Recently, I was happy to see that the Redhanded Podcast had done an episode covering the unsolved 1937 murder of Pamela Werner. I was already familiar with the case and interested in it, as it has been covered in two books that arrive at very different conclusions. For those not familiar with the case, I’ll summarize. On a bitterly cold morning in January of 1937, the mutilated body of 19 year old Pamela Werner, the adopted daughter of a former British Consul, was discovered near the base of the Fox Tower in Peking (now Beijing). She had last been seen riding her bike home from a skating rink where she had spent the evening with friends, but she never arrived at the home she shared with her father, E.T.C. Werner. Although Pamela had been killed by a blow to the head with a blunt object, her body had been subject to some gruesome post-mortem mutilations. There were stab wounds covering her face, legs, and genitals. It appeared she had been undressed and then partially redressed, and there had been failed attempts to sever her head and one of her arms. Her rib cage had been split open, her ribs broken, and her heart, kidneys, and liver had all been removed, while her stomach had been severed but remained in place. The murder of a retired diplomat’s daughter quickly became another contentious factor in a city that was already a political powder keg. For all the publicity it received, and all of the avenues that were exhausted, the crime was never solved and the investigation ended up being interrupted by the Japanese invasion and what was for all intents and purposes the start of the Second World War in Asia.

In more recent years, the writer Paul French published a book called Midnight in Peking, a fantastic and very readable summary of the murder and investigation. He also runs a series called “Crime in the City” over on Crimereads, and the skill with which he invokes the time and place make it easy to see why he is qualified to write on the subject. French’s conclusions are based largely on the investigation conducted by E.T.C Werner in the years after his daughter’s murder. This theory centers around an eccentric coterie of expat men who hosted wild parties outside the city involving, among other things, hunting and nudity. The ringleader was an American dentist named Wentworth Prentice, who is recorded as having treated Pamela a few years prior to the murder. Another member of the group, Irish journalist George Gorman, knew the Werners and, in fact, Pamela had even visited with his family briefly on the afternoon before her death. An entry in Pamela’s diary from the previous year referred to Gorman making some inappropriate advances towards her. The lynchpin of this theory comes from a rickshaw driver who told Werner that he had picked up two men carrying an unconscious woman at a brothel that night, and dropped them off at the edge of a desolate stretch of land close to the Fox Tower. French posits that the men had lured Pamela to a party, plied her with alcohol (a small amount was found in her system), and then killed her in a sexual assault gone wrong.

Later, a retired police officer named Graeme Shepherd also looked into the case, and published a book called A Death in Peking. It focuses on a completely different suspect, a Chinese student named Han Shou Ch’ing who had been a school friend of Pamela’s. He had a bit of a spotty history with her family–at one point, E.T.C Werner had struck him over the head with his cane and told him to “stop bothering Pamela.” Han did have contact with Pamela the night of her murder–he ran into her after she left the skating rink, and according to his own account, they had some food together, and he  dropped her back off at the skating rink (this explained why there had been Chinese food in Pamela’s stomach, something which had previously puzzled investigators). According to this theory, the two may have had an amicable meal together, except that Han did not take Pamela back to the skating rink, but actually murdered her, perhaps out of thwarted romantic passion.

Both of these theories have their merits and weaknesses, but in my opinion neither account for the strangest aspect of the case, the extensive and time-consuming post-mortem mutilation. French points out that the suspectded men were experienced hunters, who would have known how to butcher a human body, yet this only explains the how and not the why. Shepherd speculates that Han mutilated Pamela and took her heart out of personal vindictiveness as well as cultural beliefs about removing body parts (this is my summary of Shepherd’s ideas, not my own). I remain unconvinced by either. Breaking each of Pamela’s ribs outward would have been difficult, time consuming, and messy, and it makes little sense for the killer(s) to have done this when they should have been distancing themselves from the murder as much as possible. I can only come up with three explanations: a.) The mutilation was part of the original motive for the murder, b). Pamela was murdered by one party and mutilated by another, for separate reasons, or c). The killer was trying to make the crime seem like something it wasn’t. I also believe that the mutilation was interrupted at some point, explaining why the stomach was cut away but not removed and the apparent abortive attempts to sever Pamela’s head and one of her arms.

Now, we need to take a little detour at this point to talk about medical cannibalism. One of the theories at the time was that Pamela had been murdered so that her organs could be used in traditional Chinese medicine, or that someone had staged the scene to suggest this scenario. This is a very scanty overview of a very large and complex topic, but I did want to read up on what known cases of organ harvesting actually look like, and how closely they match the circumstances of Pamela’s murder.

Now, I want to preface this by saying that cannibalism and medical cannibalism are far from uniquely Chinese. A quick survey of the topic shows copious examples from Europe, where people were known to consume tissue from executed prisoners and ingest ground-up mummy powder for the alleged health effects. In 1937, in Peking, it’s likely that the overwhelming majority of people never thought about cannibalism, much less committed it. Yet there were undoubtably practitioners of traditional medicine present too, and there are documented cases of cannibalism being openly practiced in China as late as the 1960s, during the Cultural Revolution. So as outlandish and xenophobic as it sounds, it’s not entirely impossible. And even if no one in the city was actually practicing cannibalism, the idea that there were certainly persisted, hence the theories that sprang up in the wake the murder.

According to my foray into Chinese medical cannibalism, the most-used parts of the body were the liver, arms, and thighs, although hearts, particularly those of children, were also used. This could fit with the removal of Pamela’s liver, heart, and the attempted severing of her arm. There were stab wounds all over her body, including her legs, but there is no mention of any slices of flesh and muscle being taken from her thighs. My principal problem with the genuine organ harvesting theory is not so much that there’s anything that really rules it out as the unlikely odds of Pamela being targeted. If these types of murders were occurring in the city at all, it’s far more likely that they would happen to the poorest and most desperate of its denizens. While not totally outside the realm of possibility, it seems unlikely that a well-dressed Western woman would become a target. Also, Pamela was still wearing an expensive watch on her wrist when her body was found. If someone was going to kill her and take her organs, wouldn’t they also have stolen the watch?

There is also the possibility that whoever killed Pamela did not conduct the mutilation, but gave the body to someone who would remove the organs or left it where someone might find it and use if for that purpose. This could have been the killer’s method of disposing of the body and distancing themselves from situation. This is a bit of a long shot, and again, whoever did cut up the body and leave it by the Fox Tower still left the expensive watch on her wrist.

Now there is another type of person who might have murdered Pamela for the specific purpose of removing organs, that being a serial killer for whom mutilation is a significant factor in the “thrill”, someone who spotted Pamela at random and likely did not know her at all. The infamous Jack the Ripper is widely believed to fall into this category, as are several other famous serial murderers. In this case, the organs would have been taken as trophies This begs the question of if there were other victims of this killer in Peking, and if so, there is no remaining record at this time. It’s also still unclear why this person did not steal the watch either, but maybe that simply wasn’t the top priority to a killer focused so intently on the mutilation.

What about a staged mutilation, from someone who wanted people to think that the murder was motivated by organ harvesting? This would be more consistent with someone who was connected to Pamela and wanted to point the arrow in the exact opposite direction. If we are looking at the “Prentice gang” and Han as the two suspects, this could apply to either of them, or to someone else entirely. It would make the murder look like the work of random attacker and not of someone who knew Pamela and may have been seen with her that night. It would still take longer and perhaps leave more physical evidence, but it could serve as misdirection.

There are other aspects of the murder that don’t fit with any one theory. There were the numerous stab wounds, which may have been a sign of anger on the part of the attacker, a way to ensure that she was dead, or an attempt to obscure her identity. Another thing that bothered me is why re-dress the body? Perhaps that was done to help move it, or to keep blood from getting on the killer’s own clothing. It may also have offered some form of cover if the killer was spotted moving the body, as Pamela could have been passed off as an unconscious woman rather than a murder victim. There is also some ambiguity about whether or not Pamela was sexually assaulted. Some sources say she was, while others say that there was evidence that she was sexually active but not necessarily that she had been assaulted at the time of her death.

If I had to choose between the two theories, I find Han Shou Ch’ing slightly more plausible. Part of the reason for this is that I think there is stronger evidence for Pamela having an unplanned meeting with her killer rather than a scheduled rendez-vous with Prentice and friends. She had made plans to have supper with her father that night as per usual, she had told the cook what to purchase for supper, and she even mentioned to her friends that she wanted to get home for supper as she was leaving the skating rink. If she had plans to go to a party without her father’s knowledge, would she not have tried to come up with an excuse for not being home in advance, rather than going to meet Prentice and just hoping her father wouldn’t notice? A chance meeting with Han and having a friendly meal with him on the way home is a bit more likely in my opinion. While I would still consider some members of the hunting nudist group as plausible leads–especially George Gorman–I also think there have been some valid criticisms of E.T.C Werner’s sources. He was traveling down some desperate avenues in his quest for the truth, and often paid sources to supply him with information, and much of this happened years after the murder. With these factors in mind, things like the rickshaw driver’s statement become highly questionable. I also noted that Han’s statement about dropping Pamela off at the skating rink, while entirely feasible, does bear a suspicious resemblance to the “she wanted me to drop her off a block from her house and walk the rest of the way” narratives which have come up in modern cases.

I have written this entire article in the full knowledge that neither I or anyone else will ever know for certain what happened to Pamela Werner. This does not bother me–I write about what interests me and piques my curiosity, not necessarily with the expectation of known and inarguable truth. (Paleontology is a great field for these types of mystery–it’s like several concentric Everlasting Gobstoppers worth of questions).  That being said, I lean towards theories involving Han when it comes to the named suspects, or else to a random predator who intercepted Pamela on her way home after her meeting with Han. In the former possibility, I think that Han and/or an accomplice mutilated the body to make it look like an organ harvesting situation and draw attention away from himself.  If this story interests you, you can follow any of the links in the above article for more information as well as taking a look at the two books written about it. Both are fascinating and worthwhile reads.