Late on the night of February 12, 1914, a shadowy figure loitered behind the house at 220 East Madison in Phoenix’s Chinatown. While he waited for the people in the house to retire, he smoked a cigarette, emptied several spent cartridges from his revolver and reloaded.
Around midnight, he pried open the door to the screened porch and crept inside. A man was sleeping there, bedclothes drawn up to his chin against the nighttime chill. From only a few feet away, the gunman shot the unarmed man in the head, then fled into the darkness.
Awakened by the sound of the gunshot, neighbors summoned law officers. They identified the victim as Wong Fong, a 23-year-old barber. The house on Madison was the home of a prosperous Chinaman named Wong Fie, who may have been a relative of the deceased man. At the time of the murder, Wong Fie was not at home. The third occupant of the house was Wong Fie’s twenty-year-old wife, Quock Young. So who had killed Wong Fong, and why?
Born in China, Wong Fong had been in the United States for at least six years. While living in Globe, Arizona, he had converted to Christianity and had attended a Lutheran mission school there. His facility with both English and Cantonese was such that he had even been considered for a post at a Lutheran mission school in Shanghai. For the past eleven months, however, he had been living in Wong Fie’s household in Phoenix--long enough for him to have fallen in love with his kinsman’s much younger wife.
Presumably, Quock Young returned his affections, for she claimed that she had asked Wong Fie for a divorce. She recounted that Wong Fie, furious at his possible ‘loss of face’, had withdrew a large sum of cash from the bank and gone to Morenci, ostensibly to consult the marriage broker who had arranged his match with Quock Young.
When the coroner’s jury was empaneled the next day, Rev. Frey, a local Lutheran minister, presented a letter which he said he had received from Wong Fong on the very day of his death. It read, “When I am killed, arrest Wong Fie.” But Wong Fie had an alibi; he was visiting a friend at the time that Wong Fong was murdered.
Evidence at the crime scene suggested that someone had lain in wait for Wong Fong for at least an hour. On the strength of his alibi, Wong Fie was released from custody. While the newspapers made much of the ill-fated romance, Coroner C. Johnstone had no choice but to rule that Wong Fong had met his death at the hands of an unknown assailant.
On March 10th, Wong Fong was buried in the Chinese section of City/Loosley Cemetery. His murderer was never apprehended. Quock Young seems to have reconciled with her husband, for she was seen in Phoenix months later, wearing several gold rings and necklaces. Evidently Wong Fie still held her—and her silence?—in high esteem.
- by Donna Carr
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