RedHanded - Episode 349 - A Death in Old Peking

Episode Date: May 23, 2024

The state of Pamela Werner’s body alone would have been enough to send 1930s Peking into a frenzy. She’d been frantically stabbed, her chest cut wide open, and four of her internal organs had been precisely removed...But Pamela was the daughter of a high-ranking British diplomat. And the death of a white girl in the ancient Chinese capital, in 1939 – when anti-foreigner revolts were bubbling and the entire country was under threat of invasion by Japan – rocked the city, in the last days of old China.Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramXVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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And welcome to Red Handed. It's a spooky one. It is. It's atmospheric. It is. The H. Yeah, there's so much atmosphere. I had to add an H for hydrogen. Boom. Do you know what, I like, usually I'm such a snoozer, but I've been getting up at half six and trying to stay up. I don't go outside or anything, but I watched The Martian this morning oh interesting so I've just been thinking about atmospheres and potatoes start to your day it's like that time we were on tour

when time went out the window and I texted you and I was like do you want to go for breakfast and you were like yeah I'm just watching Bone Tomahawk and I was like okay and then you were like I also can't get the tv to work so I'm watching it on my phone. And I was like, okay, let's catch up when you're done with that then. So, you know, I'm not here to judge. Do what you need to do. But that has got absolutely nothing to do with what's going on. No, no, couldn't be further from what's happening. Apart from some of the visceral shit. Bone Tomahawk, not The Martian. No. The Martian's got literally nothing to do with this. Apart from China.

It's true. Let's get into it. China. It's true. Let's get into it. China and visceral shit. Let's get into it. In the early hours of the 8th of January, 1939, an old man was taking his caged songbird for a stroll, as you do, and he was walking through the frozen streets of old Peking. I know we talk about the first frame of David Parker Ray all the time,

like the naked lady running up the road with the collar, but this man with caged bird solitarily walks into the mist. Through a cold, frozen, old, last days of China vibe. And this man followed the ancient Tatar Wall until he reached the Fox Tower, a 600-year-old structure that was thought to be haunted by fox spirits. This creepy legend, combined with the tower's resident wild dogs and thousands of bats, meant that it was usually deserted overnight. Stay away from those Chinese bats, as we all learned in 2020. Oh, God.

And the freezing temperatures in the area and the total lack of any lights absolutely made sure that nobody was hanging around. But at the base of the tower that night, the man saw a group of dogs sniffing at something. As he shooed them away, it revealed a frost-covered body of a young woman mutilated beyond belief. Her legs and face had been frantically stabbed.

Litres of blood had been drained away. Her ribs had been snapped and her chest had been cut wide open. Her heart, bladder, kidneys and liver had all also been precisely removed. And the girl's watch had stopped at a few minutes past midnight. Hence why it's called a midnight making, everybody. Wouldn't it be interesting if we lived in some sort of dystopian universe where your watch stopped the minute you died and then you would just know? That would be. But I suppose with an be interesting if we lived in some sort of dystopian universe where your watch stopped the minute you died and then you would just know that would be but i suppose with an apple watch

it will know because it records when your heart stops yeah have you seen the things where it's like it can tell if you're in a car crash or something oh wow really because of like the impact your body will go through or whatever and i think it will call like 999 999 for you allegedly jesus christ that seems like a lot i know this is not even remotely as high stakes but my car is overdue a service by 95 days as it keeps telling me every time i turn it on and if you click okay it rings the dealership for you and makes an appointment how does the other thing about my car right when i'm driving it and it puts like the parking pilot on with the cameras, there appears to be a camera above the car.

How does it know? Is there a drone that's following me? It's like above the car and it shows me the surroundings of the car and they're correct. So it is seeing it. But how do you know, car? I don't even drive. Anyway, it blows my mind every single time. At any time, in any place, in the time of parking pilot or not, this would have been a

particularly horrifying case. But this was Peking in 1939, and the victim was the English daughter of a high-ranking diplomat, and the city was already a pressure cooker. Recent years had seen warlords and dictators taking and losing control of the city. Bloody anti-foreigner revolts had overwhelmed Peking just a few years before. Japanese forces were threatening to take the city by force. But in the last days of the Chinese Empire, the city was consumed by the death of this one English girl. So much so that a literary feud almost 100 years later and 5,000 miles away is still fighting today over the truth. So, what happened to Pamela Werner? Well, to answer that question, we're going to have to give you a super quick red-handed rundown of thousands of years of Chinese history.

Yes! So here goes. It's my birthday. I love this so much. So as you may have noticed, China is a big place. And for its first 4,000 years, it was a constant mess of warring states attempting to consolidate power and then devolving back into chaos. But they had proper houses and shit, not our fucking mud huts. But in those flashes of unity, it gave some pretty amazing things to the world. The Song Dynasty brought us the magnetic compass, gunpowder and mass printing, leading to the world's first paper currency.

The Ming Dynasty brought us amazing art and literature. And the Silk Road let China trade all of these discoveries and much more with the rest of the world. But the rest of the world liked China's stuff a little bit too much. Britain, for example, wanted a metric shit ton of tea and silk constantly flowing in. And it is honestly a hugely fascinating point of history that just the british were fucking obsessed with tea and they were like we're obsessed how do we get more of this and how

they got more of that because they grew a bit sick of just paying loads of gold and silver for it was the particularly uncool diplomatic move of intentionally flooding china with opium i do have to say china already loved opium. They were fucking mad for it. I looked at the historical records of like trade and there was like quite a lot of opium already going into China. But the Brits were like, they seem to like opium. We like tea. Let's give them loads of opium. And unlike tea, it will create a debilitating addiction that will lead to death. Yes. it will just ruin all of our teeth, but they will be fucked. So that was the plan. And we may well do a shorthand on the opium wars pretty soon. But

the even shorter version of that shorthand that is to come is that Britain wouldn't stop illegally funneling opium into Chinese ports. China tried to stamp it out. And then two pretty serious wars followed, which were obviously the Opium Wars. And during them, the British and the French captured the outskirts of the capital, Peking, looting and burning its summer palace in the meantime. And by the way, when we're talking about Peking in this story, we are talking about Beijing now. But since the city was known as Peking to all of the characters in this story, we're going to use that name to keep it consistent because everything's confusing enough.

It is. And I was actually really interested in why they changed the name from Peking to Beijing. And I don't know if other people think this is particularly interesting. It was actually because of a translational language reform that took place in the 1980s. Some places say the 1950s. It's a bit confusing. But essentially what happened is the government of the People's Republic of China changed the way in which Mandarin was to be translated into foreign languages with the introduction of what they called the pinyin method. Basically, what they were trying to do was get the rest of the world

to pronounce the names of cities in China as close to the Mandarin pronunciation as possible. And Beijing is closer to how Chinese people would say that city in Mandarin than Peking was. And they basically changed it using this method. So that was quite interesting. I feel like I know a few people who studied abroad in China and they all say Beijing. So I wonder if that's something to do with it. Probably. They all say Beijing. So I wonder if that's something to do with it. Something probably connected. But it's like when people will pronounce like, my friend Adam was talking about a friend of his

who's got an Italian husband. And he's like, oh, well, she'll just be talking completely normally. And then she was like, oh, and then my husband, Matteo. It's hard not to do, but it also does come across as quite obnoxious probably yeah yeah yeah yeah and my friend ordered raclette the other day and i was like i'm gonna punch you straight in the throat it's raclette put it on my food anyway back to uh the old opium. During this particular period of history, there was quite a lot of anti-foreigner

and anti-imperialist movements, quite understandably. The most famous was the 1900 Boxer Rebellion, led by the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists. And they called themselves that because they had mad martial arts skills, which I'm intimidated already, and I'm living 100 years later. And terrified I am right to be because the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists

not only used their fists, they beheaded missionaries and held the foreign community under siege for 55 days, aiming to starve them into submission. The boxes were eventually stamped out by armies representing eight foreign countries, including Britain, the US and Japan. So it's fair to say that tensions in Peking between locals and foreigners were running pretty high. Spooked by the violence of the West, China realised it was time for a change. The last emperor of China was removed from the throne in 1911,

and then it set about having its first big revolution. Once again, no one could quite agree though on how to run China. They had a dictator for six years until he died, then the country went to pieces again, China then took on a messy feudal system, meaning that the whole country was basically run by landlords who provided land to people in exchange for their services and loyalty, and then the ruling Republican Party and the new Communist Party had to team up to take back control. Unsurprisingly, those two parties couldn't quite agree on exactly how to run things either. But they didn't have much time to hash it out, because up jumped Japan. Japan had also recently had a bit of an imperial shake-up. And fresh from a couple of cracking victories taking over Korea and a bunch of Pacific islands,

Japan felt ready to build itself a little empire. Starting with not-so-little China. And the Japanese did do pretty well. They took Manchuria and then they moved towards Peking. Peking is surrounded on three sides by mountains and resisted capture for almost 3,000 years. Fuck, just give up. 3,000 years?

I'm prisoners of geography, man. That foreside wasn't looking good. In the 20th century, it was looking like Peking could fall. Northern cities in China were being gobbled up by the Japanese and port cities like Shanghai and Tianjin were seized by European forces. So the government's grip on the capital was loosening. The Chinese head of state fled to Nanking, which is now Nanjing, another translation switch up. And between 1916 and 1928, seven warlord rulers came and went, trying to establish

a new dynasty. Meanwhile, Japanese troops were gathering at the city's borders. So tensions were high. Wealthy and important people were leaving in droves, and everyone had a real sense that they were really seeing the last days of old Peking. Over time, the city's foreign presence was consolidated into a walled neighborhood known as the Legation Quarter. It was there that Pamela Werner spent the last days of her life. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't.

I didn't either, until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness. And inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast,

Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection.

Claudian Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media. To listen, subscribe to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts. In January 1937, Peking had a population of one and a half million, just two to three thousand of whom were foreigners. The legation quarter was understandably fortified to shit, with high walls and guards at each thick iron gate. Inside, you'd be forgiven for thinking that you were in some sort of grand European city. Tall, western-style buildings rose everywhere you looked, from nightclubs and hotels to department stores, banks and Catholic churches.

Boo. The road names were all in English, French or German, and it had its own foreign-run police force and hundreds of foreign soldiers. Foreign money still went a very long way in China. So, the foreigners who lived there lived a very comfortable life, of black-tie cocktail parties, games of bridge and rounds of golf. Many also had servants and gardeners. It felt like a haven from the chaos outside, a safe, prosperous city within a city. But just on the other side of its imposing stone walls lay the Badlands. As the name heavily suggests,

the Badlands was a lawless complex of alleyways full of brothels, gambling dens and opium houses. Police pretty much ignored the Badlands, either by choice or by payment to look the other way. Still, for Edward Werner and his daughter Pamela, life in the legation quarter was pretty comfortable. Edward Theodore Chalmers Werner

was a respected academic and former British consul, surprise, surprise. He was born on an ocean liner to a Prussian father and an English mother, so the travel bug was with him right from the start. The first 10 years of his life were spent hopping from city to city across South America, the US and Europe, eventually settling right here in London. He took on a cadetship with the Foreign Office as soon as he left school and was sent to Peking as a student interpreter to improve his Chinese language skills. And he fucking loved China. Arriving there in the 1880s, Werner learned everything he could about Chinese customs and linguistics. He could soon understand more dialects than most locals could. And

he climbed the greasy diplomatic pole and was sent all over China to learn, lecture, chat with locals and generally just soak up the culture. Sounds like a pretty good life. And then at the medium ripe age of 45 he met Gladys Ravenshaw. The society columns at the time described Gladys and her sisters as the pristine Ravenshaws and as the last unmarried one, Gladys was quite the prize. The Ravenshaws were as well-heeled and old-moneyed a family as you would expect. And Gladys and Edward met in England at a lecture, flirted by letter, and soon he proposed. It was so much simpler back then. The pair got married and Gladys moved to Peking. They adopted a daughter, two-year-old

Pamela. It's very radical for the time. Oh, absolutely. I think, yeah, like we don't know that much about Gladys, but I think it's safe to say that Edward was a very radical man. And the reason we don't know that much about Gladys is tragically, three years after they adopted Pamela, Gladys took her own life with barbiturates. And Edward, devastated, retreated further into his books. Pamela had been the daughter of two Russian refugees fleeing the revolution, and they had fled from Russia to China, but died pretty much as soon as they got there.

And now, Pamela had lost her adopted mother at the age of just five. So her childhood was spent rattling around a big, austere colonial house full of books and ancient artefacts. And she did a lot of that rattling totally alone. Edward was often off, living his Indiana Jones fantasy, heading out on research trips to hunt down relics, or seek out the lost tomb of Chinggis Khan. Spoilers, nobody ever finds it. Still, all of this early trauma and alone time gave Pamela a fierce independence streak. Her Chinese language skills were excellent and she loved exploring the whole city, not just the protected world of the legation quarter. She loved flitting around Peking's tea houses, cinemas and ice rinks,

exploring the whole city on her bike. This independence, though, often got Pamela into trouble. She didn't get on at her first school, the convent of the white Franciscans. They're the ones with the heads. Ah, sure. She was then expelled from the French school and was refused entry to the American school. Pamela was kicked out of Peking Methodist school for behavioural issues, but she was smart, so after a pretty checkered school career, she was sent to a prestigious international boarding school in Shenzhen. If the legation quarter was a little slice of England, Shenzhen Grammar School was the whole bloody Victoria sponge cake. Students wore grey pinafores, studied the English curriculum and had high tea every day at

five o'clock. There were Latin classes, cricket, netball, as well as old school English discipline. Netball was invented because basketball was seen as not ladylike. I didn't realise it was so old though. So for Americans, the only American I've ever seen watch a netball match laughed out loud as soon as he figured out what was going on. Netball, you're not allowed to move your feet if you're holding the ball. You can do one, two and a pivot. That's it. Yes.

No thanks. What position did you play? Just put me somewhere on the wing and I'll cope. I was goal attack, obviously. Obviously. Nice, nice, nice, nice. There's a lot of spots in netball for the shortest girl. You could be a centre.

Yes, I would play centre or wing attack. Yeah. And that was pretty much it. I'd be like, anybody, anybody want to swap? So anyway, all this was going on. And here, Pamela finally fit in a bit better and even got herself a sexy athlete boyfriend, Misha Hordzalski. Hordzalski was a Polish Jew, a few years younger than Pamela,

and excelled at any sport he tried. The two were inseparable at school, and they organised for Misha to come and visit Pamela and her father in Peking. But this visit never happened, because that Christmas would be the last of Pamela's life. She arrived home on Boxing Day 1937. As much as she had fit in at Tien Tien, she still fell short in her father's eyes. And since now she was 19, he had decided to send her packing to London. Most of her stuff had been shipped already, and she wanted to make the most of her last few months in the city she had loved for her entire life.

She caught up with old friends and lived her very best Peking life. And that meant boys. Her dad grew begrudgingly used to young men arriving at the front door with flowers asking to take Pamela out to dances and concerts. But sometimes he lost his temper. An old school friend of Pamela's, a Chinese student called Han Shuqing,

had started to come around quite often, and Edward Werner always sent him packing. And eventually, after telling him once again to get out of it, Edward lost his cool. And he broke Han's nose with his cane. He doesn't even punch him. No. He uses a deadly weapon. Smacks him with the cane. On the 7th of January 1937, Pamela was a month from her 20th birthday and that day started like any other. She spent the afternoon writing letters at her desk. At 3pm, her father headed out for a walk around the city and she told him that she'd be heading out too

to meet a friend for tea. Pamela jumped on her bike and rode to the house of her friend, Ethel Gervich. She sat around with Ethel and her mum gossiping about old school friends and drinking tea. And then Ethel and Pamela headed out to go ice skating. The rink had been recently built near the French embassy, not far from Pamela's house.

And she loved it so much that she'd actually joined the club immediately. Pamela, Ethel and another younger friend, Lillian, skated for about an hour. And then at 7pm, Pamela told her friends that she had to get back home. Now, the 7th of January is actually Russian Christmas, and the other girls were planning on staying out to enjoy the festive vibes. They were worried about Pamela going off alone, but she shot back, I've been alone all my life. I'm afraid of nothing. Besides, Peking is the safest city in the world.

She then rode off into the freezing dark towards home, via the Badlands. Pamela Werner was never seen alive again. Cain-wielding Edward returned home at 7.30 that night, just before dark. He was annoyed that Pamela wasn't back yet, but at first he wasn't worried. It wasn't out of character and she was just going to be out with her friends. If anyone could be trusted in this city, it was his daughter. When it got to 10pm, Edward grabbed a kerosene lamp and went out into the biting January cold to look for Pamela. At the Gervich's house, they assured him that Ethel had returned before eight. The police commissioner was off duty, so Werner walked miles and miles through the streets of Peking, through the night, searching for his daughter.

Dawn broke, and he kept looking. And later that morning, he found her. Edward spotted a crowd at the base of the infamous Fox Tower near his home, and he rushed over. As he approached, he saw a corpse. And from the blonde hair and clothing, he immediately knew that it was Pamela. Tensions were already high in the city, like we said. But now that officials realised that this victim had been the daughter of a high-ranking career diplomat, this murder needed to be solved quickly, before that tension bubbled into violence. Now murders were hardly a rare occurrence in Peking at the time,

but even at a first glance, the crowd could tell that this was no ordinary killing. The Times called it one of the most ghastly murders the ancient capital ever knew. Firstly, there were cuts all over the teenager's legs and stab marks disfiguring her face. An attempt had clearly been made to hack off her head and one arm, though both were just about still attached.

It was horrific, but the full scale of the nightmare only came to light during her post-mortem. By 1937, Chinese investigative science and processes were pretty damn impressive. At a nearby medical college, stunned pathologists charted Pamela's injuries. Washing the blood and mud away, it revealed more and more stab wounds,

painting a picture of a sustained, frenzied attack with a four-inch knife. Pamela's genitals had been mutilated and her sternum had been opened like a book. But strangely, and perhaps offering the mildest of comforts, all of these injuries had been inflicted post-mortem. Pamela had been killed between 10pm and 2am by a blunt force trauma around her right eye, which split her skull and caused her brain to hemorrhage. It would have taken only a few minutes to die. It's not a terrible way to go.

Rigor mortis had frozen Pamela's fists clenched. Pathologists noticed a lack of blood in the chest cavity. The killer or killers must have drained her blood before opening her chest. After doing so, they meticulously broke each of Pamela's ribs from the inside outwards. And then, with clean incisions made by a scalpel or similar professional tool, they removed Pamela's heart, bladder, kidneys and liver. These organs were still nowhere to be found. Her stomach had been severed from her body, but was still inside her chest. Pharmacological tests on her stomach showed that Pamela had eaten Chinese food

in the last hours of her life. No shit, she's in Peking. Yeah, I know. I feel like that's not the biggest gimme. It'd be more interesting if she somehow had a pizza. Interestingly, other than the Chinese food, the toxicology test did show that there were no poisons or chloroform or drugs in Pamela's system, only a small trace amount of alcohol.

So what conclusions could they draw? Well, Pamela's skate rink membership card, which had been crucial in identifying the horribly disfigured corpse, had been left on her person, as well as an expensive platinum watch that she had inherited from her mother. And the hands had stopped at three minutes past midnight. So this couldn't be a violent mugging or robbery gone wrong. Authorities also knew that Pamela must have been facing her attacker

when the blow to her face was dealt and the blow to her face was clearly very powerful and delivered from above so the attacker was likely taller than Pamela and very strong. The blood loss from the beating would have been significant and the almost total lack of blood at the scene and remember the ground was frozen solid so it's not like it just got washed away or seeped into the dirt made it likely that Pamela had probably just been dumped at the Fox Tower after her death. So that meant that somewhere in the city was a deep pool of blood and the actual crime scene.

Police assumed that the actual murder scene would most likely have been a private place or apartment since a bloody mess hadn't been reported or spotted publicly yet unless, of course, the people who had done it had cleaned up. This theory also led the police to believe that Pamela perhaps knew her killer if, say, she had gone into a private space with them. But overall, the police were stumped by the killing,

especially when it came to a possible motive. Who could have been behind such a brutal, frenzied, yet precise murder? And why? Yeah, it really is quite a contradiction in terms of what you're seeing on the body, like this very frenzied stabbing event. But then the precision to remove all of these organs, remove the blood and take those away in some way, which I understand why they thought it was two people. It is quite a contradiction. And a professor of obstetrics and gynecology later said that, quote, it was not the work of an ordinary sexual sadist,

as if there's an ordinary sexual sadist out there. Also definitely not the work of a sexual sadist because a sexual sadist wouldn't bother doing all of that after they'd killed you. Instead, this professor said that the killing displayed signs of being the work of a maniac. Thank you for your input. So helpful. And look, I'm not saying we are experts because of course we are not. But I really can't help but feel like this OBGYN being like, it's not a sexual status.

It's like when I always bitch about fucking silent witness and shows like that. When I'm like like why are you interviewing people and offering your input just do your job and then get onto the next body whenever they make a tv show and it's like a very specific niche wing within crime fighting or law enforcement that always is the reason it gets solved like if it's CSI it's always got to be forensic if it's Dexter it's always got to be the blood spatter and nothing else if it's bones it's the bones

if it's silent witness it's the body and fucking Nikki and here there's a whole new option whole new opportunity for a brand new show

OBGYN it's the vagina yes it's always the vagina so with the inspired input from the vagina doctor. OBGYN peaking.

We have a killer who is a tall, strong maniac with access to knives. A possibly new Pamela, or at the very least made her feel comfortable enough to be close to them. So it's not a huge amount to go on. So finding the murder scene was absolutely key. Investigators went out to every hotel in the area to check for rooms found with blood in them or missing sheets, for example. Pamela's photograph was also shown to doormen, night watchmen and staff at every bar, restaurant and nightclub near where she'd been found.

Flea markets and junk shops were scoured for Pamela's missing ice skates, bike mittens, coat and beret. The police had also noticed a discrepancy. Pamela had left home at three o'clock and met Ethel, who lived not far from her home, at five. So there were two hours unaccounted for. Pamela had also eaten Chinese food, remember it was found in her stomach, but she hadn't eaten at home or with Ethel. So where had she been? Finally investigators made some headway. A concierge at Wagons Litz, the Wagons Litz Hotel, which just sounds like sure the strangest. Wagons Litz. Wag, I just, I can't say it another time

because I'm just going to say it wrong. Wagonslets. It's so weird. Anyway, the concierge at that hotel that I'm not going to say again said that he had seen Pamela talking to a receptionist. She'd come in alone that afternoon

to inquire about a room sometime between three and four. She had taken a leaflet of the rates of the hotel and then she had left. This was the only positive sighting the police really got because other than this, all of the leads and tip-offs culminated into a series of dead ends. For example, police talked to a rickshaw puller who had been found near the scene, washing blood out of his seat in a nearby river. But it turned out that that blood belonged to an American Marine

who had been beaten up that night, which I imagine happened quite a lot. Of course, investigators spoke to Pamela's boyfriend, Misha Holjelski, but his alibi was solid gold. He'd never left Tinsin. And they even looked into Pamela's old headmaster in Tinsin, who was being forced to resign over allegations that he had been inappropri even looked into Pamela's old headmaster in Qin Xin, who was being forced to resign over allegations that he had been inappropriately forward with Pamela. And this might sound quite damning. And he actually did end up resigning over this and even leaving the country

thanks to a bloody-minded campaign by Edward Werner himself. And he did absolutely 100% try on with Pamela when she was 16 and under his care at a boarding school. So yes, he is extremely gross. But as for her murder, his alibi was also watertight. He had also been in Shenzhen the whole time. So, trust us, it wasn't him. Then, of course, the police investigated Pamela's father, Edward Werner. Now, some people at the time obviously thought,

that poor 72-year-old widower, he's just had his only daughter absolutely brutalised and left for dead in the street. Let the guy grieve. But the police had some pretty good reasons to check him out. Firstly, of course, the most likely suspects in a murder tend to be people that the victim knew. Plus, there were plenty of signs of bad blood in their history. Edward had grown furious with his

daughter's failure to accept discipline at school, and he'd made his feelings about her loose, independent lifestyle very clear when he broke Han So-ching's nose with his cane. Also, Edward admitted to having been out all night alone searching for Pamela. He said he went all over the city and only returned at dawn. Was it possible that he did run into Pamela out late drinking with her friends? And did he lose his temper? Well, maybe. But it doesn't really add up. If he'd struck his daughter in a fit of parental rage accidentally killing her would he really then drain her blood break her ribs one by one hack off her head stab her 20 times in the crotch and then meticulously remove four of her internal organs

probably not quite black dahlia isn't it yes i think when i say it's not a sexual sadist i'm not saying it's not sexually motivated yeah right the stabs to the groin usually is yeah 100 it's a very very strange killing and as we will see it doesn't help much when we're trying to narrow down who could have done it but i personally don't think it was edward verner still, Werner was highly respected, but he wasn't enormously liked. When people talk about him, the word eccentric comes up quite a lot. He was an atheist teetotaler,

not a popular combo at that particular time, and made no secret that he preferred his books to a hobnobbing social life. As he loved to say, the socially popular man is intellectually poor. What a nerd. Werner was odd in the way that he ran things with regards to his diplomatic positions at work, and he kind of made enemies wherever he went. Also, I think it's key to point out that this time in history, in order to become a diplomat in the colonies, you need literally no qualifications at all. You just need to have gone toat in the colonies, you need literally no qualifications at all.

You just need to have gone to one of the nine public schools. Whereas Edward Werner, I feel like, is solely dedicated to what he does. At least he goes there. He understands the culture in China. He learns so many of the dialects and the languages. He really soaks himself in. As we see towards the end, he has no interest interest in leaving even after some bad shit kicks off yes i'm not surprised that he would ruffle feathers in diplomatic offices yeah he's like

the kind of person that would be like really on it working in the third sector today and people be like why are you fucking rocking the boat we've got a sweet deal here and he's like no but we must and that is the vibe i get from edward verner like he doesn't play well with others but he is fucking rocking the boat. We've got a sweet deal here. And he's like, no, but we must. And that is the vibe I get from Edward Werner. Like, he doesn't play well with others, but he is solely committed to his intellectual pursuits. And rumours did swirl around this reclusive, thorny intellectual whose wife had died young under somewhat viewed as suspicious circumstances.

But was actually a drug overdose. Yeah, I mean, his wife Gladys dies of a drug overdose yeah i mean his wife gladys dies of a drug overdose but when pamela dies and then edward is questioned a lot of people like well what really happened which there is absolutely no evidence that anything happened to gladys other than she died of a drug overdose close acquaintances also knew that pamela's twenty thousand dollar inheritance from her mother would make its way to Werner upon Pamela's death. Which still doesn't seem like enough to rip her heart out, but, you know, you never know.

He's already got a big house. I don't get the impression that money is a big motivator for him. No. Anyway, the police kept an eye on the broken Edward Werner, but soon their fine-tooth comb search of the Badlands was going to pay off again. They had brought in a foreigner, Fred Pinfold, who had been found with bloodstains on his clothes and around his apartment.

Pinfold stayed dead silent in the police interviews, but investigations turned up some pretty interesting connections. Pinfold was known to work as security for a group of westerners who ran a nudist colony outside the city of Peking. I bet you any money that they were German. Some of them were. But the guy who started and ran the nudist colony was actually an American dentist called Wentworth Prentiss, which sounds like the fakest fucking name I've ever heard. But Prentiss's practice, his dental practice, was highly respected in Peking,

frequented by many of the top brass dignitaries. And his bohemian private life was very much an open secret around town. In the summer, Prentiss and a group of his close, respectable confidants would go out to an old temple in the countryside. They'd go hunting together and generally live the nudist life, including picnics, swimming and tennis, which seems like it could potentially be quite painful.

Yes, and I also bet they got bitten to fucking death by mosquitoes. Now, public nudity in Peking was certainly frowned upon, skirting on illegal, but Prentice and his other non-prudes made sure that the cops were rewarded for their discretion. Prentice was also rumoured to round up girls in the city to invite on these weekends, and even to host naked dancers in his Peking apartment for his inner circle. And where was that apartment? Well, it was right next to the French club skating rink. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich,

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The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Combs. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so.

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Yeah. One or the other. Yeah. Make your choice. Lucky day. Wentworth was the son of a grocer, but he went to Harvard Dental School during the war and shortly afterwards moved to Peking to set up his practice. There, he made big Western bucks, fixing the teeth of the foreign establishment. His wife left him in murky circumstances and moved with their three children to LA. Prentice stayed put and continued to present himself as a super clean-cut guy, always suited up to the nines

and always maintaining an air of sneering superiority. When police arrived at his spotless legation quarter apartment, it was freezing. He left all of his windows wide open in the middle of January. He explained that his landlord had just insisted on repainting and the window frames had to dry. Upon questioning, he forcefully denied having ever seen or met Pamela and said that on the 7th of January he'd gone straight to the cinema after work. He admitted to going out of the city on hunting trips with Fred Pinfold as well as his close friends, met Pamela and said that on the 7th of January he had gone straight to the cinema after work.

He admitted to going out of the city on hunting trips with Fred Pinfold as well as his close friends Ugo Capuzzo, which is probably Ugo, George Gorman and Joe Knauf. And yes, Ugo, George and Knauf were always naked. So finally, the police had something. Investigators were sure that these four naked men must have had something to do with Pamela Werner's murder. But just as the case was gaining traction, everything came to a screeching halt because... The Japanese took Peking. On the 7th of July 1937, the search for a missing Japanese private sparked the Second Sino-Japanese War. Japan seized Peking in weeks. Shortly after, they took Shanghai and slaughtered hundreds of thousands in the brutal rape of Nanjing,

something that we will definitely do a shorthand on when we have the mental wherewithal to approach that subject. Haven't we done it? No. No, we haven't. Why were we talking about it? We've talked about it before, but we haven't done it. Okay, how about you?

It's some of the most horrific shit I've ever heard in my entire life. So yeah, one day. And obviously the police, the armies, and all of the newspapers were pretty distracted by all of this. And the city was being run by a useless puppet government. The case was abandoned by everybody, apart from Edward Werner. Much of his academic work had been made impossible by the war. So Werner put all his fired up intellectual energy into finding his

daughter's killer. The 72-year-old gathered up all the police records, press clippings and reports he could get his hands on and went off to his beach house to pour over them. This is why I don't think Edward Werner had anything to do with it. If he did, he'd just be like, oh phew, nobody gives a fuck anymore, I'll leave it alone. At his beach house, Edward Werner wrote to the foreign office and any official body he could, appealing to them to keep going, writing, I shall not let the matter rest as long as I have breath in my body.

Edward Werner also wrote Chinese-language pamphlets about Pamela's case that he distributed in the city. And in that pamphlet, he wrote an open letter to the killer, saying, The sight of my child's kind little face, half cut away and bleeding, seemed to drag my eyes out of my head, and the shock has permanently injured my heart.

During every minute of every day, that vision has beat upon my heart. During every minute of every day, that vision has beat upon my brain. This pamphlet was the first real effort anyone had made to speak to any of the Chinese people who lived in the area about the case, revealing a massive hole in the police investigation. Obviously, the police spoke to, like, people who worked at places like bars and clubs and hotels and restaurants who were Chinese, but the actual locals.

Werner even hired Chinese private investigators. And very soon, they got a break. These investigators tracked down Han Xucheng, Pamela's old school friend, whose nose Werner had broken with his cane years before. Han had bumped into Pamela the previous week, and he was glad to see her back in town, so he invited her round. Pamela felt bad for her father's outburst, so the day she died, after ice skating, Pamela had gone to Han's house for dinner, which explains the Chinese food apart from being in Peking.

Afterwards, Han dropped her back at the ice rink, assuming that she would meet up with her friends again. Edwards investigators also spoke to the hotel receptionist that saw her that afternoon, who had revealed that a foreign man had left a note for Pamela, which she had collected. Remember that because it's coming back. Werner also learnt from witnesses that Pinfold, Wentworth Prentice's hired goon, had been hanging around on the Werners Street earlier that week. And he had learned that Pinfold had been asking around if police had, quote, got the American yet. And more than that, Werner had some damning proof against Prentice. The dentist had said that he'd never seen or heard of Pamela, but a letter addressed to Pamela, handwritten by Wentworth Prentice, just a few months before

the murder, talking about a routine treatment. Pamela Werner was Wentworth Prentice's patient. Werner also spoke to Pamela's friend, Ethel Gerwich, who revealed something she'd been scared to tell the police. When she'd met Pamela, Pamela was with George Gorman. Gorman was an Irish journalist who was part of Wentworth Prentice's little naked hunting club. And it turned out that he went way back with Pamela too. Gorman actually edited the English-language magazine Caravan, which published a long report on Pamela's death.

It listed seven main theories as to what happened to her, including attacked by a sadist, victim of a sexual ritual, and trapped by an insane person, which is very illuminating. Now, Pamela had in fact visited the Gorman family home the day before she died. And when Pamela's belongings were returned to her father, Werner found an entry about Gorman in her diary. Pamela had actually been on a group holiday that Gorman had also attended. During this holiday, he'd made advances towards her,

and she'd knocked him back. Gorman, as it turned out, had also been a key corroborator of Prentice's alibi. So Werner checked out listings for the cinema that Prentice said he'd been to an 8pm show at. On the day of the murder, the last film shown in that cinema was at 5.30. I don't think you need to be Chinese to find that out. It's a good piece of detective work, but I feel like they could have done that on their own.

So Werner was building a pretty solid case, and it was about to get even stronger. One day, as he was walking the streets of Peking, a young Russian girl ran after him, asking him if he was Edward Werner. She said that she'd been trying to reach him and wanted to speak off the record. She too had been Prentice's patient and she said that during an appointment he started incessantly asking her out and said that he would make it worth her while. And this girl had spoken to other girls who'd been invited to parties at Prentice's house, and they were terrified to speak of what had happened there. The implication was obvious. Prentice and his naked gang would invite young girls from the city to fancy parties, relying on

their standing in the community to reassure them, and then they would force themselves on them, and scare them into keeping it as a secret. And since this is the 30s, the bad reputation was only ever going to stick to the girls themselves. None of them ever said a word. So a theory was forming. And the last piece of the puzzle came from one of the first people the police had spoken to. The rickshaw puller with the bloody marine. Who was 19-year-old Sun Ti-Shing. The police had cleared Sun

after the Marine who had got in the fight and bled all over his rickshaw. But when Werner visited Sun, it was obvious to him that the boy was hiding something. So Werner offered him some cash, and now he got a whole new story. On the night of Russian Christmas, Sun had been hanging around outside the 28 Shaopan Hutong

brothel in the Badlands, waiting to pick up late-night revelers. He told Werner that he saw a car drop off two foreign men and a blonde woman. From photographs, he identified one of these men as Prentice. After they entered the brothel,

Sun waited outside in the hopes of a job when they left. At midnight, the three emerged again. The woman was in the middle of the two men, slumped over and unmoving. The brothel madam came out behind the group and told Sun to take the group to the legation quarter gate on the Tatar wall. During the ride, Sun remembered hearing the foreign woman's raspy breathing and assumed she was blackout drunk. When Sun dropped them off, he lingered around hoping for a tip and one of the men pulled out a knife to chase him away. On hearing this, the 70-plus-year-old Werner

had no choice but to take his investigation into the Badlands. From asking around, Werner learnt that Prentiss had a sadistic streak. He is a dentist, of course, and girls avoided working for him. He went to the brothel that Sun had mentioned and found a sex worker who'd been working that night. She told him that she'd heard two short yelps from the next room followed by a piercing scream and a thud. So Werner's timeline goes a little like this.

George Gorman sees that Pamela is back in town and identifies her as a mark. Pinfold waits near her house to tell her that there's a party that night. She picks up an invitation from the Wagons Litz Hotel. Knowing Prentiss, and thrilled to be invited into his glamorous adult world and wanting to let loose in her final weeks in the city, Pamela accepts. And that's of course the note that the hotel receptionist told Chinese investigators that a foreign man had dropped off for Pamela. After having dinner with Han Suo Ching, Pamela went to Prentice's apartment and after some

cocktails and jazz and polite company, someone suggests that they all go out to some bars and join the Russian Christmas festivities. But instead, Pamela was brought to the back room of a brothel in the Badlands. There, two men, one of them Prentice, force themselves on her, but Pamela fights back. And when she screams, the men panic and crack her skull. The brothel madam comes in

and, wanting to avoid the police sniffing around, forces them out, telling Sun, the rickshaw driver, to take them to the deserted Fox Tower. But not before they drain Pamela's blood in the room's adjoining bathroom. They then take her away by rickshaw and the bumpy ride jolts air through her throat and lungs, which, too soon,

could have sounded like laboured breathing. Death rattle. When they get there, the men disfigure and mutilate the corpse, perhaps in an attempt to mask Pamela's identity. Though, she is going to stand out quite a lot, and also, they left the

skate rink card on her if they did it. Now, as practice hunters, they would have known to carry knives. And they would have known how to carve up a body. For example, removing all of the organs precisely. Perhaps before they could finish, though, they were interrupted. That's why the stomach was left behind. Seeing lamplights at dawn, perhaps the men panicked and fled. They would have gone to Prentice's apartment to clean up. He later then redecorates to cover it up and opens up his

windows to let the paint dry. So it seems like a pretty solid story, but not everyone thinks so. We're going to go back to 1939 in a little bit, but now feels like a good time to talk about where this version of the story comes from. A lot of Werner's account that we have mentioned so far comes from Paul French's book Midnight in Peking. French's massive amount of research into the city at the time is really incredible, painting a picture of the city

in the last days of old China. That is, before the Cultural Revolution. The book was a huge critical and commercial success and was assumed to be the definitive guide to Pamela Werner's death. But when retired policeman Graham Shepherd read it, none of it made any sense. Having served for 30 years with the Met in Scotland Yard, he considered himself a pretty good authority on police investigations.

And when he dug into the case, he grew obsessed. So he wrote his own book, much to the delight of his wife, I'm sure. Now, Shepard and French agree pretty much on the basics. They agree that Pamela went skating and later died from a blow to the skull. But Shepard takes issue with pretty much everything else, French says. So after three years examining the case,

flying to China to look at the crime scene and visiting archives all over the world, Shepard thought the Prentiss sex ring brothel story was absolute horseshit. He said that Werner was obsessed with pinning it on Prentiss sex ring brothel story was absolute horseshit. He said that Werner was obsessed with pinning it on Prentiss, saying that Werner first selected his suspects and then paid Chinese agents to find evidence to support his theories. In Shepard's book, he says that all of the supposed evidence pointing towards French's version of events comes from Werner's private investigations,

which he puts down to unsubstantiated hearsay. Which, like, is true, there's nothing concrete. And what's also true is that poor French, if you read his book, does love to spin a yarn, that is very clear. True crime book lovers, you will absolutely know the type. He's the kind of author that tells you all about the protagonist's inner thoughts and feelings, even though he wasn't very clear. True crime book lovers, you will absolutely know the type. He's the kind of author that tells you all about the protagonist's inner thoughts and feelings, even though he wasn't in the room when it happened 80 years ago, and even if he was, he couldn't possibly know what somebody was thinking. But it is very beautifully written. However, that also makes me feel like there's quite a lot of poetic license slipping in. So, what does Shepard think actually happened?

Well, he picks up a thread that was pretty strongly followed by the lead detectives at the time, that Pamela was killed by Han Su Ching, the boy with the broken nose. So let's rewind. As a teenager, Han had come to Pamela's house to ask her out one too many times and got a face full of cane from Edward Werner. When Pamela was back from boarding school, perhaps Han had spotted her. He could have then asked her to dinner, as French theorises. But Shepard says that Han could also have approached Pamela as she left the ice rink, and that Pamela would have just walked off with

him, not seeing him as any kind of threat. Or perhaps Han just followed Pamela on her way home that night. Her journey back from the ice rink was mostly down dark, unlit roads, and when she reached the Fox Tower, there would have been no one around. Shepard believes that Pamela was killed at the spot that she was found. It was, after all, close to home and on the way back from the ice rink. And Shepard says that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one, because moving bodies is risky and it is messy. Han could well have had some kind of infatuation or grudge against Pamela, having been knocked back despite his repeated advances. And there was mud and water on the inside of Pamela's

clothes, meaning that she had been undressed and redressed, which would fit with a sexually motivated revenge killing. Still, what about those organs? Well, nobody really seems to have a very good explanation for it. Obviously, French says that Prentice's hunting gang had hunting knives and maybe they could have removed the organs. There's also suggestions that maybe dogs ran off with it. I don't know.

Shepard's theory, on the other hand, is that it was some sort of grisly ancient Chinese custom. There were a few rumours at the time of ancient Chinese traditions in which organs could be used in rituals, medicines or religious rites. Shepard cites a paper by an American journalist saying Chinese warriors used to cut out and eat the hearts of their enemies. And he points to a history of ritual cannibalism in Chinese history. Perhaps a jilted lover might eat organs to express their unique mix of affection and revenge.

Orr Shepard says it could represent the mutilation of the body to make sure it stayed damaged in the underworld. But again, it's all just a theory. The studies on all this are extremely rare. And it feels like if this kind of Chinese ritual cannibalism was really a thing, it might be better documented. It's very condescending. It's super Orientalist, to be honest. Like it's like, oh, well, it happened in China and I think it was a Chinese person therefore it must be this savage ritual by the uneducated Chinese that's thousands of years like no I hate it and those who oppose Shepard say that Han having the knowledge to make such precise cuts feels like a stretch but if you ask me wild dogs carefully running off with those same organs also feels like a huge stretch but leaving the stomach full of Chinese food.

Yeah, they don't like Chinese food. Gives them indigestion. They've had far too much of it. But, scoff we may, but these versions of what happened to Pamela Werner are probably the two best theories that we're ever going to have. So we have French's admittedly quite out there theory of the nudist grooming gang rape gone wrong, and then we have Shepard's simplest explanation but bit racist theory that Pamela was followed home by a jealous admirer

and then mutilated in a fit of jealous rage but also simultaneously in some sort of ancient ritual. French and Shepard are still duking it out to this very day correcting each other on minor details and oversights. French's view on the Shepard theory is basically that it can't account for the brutality any way you slice it. And if Pamela was killed at the fox tower where she was found where was all of her blood shepherd has fired back that since the injuries happened after death the heart had stopped and the blood had coagulated so she wouldn't have bled so much but she would have bled a bit surely anyway it goes on and on and on yeah and as much as much as Shepard represents the kind of cold, hard realism side of the feud, there are a few holes in his story too.

A lot of his problems with the Prentiss story go something along the lines of, if there was anything to it, the police would have looked at it properly at the time. Ah, come on. Now, when talking about whether George Gorman was involved, Shepard says, if the police in 1937 found no evidence to support any further interest in Gorman, then it's highly likely that there was simply none to be found. His point essentially seems to be that the police are shit-hot at solving murders, and if they didn't properly investigate Prentiss,

it's probably because he's innocent. Which is incredibly circular logic that does the police quite a lot of favours. Now Shepard also thinks it's impossible that Werner could find evidence that the police couldn't. It also, like the police did at the time, discounts the direct testimony of the Chinese rickshaw pullers, sex workers and hotel staff that shone a light on Werner's side of the case. Also, there's one more thing about Shepard that is probably worth knowing. His wife's grandfather was Nicholas Fitzmorris, the British Consul General at the time of the murder, who had run the inquest into Pamela's murder. Fitzmorris also openly hated Edward Werner.

They'd fallen out over whether Chinese artefacts should be shipped back to the British Museum. Werner correctly said that it was looting, and Fitzmaurice said Werner was going native. And academic shots were fired for the rest of both of their careers, especially when the consul failed to find Pamela's killer. So maybe Shepard, being related to Fitzmaurice, had a little bit more to gain from defending the establishment than French did. Still, whatever happened, the investigation at the time never got back on track. Han Su Ching left shortly after the murder to join the Chinese resistance against the Japanese and ended up dying in battle. The others in the naked hunting brigade also went AWOL.

Joe Canaff disappeared without a trace. And Argo Capuzzo returned to Italy to fight the Allies. He's a fascist and a nakey. Yes. The Naked Fascist by Argo Capuzzo. Oh, God. No, no. And that's really where this story ends.

Everything and everyone being sucked into a world at war. By 1943, Japan had control of most of China, and foreigners were rounded up and sent to detention camps. Werner left behind all his possessions, all his artefacts, and his pages and pages of notes on his daughter's murder, and was sent to a camp in Shandong province. Now in his 80s, he was excused from hard labour, but kept himself busy giving occasional lectures to other inmates on Chinese history. And you'll never guess who he was also locked up with. Wentworth Prentiss. Prentiss got himself a cushy job in the camp, working on people's teeth using makeshift tools. Some inmates remember Werner occasionally clashing

with Prentiss, pointing his finger across the camp, shouting, you killed her. I know you did. Why isn't this a film? I don't know. This is one of the most intriguing stories we've ever covered. Just like the time it set in, like the last days of Peking, the start of the war, the Badlands. Even just Wentworth, Prentice and Edward Werner as characters. Being in the same internment camp, that is insane. I know. Anyway, a Chinese defeat by the Japanese had seemed almost inevitable, but the truce between the Chinese communists and the Republicans somehow held. And now they had

their mates Stalin and Roosevelt to help out. And eventually, the war was won. Wentworth Prentiss went back to the legation quarter and died there of a heart attack a few years later. And despite being 30 years his senior, Werner outlived him and moved back into his old house in Peking. As a civil war tore through post-war China and the Communist Party took root, foreigners poured out of China. But not Werner. By 1951, he was one of just 30 British subjects still in the capital. He was eventually forced out and moved back to Britain, a country he hadn't set foot in for 34 years. He died at age 89 and was buried in Ramsgate in Kent.

And with no family left, his funeral service was practically empty. That makes me sad. I know. I feel like Edward Werner was a weird guy, but I think he loved his daughter and he did everything he could to find out who killed her. And was unsuccessful because of so many external forces going against the investigation. Yeah. I think it was the Nakey Dentist.

I think it was. I think my issues with Shepard's version of events is, I'm not saying it's not Han. It could absolutely have been Han. But I just don't think any of it adds up. No, I don't. Like, why would Han cut out her organs? Did he know how to do that? I'm not saying it's impossible.

Maybe he was really fucked up and he did want to do that. We don't know. But there's so little evidence of anything. Also, it discounts things like the note left by a foreign man for Pamela at the Wagons Litz Hotel. Like, what's that about? Maybe again, it was just completely unrelated. We don't know. Like, there's too many things that don't add up, I think. And the rickshaw man. The rickshaw man, yeah.

Two foreign men and a blonde woman. Yeah, the rickshaw man. I think there are still things with French's story that don't add up for me. For example, if they took her to the Fox Tower, yes, I could believe that as hunters they could have precisely removed her organs. Why bother? What's that got to do with anything? I think it's a Black Dahlia situation. I think it's a like high society. Fucked up.

Fucked up. Let's see how far we can push it because we kind of are above the law here because we have our own police. Blah, blah, blah. My only other issue with that, because I can totally buy that, is these men were running wild. They were doing whatever the fuck they wanted. Why would you target someone like Pamela Werner? She was 19 years old. She was the daughter of an incredibly high ranking diplomat.

They would have known if we fuck with her, this could bring the whole house of cards down. We just carry on doing it to Chinese girls like they probably have been doing. There would have been no consequence. But again, was that part of the thrill? Was that part of the thrill for them? I buy far more into French's version and Edward Werner's version than I do into Shepard's. But there are holes everywhere. But this is a historic case that again, like murder investigations like this are difficult at the best of times, let alone when World War is knocking at the door. So yeah, that is the story of the murder of Pamela Werner. Yeah. And you should definitely go and check out Paul French's book. I know we were a

bit harsh on it. But Midnight in Peking is a very, very very nicely written book and if you make a film i want to be in it oh it was adapted into a mini series oh by kudos film and television never heard of it so there you go great oh netflix releases first tv show set in china midnight in peking is set in 1937 i've never heard of that. Is it on Netflix? Well, I will find out and watch it this evening. Yeah. Well, I'm on a website called The Chairman's Bow. Yes, I saw that. Bow is a great name for a restaurant.

There's a still from the movie. Oh, wonderful. Not movie, TV series. It looks very made for TV. Yes. Oh, that. Not movie, TV series. It looks very made for TV. Yes. Oh, that's a shame. Well, if you want to make a good film, I can be a high society boarding school person.

There you go. All set. Or a German nudist. Pick your favourite. I'm a very diverse cast. Oh, speaking of films, I went to see Back to Black. Oh, yes.

And I have thoughts and feelings. And if you want to find out about them, you're going to have to tune in to Patreon. Under the Duvet. Yes, where I shall want to hear a full review. I did a cry. Oh, no. Okay, we'll save it for then.

And you guys go maybe watch this series, go read the book. I don't know. Do something. And eat some Chinese food. It's delicious. Unless you're a dog with indigestion. And we'll see you next time goodbye bye i'm jake warren and in our first season of finding i set out on a very personal quest

to find the woman who saved my mom's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now, exclusively on Wondery+. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey, to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental

health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space

aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery Plus or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery Plus. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today.