Born to Kill (44 page)

Authors: T. J. English

BOOK: Born to Kill

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The same mentality that treated an international smuggling conspiracy based on the exploitation of Asians as if it were less newsworthy than, say, a mob war between rival Mafia families in Brooklyn, has helped make it possible for Chinese and Vietnamese gangs to continually regenerate. When speaking frankly, most federal agents and cops admit that their mandate as lawmen is all too often determined by what the media and, by extension, the public designate as a priority. Only recently, with the discovery of massive shipments of heroin being transported into the United States by Chinese syndicates, has the issue of Asian organized crime been labeled a significant national problem.

One federal agent determined to keep the subject on the front burner is Dan Kumor, who made a number of valuable community contacts through his six-month-long immersion into the world of the BTK. In December 1993, Kumor made the most of his newfound expertise. After a long investigation, he and other members of a joint ATF-NYPD task force arrested fifteen members of a gang known as the Tung On. The most notable of those charged on a multitude of federal RICO
violations was none other than Paul Lai, adviser-for-life of the Tsung Tsin Association, one of Chinatown's most influential tongs.

Three years earlier, Paul Lai was among those who gathered at police headquarters during the unprecedented meeting among City Hall, the police, and community leaders to discuss the gang problem in Chinatown. At the meeting, Lai had been the first business leader to speak up; he condemned the rash of gang crimes then being perpetrated by the BTK. Lai claimed he was motivated by a desire to protect the image of the community. If the indictment filed by the U.S. government was accurate, Lai's real motivation was to apply political and police pressure to eliminate a vexing rival: the BTK.

The case against Paul Lai and other members of the Tung On gang was unique. In the past, many Chinatown gang members had been prosecuted at the state and federal levels. Since the mid-1980s, dozens of young gangsters had paid the price for their involvement in the underworld. Never, however, had an attempt been made to clearly establish a criminal link between a powerful tong bossâa “reputable” community elderâand the day-to-day operations of a Chinatown street gang.

The indictment alleged that Lai “relied on the gang's use of violence to maintain the prestige of the Tung On and Tsung Tsin Associations vis-Ã -vis other Chinatown business and criminal groupsâ¦. Among other things, gang members slept and held their secret initiation ceremonies in the Tung On Association, regularly met in both Associations to plan murders, assaults, firebombings and extortions, and provided security for an illegal gambling operation housed in the basement of the Tsung Tsin Association.”

Of course, neighborhood merchants, the cops, and citizens in the know were well aware that Paul Lai's relationship with the Tung On gang was not atypical. Traditionally, the primary function of youth gangs in Chinatown has always been to do the dirty work for an older, socalled legitimate stratum of the business community. But no one had ever tried to prove it in court. The prosecution of Paul Lai had the potential to rock Chinatown to its foundations, to significantly alter the area's criminal hierarchy for the first time ever, perhaps changing irrevocably the way the local underworld conducts business.

As for Vietnamese gangsters in Chinatown and beyond, there was
little doubt that the prosecution of David Thai and his minions had dealt a devastating blow to the single most notorious gang in their midst. Seven months after their conviction, the BTK gang members received the ultimate adjudication. Thai and his right-hand man, Lan Ngoc Tran, were given multiple life sentences without the possibility of parole. The others received slightly less harsh sentences ranging from twelve to sixty years.

In the end, perhaps the most significant result of the government's successful prosecution of the BTK was that David Thai had been stopped before he was able to fulfill his most ambitious schemes.
Anh hai
would never be able to further cultivate his relationship with “the Italians,” as he had planned. And he would never again forge ties with the country's larger Vietnamese underworld, with the hope of one day establishing himself as the leader of a vast multistate network of young, wayward criminals.

That network, howeverâthe less savory representatives of a lost generation of Vietnamese youthâremained relatively unaffected by the conviction of eighteen BTK gang members, who either copped a plea or were found guilty in court. The circumstances surrounding the creation of this underworld still exist as a gaping wound on the body politic, both in the United States and half a world away in the Republic of Vietnam. Despite improving diplomatic relations between the United States and its former arch-enemy, shell-shocked refugees continue to flee the Land of the Ascending Dragon. Once in America, they drift aimlessly, with few points of entry into a society that, historically, has rarely been receptive to “their kind.”

Into the early months of 1994, merchants and citizens were still being victimized by young Vietnamese-born gangsters at an alarming rate. The International Association of Asian Crime Investigators bimonthly newsletter still contained information about criminal activity and violent fugitives from California, Texas, Virginia, Massachusetts, and other states. There is no way of knowing exactly how many gang members there are spread throughout the United States, but the IAACI estimates thousandsâmaybe tens of thousands.

For Dan Kumor and other lawmen who received a crash course in Asian organized crime through the first successful investigation of a
major Vietnamese gang, the results were a wake-up call. In New York City and beyond, the parameters of a substantial new criminal phenomenon had been defined more clearly than ever before, and the results were sobering.

For those in law enforcement and elsewhere who cared to notice, the successful prosecution of the Born to Kill gang was not the end.

It was only the beginning.

Sources

T
he following is a partial list of books that contained information and insights that were helpful, if not instrumental, in the writing of
Born to Kill
.

Of the dozens of books published on the subject of the Vietnam War, Stanley Karnow's
Vietnam: A History
(New York: Viking Press, 1983) is still the most comprehensive. Neil Sheehan's
A Bright Shining Lie
(New York: Random House, 1988) provides unparalleled insights into the American military mind-set that created and sustained the war. Also helpful was
The Vietnam Wars: 1945-1990
(New York: HarperCollins, 1991) by Marilyn B. Young.

On the subject of life in Southeast Asia during the tumultuous years of the war, there are few testaments more moving than Haing Ngor's
A Cambodian Odyssey
(New York: Macmillan, 1987), which details the author's experiences in Cambodia during the horrendous reign of the Khmer Rouge. Le Ly Hayslip's
When Heaven and Earth Changed Place
(New York: Doubleday, 1989) is the autobiographical account of a woman's coming-of-age in Vietnam during some of
the worst years of the war. John Balaban's
Remembering Heaven's Face
(New York: Poseidon Press, 1991) is a different kind of memoir, written by a poet and conscientious objector who lived in Saigon in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

On the subject of Vietnam in the years after the U.S. evacuation, two very different books were helpful: Duong Thu Huong's
Paradise of the Blind
(New York: William Morrow, 1993), a novel that beautifully evokes the colors, sounds, and textures of Vietnamese culture, and Neil Sheehan's
After the War Was Over
(New York: Random House, 1992), a telling examination of, among other things, the political failures of Vietnam's postwar government.

Not much has been published in the United States on the subject of the refugee camps, although
Ban Vinai: The Refugee Camp
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), by Lynellyn D. Long, is an excellent source of information, particularly on the camps in Thailand.

The Asian experience in America has been the subject of numerous books, including a poignant memoir by Nguyen Qui Duc titled
Where the Ashes Are: The Odyssey of a Vietnamese Family
(New York: Addison-Wesley, 1994). Ronald Takaki's
Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans
(New York: Little, Brown, 1989) provides an informative overview of Asian immigration. Le Ly Hayslip's
Child of War, Woman of Peace
(New York: Doubleday, 1993) continues where her first book left off by recounting the author's years as a Vietnamese refugee trying to adjust to life in America.

Two works of fiction by Robert Olen Butler were especially inspiring, both for their insights into the Vietnamese experience in America and the exquisite quality of the writing:
A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
(New York: Henry Holt, 1992), a collection of short stories, each narrated in the voice of a different Vietnamese refugee living in the United States, and
The Deuce
(New York: Henry Holt, 1989), a fictional account of an Amerasian teenager living on the streets of New York City.

Considering that the Chinatowns of America have been around for more than a century, not many books have been published on the subject. However, two recent booksâ
The New Chinatown
(New York: Noonday Press, 1987), by Peter Kwong, and
Chinatown: Portrait of a Closed Society
(New York: HarperCollins, 1992), by Gwen Kinkeadâ
examine the social and historical forces that have shaped the “Gilded Ghetto.”

The subject of Asian organized crime is one that will no doubt be receiving more attention in the years ahead. Of the books already published, Herbert Asbury's venerable
The Gangs of New York
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927) contains a chapter on Chinatown's early tong wars. Gerald Posner's
Warlords of Crime
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988) gives a broad overview of Asian organized crime, focusing mostly on the heroin trade.
Nightmare: Vietnamese Home Invasion Robberies
(Falls Church, Va.: International Association of Asian Crime Investigators, 1992), by Phil Hannum, is a case-by-case look at an especially brutal form of criminal activity.
Chinese Subculture and Criminality
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1990), by Kolin Chin, is a small gemâthe most detailed study to date on the sprawling subject of triads, tongs, and Asian gang culture in the United States.

Index

ABCs,
77
,
78

Agent Orange,
18

AK&Y Laundromat,
255â256

Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Bureau of (ATF):

emerging crime groups handled by,
166
,
252

history of,
164â166

Jersey City gun-trafficking case of,
131â132
,
133
,
160

Major Case Squad liaison with,
131â132
,
138â142
,
160
;
see also
ATF/NYPD joint investigation

Manhattan offices of,
160

other Justice Department divisions vs.,
164â166
,
217

Prohibition activities of,
165