

hours later see how difficult it is cross-racial ID it's one of the enormous problem if you're not Asian you're not likely to identify someone who is Asian as easily. Research has shown that, quote, an eyewitness trying to identify a stranger is over 50% more likely to make a misidentification when the stranger and eyewitness are of different races. And not a single one of the witnesses identifying Chol Su Lee was Asian. KW's articles about Chol Su Lee hit the mainstream. And the majority of people read them and moved on with their lives. But not everyone. Some Korean Americans who read the stories were shaken enough to take action.

There was a small group of Korean Americans living in the Davis, Sacramento, California area, and they decided that they were going to form a defense committee to help Chol Suli, whom they believe was innocent after reading KW. Lee's newspaper articles. There were maybe 10 Koreans in this group. Baranko Yamada had already begun to rally college students and youth activists in the Bay Area. The Koreans in the Valley were welcome allies in their fight to free Chol Su Lee, which KW had helped them take public. If Chosu was going to be convicted in the courtroom,

at least we could have him tried in the public. KW's articles became the opening argument in a trial of public opinion. Activists and concerned Korean Americans took the article, ran to the nearest photocopier, and started shoving copies into the hands of anyone who would take it. So it might be something that would show up at a university or in a meeting of students, but it became something really tangible that people could then use, in a sense, as evidence and support for mobilizing. And just word of mouth, little by little, as news spread that there was this Korean immigrant man who was likely railroaded for a murder he did not commit in San Francisco.

people just started joining the movement and they wanted to do something to help this man even though he was a stranger. So it was KW who had spelled it out in a very clear outline and we followed it and this movement was created. The article had given voice to a broad swath of Americans

who felt voiceless and unseen. We're coming on the heels of the Civil rights movement, on the heels of ethnic studies movement, on the heels of the anti-war movement because of the Vietnam War. And you had a really, like this whole generation of young Asian Americans who were feeling quite empowered to try to work for themselves to be seen and heard in a society that they felt was not seeing them and also discriminating against them. Everybody had an incident either through themselves or their relatives or their friends when they had been treated quite unfairly or gone through a terrible, terrible process

due to no fault of their own but because they were Asian. Something in Cholese story resonated with each of them and really touched them deeply. KW had hoped to rally Korean-American, to Chol Su's side. The irony of it, though, is that what he helps to mobilize is a pan-Asian-American movement. Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, and many more joined the fight.

College students sold hot links and held car washes to raise money for the Chol Su Lee Defense Fund. Older Asian Americans spoke at churches and asked for donations. Some supporters even wrote a song. A man was lying cold dead. Witnesses free out of town tourists barely recollected.

He kind of looked like this. Cops in a hurry want to close the case. The handcuffed Joe Su Lee. Proceeds from all these efforts went to the defense fund, and eventually they had raised enough money to reinvestigate Chol Su Lee's case. The free Chol Su Lee defense fund

hired new lawyers for Chol Suli, Leonard Weinglass, who defended the Chicago 7, took the lead. And he hired a private investigator named Josiah Tink Thompson. Tink soon discovered another witness that Chol Suli's original defense attorney never knew about. And that's because the police never told them, a man named Stephen Morris. He is a man who actually witnessed the murder

from a closer distance than any of the witnesses who testify at Cholso's first murder trial. And actually, he called the police station after the murder and said, I witnessed this. The police apparently talked to Stephen Morris briefly, but then never called upon him again as they investigated the case. Stephen Morris had been ready to testify

on behalf of Chol Su Lee, but he never heard from the police again. And nobody who was defending Cholsouli was made aware of his examiner. He said the killer was taller. Also, you know, when he looked at Chil Suli at the courthouse one day, because the defense's private investigator brought him in to just take a look at Chol Suli and ask him, is that the killer you saw that day? You know, Stephen Moore said, no, that's not him. Chol Suli is very handsome. He's beautiful. You know, he's like, actually the killer was kind of ugly. And so he was able to say that, definitively, this was not the killer that he saw. A judge ruled that since the police suppressed the existence of the witness Stephen Morris, Chol Su Lee's murder conviction had to be thrown out and a new trial had to be held.

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and we hope it's an email that you'll actually look forward to getting. When you sign up, you'll hear from me, and you'll hear from the producers who work on the show. You'll find out about episodes that we're making right now, the books and movies we're enjoying, and questions we have for you. Sometimes we put in pictures from our reporting trips or of our pets. You'll also be the first to find out about live events or planning or new merch or giveaways, like this one.

New subscribers who join our mailing list by the end of the month will be entered into a drawing for a one-year criminal-plus membership. You can sign up right now at this iscriminal.com slash newsletter. It was 1979 when Chol Su was granted a retrial for the killing of Yipi-Tock, nearly six years earlier. With additional evidence and a crack legal team by his side, there was hope. But there was also dread, because in the meantime, Chol Su Lee had to be tried for the prison yard stabbing. The jury in that case had no idea that Chol Su's earlier murder conviction had been overturned, and they found him guilty.

Because it was his second murder charge, he was sentenced to death and transferred to San Quentin's death row. Chol Su Lee sat on death row in San Quentin for the next three years, awaiting his retrial. And during that time, KW upended his life to stay on the case. He took a leave of absence from his newspaper, the Sacramento Union, because his editors finally said, we can't have you our chief investigative reporter still working on the same case. So KW said, look, I'm sorry, but I have got to see this through to the end. And so he takes a leave of absence and he starts a Korean American newspaper in Los Angeles. He starts the Koreatown Weekly, which is a weekly newspaper.

And one of the key stories that they follow in that newspaper is the Cholsu Lee case. KW rearranged his entire career to stay on top of Cholsu's case, running himself ragged to get this new paper off the ground. And at the end of each day, he stayed up late to write to Chol Su at San Quentin. Because he knew, like, Chol Su was probably waiting for that kind of human contact from him, you know, from that letter of encouragement. And so he just couldn't let him down. I mean, the letters between those two are so beautiful, really encouraging each other in the darkest moments. K.W. really wanted to keep his morale up.

He wanted to give him a sense of what the possibilities were. He wanted him to feel proud of who he was and what he had endured. Even Chol Su, after being placed on death row, and you can imagine what he was going through at that time. but he writes such a comforting letter to KW after that. You see Chelsu encouraging him, you know, like, it's great. I saw the issue, great job. It must be really hard, but it's great.

You know, I'm glad you're doing this. I remember KW saying like, oh my gosh, like, hear you on death row and you're comforting me. Chilu never knew his own father. And so I think in many ways KW sort of filled that role in his life. August 11th, 1982, nine years after Yipyi Tak was killed in Chinatown, Chol Su Lee's retrial began. Not so much was different in the second trial.

It was like night and day, those two murder trials. This time, Chol Su Lee had a community of supporters behind him. You had not only these young college-age activists there, you had these church-going grandmothers. Korean immigrant grandmothers, some of them wearing their traditional Korean silk dresses, showing up in the courthouse, smiling at and waving at Chol Suli at the defendant's table. And while this community support didn't have any legal power, Julie says it had an impact on the trial. I think it was Ronco who said, you know, that the community's support and presence helped give the jury and the judge a conscience. It helped keep everybody honest.

Community support and a top-notch defense was good in all, but Chol Su's fate would ultimately come down to the evidence and testimony that was presented to the jury. Remember, there was no evidence tying Chol Su Lee to the murder of Yip Yeh-Yot. The ballistics didn't match, so his conviction rested purely on eyewitnesses, the very same witnesses who testified in 1974. But this time, the result was different. Chol Su's attorneys were able to actually show how outrageous it was that they could be describing a killer who looked nothing like Chol Su Lee and it still led to his conviction. This is what happens when you actually have competent defense attorneys who believe in their client's innocence.

After nearly a month-long trial, the prosecution and defense rested their cases. The jury began to deliberate. Ronco, KW, and Chol Su's supporters were hoped for. all their work would free Chol Su. But you still, you never know. You never know until the verdict comes out. Deliberations lasted one day. At 8 p.m., the jury announced that they had reached a verdict.

Everyone filed into the courtroom to hear their decision. The verdict is read and it's not guilty. The courtroom just erupts into, screams and shouts of elation. Oh, people weren't crazy. People just jumped up and started yelling in the courtroom. One of the members of the Defense Committee, J. Yu, had told activists in the courtroom to stay quiet after the verdict.

Don't make a scene. But as soon as he heard the not guilty verdict, he screamed. He screamed he couldn't control himself. This is how the verdict was covered in KW. Lee's Koreatown newspaper. With tears brimming in his eyes after the nine-man, three-woman jury read the not-guilty verdict, Cholsu Lee faced his supporters through bulletproof glass partitions of the maximum security facility and told them that his victory was in fact theirs. It's a verdict. Not only for myself, it has been your support, your faith that has made this possible.

God bless you. The audience wept. Even some sheriff's bailiffs showed red-rimmed eyes. This pan-Asian movement of old and young, Japanese Americans, Korean Americans, Chinese Americans, and many others, had come together, and they had freed a young Korean immigrant from death row. But Chol Su Lee was still a convicted murderer for the prison stabbing in 1977. His lawyers, though, were able to strike a plea deal.

So he settled with the conditions that there'd be no other, association with the courts. When he walks out, he walks out for good. He said, okay. In March of 1983, he walked out a prison, a free man.

Chol Su Lee had spent nearly 10 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. And during that entire time, Ronko Yamada never lost focus on getting him back home. It was the issue that really

did change me and created me, just made me who I am. It inspired her to go to law school and become a champion for the underdog. But it wasn't just her life that was changed. Working on the Cholsouli case really changed KW's life. I think that he would probably say it was probably one of the most important relationships and experiences that he had. After meeting Chol Suli, he said, It sort of awakened his latent Korean-American identity.

KW. Lee left mainstream English-language newspapers and dedicated himself to journalism about Korean Americans and for Korean Americans. He was also working hard to train a whole new generation of journalists. He was mentoring all these Korean students and all these young people in journalism, in how to be an excellent journalist. That's how Julie met KW. Lee in 1990. I was 18 years old. I had just graduated from high school, and he just started a Korean American newspaper called the Creed Times English Edition. He was espousing this principle of how all people, all communities, including Korean Americans, deserve to be known, seen and heard in our full human context, warts and all.

And that was sort of a signature phrase of his. KW stayed friends with Chol Su Lee for the rest of his life. He was his mentor, a guiding hand that helped Chol Su when he struggled to adapt to life outside prison. KW was like a father figure to him, which made it even harder when Chol Su died unexpectedly in 2014. And he was in such anguish when Chol Su died at age 62. But KW was also angry. At the funeral, he stood up. And he was clutching this Buddhist monk's walking stick that Cholsu had carved for him out of a tree.

And he was a little bit angry and he said, why is the story of Chol Suli, like, underground after all these years? You know, why don't people know about it? That speech inspired Julie to make the documentary Free Chol Su Lee. And KW was at the film's premiere in 2022. Three years later, in the spring of 2025, he died at the age of 96. When he passed, I described it as like the brightest flame going out. You know, that's what it felt like because his force and his spirit felt that big. And so when he passed, it did feel like the brightest flame just blew out.

K.W. Lee has become known as the godfather of Asian American journalism. Armed with a typewriter, he spent his life bringing people together to build a community. And he challenged people to find the strength to protect that community. I've known many, many, brilliant people. People, I would consider genius, and KW was one of them. Smart is just smart. But when you couple that with the compassion that he had and his integrity and his feeling for,

humanity as a whole, that's singular. That's the difference. He was a great, great person. Sojin Kim says KW can be summed up in a letter she once saw sitting on his desk. It was from a former colleague of his at the Charleston Gazette in West Virginia. This was years after they had worked together, reporting on coal miners. He wrote, What struck me at the time was how much you really cared about these people.

And he said, except back then I wouldn't have said it that way. Back then I would have said, that KW, he gives a shit. And I think that's how I think of him. Yeah, he really gave a shit. Thanks to Lizzie Peabody and the podcast Side Door from the Smithsonian. We've got a link to the Side Door podcast in our show notes. It's great, and we hope you'll follow them. We've also got a link there to Julie Haas documentary,

Free Chol Su Lee. Special thanks to Ranko Yamada, Julie Ha, Sojin Kim, Rick Lee, Sebastian Yun, and Matsuko Adachi. Side Door is produced by James Morrison, Lizzie Peabody, and Anne Conan. Fact-checking by Natalie Boyd, and mixing by Tarek Fuda.

Criminal is created by Lauren Spore and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Zediko, Lily Clark, Lena Sillison, and Megan Canane. Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at this iscriminal.com. And you can sign up for our newsletter at this iscriminal.com slash newsletter.

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