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Cops Find Missing 5-Year-Old Murdered in Chinese Restaurant Freezer · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: You know, usually when we talk about a nine to
• 0:01
  one one call, there's this this expectation of.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Raw chaos, right, like a primal reaction.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, like somebody's house is on fire, or maybe
• 0:10
  there's a terrible accident and the person calling is just
• 0:13
  you know, operating purely on instinct and adrenaline. That dispatcher
• 0:17
  asks a question and the answer is just desperate. It's immediate.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: Yes, it is the sound of an individual's cognitive processing
• 0:26
  being completely overwhelmed by an acute stressor right, you can
• 0:29
  hear the panic, and the panic is palpable specifically because
• 0:32
  it is entirely uncalculated. It's real.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: But then, I mean you step into the world of
• 0:37
  criminal investigation and suddenly that raw, uncalculated panic turns out
• 0:42
  to be something that can actually be counterfeited. Hm.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Just terrifying, it really is. You end up looking at
• 0:47
  a scenario where the distress is well, it's actually a
• 0:49
  highly orchestrated illusion. Yeah, and trying to parse out what
• 0:53
  is a genuine cry for help versus what is you know,
• 0:56
  a rehearsed script. That is one of the most difficult
• 0:59
  yet crucial tasks for investigators in those initial critical hours oh.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, and we see this dynamic play out with just
• 1:07
  devastating clarity in the case we are analyzing today.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: They really do.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. We are looking at a deeply
• 1:14
  complex and frankly tragic case stemming from a transcript by
• 1:18
  the Long Crime Investigates channel, and this deep dive is
• 1:21
  going to detail the investigation into the death of a
• 1:23
  five year old girl named Ashley Zoo in Jackson Township, Ohio.
• 1:28
  Our mission today for this deep dive is to answer
• 1:30
  one central driving question, which is how to investigators dismantle
• 1:36
  a perfectly rehearsed line.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: It's a fascinating process, it is.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: We're going to examine the psychology of a cover up,
• 1:43
  the overt and subtle tactics of police interrogation, and the
• 1:46
  mechanics of an investigation that suddenly pivots from a desperate
• 1:49
  rescue mission into a homicide case.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Because that pivot is everything exactly.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: We have to look at the timeline the parents invented
• 1:56
  for the world and meticulously compare it to the horrifying
• 1:59
  timeline that were trying so desperately to hide, and.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: To understand how a massive deception is constructed and ultimately broken.
• 2:07
  We have to start with the initial parameters the suspects
• 2:09
  set right. The official story, Yeah, the entire situation begins
• 2:14
  with a phone call from Aang's Asian Cuisine. This is
• 2:17
  a family run restaurant where thirty four year old Ling
• 2:20
  Zao and his twenty nine year old wife Ming Ming
• 2:23
  Chin are the only employees.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Just the two of them running the whole place, just.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Them, and they have two daughters, six year old Jojo
• 2:30
  and five year old Ashley.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: So the story Ling gives the nine to one to
• 2:34
  one dispatcher kind of sets the stage for everyone. He
• 2:37
  claims they had set Ashley down for a nap in
• 2:39
  this like sleeping nook near the back door of the
• 2:42
  restaurant somewhere between three and four o'clock in the afternoon.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: Right, just a makeshift bed.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And he says he went to pick up Jojo
• 2:49
  from school, that came back, saw Ashley sleeping and just
• 2:52
  left her there. Then, according to their official timeline, anyway, the.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: Dinner rush hit, right, so they got busy, very busy.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: They were cooking, serving customers, cleaning up, and they claim
• 3:03
  they didn't go back to check on her until about
• 3:05
  nine thirty that.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: Night, which is a huge gap, exactly, and.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: When they finally opened the door to that area, she
• 3:10
  was gone.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: You really have to consider the massive window of time
• 3:14
  they are establishing here. From three or four in the
• 3:17
  afternoon until nine thirty at night.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: It's like five or six hours, right.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: Even assuming a child is sleeping. Leaving a five year
• 3:25
  old entirely unaccounted for in a busy commercial environment for
• 3:29
  five to six hours is highly unusual, oh totally. So
• 3:32
  when Jackson Township police officers arrive, they are immediately thrust
• 3:37
  into a high stakes emergency. I mean they are operating
• 3:40
  under the assumption of a missing child in freezing winter.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Temperatures because it's January and Ohio.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: Exactly, which means the golden hour of missing persons, that
• 3:50
  critical window where a child is most likely to be
• 3:52
  found alive has already long passed by the time they
• 3:55
  even get the.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Call, right, So the police immediately examine the back exit area,
• 4:00
  naturally looking for signs of forced entry, because the obvious
• 4:03
  fear is an intruder, right, somebody sneaked.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: In that standard procedure.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but the source material makes it incredibly clear there
• 4:09
  is absolutely no physical evidence to substantiate the intruder theory,
• 4:14
  no broken locks, no disturbed areas outside in the snow. Nothing.
• 4:18
  So if nobody broke in, the immediate alternative theory is
• 4:22
  that little Ashley woke up from her nap somehow pulled
• 4:25
  open a heavy commercial back door herself and wandered outside
• 4:29
  alone into the freezing Ohio winter.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: And the absence of evidence for an intruder forces the
• 4:34
  police to activate a massive logistical machine. I mean, they
• 4:38
  don't have a choice.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: You have to assume she's out there, right, The.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: Jackson Township Police Department launches a coordinated search effort and
• 4:44
  issues a statewide and dangered child alert. And let's look
• 4:47
  at the sheer scale of what that actually means, because
• 4:49
  it highlights the audacity of the parent's deception.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, please break that down.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: Well, initiating a statewide alert is not just you know,
• 4:56
  sending out a fax. It is a logistical leviathan.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Right, break down that logistical leviathan for us, because I
• 5:02
  think people here alert and just think of a notification
• 5:05
  on their phone. What is actually happening on the ground
• 5:07
  when that goes out.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: Well, first, you have immediate jurisdictional handoffs. A local township
• 5:12
  police department does not have the manpower to canvass an
• 5:16
  entire region.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: No, of course not.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: So they bring in the county sheriff's office, state troopers,
• 5:20
  and often FBI liaisons who specialize in child abduction response teams.
• 5:25
  You're instantly looking at hundreds of personnel. Wow, then there
• 5:29
  is the financial burn rate. You have helicopters deployed equipped
• 5:33
  with forward looking infrared or FLR technology to scan the
• 5:37
  freezing terrain for heat signatures, looking.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: For any sign of a body in the woods exactly.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: You have specialized tracking canine units brought in from surrounding counties.
• 5:47
  You have dozens, if not hundreds of officers pulling overtime
• 5:51
  pay to walk shoulder to shoulder in grid searches through woods, dumpsters,
• 5:55
  and industrial parks.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: And meanwhile, the state Attorney General is put out public advisories.
• 6:01
  They are flooding the local area TV stations, news outlets,
• 6:05
  and surrounding businesses with Ashley's picture. I mean, they're commanding
• 6:08
  the attention of millions of citizens.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and while this massive mobilization is happening outside, the
• 6:14
  lead investigators are walking a very delicate tightrope inside.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: How so they have.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: To manage this aggressive outward search grid while quietly attempting
• 6:24
  to preserve the restaurant as a potential crime scene, all
• 6:27
  without tipping off the parrots.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Oh right, because they always have to look at the
• 6:31
  family first.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: Exactly, staging a disappearance of this magnitude requires the perpetrators
• 6:36
  to maintain a high stakes performance under immense crushing pressure.
• 6:41
  I mean, think about it. Yeah, they are watching police
• 6:43
  officers scour their freezing town. They're watching helicopters spotlight the woods,
• 6:48
  fully knowing the entire thing is a phantom operation.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: It's essentially a magician's act of misdirection. By making that
• 6:56
  nine to one one call and telling that specific story
• 6:58
  about the nap in the back door, Lang and Ming
• 7:01
  Ming pointed all of law enforcement's resources.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: Outward into the dark.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: Yes, they send the dogs out into the night and
• 7:08
  pointed the cameras toward the public to ensure that nobody
• 7:11
  was looking closely at the restaurant itself.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: But investigators know that when two people construct a lie,
• 7:16
  they rarely account for the exact same granular details.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: Right, The little things trip them up.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: So the strategy is to create an information vacuum. You
• 7:24
  separate the individuals, lock them into their specific narratives and
• 7:28
  look for where the seams.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Tear, which brings us to the interview room. The morning
• 7:33
  after the disappearance is reported, while this massive outdoor search
• 7:37
  is still actively going on, authorities bring both Ling and
• 7:41
  ming Ming down to the police station for official questioning separately. Separately. Yes,
• 7:46
  and Mingming's interview is particularly fascinating because English is not
• 7:50
  her first language, so the police provide a translator.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: And introducing a translator into a police interrogation completely disrupts
• 7:57
  the standard mechanics of an interview.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: Really, why is that?
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: Well, let's look at the widely used read technique or
• 8:03
  similar psychological interrogation models. These methods rely heavily on pacing
• 8:08
  rhythm and reading real time behavioral baselines. Okay, the interrogator
• 8:12
  Bill's momentum, fires rapid questions and watches for micro expressions
• 8:16
  or immediate hesitations.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: But a translator acts like a speed bump, a.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: Massive speed bump. It shatters the rhythm entirely. The detective
• 8:25
  asks a question, waits for the translation, watches the suspect
• 8:29
  process it, waits for the suspect's answer, and then waits
• 8:32
  for the English translation.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: So all that momentum is just dead exactly.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: However, this disruption cuts both ways for a deceptive suspect.
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  Maintaining a lie requires immense cognitive load.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: Right, keeping this story straight, you have.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: To create a secondary reality, ensure it remains internally consistent,
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  and constantly monitor the interviewer to see if they are
• 8:55
  buying it.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: And doing all of that in the second language adds
• 8:58
  an entirely new layer of difficult for her. But the
• 9:01
  translation delay also gives her something incredibly valuable, doesn't it time?
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: Yes, it gives her an extra five to ten seconds
• 9:08
  per question to formulate her answers to build the cognitive
• 9:12
  scaffolding of her lie.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah.
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: The detectives know this, so their goal isn't to pressure
• 9:16
  her into a rapid fire confession because they can't, right.
• 9:19
  Their goal is to simply ask her to lay out
• 9:21
  the bricks of her timeline, knowing that eventually the laws
• 9:25
  of physics will contradict her story.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: So ming Ming starts giving her narrative, and she focuses
• 9:32
  heavily on the moment her husband brought her six year
• 9:34
  old daughter, Jojo back from school. She paints this very
• 9:39
  picturesque domestic scene very deliberately. Yeah, she says, Jojo is
• 9:43
  quote very nice to me, and that every single time
• 9:46
  Jojo comes back to the shop, they hug. She makes
• 9:49
  a point to tell the detectives she went to the
• 9:51
  back door to greet her oldest daughter with a warm embrace.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: Notice what she's doing there. Linguistically, she is actively establishing
• 9:59
  her identity as a a loving, affectionate mother, right before
• 10:02
  the detectives can even probe her maternal fitness. She is
• 10:06
  planting the image of domestic warmth. It's a deliberate framing
• 10:09
  device to present herself as someone utterly incapable of harming
• 10:13
  a child.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: But the detectives, you know, they let her build that image.
• 10:16
  They just listen. Yeah, and then they press her on Ashley.
• 10:18
  They ask if she saw Ashley there at the back
• 10:20
  door during this big hug with Jojo, And what does
• 10:22
  she say? Mingming says no, Ashley was in the sleeping
• 10:25
  duck on a bed on the floor. When they asked
• 10:28
  to explain the massive gap and time, like why she
• 10:31
  didn't check on a five year old for hours, ming
• 10:34
  Ming relies on her routine.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: Her work routine.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she says, she started taking out food and cooking
• 10:40
  for the dinner rush. And because Ashley had never wandered
• 10:42
  off before, they had no reason to worry.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: See perpetrators of crimes against children often invent scenarios that
• 10:48
  entirely absolve them of active guilt. Interesting By heavily detailing
• 10:53
  the mundane truths of her routine chopping food serving customers.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: She shifts the blame like I was just doing my job.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: Exactly, The narrative becomes I was working hard to provide
• 11:04
  for my family and the cruel randomness of the universe
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  took my child. The truth of the cooking routine makes
• 11:10
  the lie of the disappearance easier to deliver.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: But then we reach the detail that completely stalls the
• 11:15
  logic of her story.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: This is crazy. Ming. Ming claims that when they were
• 11:20
  closing up the shop and realized Ashley was missing, her
• 11:23
  husband went outside to look. She says, she herself tried
• 11:26
  to open the back door and it was locked from
• 11:28
  the inside.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: That's it right there. Yeah, she explicitly states she had
• 11:33
  to wait for her husband to come back around and
• 11:34
  open it.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: That statement is the logic trap. She walks right into it,
• 11:38
  and the physical reality of the environment immediately contradicts her narrative.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: Let's run the math on this logic trap for a second,
• 11:44
  because this is where the detective's patient questioning totally pays off.
• 11:48
  Please do Okay, they have two working theories based on
• 11:51
  the parents nine to one to one call a wandering
• 11:54
  child or an abduction. Let's take the wandering child very first.
• 11:59
  It is freezing outside. If a five year old wakes up,
• 12:02
  pulls open a heavy commercial door, and wanders out into
• 12:05
  the snow, where are the footprints?
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: Exactly?
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: A massive search party found absolutely nothing outside the door.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: The physical environment invalidates the wandering theory. A child cannot
• 12:16
  levitate over snow, right.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: So now let's cuss the abduction theory. Let's say a
• 12:21
  kidnapper sneaks in, takes the sleeping child, and clips out
• 12:24
  the back door. If an intruder fled with Ashley, how
• 12:28
  on earth is the door locked from the inside when
• 12:30
  Ming Ming goes to check it hours later?
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: It makes no sense.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: A kidnapper fleeing with a heavy, struggling child does not
• 12:37
  stop to re engage the interior lock of a commercial
• 12:41
  door behind them. The math simply does not add up.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: And when the detectives point out this impossibility and ask
• 12:47
  her what she thinks, happened. She feigns complete ignorance. Of course,
• 12:51
  she says, I don't know what happened. Maybe she go
• 12:53
  outside by herself. She even tries to plant the idea
• 12:57
  that Ashley was prone to wandering, claiming they had scolded
• 13:00
  her before for trying to open doors.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: But the detectives already know she is lying.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: They absolutely know because.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: While ming Ming is in that room constructing a paradox
• 13:09
  about locked doors, investigators have already spoken to the one
• 13:12
  person who wasn't briefed on the script.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: Yes, six year old Jojo.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: And we have to look at how investigators approach a
• 13:19
  child in the middle of a massive missing person's case,
• 13:22
  because you don't put a six year old in a
• 13:23
  stark interrogation room and run the read technique on them.
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: No, no, you can't. Pediatric forensic interviewing is a highly
• 13:31
  specialized discipline. You have to avoid leading questions entirely because
• 13:34
  children are highly suggestible and often want to please authority
• 13:38
  of figures.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: Right, They'll just say what they think you want to hear.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: Exactly, so you use open ended prompts. And the night before,
• 13:45
  amidst all the chaos of the initial search, a detective
• 13:48
  managed to separate Jojo from her parents near.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: The front of the restaurant, and the detective later recounted
• 13:53
  this to the parents. He said, he just asked her
• 13:56
  one very simple, direct question, He said, where's your ad
• 14:01
  And JoJo's response is the turning point of the entire investigation.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: It changes everything.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: She looks the officer and says, Mommy and Daddy don't
• 14:09
  want me to tell you what happened.
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: Let the gravity of that eleven words sentence sink in.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: It's chilling.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: It is a brilliant, devastating piece of evidence. She doesn't
• 14:18
  confess to knowing where the body is. She doesn't explicitly
• 14:21
  describe a murder, but she confirms, beyond a shadow of
• 14:24
  a doubt, that a coordinated cover up is actively occurring.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: Think about the unbearable psychological weight placed on a six
• 14:31
  year old.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: It's heartbreaking.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: She is trapped in the middle of a massive police mobilization.
• 14:36
  She knows her sister is gone, she knows her parents
• 14:39
  are lying, and she is the lynchpin holding their entire
• 14:43
  fake reality together.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: And she couldn't hold it no.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: Her single statement forces an immediate radical pivot in the investigation.
• 14:51
  The police are no longer looking for a lost child
• 14:53
  in the woods. Ang's Asian Cuisine instantly transitions from a
• 14:57
  last scene location into a primary crime se.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: The paradigm shifts inward. Based on JoJo's statement, authorities secure
• 15:05
  the right to perform a second, highly focused, incredibly aggressive
• 15:09
  search of the restaurant.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: They aren't looking for signs of a break in anymore.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: No, they're looking for evidence of a homicide.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: And it is during the second search that they find her.
• 15:18
  Inside the commercial kitchen, there is a walk in freezer.
• 15:21
  Officers enter the space and inside they discover five year
• 15:25
  old Ashley's lifeless body. She had been stuffed into a
• 15:28
  plastic storage bin and she's completely covered in salt, which
• 15:33
  is horrifying.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: And the inclusion of salt is a detail that requires
• 15:36
  deep forensic and psychological analysis.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, talk about that. Why salt well.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: In a commercial kitchen? Bulk salt is an abundant, readily
• 15:43
  available commodity. In forensic pathology terms, salt acts as a powerful.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: Disscond meaning it dries things out right through.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: The process of osmosis. Salt draws moisture out of human tissue. Historically,
• 15:57
  this has been used for preservation, like an ancient times
• 16:00
  but in the context of a modern criminal cover up
• 16:03
  in an industrial setting, it serves a highly specific pragmatic function,
• 16:08
  which is what odor mitigation and the management of biological degradation.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: Wow, they weren't just panicking. They were actively problem solving
• 16:16
  the biology of a decomposing body.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: Precisely, a body begins the puture faction process relatively quickly,
• 16:23
  especially if it was kept at room temperature before being
• 16:25
  moved to the freezer. By encasing the child in salt,
• 16:28
  they were attempting to neutralize the biological realities of death
• 16:32
  in a space where they were actively storing and preparing
• 16:35
  food for public consumption. That is so dark it demonstrates
• 16:38
  an industrial approach to covering up a homicide. They use
• 16:42
  the raw materials of their culinary trade to manage the
• 16:45
  problem of their deceased daughter.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: So, with the body recovered, the entire zonamic at the
• 16:49
  police station flips. The detectives now hold the ultimate leverage.
• 16:52
  They have undeniable physical evidence. The game is over right,
• 16:56
  so they return to the interrogation rooms, but they deployed
• 16:59
  two completely different strategies for the husband and the wife,
• 17:03
  based on who they think will break first.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: They are running simultaneous interrogations, executing a classic investigative maneuver,
• 17:11
  leveraging the discovery of the body to shatter the suspects
• 17:14
  constructed reality.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: Let's look at how they approach ming Ming first, because
• 17:19
  they walk into her room and the gentle questioning about
• 17:22
  timelines is just gone, they drop the pretense entirely.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: They have to.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: They sit down and tell her flat out, she's dead
• 17:30
  in your restaurant. They don't ask if she knows where
• 17:33
  Ashley is. They inform her that they found her.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: This is the confrontation phase. You remove the suspects perceived control.
• 17:40
  You introduce an undeniable catastrophic truth to induce a state
• 17:44
  of cognitive shock, hoping it leads to a confession.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: But Mingming's reaction completely defies psychological expectations.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: It really does.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: She refuses to confess. She issues denial. After denial, she
• 17:54
  actually looks at the detective and says, we can keep
• 17:57
  playing this game, but you know what happened.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: She projects it back onto them.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she accuses them of playing a game. Even when
• 18:03
  told her daughter is dead in a freezer feet from
• 18:06
  where she works, she clings rigidly to the script, saying,
• 18:10
  I only can say I saw her sleep.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: Her commitment to the lie indicates a profound psychological entrenchment.
• 18:16
  When the detective tries to find an angle, asking if
• 18:18
  she thinks her husband or six year old Jojo did it,
• 18:21
  she just scoffs.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: The detective is visibly appalled by her total lack of emotion. Yeah.
• 18:27
  He finally just asks them directly, you're not even crying,
• 18:29
  and her.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: Response is a terrifying window into her mindset.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: She looks at him and says, because I can't, I
• 18:34
  don't have any waters anymore.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: It's such a strange phrasing, very strange from a linguistic
• 18:39
  and psychological standpoint. I don't have any waters anymore is
• 18:43
  an attempt to describe an emotional void. She is claiming
• 18:46
  she has literally cried herself dry.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: But the behavioral baseline contradicts her completely.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: The detective is observing a total absence of maternal grief.
• 18:55
  There is no shock, no collapse, no wailing, nothing. There
• 18:59
  is only a rigid, hollow defense mechanism. She is entirely
• 19:04
  emotionally attached from the reality of her child's murder.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: But while ming Ming is staring blankly at the wall,
• 19:10
  refusing to break Leing is in the other room facing
• 19:13
  the exact same pressure, and his reaction is entirely different
• 19:18
  night and day. As soon as the detectives apply the
• 19:20
  weight of the evidence, Leing fractures. He decides he is
• 19:24
  ready to tell the truth.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: It's the prisoner's dilemma in action. Co conspirators often fracture
• 19:30
  at different rates when physical evidence is introduced.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: Right, someone always talks first.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: Exactly one partner will double down on denial, as Mingming did,
• 19:38
  while the other calculates that cooperating is their only remaining
• 19:42
  Lifelineleing realizes the shared lie is dead, so he pivots
• 19:47
  immediately to self preservation through confession.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: And the story Leing tells the detectives about the reality
• 19:53
  of that morning is just staggering. He admits the nap
• 19:56
  story was a complete fabrication.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: The whole thing was made up.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: He says that the morning of the murder, he had
• 20:01
  just returned from taking Jojo to school. His wife, Ming Ming,
• 20:04
  was completely enraged, and the catalyst for this lethal rage
• 20:08
  Lying says, Ashley had a potty training accident. She had
• 20:11
  soiled her diaper.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: A potty training accident. It is one of the most
• 20:14
  common fundamental challenges of early childhood development. It is a
• 20:18
  minor behavioral issue that requires patience.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: Right, and the gap between a normal parental frustration over
• 20:25
  a soiled diaper and the lethal escalation that followed is
• 20:28
  just unfathomable. Ling tells the police that Mingming was furious
• 20:32
  because Ashley was five years old.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: And still struggling, which can happen, of.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Course, but in her anger, ming Ming physically attacked the child.
• 20:40
  Ling admits he stood there and watched his wife grab
• 20:42
  Ashley and slammer her. Heead repeatedly into the floor.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: He is describing a vicious, uncontrolled physical assault. It indicates
• 20:49
  a massive deficit and emotional regulation on the mother's part
• 20:52
  and a deeply ingrained pattern of responding to inconvenience with
• 20:56
  extreme violence.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: And Ling says after the assault, Ashley was still breathing,
• 21:00
  but she was in severe distress. They waited about thirty
• 21:03
  minutes and Ashley began.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: Vomiting, a clear sign of head trauma.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Exactly yeah, But instead of calling an ambulance, they took
• 21:09
  her to the bathroom, cleaned the vomit off of her,
• 21:12
  and later back down on the floor. Lenk says he
• 21:15
  left her there.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: He just walked away.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: He just walked away. When he finally went back to
• 21:19
  check on her later, he noticed she had stopped breathing,
• 21:23
  her heart had stopped.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: He claims. He attempted CPR giving compressions, but the blunt
• 21:28
  force trauma to the head had been fatal. And this
• 21:31
  brings us to the most crucial, disturbing psychological juncture of
• 21:35
  the entire case.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: The detectives asked the obvious question, when you realize she
• 21:40
  wasn't breathing, why didn't you immediately call nine one one.
• 21:45
  Lane's answer reveals what we have to call the cold
• 21:47
  calculus of the cover up.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: It's bone chilling.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: He explicitly outlines their motive for silence.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: Let's dedicate some time to unpacking the psychology of this moment,
• 21:56
  because it is the core of how the human brain
• 21:58
  switches from pairt to liability. Manager Lean tells the detectives
• 22:03
  that they discussed calling nine to one one but decided
• 22:05
  against it out of fear. He lists their fears sequentially.
• 22:09
  They were afraid of losing Jojo, losing their family unit,
• 22:12
  losing the house, and critically losing the restaurant.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: Without restaurant, he.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: Says, quote, everything in our lives that we worked so
• 22:18
  hard for for the past six years. This is going
• 22:20
  to be gone.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: They're sitting next to their deceased five year old daughter
• 22:24
  conducting a morbid corporate risk assessment meeting.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: That's exactly what it is.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: They treated her death not as an earth shattering tragedy,
• 22:32
  but as a liability that threatened their business assets.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: This requires a massive degree of cognitive dissonance and compartmentalization.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: Explain compartmentalization in this context.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: Compartmentalization is a psychological defense mechanism where the mind creates distinct,
• 22:48
  isolated zones like the bulkheads of a submarine. Okay, the
• 22:52
  flooding of one compartment, which is the motor of their child,
• 22:55
  is sealed off so it doesn't sink the other compartment,
• 22:58
  which is their identity as business owners. The fundamental evolutionary
• 23:02
  instinct to protect one's offspring is completely overridden by the
• 23:06
  instinct to preserve financial and social standing.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: Once they categorized Ashley's body as a threat to the restaurant,
• 23:13
  they had to figure out how to dispose of the liability.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: And Leing admits they literally brainstorm disposal methods. He tells
• 23:20
  the police they debated three specific options burn the body,
• 23:24
  bury the body, or throw it in the ocean, and
• 23:27
  they systematically ruled each one out based on logistical risks.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: The transcript shows their terrifyingly practical debate. Lee explains that
• 23:36
  if they threw her in the ocean, the coastguard might
• 23:38
  see it. The coast guarde if they buried her, wild
• 23:41
  animals might dig her up. If they tried to burn her,
• 23:44
  it would require a massive fire, which would attract too
• 23:47
  much attention at night and be too risky during the day.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: They are analyzing the disposal of human remains with the
• 23:53
  cold precision of criminals trying to avoid a municipal code violation.
• 23:57
  It's astounding, and remember they were in Ohio debating ocean currents.
• 24:01
  Shows how frantic their brainstorming was, yet how intensely focused
• 24:05
  they were on permanent, untraceable erasure. They needed a temporary
• 24:08
  holding solution while they figured out a permanent one. Yes,
• 24:11
  and that is when they devised a plan that weaponized
• 24:14
  their surviving child.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: The staging aspect of this crime is a masterclass in
• 24:18
  psychological manipulation.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: It makes me sick.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: Lean details how they put Ashley's decease body into their car,
• 24:25
  drove to the restaurant, carried her inside, and laid her
• 24:28
  down in the sleeping nook.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: Right and he admits they purposely arranged her there so
• 24:33
  that when six year old Jojo arrived from school, she
• 24:36
  would see Ashley lying there and assume she was simply napping.
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: They use their own daughter as a.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: Prop Yes, Leing explicitly tells the detectives this was a
• 24:45
  calculated move so that if Jojo were ever forced by
• 24:48
  the police to take a polygraph test, she would pass
• 24:51
  because in her six year old mind, she truly believed
• 24:54
  she saw her sister alive at the restaurant that afternoon.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: They planted a false memory in their own child to
• 25:00
  defeat a hypothetical light detector test. Oho thinks of that
• 25:03
  someone operating in total survival mode. They actively recruited their
• 25:08
  surviving daughter as an unwitting alibi. Once Jojo had seen
• 25:12
  the sleeping body and the alibi was seated, Ling took
• 25:15
  Ashley's body and hid it inside the walk in freezer,
• 25:18
  layering the salt to manage the decomposition, and then.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: They just open for business. The detective Aslene, point blank,
• 25:25
  you can actually cook to serve meals while your daughter
• 25:28
  was laying there, and Ling replies yes. The detective says
• 25:32
  business as usual, and Ling says yes.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: The mental bulkheads are completely sealed at this point. They
• 25:38
  are chopping vegetables, taking orders, and smiling at customers while
• 25:41
  their murdered daughter is hidden in a plastic tub just
• 25:44
  feet away from the stove.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: It's monstrous, it is, and.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: To understand how a mother and father could reach this
• 25:50
  absolute emotional void, we have to look at the history
• 25:53
  of the family dynamic.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: Because where did this intense, lethal animosity toward a five
• 25:59
  year old come from? Because Ling admits this wasn't a sudden,
• 26:02
  isolated snap, No, this was building. When investigators push ing
• 26:06
  on Mingming's history with Ashley, he reveals that the friction
• 26:09
  stems from the very beginning of Ashley's life. He explains
• 26:12
  that shortly after Ashley was born, she was sent away
• 26:15
  to China to be raised by Ling's mother.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: And it is important to note a typographical error in
• 26:20
  the source transcript rate out right the typo. The raw
• 26:22
  text quotes Leeing as saying his mom raised Ashley for
• 26:26
  forty years, which obviously makes no sense right contextually based
• 26:30
  on the timeline, he meant his mother raised Ashley for
• 26:33
  about four years, essentially the entirety of her life up
• 26:36
  until about a year before her death.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: Okay, so Ashley spends her crucial formative early years thousands
• 26:43
  of miles away, completely separated from her biological parents. Leing
• 26:47
  explains that he was too busy running the restaurant to
• 26:49
  care for an infant, so he just trusted his mother
• 26:51
  to do it right. But then, a year before the murder,
• 26:54
  Ashley is brought back to America to live with Leing
• 26:57
  and ming Ming.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: And this introduces complex developmental psychology. When Ashley returns, she's
• 27:03
  a toddler who has been raised by someone else. She
• 27:05
  has no primary attachment to Mingming, not at all. We
• 27:08
  see a textbook example of other ring occurring within a
• 27:12
  nuclear family. Because Mingming was entirely absent for the years
• 27:15
  where crucial maternal bonding typically occurs, she failed to form
• 27:19
  a neurological and emotional connection with the child.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: So when Ashley returned, she wasn't potty trained to ming
• 27:25
  Ming's exacting standards, and Leing says this became the focal
• 27:28
  point of ming Ming's rage. He tells police that really
• 27:32
  gets my wife going, because we have her for a
• 27:34
  year now, and she still can't. She still don't know
• 27:36
  how to train well.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: Mingming didn't see a daughter struggling with a developmental milestone.
• 27:41
  She saw an intruder. She saw a delayed, inconvenient burden
• 27:45
  that was disrupting her highly regimented life and her restaurant business.
• 27:49
  Wow Jojo, the older daughter who was kept with them
• 27:53
  and raised by them from birth, was treated entirely differently.
• 27:56
  Leing insists ming Ming never abused Jojo. The violent ells
• 28:00
  was exclusively reserved for the child who had been othered, and.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: Lean admits to witnessing this escalating abuse. He tells detectives
• 28:07
  he saw ming Ming twist Ashley's arm, kick her, and
• 28:10
  hit her head multiple times prior to the fatal assault.
• 28:13
  He estimates she hit her head like that maybe four
• 28:15
  times before, which brings up the horrific reality of bystander complicity.
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: The detectives ask Leeing the question everyone is thinking, why
• 28:23
  didn't you intervene? Why didn't you protect your child from
• 28:26
  your wife?
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: His excuse is an astounding abdication of parental duty. He
• 28:31
  claims he tried to tell Mingming to stop, but it
• 28:34
  only made her angrier.
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: He blames her anger.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: He says he was scared of sending his wife to jail.
• 28:40
  His ultimate solution wasn't to call child protective Services or
• 28:43
  the police, he tells the detectives. His plan was to
• 28:46
  eventually ship Ashley back to China, this time to Mingming's mother.
• 28:51
  He says he was hoping it wouldn't come to this
• 28:52
  before they could send her away, hoping to give his
• 28:55
  wife some time to balance out.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: He prioritized his marriage, his wife's freedom, and the operational
• 29:01
  stability of the restaurant over the physical survival of a
• 29:04
  toddler who was being repeatedly assaulted in his presence.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: Is a complete failure of the protective instinct. Absolutely tragic.
• 29:11
  Irony is profound. Leing was so scared of sending his
• 29:15
  wife to jail for child abuse that he chose total inaction,
• 29:18
  and that cowardice resulted in the murder of his child,
• 29:21
  the permanent traumatization of his other child, the loss of
• 29:24
  the business he worshiped, in both him and his wife
• 29:27
  going to prison.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: Anyway, it's a self fulfilling prophecy of destruction.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: Meanwhile, as Ling is detailing his complicity, the detectives are
• 29:35
  preparing to formally arrest ming Ming, and just before she
• 29:39
  is led away, she finally breaks her silence about her motivations.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: This part is very telling.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: The detective's informer she is under arrest for murder and
• 29:48
  assault and that Jojo is being placed with child protective services.
• 29:52
  Ming Ming, in a sudden flash of resentment, doesn't ask
• 29:55
  for forgiveness. She starts complaining about the stress of her life.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: She complains about her work.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: She complains about running the restaurant, saying I only have
• 30:03
  two hands. I'm not four hands girl. I'm two hands.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: I'm not four hands girl. It is an astounding display
• 30:08
  of self pity. Facing arrest for the murder of her child,
• 30:12
  her primary defense is that she was overworked. She frames
• 30:16
  herself as the victim of a stressful culinary environment.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: She goes on to say, I don't want to do
• 30:21
  that to Ashley, but you can't control yourself sometimes, and
• 30:25
  then she lays out a terrifying logic of normalization.
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: What does she say?
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: She says, if you do one times, that means you
• 30:30
  have two times. If you two times, that made you
• 30:32
  have three times. I can't control myself a lot of stuff.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: She is outlining the escalating cycle of normalized violence. She
• 30:40
  recognizes that crossing the line into physical assault the first
• 30:43
  time rewrote her internal behavioral boundaries. It made it easier,
• 30:47
  It made the second time easier, and the third time inevitable.
• 30:50
  But notice the total lack of moral accountability, oh completely lacking.
• 30:55
  She argues that because she couldn't control her temper, the
• 30:59
  murder was simply the unavoidable conclusion of her heavy workload.
• 31:03
  She blames her hands and the restaurant, not her choices.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: It is a monstrous rationalization. Let's look at the aftermath
• 31:10
  and how the justice system handled this. The night after
• 31:13
  the arrests, the community of Jackson Township reacts. Hundreds of
• 31:17
  people who had been the previous twenty four hours terrified
• 31:20
  that a kidnapper was prowling their streets gather outside Ang's
• 31:24
  Asian Cuisine in the freezing cold.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: The contrast is striking, the cold calculus of the parents
• 31:29
  inside the restaurant versus the warmth and grief of the
• 31:32
  community outside.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah patrons who attended the vigil shared memories of Ashley,
• 31:37
  remembering her not as the burden her mother perceived, but
• 31:40
  as a bright, sweet child who loved to draw pictures
• 31:44
  for customers and light up around other children.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: So how does the legal system weigh the varying degrees
• 31:49
  of guilt in a complex shared crime like this.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: Well. In September of twenty seventeen, Leing reaches a deal
• 31:56
  with prosecutors. He pleads guilty to complicity to commit murder,
• 32:00
  obstructing justice, and abuse of a corpse okay. He is
• 32:04
  sentenced to twelve years in prison and agrees to testify
• 32:07
  against his wife, but.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: He never takes a stand right.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: In December of twenty seventeen, after an initial attempt to
• 32:12
  plead not guilty by reason of insanity, Mingming Chen takes
• 32:16
  a plea deal. She pleads guilty to involuntary manslaughter evidence, stampering,
• 32:20
  abuse of a corpse child, endangerment, and obstructing justice. She
• 32:24
  is sentenced to twenty two years in prison.
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: Look at the math of those sentences twelve years for him,
• 32:29
  twenty two years for her. The justice system is actively
• 32:32
  parsing out the difference between the primary aggressor and the
• 32:35
  complicit enabler. Mingming receives nearly double the time because she
• 32:38
  physically executed the fatal assault, but Lying's twelve year sentence
• 32:43
  acknowledges a critical legal and moral reality. His failure to intervene,
• 32:48
  his active participation in desecrating the body in a freezer,
• 32:51
  and his orchestration of a massive public deception were severe
• 32:55
  destructive crimes in their own right.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they were.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: The sentences attempt to account for both the brutal manslaughter
• 33:01
  and the calculated violation of the cover up.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: Before Ming Ming was led away to begin her sentence,
• 33:06
  the presiding judge delivered a final reprimand, stating that children
• 33:10
  must be able to rely on their parents for love, safety,
• 33:13
  and protection.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: Which is the bare minimum.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: The bare minimum. The judge highlighted the incomprehensible horror of
• 33:19
  Ashley's final moments, dying at the hands of the very
• 33:22
  person mandated by nature to be her protector.
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: This case strips away the facade of the family unit
• 33:27
  to reveal the dark mechanics of isolation, resentment, and a
• 33:30
  severely skewed set of priorities. It demonstrates what happens when
• 33:34
  human life is reduced to a line item on a
• 33:36
  risk assessment matrix.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: It is a terrifying example of how the desire to
• 33:40
  protect a financial asset can completely override basic human decency.
• 33:45
  We've explored the intricate mechanics of how police dismantle a lie,
• 33:49
  the cognitive loaded deception, and the chilling psychology of compartmentalization.
• 33:55
  But I'll leave you with one final thought to mull over.
• 33:57
  Building on the source material we've discussed today, we talked
• 34:00
  at length about the parents twisted logic. They spend hours
• 34:04
  meticulously debating ocean currents and fire sizes. They carefully constructed
• 34:08
  an elaborate, multi layered house of cards, even repinizing their
• 34:12
  six year old's memory to beat a polygraph. Yet despite
• 34:16
  all of their adult calculations and risk assessments, their entire
• 34:19
  defense was blown down by a kindergartener. It really was
• 34:23
  Little Jojo simply decided, in that brief moment with the
• 34:26
  detective that she did not want to carry her parent's
• 34:28
  dark secret anymore. Amidst all the evil and manipulation orchestrated
• 34:33
  inside that restaurant, Consider the profound resilience of truth and
• 34:36
  what it takes for a child's inherent moral compass to
• 34:39
  finally override their loyalty to their parents when faced with
• 34:42
  undeniable evil.
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: It forces us to recognize that the most sophisticated deception
• 34:47
  can be undone by the simplest honesty.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us on this deep dive. Keep
• 34:52
  asking tough questions of the information you consume, and we
• 34:55
  will see you next time.