Episode 6: A Sense of Order from The Chinatown Sting

Bad Women Presents Stolen Sister

Pushkin Industries

True Crime, History

4.6 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 14 October 2025

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After five days of deliberation, a jury finally returns a verdict in the case of Johnny Eng. Its ultimate meaning depends on whom you ask — and the lessons it taught the justice system may already be forgotten.

For more:

Mike Moy’s memoir book Bad to Blue and his Chinatown Gang Stories channel on YouTube.

Rong Xiaoqing’s article in Documented, "Ghosts of Chinatown."

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	It was the spring of 1988, northwestern Alabama.
0:04.5	A preacher commits a sin, a deeply personal transgression.
0:09.2	And from there, everything spirals out of control.
0:12.6	The amount of damage this man did is incalculable.
0:16.6	It's still damaging all of us.
0:19.3	It still hurts us to think about it.
0:21.4	From Revisionous History, this is The Alabama Murders.
0:25.5	Listen to Revisionous History, The Alabama Murders, Anyway You Get Podcasts.
0:33.6	Pushkin.
0:41.1	Pre-Pesitioned. Pushkin. Previously on the Chinatown Sting.
0:44.3	When the verdict was coming in
0:47.1	and the summations and rebuttals were happening,
0:51.4	I was in intensive care with the new baby.
0:55.6	One of the things that was so amazing to me about Johnny Yang is he looks so young until you see him in person.
1:04.0	You forget what a baby-faced gangster could look like.
1:09.4	It was a case that truly, if you didn't believe the cooperators, you didn't have
1:14.3	enough evidence to convict the defendant.
1:20.3	On Thursday, December 10th, 1992, 12 jurors filed out of a small wood-paneled courtroom in Brooklyn.
1:28.9	They were about to begin deliberating the 17 federal criminal charges against Johnny Yang.
1:36.3	Among the charges that he'd coordinated the smuggling of heroin from Asia to the U.S. via a bean sprout washing machine.
1:45.4	Other charges were related to him smuggling heroin through mail packages.
1:50.2	But the biggest count was the first one, that Johnny Yang was, quote,
	...

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