Advertisement

An anguished search for his daughter’s killer

Share

The rain had washed away his daughter’s smile by the time George Shi reached the parking lot.

Gently, he glued a new flier over the old one, smoothing each crease, until her photo and his message again shone clear:

REWARD: $200,000 to anyone who helps find her killer.

It is all Shi can do, nearly two years after his daughter, Donglei Shi, was strangled and her body dumped in an Alhambra park, leaving behind a case with no witnesses and little evidence.

Advertisement

Donglei, also known as Kyral, was Shi’s only daughter, the older of two children. She had become her father’s right hand after the family emigrated from China. At 31, the graphic designer helped him manage his acupuncture business, took him for long walks in the park, even bought his ties, his glasses, his belts and his razors.

“She was my warm cotton coat,” Shi said in Chinese, through an interpreter. “My heart.”

When her body was discovered beside a wash at Story Park in April 2010, Shi at first refused to believe it.

“I heard the words,” he said. “They invaded my body, they invaded my space. They made me feel like my head was going to explode.”

Authorities have been guarded in discussing the investigation, releasing few details.

“Detectives are working diligently,” said Steve Whitmore, spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. “They have people of interest that they’ve talked to, but they can’t prove anything yet.”

Shi, 61, talks with homicide detectives every so often, but simply waiting is impossible for him. His life revolves around finding Donglei’s killer.

The acupuncturist sat in his San Gabriel apartment recently, his face somber, his detective work stacked on the worn-out carpet — notebooks filled with his interviews of Donglei’s friends and co-workers, her phone records, legal documents and photos.

Advertisement

He’s written letters, pleading for help, to the district attorney’s office, to members of Congress and President Obama, to China’s ambassador to the U.S., to the Chinese Consulate and to every justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. (Only the district attorney’s office answered, but it couldn’t offer much help.)

He prints notices in Chinese and Vietnamese newspapers and posts fliers on trees and walls around Alhambra. He’s hired lawyers and a personal assistant to help.

Every morning before work, he wakes up early to review his findings, scouring his notes for any clue, any detail he may have overlooked.

Little is known about what happened April 9, the day Donglei was killed.

She left her job at REM Eyewear in Sun Valley around 5:30 p.m. Shi believes his daughter was scheduled to meet someone.

A few hours later, her brother, Will, tried to call her several times, but she did not answer her cellphone.

The next morning, a man walking his dog spotted Donglei’s body in a grassy patch near the sidewalk.

Advertisement

Police dogs found her Toyota Prius around the corner, parked on a quiet street lined with trees and quaint homes.

No one, apparently, had seen Donglei or spotted anything out of the ordinary that evening.

Shi believes Donglei’s life insurance may provide a major clue.

A few weeks before his daughter died, he said, the main beneficiary of her $890,000 policy was changed from her mother, Linda, to her ex-boyfriend, Daniel Duong. A second policy for $1 million was also taken out with Duong as the recipient. The couple had broken up about two years before.

Duong and Donglei sold life insurance together, and Shi believes Duong could have altered the plan without Donglei’s permission.

After Donglei’s death, Shi filed a civil lawsuit against Duong to keep him from collecting the $890,000 from one insurance company. They settled in November, with the Shis and Duong each getting about half.

The second insurer has so far declined to pay because the case is under investigation.

Recently, Shi filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Duong and another man, Aaron Lee, who was Donglei’s boyfriend at the time she was killed. He is asking for $5 million.

Advertisement

Duong and Lee both have been questioned by detectives. Neither returned repeated calls requesting comment, although Duong answered the phone initially and said he could not hear the caller.

His connection with Donglei went back nearly a decade, her family said. They described him as driven and savvy and said he introduced Donglei to things and places she’d hadn’t explored as an immigrant.

They believed, however, that the year the couple dated was also filled with disagreements. But the Shis didn’t want to pry.

“My daughter looked tired all the time,” Shi said. “She was sad and more moody than usual.”

After the couple broke up in 2007, they continued to sell life insurance together.

Between running the family business and the children’s jobs, the Shis had always stayed busy.

Longing for political and economic freedom, Shi came to Los Angeles on a visa from China’s Shandong province in 1996. His wife and children joined him three years later.

Advertisement

“We thought everything would be great here,” Linda Shi said, smiling. “The sun would be bigger, the moon would be brighter, and we could say whatever we wanted.”

When the family reunited, 21-year-old Donglei focused on her studies. She mastered English and graduated with honors in studio art from Cal State Long Beach.

Her sketchbooks and art projects fill the family’s two-bedroom apartment: the entryway, on the walls and on the bookshelves. Seeing the work is so painful that her mother has begun to throw some of it away.

“All we wanted for Donglei was a good life, a good, stable job and family,” George Shi said.

The slaying stunned the Chinese community in San Gabriel and Alhambra; killings involving Asians are rare there.

For a time, Asian-language reporters came knocking on Shi’s door, but he turned them all away, advised by police to keep a low profile.

Advertisement

Now he has no idea how the community perceives his family. And it matters little. He mostly leans on a close circle of friends, fellow Chinese acupuncturists and doctors. They often ask him: What’s new with the case? When will police solve it? Why has it taken this long?

Most painful of all is when Shi speaks to relatives in China. They have no idea Donglei is dead. The Shis are too ashamed to tell them.

“What will they say?” Shi said. “They think we are in the best place on Earth. They think we are in heaven. But here, in America, we lost our daughter. She was killed, and I haven’t been able to catch the murderer.”

So they tell brothers and sisters back home: Donglei is working. Donglei is doing well.

Outside Shi’s business, the advertisements Donglei crafted still decorate the storefront. Shi walks in each morning and hears her voice as he runs through her to-do list for opening the shop.

One: Open the curtains. Two: turn on the computer. Three: check the messages.

Without her, nothing feels the same.

The day before she died, she came by for a quick visit. They spoke in the parking lot, then she drove off on an errand.

Advertisement

Shi plays the moment — her pink skirt, her white sweater, her quick smile — over and over in his mind.

“I cherish it,” he says, between deep sighs. “I only wish it had lasted longer.”

With her insurance money, Shi hopes to motivate witnesses to come forward.

“We’re looking for anyone who may have seen her or seen anything at all on April 8, 9 or on any day before that,” Shi said.

On a recent evening, he paced around the spot where her body was found, leaves crunching beneath his feet. A few yards away at the park’s senior center, silver-haired ladies stretched their bodies in yoga positions.

He walked, fliers in hand, to post another announcement on a pine tree, stapling it firmly to the trunk. Then he drove around the block to post two more fliers on the trees.

“All around this street, the dogs picked up her scent,” he said, following the trail with a hint of hope.

“Somebody, I’m sure, had to have seen something.”

esmeralda.bermudez@latimes.com

Advertisement