UW murder-suicide attributed to need for honorable death

Dr. Jian Chen was seeking an honorable death and revenge in June when he walked into his mentor's office at the University of Washington Medical Center with a newly purchased handgun.

The troubled medical resident said he believed he was fated to fail as a doctor, and in a "ghost letter" to his ancestors he explained that he was committing suicide to pay off bad karma from a previous life, according to UW police records obtained under the state Public Records Act.

"I am not a bad men, but I am not a good one either," Chen wrote to a former mentor. ". . . Forgive me and forget me. It is god's will. I do not have choice."

A once-promising forensics scientist, Chen's career in medicine destructed at the UW when he couldn't keep up with the workload and began seeing his own shortcomings as a faculty plot to personally destroy him.

E-mails and letters indicate Chen intended to kill himself in the UW pathology department after he was fired and could not obtain a training position elsewhere.

But whether his fatal shooting of eminent pathologist Rodger Haggitt on June 28 was part of the plan is a question police have been unable to answer.

"When I saw that (ghost) letter," said UW police Capt. Randy Stegmeier, "it clearly indicated to me that - at least when he wrote the letter - it didn't appear that he had in his mind to kill Dr. Haggitt but rather make him watch him kill himself and have to deal with it.

"Whether he changed his mind or whether something happened there behind the closed door to make the situation different, we'll never know."

In a letter to Haggitt found after Chen's death, the resident wrote, "In this disaster I will die and you will alive. I want you confess then kill yourself."

Chen used an ancient Taoist text as a rulebook of sorts for the murder/suicide, police records indicate. The book, "The Art of War," is a 2,000-year-old treatise on managing conflict. Among the main themes: Only by understanding conflict can it be avoided.

"Chen studied Sun-Tzu's `The Art of War,' and he was the son who was supposed to succeed in the family," police noted in a report. "When he was failing, he knew the honorable thing was to end his life. He chose his time in reference to page 118 (in his copy of the book), and he knew he needed to kill himself in front of his enemy, who in this case was the supervisor who had direct control over his life."

The UW would not release the letter Chen wrote to his ancestors, saying it would violate Chen's privacy. They also would not release a written statement provided by Chen's girlfriend in which she explained the meaning of his letter.

In e-mails to supervisors and his former mentor in Mississippi, Chen was alternately bitter and self-pitying. He accused Haggitt of playing God with his life, and warned: "I will demonstrate to him and all the people like him, that when real god shows the power, they are nobody and lost everything within a second."

"I do not have any intention to make any trouble," he continued. "However, I will do not allow people destroy me like that."

William Powell, associate professor of East Asian languages and cultural studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said Chen may have been acting from a tradition in which family honor is paramount.

"He may have felt the unjust treatment would influence the honor of his family, and he was going to protect it," Powell said. The letter in which Chen advised his ancestors of his impending actions also is based in traditional Chinese culture, he said.

"Definitely, one would inform one's ancestors. In big things that have to do with life and death, you inform your ancestors. That's very traditional."

Seattle Times staff reporter Eli Sanders contributed to this report.