Twenty-nine years ago, Chinese-American Vincent Chin, age twenty-seven, died. He was murdered for being Japanese.
The Murder
On June 19, 1982, Chin and a few friends were at the Fancy Pants strip club in Detroit, having a last hurrah before he was to marry his then-fiancee, Vicki Wong. They were approached by Ronald Ebens, a white man who shouted that “it’s because of you motherfuckers that we’re out of work!”
1979 through 1982 were tough recession years, perhaps at the time the worst since World War II. Like today’s recession, there were high oil prices and high unemployment. What drew particular ire was the competition from Japanese car companies, which designed smaller, more dependable and fuel efficient cars. American manufacturers, however, refused to change their products to match consumer demand. Instead, they and many politicians begged people to “buy American;” the United Auto Workers frequently referred to Pearl Harbor while smashing Japanese-made cars at their events. Nevertheless, many companies were forced to close, resulting in mass layoffs. Detroit, the car manufacturing center, was hit especially hard. Ronald Ebens and his stepson Michael Nitz were two of the many affected. Ebens, a plant supervisor at Chrysler, had been laid off once in 1979.
At the club, he and Nitz shouted racial epithets at Chin, who was actually of Chinese not Japanese descent, which resulted in a fight. Chin challenged the white men to fight after being thrown out, but Chin and his group run away after Ebens took out a baseball bat. Ebens and Nitz spent twenty to thirty minutes looking for Chin, even paying someone $20 to find him. Eventually they found him at a McDonald’s.
Chin tried to run away, but was soon caught by the two white men. Ebens repeatedly bludgeoned Chin with a baseball bat while Nitz allegedly held Chin down. He hit Chin at least four times with several blows to the head. They ran off, leaving Chin unconscious.
By the time Chin is rushed to Henry Ford Hospital, he was already brain dead. He entered a coma and dies four days later.
“These weren’t the kind of men you send to jail”/”This happened because my son is Chinese.”
Two off-duty police officers had witnessed the murder and arrested Ebens and Nitz. Although originally charged with second-degree murder, both plead guilty to third-degree manslaughter. Judge Charles Kauffman sentenced them each to three years probation, $3,000 fine and $780 in court costs. “These weren’t the kind of men you send to jail… You don’t make the punishment fit the crime; you make the punishment fit the criminal,” he said.
The sentence horrified minorities throughout the country, especially Asian-Americans. Lily Chin, Vincent’s mother, stated their sentiments as she vented: “What kind of law is this? What kind of justice? This happened because my son is Chinese. If two Chinese killed a white person, they must go to jail, maybe for their whole lives… Something is wrong with this country.”
The Asian American community’s efforts, particularly those of Helen Zia and Liza Cheuk May Chan, convinced the federal government to file the first federal hate crime charges. Both Ebens and Nitz escaped those charges as well; Nitz was acquitted in the first federal trial, while Ebens’ conviction was overturned in a 1987 retrial.
Getting Away with Murder, Again
Although they escaped criminal charges, Ebens and Nitz – especially Ebens – faced other consequences. After a front page article about Chin’s murder in the Detroit Free Press, the United Auto Workers threatened to strike if Chrysler did not fire Ebens. Chrysler fired Ebens roughly a week after he plead guilty, claiming that it was because Ebens now had a felony on his criminal record.
Ebens and Nitz also faced a civil suit from Chin’s estate for unlawful death. This was settled out of court in 1987. Nitz was ordered to pay $50,000 to Chin’s estate. Ebens was ordered $1.5 million to Chin’s estate, also in monthly installments.
Neither Ebens or Nitz paid the court settlement. The Chin estate repeatedly sued for the funds, as the order did not allow it to garnish Ebens’ Social Security, disability or pension payments, nor did it allow the Chin estate to place a lien on Ebens’ home. Nitz filed for bankruptcy in 1986. Ebend disposed of his assets and fled Michigan. In a 1987 interview with Michael Moore for the Detroit Free Press, he stated that he would commit suicide rather than pay any of the settlement.
Ebens is rumored to currently reside in Nevada.
Lily Chin, disgusted with the American legal system, left the United States to Guangzhou, China in 1987. She died in 2002.
History Repeats Itself
On July 12, 2008, Luis Ramirez, an undocumented immigrant, was beaten to death by three white teenagers: Brandon Pierkarski, Collin Walsh, and Derrick Donchack in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. The teenagers, described as “all-American” football-playing boys, taunted Ramirez with racial slurs before and during the beating, telling Ramirez that they didn’t want immigrants in their neighborhood. They beat him so severely that brain tissue oozed out of his skull at the hospital. Pierkarski and Walsh, however, were found guilty only for misdemeanor simple assault.
Minority advocates and legal scholars have noted the eerie similarities between the Chin and Ramirez murders. Both were during severe recessions where a minority group was blamed for “taking all the jobs.” Both were engaged to be married and both died of severe head wounds. In the state criminal trials, the killers in both cases claimed that they were drunk and that the deceased victim instigated the fight. Additionally, the killers in both cases were acquitted of the most serious charges and served light sentences, considered good, white all-Americans who “weren’t the type…you’d send to jail.”
Both verdicts also galvanized their respective communities. However, the similarities end there. Donchak and Piekarsky were found guilty of all counts in the subsequent federal prosecution. As his widow Crystal Dillman said, “it’s nice to know that there is some justice for Luis.”
For more information on the Vincent Chin case please see the articles listed below.
- Comments by Frances Kai-Hwa Wang, June 19, 2009.
- Remembering Vincent Chin, Aletha Yip, AsianWeek, June 5-13, 1997.
- Vincent Chin? Remembering Ronald Ebens, the Man Who Got Away with Murder, Emil Guillermo, AALDEF, June 13, 2011.
- Vincent Who?
- With “Buy American” Back, Is Anti-Asian Sentiment Around the Corner?, Lynda Lin, Pacific Citizen,
March 6,
2009.
- Who Killed Vincent Chin?
- Mexican’s Death Bares a Town’s Ethnic Tensions, Sean D. Hamill, New York Times, August 5, 2008.
- Prosecutor in Immigrant’s Beating Death Suspected Cover-Up, CNN, December 17, 2009.
