Underground_Network
April 2nd, 2010, 02:58 PM
Convenience
Four days ago something strange happened on Seventeenth Street. My name is Terrence Delgado and I am a detective for the Wichita Police Department, and what happened four days ago has to be one of the strangest crimes, if you can call what happened a “crime,” that I have ever investigated. I was made lead investigator for the case, and well, here’s what happened:
On the corner of Seventeenth Street is a convenience store, owned by Wang Dao, named “Master Wang’s.” At that very convenience store, a dull, faded white from the outside, not the most attractive place, but still a place where everyone in the neighborhood would go on a weekly basis to pick up milk, fruit, snacks, over-the-counter medications, cigarettes, soda, etc. Wang was a very amiable, well-respected man. On that day at 6:17 PM, Wang, the amiable, well-respected store owner, was shot in the head: point blank, a bullet to the brain.
There were four suspects, all men who had been in the convenience store at the time. You’d think three would be witnesses and one would be the prime suspect, but that was the strange occurrence. One man, John Foster, was the first to enter the store at 5:47 P.M. The second man was James Carlisle, who entered the store at 5:59 P.M. The third man was Warren Hempstead, who entered the store at 6:05 PM. The final man to enter was Wang’s nephew, Timmy Dao, who entered at 6:10 PM. These times were acquired by security camera footage at the store. But the interesting thing is, just before Wang was killed, the security cameras cut out: at exactly 6:16 PM, the cameras went dead and stopped recording. It was determined that the cameras were manually shut off, but it was most likely by the use of some sort of jamming device. It was also determined that the shooter had to have been either over the counter and right in front of Wang, or in front of the counter, but still directly in front of him, based on how he was shot and where the bullet entered and exited his skull.
But rather than bore you with those specifics, let me explain the testimony of each man, everyone whom denies they were the shooter, but also everyone of whom refuses to indicate who the actual shooter was:
John Foster was dressed in a black suit with black suit pants and a blue and red striped tie. He was wearing sneakers though, which completely threw off his appearance as a “gentleman.” His sneakers were white and blue Nikes. He was a very nervous man and throughout his interview he kept tapping his foot, scratching the back of his neck, and tugging at the top of this tie, as if overheated or distressed in some way. Foster explained that when Wang was shot he was in the far end of the store, looking at magazines. At first he refused to say which magazines, as the magazine section is large and giving an exact location would help investigators determine where he was truthfully, in regards to the other men, and whether or not he seriously could not have viewed the shooter or at least witnessed Wang collapse. After nearly an hour of interrogation he broke down and claimed he had been looking through the Maxim and Playboy magazines. He claims he was recently divorced due to an affair and that he’s a sex addict. He claims he’s been to clinics in the past but they haven’t helped. He claims that he saw the convenience store while patrolling the town, looking for a prostitute. He went in there to take his mind off things. He claimed he had never touched a gun in his life. Despite his nervousness, he seemed very cool and collected while repeating his story to investigators. He was very believable and viewed as the least likely to be guilty of the crime, but still, we held him in the station just as long as we held all of the others.
The second man to enter, James Carlisle, was dressed in a sleeveless white shirt and a pair of faded blue jeans ripped at the knees. He also wore a Royals cap on his head, with the tip pointed upward towards the sky. He was the only one of the four men to have entered to have had a prior criminal record. Interestingly enough, it was for robbing a convenience store seven years ago, just a street over from where Wang’s is. James claims he’s changed since then, even telling the investigators to call him James instead of “Jimmy Boy,” as he had been referred to prior to his conviction seven years ago. James claims that of the other three men he only knew a little bit about Wang’s nephew, Timmy. James says he and Timmy were friends for awhile before his conviction, but that upon returning home from prison just over a year ago, he had never interacted with Timmy. James claimed that when in the store he was behind a rack that was just in front of the counter, looking at fruit candy. He claims the reason that he hadn’t purchased anything yet is that he appears young and didn’t have an ID, but he really wanted cigarettes. He knew Wang was strict about selling cigarettes and required everyone, besides those who he could tell for certain were over twenty-one, which usually only included senior citizens, to show him ID. James, despite being twenty-nine, stands only five-foot four and has a youth-filled face with rosy red cheeks, a small, rounded nose and very small, curved ears. His bright blonde hair also gives him an appearance of youth and even of innocence. He claims that he has been mistaken in the past for being under the age of eighteen, despite being well over a decade older, so he claims what he usually does is wait until a line builds up so the store owner is more distracted and less likely to check the ID of every customer passing by asking for cigarettes. James claims that he heard the shot go off but denies seeing anyone near the counter or witnessing the clerk collapse from the gunshot wound. He claims that once he heard the gunshot he ran out of the store, out of fear of being shot himself. Since the camera was turned off at 6:16 PM and he ran out after the gunshot, there was no camera footage to prove or refute his claim, though investigators were suspicious of him either way, especially due to his prior conviction, and the air of arrogance with which he spoke to them about his location and actions while in the store.
Warren Hempstead was the third man to enter the store. Weighing more than three hundred pounds and always carrying around an expression that had cluelessness written all over it, Hempstead was a very unlikely suspect. Hempstead wore a bulky green sweater and grey sweat pants that tightly fit his thick waist. Hempstead claims upon entering the store he went to the snack rack on the far left side of the store, and despite being parallel to the counter where Wang was shot, claims to have seen nothing. He appears to be very distraught, though not necessarily nervous. He continually says he has to be somewhere by midnight, though he will not say where. He claims he was trying to decide whether to buy BBQ chips or cracked pepper ones. He claims in the end he decided he would buy both, but just as he came to that conclusion, a gunshot went off. He could not come up with an explanation as to what he found himself doing as the gunshot went off, but he claims afterward he cowered in the corner of the store, which can be confirmed, as that is where police found him when they arrived on the scene.
Timmy Dao was the fourth man to enter the store, and by far the most interesting character of them all. Entering the store only minutes before his uncle was killed, Timmy wore a Houston Rockets jersey with the name “McGrady” on the back, black shorts with red stripes on the sides, and a gold chain around his neck that had the word “Superstar” attached to it, inscribed in golden block lettering. Timmy had a minor gang affiliation with The Torreros, a gang from a town over who had some “turf” in Wichita, but for the most part Timmy was a drug user, not a dealer, and didn’t do much more than purchase drugs, get high off of them, and eat and sleep. Dao was shaking the whole time but spoke in a very serious and almost sardonic tone. He claimed that when he walked in he saw “Jimmy Boy” and went immediately over to say hi to him. He said that turned into a minor altercation, as Jimmy Boy refused to talk to him and told him repeatedly to “leave him alone.” Timmy says after that he went toward the counter to greet his uncle, but as he did a twenty dollar bill slipped out of his pocket. He claims he leant over to pick it up off the ground, and just when he did the shot rang out. Investigators had a large amount of trouble believing this, but…
When James was asked if Timmy approached him he said yes. And when James was asked if he had told Timmy repeatedly to “leave him alone” he also said yes. When James was asked if Timmy had been leaning over when the shot went enough, due to dropping a twenty dollar bill, James claims he “believed so.” He claims that he saw Timmy leaning over to pick something up off the ground just as the shot went off. He claims that both he and Timmy were the first ones out of the store. They shot out like bullets as soon as the shot went off. Timmy confirmed this, claiming that rather than looking up to see the shooter, he darted out of the store, carrying the twenty dollar bill carelessly in his right hand, dropping it on his way out, leaving it in front of the store. His claim that he dropped the twenty dollar bill outside the store was confirmed by James, but could not be confirmed by investigators, because when they arrived on the scene the bill was missing, though since investigators took eleven minutes from when the shot took place to arrive, it is certainly possible a passerby picked up the bill on his way out.
Based on the testimony of James and Timmy, they had exited the store as soon as the shots had been fired. The two of them seemed to corroborate each other’s stories, which led investigators to believe either both of them had been behind the killing, or both of them were innocent. They did not believe that one or the other could have acted alone. They truly did suspect the both of them, but what irked them most is that they did find one thing outside of the store, something James claims he dropped. That and the fact that no money was stolen also irked investigators. James was a convicted robber and Timmy was known around town as a petty thief, though he had never been caught. What was found outside was a bag of half opened Sourpatch Kids which James claimed to have dropped upon running out the door. He claims Timmy swung the door wide open when he darted out of the store, and that rather than keeping the door open, James tried to run through the open door, but that as he was exiting the door slammed itself closed and hit him in the shoulder, causing him to drop the bag of half-opened Sourpatch Kids. James admitted to having opened the bag in the store, and to have eaten several Sourpatch Kids in the store before Wang was shot, without paying for the candy. His cheeks flushed even redder than usual at this admission, leading investigators to further believe in his innocence.
This left investigators believing the shooter had to have been Warren or John. Of the two they though John the most intriguing. He was wearing a business suit but had no explanation as to why. He also could not explain why he was wearing sneakers along with the suit. Investigators had a hard time understanding why a man hunting for prostitutes would be wearing a suit and a necktie. But Warren was also an interesting character. He was dressed like a recluse who only exits his house to replenish his resources, and he seemed to confirm that by stating that he didn’t get out of the house much but that when he did he almost always headed to Wang’s to pick up chips, soda and a pack of gum. Warren seemed to be the easiest suspect to rule out, having been found cowering in the corner when investigators arrived. It was also he who first contacted police, though James and John both called police shortly thereafter.
John, like Warren, remained by the store after the killing. He was standing out front, tapping his foot as he did in the interrogation room, when the investigators arrived. He seemed frustrated with how long it took them to arrive and though he didn’t say much, he off and on pestered the lead investigator, he asking him if he had figured out what happened what, speaking with an air that inferred that he knew what had happened and wanted to know if the investigators had figured it out yet. While being interrogated he spoke with this same air. His hands along with the three others were tested for gunshot residue. All four came back negative. No gun has ever been found, though the slug that entered and exited Wang’s skull that was found not too far from his body, was that of a 9mm Beretta, a rather powerful military pistol. The slug was found by a glass case housing a fire extinguisher that had never been used. Of the four men, the only one with a slight military background was John Foster, who was in the marines for one year, before being honorably discharged due to suffering from a very serious case of influenza that hampered his life for a good several months. John continually denied knowing what happens, but interestingly enough, while denying that he had any knowledge of what had occurred, he seemed to smile.
But he also had something else interesting to say. John claimed that Timmy ran out of the store before the gunshot. John claims he didn’t see a gun drawn and saw no one by the counter but Timmy, which confused investigators mightily. But he claims that despite not seeing anyone other than Wang and Timmy, and not seeing a gun anywhere, he can confirm for a fact that Timmy ran out of the store before the shot was fired. He also refuted Timmy’s claim that he had dropped a twenty dollar bill and leant over to pick it up. John claims, with a laugh sounding much of exasperation, that Timmy didn’t pull the trigger but of the four men he “sure as hell was the most suspicious. “It was like he fired the gun, but he wasn’t there. That’s what it was like,” he shouted almost joyously to investigators. The investigators were bewildered by him and even made him take a breathalyzer test to see if he was intoxicated. He passed the test and left investigators, myself included, even more befuddled.
After the other investigators failed to get any truly helpful information from any of the four men, I headed in to interrogate Warren, who I had a strong gut feeling had seen what had happened, but was just scared to come forward and tell investigators. He feared someone unknown repercussions, as Wichita does not have a heavy gang population and its not one of those places where when someone witnesses a crime, they’re sworn to silence, knowing that if they speak they’ll be touted a “rat” and will most likely be killed and hung from a telephone pole, left as an example to all others of what will happen to them if they choose to follow in that rat’s footsteps. Warren spoke to me with an air of cautiousness and I could tell that he was hiding something. I worked up a conversation with him for awhile, and like he did with the other investigators he constantly interrupted me claiming he had somewhere “important to be” by midnight. By around 10 PM I gave up on him for a little while and headed to James Carlisle’s room to see if I could figure out why he correlated Timmy’s story about dropping the twenty dollar bill while John Foster dismissed that claim. After awhile James told me that he actually didn’t see Timmy drop the bill and that he wasn’t sure when Timmy left the store, but that he left it “around the time of the gunshot.” He claims it was certainly possible that he left beforehand. When asked why he lied, he told me “to protect an old friend, especially after doing him wrong there, and not giving him a chance to even say hello.” I somewhat believed him, but I believed there was more to it then that, so I headed to Timmy’s room to ask him why he had lied in the first place.
Timmy told me he had lied about the twenty dollar bill, though video camera footage taken shortly before the cameras went out confirmed that he had gotten into a minor dispute with Jimmy Boy before heading toward the counter. Timmy claims a speech was made. He told me to “ask the fat man” what happened. After that Timmy took an oath of silence and refused to speak to any of the investigators, myself included. After giving up on Timmy, I headed to John’s room, just for that fourth and final perspective I desired, before eventually heading back to Warren’s room to ask him about the speech, and put more pressure on him as the clock approached twelve.
Upon entering John’s room I saw a huge smirk on his face. He deigned a look of joyful cockiness, like he was above everyone else and was happy about it. The look caught me off guard, but for some reason I was not put off by it. I saw him as an average man. He was certainly an interesting character and I thought maybe some marbles had gone missing, but I believed that he was incapable of the crime committed. I believed him to be, “mentally disrupted,” though I did have a very strong gut feeling that he too knew what had happened, as the video camera footage showed him starting to leave the area in the back where the milk is stored to head toward the front of the store, just before the footage cuts out. I asked John whether or not he saw what happened and he could tell I knew that he knew at least a little bit more than he was letting on. John broke out laughing and said “of course, of course!” in a very loud tone that stung my ears a bit, causing me to push myself back up against the wall, and to stare with a look of confusion and slight despair at the man in the black suit with the white undershirt and the red and blue tie, that simply didn’t fit in with the outfit. His shoes didn’t seem to fit his outfit either. He was one strange man. He scared me enough with that statement that I did not dare press on, I left him to his craziness and headed back to Warren’s room.
By now it was nearly 11 o’clock and I knew Warren was getting nervous. Though he had neither a watch nor a cell phone to check the time with, there was a clock in his interrogation room. His interrogation room was ironically the only one with a clock in it, as it was the most recently constructed of the five interrogation rooms in the police building. It was also much larger than the three that the other men were housed in. It was a bit serene and a lot less intimidating than the other rooms, which were tight, overly warm and just flat out uncomfortable, not only to the suspects questioned there, but also to investigators. The premise behind this most recent room was to make investigators more comfortable, though the rosy red paint on the walls and the excess space in the room made some investigators even more uncomfortable in that room than in the others, with their dull, fading grey paint, their gray, morose tables and chairs and their escalated temperature, dry air and awful smell. The newest room actually had a filter that made it smell nice, “like springtime,” one investigator had described it shortly after the room was finished, just over a week ago. The room was heated to a perfect seventy-six degrees Fahrenheit and the air was just moist enough. But the room did not feel like an interrogation room; even I myself had trouble being serious while questioning Warren about this serious crime, upon returning there and truly taking in the vastness of the room around me.
I, after some hesitation, due to tilting my head back and rolling my neck to examine the rosy red walls and ceiling of the room I was in, and then tilting my head towards the ground and even kneeling down to get a closer look at the white and black tiled floor, that did not match the paint upon the walls and ceiling at all. I finally removed my attention from the color of the room and asked Warren about the speech that Timmy had told me about. He immediately looked at me as if I were death upon his door and almost began to weep. He said, “It’s over. It’s over,” while I looked at him with an air of intense dysfunction and incomprehensibility. I asked repeatedly, “What’s over? What’s over?” but he said not a word. I screamed at him that it was almost midnight and if he wanted to get out he would have to tell me what had happened, but he just nodded his head no, placed his head on the large oak table in the center of the room, another new addition, covered it with his hands and began either sobbing or groveling, though I couldn’t tell which.
I gave up on him and decided James was my best bet. I asked him again and again what had happened. He said to ask the “fat dude” in the corner of the store. I didn’t understand it, but then James shed a little more light on the situation. He told me to watch over the surveillance film and to take note of what happened what Warren did just before the gunshot. I watched the film and saw him pick up a bag of BBQ potato chips, and then I saw what he had mentioned I should notice. Warren saw a hole in the wall where the potato chips had been laid on a black metal shelf. James claims that just then, “it happened.”
James actually told me what happened, though he spoke in broken phrases and was very hesitant at times. To this day I still do not comprehend what happened though, though I certainly understand why the four men, who all did see what had happened, refused to tell investigators. There was a snowball’s chance in hell that they’d have believed them, that’s why. I actually did not believe James at first myself, until I asked the other three if the story was true and they all confirmed it.
This is what happened: When Warren saw that hole in the wall he saw a man on the other side. That’s just when the footage went out. Warren screamed, just after the footage went out, that there was a strange man in the back of the store, standing by that whole. Just as he screamed this Wang told him to stop and shouted for “everyone to stop right now.” Wang confessed (this confession was the so-called “speech” which the exact words of have never been revealed) just then that that man back there was a man who Wang owed money to. Wang then said “You all know what must be done,” to which everyone in the store responded with an air of confusion, except for Wang’s nephew Timmy, who immediately darted out of the store. James, seeing Timmy leave darted for the door too, but turned around to see what was going on, just as he turned around he saw Wang shoot himself in the head. How Wang managed to shoot himself in the temple to this day still befuddles me. Even how he managed to get his hands on a Beretta leaves me clueless. But all four men confirmed this story, and the two who stayed behind claim the “man in all black” who was in the back of the store came and picked up the gun and left.
To this day we have not figured out who the man in black was. No one knows who Wang owed money to. No one is completely certain how Wang got his hands on such a powerful gun. Wang’s nephew Timmy even confessed that his uncle did not need the gun, as he had a shotgun on display on the wall behind where he stood in front of the cash register everyday. That was enough to intimidate most not to dare attempt to rob his store.
John Foster claimed, just before everyone left that, “the man in black, he’s the devil! He’s the devil I tell you! The devil in man’s clothing! He wore black, not red though! What a silly man!” To this day I can’t get those words out of my head. The main reason being that after the four men were dismissed we discovered that John Foster, 24, male, resident of Wichita, Kansas, a former business man who had been through two wives and was an admitted sex addict, had overdosed on pain pills over a month ago and had successfully taken his own life, leaving a note stating “The devil has overtaken my soul, I cannot live any longer. I must go. Goodbye. P.S. Fate is cruel.”
Four days ago something strange happened on Seventeenth Street. My name is Terrence Delgado and I am a detective for the Wichita Police Department, and what happened four days ago has to be one of the strangest crimes, if you can call what happened a “crime,” that I have ever investigated. I was made lead investigator for the case, and well, here’s what happened:
On the corner of Seventeenth Street is a convenience store, owned by Wang Dao, named “Master Wang’s.” At that very convenience store, a dull, faded white from the outside, not the most attractive place, but still a place where everyone in the neighborhood would go on a weekly basis to pick up milk, fruit, snacks, over-the-counter medications, cigarettes, soda, etc. Wang was a very amiable, well-respected man. On that day at 6:17 PM, Wang, the amiable, well-respected store owner, was shot in the head: point blank, a bullet to the brain.
There were four suspects, all men who had been in the convenience store at the time. You’d think three would be witnesses and one would be the prime suspect, but that was the strange occurrence. One man, John Foster, was the first to enter the store at 5:47 P.M. The second man was James Carlisle, who entered the store at 5:59 P.M. The third man was Warren Hempstead, who entered the store at 6:05 PM. The final man to enter was Wang’s nephew, Timmy Dao, who entered at 6:10 PM. These times were acquired by security camera footage at the store. But the interesting thing is, just before Wang was killed, the security cameras cut out: at exactly 6:16 PM, the cameras went dead and stopped recording. It was determined that the cameras were manually shut off, but it was most likely by the use of some sort of jamming device. It was also determined that the shooter had to have been either over the counter and right in front of Wang, or in front of the counter, but still directly in front of him, based on how he was shot and where the bullet entered and exited his skull.
But rather than bore you with those specifics, let me explain the testimony of each man, everyone whom denies they were the shooter, but also everyone of whom refuses to indicate who the actual shooter was:
John Foster was dressed in a black suit with black suit pants and a blue and red striped tie. He was wearing sneakers though, which completely threw off his appearance as a “gentleman.” His sneakers were white and blue Nikes. He was a very nervous man and throughout his interview he kept tapping his foot, scratching the back of his neck, and tugging at the top of this tie, as if overheated or distressed in some way. Foster explained that when Wang was shot he was in the far end of the store, looking at magazines. At first he refused to say which magazines, as the magazine section is large and giving an exact location would help investigators determine where he was truthfully, in regards to the other men, and whether or not he seriously could not have viewed the shooter or at least witnessed Wang collapse. After nearly an hour of interrogation he broke down and claimed he had been looking through the Maxim and Playboy magazines. He claims he was recently divorced due to an affair and that he’s a sex addict. He claims he’s been to clinics in the past but they haven’t helped. He claims that he saw the convenience store while patrolling the town, looking for a prostitute. He went in there to take his mind off things. He claimed he had never touched a gun in his life. Despite his nervousness, he seemed very cool and collected while repeating his story to investigators. He was very believable and viewed as the least likely to be guilty of the crime, but still, we held him in the station just as long as we held all of the others.
The second man to enter, James Carlisle, was dressed in a sleeveless white shirt and a pair of faded blue jeans ripped at the knees. He also wore a Royals cap on his head, with the tip pointed upward towards the sky. He was the only one of the four men to have entered to have had a prior criminal record. Interestingly enough, it was for robbing a convenience store seven years ago, just a street over from where Wang’s is. James claims he’s changed since then, even telling the investigators to call him James instead of “Jimmy Boy,” as he had been referred to prior to his conviction seven years ago. James claims that of the other three men he only knew a little bit about Wang’s nephew, Timmy. James says he and Timmy were friends for awhile before his conviction, but that upon returning home from prison just over a year ago, he had never interacted with Timmy. James claimed that when in the store he was behind a rack that was just in front of the counter, looking at fruit candy. He claims the reason that he hadn’t purchased anything yet is that he appears young and didn’t have an ID, but he really wanted cigarettes. He knew Wang was strict about selling cigarettes and required everyone, besides those who he could tell for certain were over twenty-one, which usually only included senior citizens, to show him ID. James, despite being twenty-nine, stands only five-foot four and has a youth-filled face with rosy red cheeks, a small, rounded nose and very small, curved ears. His bright blonde hair also gives him an appearance of youth and even of innocence. He claims that he has been mistaken in the past for being under the age of eighteen, despite being well over a decade older, so he claims what he usually does is wait until a line builds up so the store owner is more distracted and less likely to check the ID of every customer passing by asking for cigarettes. James claims that he heard the shot go off but denies seeing anyone near the counter or witnessing the clerk collapse from the gunshot wound. He claims that once he heard the gunshot he ran out of the store, out of fear of being shot himself. Since the camera was turned off at 6:16 PM and he ran out after the gunshot, there was no camera footage to prove or refute his claim, though investigators were suspicious of him either way, especially due to his prior conviction, and the air of arrogance with which he spoke to them about his location and actions while in the store.
Warren Hempstead was the third man to enter the store. Weighing more than three hundred pounds and always carrying around an expression that had cluelessness written all over it, Hempstead was a very unlikely suspect. Hempstead wore a bulky green sweater and grey sweat pants that tightly fit his thick waist. Hempstead claims upon entering the store he went to the snack rack on the far left side of the store, and despite being parallel to the counter where Wang was shot, claims to have seen nothing. He appears to be very distraught, though not necessarily nervous. He continually says he has to be somewhere by midnight, though he will not say where. He claims he was trying to decide whether to buy BBQ chips or cracked pepper ones. He claims in the end he decided he would buy both, but just as he came to that conclusion, a gunshot went off. He could not come up with an explanation as to what he found himself doing as the gunshot went off, but he claims afterward he cowered in the corner of the store, which can be confirmed, as that is where police found him when they arrived on the scene.
Timmy Dao was the fourth man to enter the store, and by far the most interesting character of them all. Entering the store only minutes before his uncle was killed, Timmy wore a Houston Rockets jersey with the name “McGrady” on the back, black shorts with red stripes on the sides, and a gold chain around his neck that had the word “Superstar” attached to it, inscribed in golden block lettering. Timmy had a minor gang affiliation with The Torreros, a gang from a town over who had some “turf” in Wichita, but for the most part Timmy was a drug user, not a dealer, and didn’t do much more than purchase drugs, get high off of them, and eat and sleep. Dao was shaking the whole time but spoke in a very serious and almost sardonic tone. He claimed that when he walked in he saw “Jimmy Boy” and went immediately over to say hi to him. He said that turned into a minor altercation, as Jimmy Boy refused to talk to him and told him repeatedly to “leave him alone.” Timmy says after that he went toward the counter to greet his uncle, but as he did a twenty dollar bill slipped out of his pocket. He claims he leant over to pick it up off the ground, and just when he did the shot rang out. Investigators had a large amount of trouble believing this, but…
When James was asked if Timmy approached him he said yes. And when James was asked if he had told Timmy repeatedly to “leave him alone” he also said yes. When James was asked if Timmy had been leaning over when the shot went enough, due to dropping a twenty dollar bill, James claims he “believed so.” He claims that he saw Timmy leaning over to pick something up off the ground just as the shot went off. He claims that both he and Timmy were the first ones out of the store. They shot out like bullets as soon as the shot went off. Timmy confirmed this, claiming that rather than looking up to see the shooter, he darted out of the store, carrying the twenty dollar bill carelessly in his right hand, dropping it on his way out, leaving it in front of the store. His claim that he dropped the twenty dollar bill outside the store was confirmed by James, but could not be confirmed by investigators, because when they arrived on the scene the bill was missing, though since investigators took eleven minutes from when the shot took place to arrive, it is certainly possible a passerby picked up the bill on his way out.
Based on the testimony of James and Timmy, they had exited the store as soon as the shots had been fired. The two of them seemed to corroborate each other’s stories, which led investigators to believe either both of them had been behind the killing, or both of them were innocent. They did not believe that one or the other could have acted alone. They truly did suspect the both of them, but what irked them most is that they did find one thing outside of the store, something James claims he dropped. That and the fact that no money was stolen also irked investigators. James was a convicted robber and Timmy was known around town as a petty thief, though he had never been caught. What was found outside was a bag of half opened Sourpatch Kids which James claimed to have dropped upon running out the door. He claims Timmy swung the door wide open when he darted out of the store, and that rather than keeping the door open, James tried to run through the open door, but that as he was exiting the door slammed itself closed and hit him in the shoulder, causing him to drop the bag of half-opened Sourpatch Kids. James admitted to having opened the bag in the store, and to have eaten several Sourpatch Kids in the store before Wang was shot, without paying for the candy. His cheeks flushed even redder than usual at this admission, leading investigators to further believe in his innocence.
This left investigators believing the shooter had to have been Warren or John. Of the two they though John the most intriguing. He was wearing a business suit but had no explanation as to why. He also could not explain why he was wearing sneakers along with the suit. Investigators had a hard time understanding why a man hunting for prostitutes would be wearing a suit and a necktie. But Warren was also an interesting character. He was dressed like a recluse who only exits his house to replenish his resources, and he seemed to confirm that by stating that he didn’t get out of the house much but that when he did he almost always headed to Wang’s to pick up chips, soda and a pack of gum. Warren seemed to be the easiest suspect to rule out, having been found cowering in the corner when investigators arrived. It was also he who first contacted police, though James and John both called police shortly thereafter.
John, like Warren, remained by the store after the killing. He was standing out front, tapping his foot as he did in the interrogation room, when the investigators arrived. He seemed frustrated with how long it took them to arrive and though he didn’t say much, he off and on pestered the lead investigator, he asking him if he had figured out what happened what, speaking with an air that inferred that he knew what had happened and wanted to know if the investigators had figured it out yet. While being interrogated he spoke with this same air. His hands along with the three others were tested for gunshot residue. All four came back negative. No gun has ever been found, though the slug that entered and exited Wang’s skull that was found not too far from his body, was that of a 9mm Beretta, a rather powerful military pistol. The slug was found by a glass case housing a fire extinguisher that had never been used. Of the four men, the only one with a slight military background was John Foster, who was in the marines for one year, before being honorably discharged due to suffering from a very serious case of influenza that hampered his life for a good several months. John continually denied knowing what happens, but interestingly enough, while denying that he had any knowledge of what had occurred, he seemed to smile.
But he also had something else interesting to say. John claimed that Timmy ran out of the store before the gunshot. John claims he didn’t see a gun drawn and saw no one by the counter but Timmy, which confused investigators mightily. But he claims that despite not seeing anyone other than Wang and Timmy, and not seeing a gun anywhere, he can confirm for a fact that Timmy ran out of the store before the shot was fired. He also refuted Timmy’s claim that he had dropped a twenty dollar bill and leant over to pick it up. John claims, with a laugh sounding much of exasperation, that Timmy didn’t pull the trigger but of the four men he “sure as hell was the most suspicious. “It was like he fired the gun, but he wasn’t there. That’s what it was like,” he shouted almost joyously to investigators. The investigators were bewildered by him and even made him take a breathalyzer test to see if he was intoxicated. He passed the test and left investigators, myself included, even more befuddled.
After the other investigators failed to get any truly helpful information from any of the four men, I headed in to interrogate Warren, who I had a strong gut feeling had seen what had happened, but was just scared to come forward and tell investigators. He feared someone unknown repercussions, as Wichita does not have a heavy gang population and its not one of those places where when someone witnesses a crime, they’re sworn to silence, knowing that if they speak they’ll be touted a “rat” and will most likely be killed and hung from a telephone pole, left as an example to all others of what will happen to them if they choose to follow in that rat’s footsteps. Warren spoke to me with an air of cautiousness and I could tell that he was hiding something. I worked up a conversation with him for awhile, and like he did with the other investigators he constantly interrupted me claiming he had somewhere “important to be” by midnight. By around 10 PM I gave up on him for a little while and headed to James Carlisle’s room to see if I could figure out why he correlated Timmy’s story about dropping the twenty dollar bill while John Foster dismissed that claim. After awhile James told me that he actually didn’t see Timmy drop the bill and that he wasn’t sure when Timmy left the store, but that he left it “around the time of the gunshot.” He claims it was certainly possible that he left beforehand. When asked why he lied, he told me “to protect an old friend, especially after doing him wrong there, and not giving him a chance to even say hello.” I somewhat believed him, but I believed there was more to it then that, so I headed to Timmy’s room to ask him why he had lied in the first place.
Timmy told me he had lied about the twenty dollar bill, though video camera footage taken shortly before the cameras went out confirmed that he had gotten into a minor dispute with Jimmy Boy before heading toward the counter. Timmy claims a speech was made. He told me to “ask the fat man” what happened. After that Timmy took an oath of silence and refused to speak to any of the investigators, myself included. After giving up on Timmy, I headed to John’s room, just for that fourth and final perspective I desired, before eventually heading back to Warren’s room to ask him about the speech, and put more pressure on him as the clock approached twelve.
Upon entering John’s room I saw a huge smirk on his face. He deigned a look of joyful cockiness, like he was above everyone else and was happy about it. The look caught me off guard, but for some reason I was not put off by it. I saw him as an average man. He was certainly an interesting character and I thought maybe some marbles had gone missing, but I believed that he was incapable of the crime committed. I believed him to be, “mentally disrupted,” though I did have a very strong gut feeling that he too knew what had happened, as the video camera footage showed him starting to leave the area in the back where the milk is stored to head toward the front of the store, just before the footage cuts out. I asked John whether or not he saw what happened and he could tell I knew that he knew at least a little bit more than he was letting on. John broke out laughing and said “of course, of course!” in a very loud tone that stung my ears a bit, causing me to push myself back up against the wall, and to stare with a look of confusion and slight despair at the man in the black suit with the white undershirt and the red and blue tie, that simply didn’t fit in with the outfit. His shoes didn’t seem to fit his outfit either. He was one strange man. He scared me enough with that statement that I did not dare press on, I left him to his craziness and headed back to Warren’s room.
By now it was nearly 11 o’clock and I knew Warren was getting nervous. Though he had neither a watch nor a cell phone to check the time with, there was a clock in his interrogation room. His interrogation room was ironically the only one with a clock in it, as it was the most recently constructed of the five interrogation rooms in the police building. It was also much larger than the three that the other men were housed in. It was a bit serene and a lot less intimidating than the other rooms, which were tight, overly warm and just flat out uncomfortable, not only to the suspects questioned there, but also to investigators. The premise behind this most recent room was to make investigators more comfortable, though the rosy red paint on the walls and the excess space in the room made some investigators even more uncomfortable in that room than in the others, with their dull, fading grey paint, their gray, morose tables and chairs and their escalated temperature, dry air and awful smell. The newest room actually had a filter that made it smell nice, “like springtime,” one investigator had described it shortly after the room was finished, just over a week ago. The room was heated to a perfect seventy-six degrees Fahrenheit and the air was just moist enough. But the room did not feel like an interrogation room; even I myself had trouble being serious while questioning Warren about this serious crime, upon returning there and truly taking in the vastness of the room around me.
I, after some hesitation, due to tilting my head back and rolling my neck to examine the rosy red walls and ceiling of the room I was in, and then tilting my head towards the ground and even kneeling down to get a closer look at the white and black tiled floor, that did not match the paint upon the walls and ceiling at all. I finally removed my attention from the color of the room and asked Warren about the speech that Timmy had told me about. He immediately looked at me as if I were death upon his door and almost began to weep. He said, “It’s over. It’s over,” while I looked at him with an air of intense dysfunction and incomprehensibility. I asked repeatedly, “What’s over? What’s over?” but he said not a word. I screamed at him that it was almost midnight and if he wanted to get out he would have to tell me what had happened, but he just nodded his head no, placed his head on the large oak table in the center of the room, another new addition, covered it with his hands and began either sobbing or groveling, though I couldn’t tell which.
I gave up on him and decided James was my best bet. I asked him again and again what had happened. He said to ask the “fat dude” in the corner of the store. I didn’t understand it, but then James shed a little more light on the situation. He told me to watch over the surveillance film and to take note of what happened what Warren did just before the gunshot. I watched the film and saw him pick up a bag of BBQ potato chips, and then I saw what he had mentioned I should notice. Warren saw a hole in the wall where the potato chips had been laid on a black metal shelf. James claims that just then, “it happened.”
James actually told me what happened, though he spoke in broken phrases and was very hesitant at times. To this day I still do not comprehend what happened though, though I certainly understand why the four men, who all did see what had happened, refused to tell investigators. There was a snowball’s chance in hell that they’d have believed them, that’s why. I actually did not believe James at first myself, until I asked the other three if the story was true and they all confirmed it.
This is what happened: When Warren saw that hole in the wall he saw a man on the other side. That’s just when the footage went out. Warren screamed, just after the footage went out, that there was a strange man in the back of the store, standing by that whole. Just as he screamed this Wang told him to stop and shouted for “everyone to stop right now.” Wang confessed (this confession was the so-called “speech” which the exact words of have never been revealed) just then that that man back there was a man who Wang owed money to. Wang then said “You all know what must be done,” to which everyone in the store responded with an air of confusion, except for Wang’s nephew Timmy, who immediately darted out of the store. James, seeing Timmy leave darted for the door too, but turned around to see what was going on, just as he turned around he saw Wang shoot himself in the head. How Wang managed to shoot himself in the temple to this day still befuddles me. Even how he managed to get his hands on a Beretta leaves me clueless. But all four men confirmed this story, and the two who stayed behind claim the “man in all black” who was in the back of the store came and picked up the gun and left.
To this day we have not figured out who the man in black was. No one knows who Wang owed money to. No one is completely certain how Wang got his hands on such a powerful gun. Wang’s nephew Timmy even confessed that his uncle did not need the gun, as he had a shotgun on display on the wall behind where he stood in front of the cash register everyday. That was enough to intimidate most not to dare attempt to rob his store.
John Foster claimed, just before everyone left that, “the man in black, he’s the devil! He’s the devil I tell you! The devil in man’s clothing! He wore black, not red though! What a silly man!” To this day I can’t get those words out of my head. The main reason being that after the four men were dismissed we discovered that John Foster, 24, male, resident of Wichita, Kansas, a former business man who had been through two wives and was an admitted sex addict, had overdosed on pain pills over a month ago and had successfully taken his own life, leaving a note stating “The devil has overtaken my soul, I cannot live any longer. I must go. Goodbye. P.S. Fate is cruel.”