Wah Mee Killer Avoiding Death -- 16 Years After Gambling-Club Massacre, Mastermind's Fate In A Legal Quagmire

Sixteen years to the day since her sister was murdered in the Wah Mee massacre, Jeannie Robertson's grief is still diamond bright.

"It's been so very, very long," says the Fall City woman as the tears come. "It's like nobody cares anymore."

Indeed, memories of Washington's worst mass murder have long since faded. Most of the police who stumbled into the Chinatown International District gambling club in the early morning of Feb. 19, 1983, to find a slaughterhouse - 13 dead, hog-tied and executed on a blood-washed linoleum floor - have long since retired. The only survivor, Wai Chin, an aged card dealer whose testimony was crucial in bringing the killers to justice, died half a decade ago.

But Kwan Fai "Willie" Mak, the man convicted and once sentenced to die as the Wah Mee mastermind and triggerman, remains very much alive. And given the legal quagmire bogging down the state's efforts to put him back on death row, Mak, now 38, will likely continue to draw breath for a long time to come.

The deep irony in all of this is that Mak's legal - and literal - survival is due in great degree to the refusal of federal investigators to give Mak evidence two courts say he deserves - the identities of a pair of secret informants.

That irony is sharpened by the fact those same federal agents and prosecutors almost certainly would like to have justice delivered to Mak at the end of a needle or a noose.

Yet, unless the federal government changes its legal course - which seems unlikely - it is providing Mak with an almost sure-fire challenge to any new death sentence he might receive.

"I never thought the number of years for the retrial would outnumber the victims," said Tim Bradshaw, a King County prosecutor.

"It's frustrating. Incredibly so. All I want to do is go into a courtroom and try this thing," sighs his partner, Craig Peterson, also a county prosecutor. Both are dedicated to seeing Mak pay for Wah Mee with his life - no matter how long it takes.

Both also concede that won't happen any time soon.

"I suspect I'll be long-since retired by the time this is all finally resolved," said Peterson who, at 40, is among the second generation of prosecutors in the case.

Taped to the wall behind his desk is a diagram of the Wah Mee crime scene, a constant reminder of the sheer viciousness of the crime. Six bulging file boxes, each simply labeled "Mak," sit on a sideboard in his office.

"There are 40 others downstairs," said Peterson. "They're here to remind me this case is still alive."

Sentenced to die

Mak was convicted and sentenced to die in 1984 after a King County jury decided that, of the three killers who entered the club that night, he was most culpable. The others, Benjamin Ng and Tony Ng (no relation), received life sentences.

But in 1991, U.S. District Judge William Dwyer found that Mak's attorneys had failed to provide an adequate defense during the penalty phase of his trial. While his 13 murder convictions were upheld, Dwyer vacated Mak's death penalty and ordered a new sentencing hearing.

So far, efforts to convene that hearing have been stymied, first by an appeal of Dwyer's ruling by prosecutors and now by a lawsuit filed in 1996 by Mak against the FBI and the Department of Justice.

The issue is secrecy. The FBI has refused to identify the pair of confidential informants Mak's attorneys insist could lend credence to Mak's claim that the slayings flared from a smoldering rivalry between two social clubs - or, tongs - in what was known as Chinatown.

If true, Mak could claim the killings were tong driven and not solely his idea - a subtle legal distinction that could sway a jury to spare his life. Similar arguments worked for the Ngs in their trials.

The FBI and prosecutors say they thoroughly investigated and ultimately discounted any organized-crime involvement. They insist Mak and the Ngs were nothing more than two-bit bandits who, in the course of robbing the club, decided that the dead tell no tales.

"There is simply no evidence that this was anything more than three guys going into a gambling club, robbing it and killing everybody," Peterson said.

To those who walked into the club early that morning, like retired Seattle police homicide Capt. Mike Slessman, the killings remain unrivaled in their senseless brutality.

"It was unreal. You just thought, `This can't be,' " Slessman recalled. "They just slaughtered those people."

In cold blood

The killers walked into the Wah Mee through a set of steel doors that opened onto Maynard Alley South, not far from the Kingdome. Mak and Benjamin Ng were regulars at the high-stakes gambling club, which once operated as a "B-grade cocktail lounge," according to news reports at the time.

They ordered the gamblers and workers gathered around a trio of felt-topped tables to the floor on their bellies in clusters of three or four, with their hands and legs hog-tied with nylon rope. It appeared, Slessman said, that most of the patrons cooperated, apparently thinking they would be robbed but otherwise unharmed. Then Mak and the Ngs, according to the testimony of Wai Chin, went from patron to patron, shooting each at least twice in the head.

The killers had to reload at least once - 32 rounds were fired from two small-caliber handguns.

Among the dead was 47-year-old Jean Mar, Jeannie Robertson's big sister and the only woman in the club. For some reason, the killers draped a towel over her head. Mar's husband was also murdered that night. Many of the other victims were family friends.

"I can't tell you how much we miss them. . . . I can't even think about how they died," Robertson said. "Even after all these years, I still find myself talking out loud to her, telling her how my day's going, hoping she won't find out when I've done something awful."

Murders investigated

The killings were discovered when Wai Chin, critically wounded and bleeding, slipped his bonds and stumbled into the street.

As news of the murders roared through the Asian community, the FBI opened an investigation into possible organized-crime involvement. Gambling and protection rackets were common in Chinatown at the time, and tong rivalries sometimes flared into violence.

The theory seemed promising, since agents learned that Mak and the Ngs belonged to one tong, while its rival operated the Wah Mee.

A task force was formed, and agents pursued that angle for several weeks before discounting any gang connection. At that point, the FBI bowed out of the investigation.

Even so, the FBI has refused to identify the informants to this day. Indeed, the identity of one of them - called "C-1" in court documents and described as a "foreign counterintelligence informant" - is considered a national secret. That designation was reviewed and upheld as recently as two years ago, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Kipnis, who heads the Seattle office's civil division.

The other informant's name is being withheld on a 16-year-old promise to keep it confidential.

A right to the information

Those arguments ring hollow to Kathryn Ross, Mak's attorney. Some vague promise of anonymity to one informant and a bureaucratic wall built around the other should not weigh against a man's life, she insists.

"A person on trial for his life should have the right to present and obtain all of the evidence that may argue in favor of mitigating that sentence," she said. "Under the circumstances of this case, after all of these years, what national security interest could there actually be?"

The FBI and the Justice Department can't even answer that question without potentially violating the secrecy edict, said Kipnis.

But by not giving the defense access to the informants, so a judge or jury can weigh their credibility, the federal government could be dooming any new death penalty for Mak before it is even handed down.

"If Mr. Mak is not able to obtain evidence which is in the government's possession and is relevant and helpful to his defense, and he were again sentenced to death, that would undoubtedly be raised as an issue on appeal" - just as it was in 1991, said Ross. She's of a mind that the government's efforts to protect C-1's identity stem as much from inertia as national security.

"There is just this huge bureaucracy that has regulations that are inflexibly applied," she said. "They don't seem to have the mechanism to make adjustments in individual cases, even when it seems like it would be called for to do so."

As for the other informant, known as "C-3," the FBI still feels obligated to keep its promise of anonymity, Kipnis said. The informant declined an offer, made through the FBI, to submit to questioning by Mak's lawyers.

Kipnis said the best the FBI can do is turn over a synopsis of the information culled from the informants - which was done early on in the case.

No end in sight

Though Mak's federal lawsuit is grinding to a conclusion - a federal judge is expected to rule sometime this spring - there is no indication that that will be the end of it, because whoever loses is likely to appeal.

The state court has made clear where it falls on the issue - though it has no say in the outcome of the federal lawsuit. Superior Court Judge Laura Inveen, who will preside over any new penalty hearing, insisted more than two years ago that "Informant C-1 should be disclosed. He possesses information relevant and helpful to the defense."

There are other telling rulings on the issues. The 9th Circuit, when it refused to reinstate Mak's death penalty, ruled the trial court committed an error of "constitutional proportions."

Robertson: no justice

Meantime, King County's Peterson and the families of those murdered at Wah Mee remain little more than spectators as the case wears on and memories of Wah Mee dim.

It would be easier, Peterson concedes, to simply drop the efforts to reinstate the death penalty. Mak is, after all, currently serving 13 life sentences.

But "that's not an option," he says flatly. "This is perhaps the most heinous crime in this state's history."

As for Jeannie Robertson, she long ago accepted there is no justice for the murders of her loved ones.

"That man took so much from us, I'm just not going to give him any more," said Robertson. "There is no justice as we perceive it should be. We just try not to think about it. It's better just to go on."