Part One – The Gold Bar Murder Case – Shanghai 1947 – “It was a foreigner who shot me”

The war was over, Shanghai liberated, around the city the Chinese civil war was raging and the Nationalists losing ground to the Communists. The city was full of American army personnel and the remnants of the ne’erdowells and gangsters that had infested the city before the war. It was 1947 but the Badlands of Shanghai still had a few more years to run. What became known in 1947 as “The Gold Bar Murder Case” was indicative of the times….

At some point Chicagoan Thomas A. Malloy, known as “Whitey”, an American T/5 (Technician Fifth Grade) in the US Army Medical Corps found out that Yu Shen-pao (also known as Yue Zung Ziao) had a bunch of gold bars. Maybe Malloy had changed up some money illegally with Yu, who was thought to be a black market currency dealer, probably her heard about the gold from an acquaintance of his called Charlie Archer. On a hot August 1st Friday night in 1947 Yu left his house and got in a car with two foreigners and five ten-ounce gold bars. Driving out towards the countryside he was shot, the five ten-ounce gold bars stolen and he was thrown from the car and left to die by the highway. Yu told the farmers who found him shortly before he expired, “It was a foreigner who shot me – Charlie!” He then died by the side of the road. The Chinese Police quickly arrested a Hong Kong-born British national called Charles (“Charlie”) P. Archer.

But was Yu accusing Charlie of having shot him, or was he shouting Charlie’s name for help? Yu was dead and his body moved to the Shanghai morgue. Archer, under questioning by the Chinese Police, soon gave up Whitey Malloy. The American Military Police, co-operating with the Chinese police in Shanghai, headed over to Malloy’s barracks where they found blood soaked trousers, socks and shoes. Malloy denied the crime and claimed he had been dead drunk for several days.

The conventions of the law in post-war Shanghai remained almost as complicated as before when Shanghai was still a treaty port. Archer was held by the Chinese Shanghai Police and Malloy, as a US serviceman, by the MPs. It was determined that Malloy would be brought before a Court Martial tribunal appointed by the Commanding General, US Army Advisory Group, Shanghai, China to be heard September 2nd, 1947….

Shanghai 1947