The Place Where Ludington Talks
Investigating the Investigation: Lingyan Zou, 2012 Marina Death
A young Chinese woman was found dead in the Ludington City Marina on June 2, 2012. A lengthy investigation by the Ludington City Police followed which determined that the woman drowned in the course of committing suicide in the waters of the municipal marina. Many of the established facts do not support that claim.
The following report is based on the investigation records of the Ludington City Police received by me this fall, all of which are included at the end of this thread, and used throughout, linked to whenever possible. I will be as methodical as possible and admit my original bias up front, that I thought she tripped over one of the many tie-downs at the water's edge. After reviewing the records, I have changed my viewpoint somewhat.
The Deceased: Lingyan Zou
Lingyan Zou grew up with her brother and sister in XiangZhou village, Hangcheng town, Changle City, Fujian Province in China. In March of 2007 she received a passport and arrived sometime thereafter in New York, NY without the rest of her family.
The records indicate she had some legal issues in NY, that she had apparently prevailed at, but had a sizable legal bill, which she made a payment of $1500 in February. Another record showed she had been prescribed some drugs at Bellevue, a mental health facility in New York, that are listed in this active medical order. She left New York bound for Ludington on April 23, 2012 being sent through an employment agency as found in her effects.
Arriving in Ludington, she was hired by Steve Zhang to work at the local "China Buffet", staying in a roughly 7" X 13" room in the upstairs of Zhang's house at 503 Filer Street with Xiu Wen Jiong (called 'old Amy'). In her time in Ludington, between the last part of April to the first part of June, she is said to have been a non-exceptional worker, who was a bit eccentric, who would go to the beach on her days off. She wore glasses, recently became a vegetarian, and frequently changed her hair style, according to those who knew her around here.
The Timeline: Missing for Over a Day
Wednesday, May 30: Lingyan worked at her job, came home and seemed in fine spirits, showing her roommate new clothes and jewelry she had just brought.
Thursday, May 31: Old Amy claims she never saw her the next morning when she got up at 8:00 AM, though she thought she was present, but Lingyan was nowhere to be found in the house when it came time to go to work, even though she was searched for. She would not be seen there again. (p 7-8 PR).
At around 3:00 PM, retired correction officer John Rull noticed Lingyan walking in the rain near Rite-Aid, on Ludington and Jackson. He knew her from work, where he was teaching English to some of the help. He offered her a ride, but she cheerily remarked that she was just enjoying the day. She was not wearing her glasses and had a small white bag. This was the last positive identification of Lingyan until she was found in the marina on Saturday, though at some time on Friday, Dawn Nicewander notes seeing someone looking like Lingyan at the Waterfront Park playing hide and seek with another young man and woman.
Friday, June 1: There is nobody who knew who she was see her on Friday, however there was a sighting of an Asian women that looked like Lingyan. At around 7 PM, Vivian Yennior watches the carferry come in at the end of Ferry Street, on the west side of the marina, when she sees someone who looks exactly like Lingyan sit down at the nearby bench with a guy with big feet and do the same. Yennior notes that the woman appears to be very interested in the guy. Michael Wolff who was fishing on the transient docks until 10:00 PM near the spot where the body would turn up, saw nothing at that time, and nobody matching Lingyan's description.
Saturday, June 2: At 9:30 AM Bob Nelson calls 9-1-1 after seeing Lingyan's body floating in the marina. An investigation ensues as the body is taken to the morgue.
Sunday, June 3: At 10:00 AM, an autopsy is performed, and the
Thursday, June 14: Autopsy is published, claiming no water in the lungs, no drugs in the system beyond caffeine, no trauma, and well-documented history of mental illness. Concludes it was a suicide.
Tuesday, June 26: Detective JB Wells also concludes suicide, and rationalizes dry drowning, he will continue to investigate the 'suicide angle'.
Friday, July 20: Lingyan is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Manistee.
Tuesday, August 28: The investigation ends. No documents showing the 'well-documented history of mental illness' mentioned by the coroner, provided anywhere in the investigation. Detective Wells concludes: "Given the circumstances that surrounded the death, multiple interviews and consultation by doctors, it is still the opinion that Zou committed suicide, as no other evidence can be produced to show otherwise."
The Cause of Death: Using Regression, Evidence, and Deduction
I have not been trained to be a police detective, but I have read my share of Sherlock Holmes and other mysteries, and seen my share of CSI, NCSI, Law and Order, shows to qualify myself as an armchair detective. Taking Detective Wells investigation as a whole, I believe it fatally suffers from choosing a cause of death and trying to adapt the evidence to support that claim.
We have a young woman found dead in a marina early on Saturday morning, before we even figure out what happened we should look at the basic question of what sequence of events got her there in that condition, and rule on their likelihood. We do have the benefit of having a bit of information from the months long investigation.
But first let's look at a couple of factors that weren't brought up in the investigation, weather conditions between the time Wolff left the area on Friday night around ten, and when she was found the next morning. From the data below (courtesy of Weather Underground) you can see that the temperature that Friday night was in the mid forties and the wind was fairly light and out of the north and west. The dew point was very close to the temperature, so there was likely some rain overnight.
The depth of the water at where she was at was between 6' and 7', while she was a modest 5'1". Her positioning in the marina with stagnant waters in the region she was at makes it unlikely that her body moved in the water since her death, although it's remotely possible it could have crept westward.
Lets consider some options:
1) Did Lingyan enter the water to swim, then drown accidentally? Her proximity to the ladder may give this impression. But consider the air temperature, consider the water temperature, consider the absence of any dry clothes or towels, consider that her sister Ling said she did not know how to swim, or had the inclination, even though their Chinese town of Hangchen was close to the Pacific Ocean. This possibility is very unlikely.
2) Did Lingyan visit a boat in the marina and fall (or get pushed into the marina from the seasonal dock area)? The body would not drift over to the north side of the marina from currents or winds, also there was enough people at the docks to have likely witnessed or heard the commotion. Nigh impossible.
3) Did Lingyan commit suicide? Detective JB Wells of the LPD indicates that an active medical order stated that Zou had stayed at Belleview between the dates of March 17 to April 5, 2012 in an affidavit requesting medical records. This information is not on the order.
An alleged telephone call to a Dr. Jenny Su by Det. Wells, undocumented as to when it happened and unverified by any documentation, has those dates and other long term visits of Lingyan to Belleview. Strangely, according to the report, Dr. Su was the only person who ascribed any attempt at suicide or any 'mental condition'. Others, co-workers and family said she acted oddly, but not crazily so. The call to Dr. Su was noted rather late in the investigation. My attempts to talk to her as a private investigator into the case, had me being sent to her supervisor and then to risk management. I was told that even before I was to talk with Dr. Su about my verification questions, I would need to get through the risk management office, something Det. Wells was able to circumvent.
Detective Wells may be somewhat familiar with Michigan law of confidentiality of medical mental health records contained herein, but the laws for New York are different, and they are held to an even higher standard, and the privacy restrictions extend beyond death for both states. New York's guarantee is in a Patient's Bill of Rights in this state issued pamphlet.
Furthermore, "Court cases in New York have established that you cannot release information without a patient authorization even under a Grand Jury subpoena." As seen in this informational brochure provided by NY's . They also advise to always consult legal counsel before divulging any confidential material, verbally or orally. Would a seasoned psychiatric doctor like Jenny Su violate this oath in saying what she is alleged to have said to someone on the phone claiming to be a police detective from Ludington, Michigan? Someone didn't act very professionally.
But even if we assume Lingyan was crazy enough to kill herself, how likely was it that she did? She was ten feet out according to Wells, she had blood on her hand apparently from her nostril. She was parallel to the pier in a face-down fetal position. To get as far out as she did, she couldn't climb down on the ladder. She could have jumped from the pier, and ended up in the position scraping her own nose with her hand in her struggles, but it's very unlikely.
She would have no idea how deep the water was, and drowning is a very rare way to commit suicide, particularly for someone who doesn't swim, and when the temperature is so cold. Her private nature makes it unlikely she would choose such a public place for a suicide, and this angle does not take into account what happened during the missing day, and where she slept on Thursday night, where lows were around forty degrees and it was rainy. The absence of water in the lungs when her singular intent was to drown herself makes this an even more unlikely case, 'dry drowning' which is rare, usually occurs due to panic responses. Suicide is possible, but not very likely.
4) Lingyan tripped and fell in the water: Such hazards have been pointed out by our Ludington Torch contributors in this thread and others since June 2010, more than two years before this incident, and even if it is ever found out that this was absolutely not a factor here, it still could be.
Notice in the two pictures there are boat tie-downs on both sides of the ladder, very close to the same color as the pavement, dull-gray. It was established that Linyang wore and needed glasses, wore them to work all the time, but left them at home since Thursday, as they were found among her effects after her death. Assuming she went to this area after Wolff left on Friday night, it would have been dark, overcast, and poorly-lit (the many street lamps on that side are directed so as not to disturb the sleep of those who stay at the transient docks).
If she tripped over the tie-down or just fell off the side of the dock, she would have landed up to five feet away from the docks, and would have been surprised, and then thrown into a frozen shock as she entered the forty degree water unexpectedly. The water level over her head, the water dark and murky, she may have instinctively tried to travel back to the dock area but went further out. Unable to swim, disoriented, unable to scream for help since her head was under water, she dry drowns after a struggle, perhaps getting a nosebleed or scraped hand in the process of falling or thrashing about.
This could explain why her shoe (if it was her shoe) may have been on the west side of the marina, she may have took it off before walking around the dock area, and one may have been taken by the tidal action out to a deeper area during the night.
No shoes or body floated by the camera that was pointed towards the water at the pumphouse, located between the body and the shoe during that night, nor would a shoe have drifted against the wind and normal currents of the marina. This unexplained distance between the two entities is another major problem with the suicide theory, but can be better explained here.
Though the facts support Lingyan having an accidental death rather than a self-inflicted one, this is not a result that would be welcomed by the City of Ludington, who chose to use their own police department's detective to check out an event that could hold the City accountable for having a transient dock with insufficient safeguards for the public that can freely walk thereon at any time.
As has been said, it provides the opportunity for an accident waiting to happen, and it could have very well happened in this instance, as nothing I notice in the investigation precludes it or makes its likelihood remote. Until then, these and other factors that show no premeditation of taking her own life shows it is very possible that this was an accidental drowning.
5) Lingyan was the victim of foul play (murdered): The most compelling evidence for this may be the lack of water in the lungs, which indicates a possible placement in the marina. Working against such placement is the location. Whoever with an inclination to drop an already dead body at the marina would have to worry about being detected doing so. So one may think if this was the case, 'her murder' must have happened in the vicinity. The 7:00 PM sighting by Vivian Yennior seems to indicate she was with a man at that point, perhaps the same man noticed the previous night by Dawn Nicewander in that same area.
The question of where she went Thursday night makes this most compelling. She apparently never showed back up at her apartment that night, leaving her glasses behind. It reached forty degrees overnight, and she had to have stayed somewhere. In Old Amy's words, she had beamed about some new purchases of clothes and jewelry she had made on Wednesday night, made up a large amount of vegetables as well. She left without her glasses on Thursday morning.
To me, it appears that she may have prepared herself for a 'date' with some as of yet unknown admirer. New clothes, jewelry, leaving her glasses behind (as per her roommate), probably all done to impress a guy. This would be consistent with the later sightings, and provide an answer as to where she may have stayed at on Thursday night.
Her stomach was full of undigested vegetables according to the coroner, so she must have ate within a half hour of her death. It also says she had a significant level of caffeine in her system, even though according to her roommate, she only drank bottled water. This wasn't a girl walking the street by herself, starving because she was poor. She had over $3000, a place to stay, a job, and likely a new boyfriend. And every single person, who saw her last (or her doppleganger)-- Old Amy, Dawn Nicewander, John Rull and Vivian Yennior, said she was in very good spirits.
There is someone out there who knows where Lingyan stayed Thursday night, who hasn't came forward, likely because they figure they would be a suspect even if foul play was not involved. If that one shoe was Lingyan's, then Vivian Yennior's story is given more credibility because it was in the same area she seen her. This relationship she perceived at least three hours before Lingyan's death should lead to some possibility that this man may have had some knowledge of how she died.
The blood on her hand, the bloody nose may symbolize that a scuffle may have occured at the waterfront itself, as it would be a bit crazy to bring the body to where it was from some other area without taking a lot of extra danger. As it is, the likelihood she may have been done in by foul play is very possible.
Conclusion: Investigation should have been given to other agency
Detective JB Wells did a flawed job on this investigation. He spent three months looking into the suicide angle primarily, and wound up with what he started with, an active medical order that he assigned a lot of significance to. He actively lied on the sworn affidavit for the search warrant about Lingyan's fellow workers and family members saying she had attempted to commit suicide-- it's nowhere in his reports. Dr. Su should and would have referred Det. Wells to the Risk Management people and they would have had to okay her giving the information she is alleged to have gave. If she didn't, she seriously violated her own professional responsibilities.
The problem JB Wells had was that he was likely restricted from doing a totally independent investigation, because the City of Ludington could have been greatly affected by the finding of her having a tripping accident on their docks. Even though this could not be explained away with the directed evidence he sought out, he never considers the possibility, or any other possibilities in his final report. Lingyan's computer was never even inspected to see whether there may have been some lead as to the cause of death.
I am not going to pinpoint any one of these as "the cause", but he should have been at least able to minimize or eliminate the two causes I feel are 'very possible' from the realm of possibilities, before declaring her death was a suicide. This lack of objective investigation in this case, could easily lead one to believe that Detective Wells may have had similar failings in the Baby Kate case of shortsightedness and not eliminating other possibilities.
Calling it suicide does not allow the public to consider there may be a murderer on the loose, or an unsafe hazard that just led to the death of a young woman. Very clean, but unworthy of an objective investigation that can't rule accidental death or foul play out just by ignoring those possibilities.
But I am not beyond thinking that my mindset might be as skewed as Detective Wells, and I may have missed something. Please take a look at the Lingyan Zou files herein, compare it with what I've presented and offer me your observation and/or opinion.
Police Report and Forensic tests
Pictures:
Views: 1303
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Willy on
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I don't understand why the officers would label it a crime scene before they found out if the victim was deceased. The following is a portion of an article I read regarding cold water drowning.
"Cold water slows down the oxygen depletion of the brain. Brain damage at normal temperatures starts to occur at 3 to 4 minutes. But the real reason people can survive much longer in cold water drownings - up to an hour, and perhaps longer - is this:
Hypoxic Ischemic encephalopathy, or damage to the brain by not having enough oxygen, starts to occur in about 3 to 4 minutes. This brain damage is not reversible and occurs in drowning victims, and also victims of cardiac arrest, suffocation, drug overdose and so forth...
In cold water drowning, a unique event occurs: the cold water (58 degree water or colder) triggers the mammalian diving reflex, a naturally occurring reflex in all mammals - including man - which prepares the body to shut down in an orderly fashion. It's this specific reflex that delays brain damage in cold water drowning victim".I think it was a serious error not to check and see if the victim was indeed dead.
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Permalink Reply by XLFD on
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Police arrived first, I believe Sue Maltbie, Tubbs, Miller, and Warmuskerken (who managed to keep his Taser holstered). They are more concerned with preserving the scene than your usual responders. If firefighters/EMTs had arrived first, they may have followed your protocol.
I recall from my FF time of service that protocol had us respond differently to fires with fatalities, such as the one we had up on North Robert Street in 2001 or 2002. If a suspicious fire occurred, the officers used tactics and strategies to help the fire marshall out as best they could.
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Since noone knew how long she had been in the water doesn't it seem odd that out of all of the police and rescue personal nobody thought to check and see if she could be resuscitated? As I said, my first reaction would be to see if she was still alive.
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There's very little about this investigation that didn't seem odd. Let us not forget, the 'leaders' of this town have decided that recovery of dead bodies makes them a lot less liable than trying to rescue live people, by their recent decisions on beach 'safety'. As Kim Cole pointed out in the election, Mason County has also cut back on water rescue ability over the years.
Manistee County and City lost over a million a few years back in court, however, when their county's sheriff (Haik) threatened to arrest anyone on private rescue efforts who would attempt a rescue without his approval, and a man named Beck likely drowned because of it. Not surprisingly, our City has adopted the Manistee attorneys who lost that case, and helped set that policy.
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Last night at the Ludington City Council meeting, Police Chief Barnett did the 2012 LPD report and mentioned this case in passing, and the result that it turned out to be a suicide. Also mentioned was the year long (plus) investigation into the Baby Kate case (which is ongoing), which turned from being an unlawful imprisonment investigation into a homicide investigation.
That homicide investigation has continued for nearly a year; have you heard anything other than them growing out some seeds found in the father's shoe? This investigation's continuance is a ruse to try and keep the records away from the public, and it just seems contrary to keep the public in the dark about a possibly missing and still alive baby, when the public might be able to help the police figure out this case.
When you consider all the factors in this Lingyan Zou case:
1) the low percentage of people who choose to drown themselves to commit suicide (Wikipedia: It is among the least common methods of suicide, typically accounting for less than 2% of all reported suicides in the United States.) Also, due to the body's natural tendency to come up for air, drowning attempts often involve the use of a heavy object to overcome this reflex, which wasn't used for this light buoyant girl.
2) the low percentage of people who would "dry drown" in similar circumstances. This recent pathology text states:
"The issue of dry-drowning has recently been reappraised, and the suggestion has been made that its actual incidence may be lower than previously estimated [10-15% of drownings] and that human bodies found in water with apparently normal lungs could conceal more natural deaths or body disposal in water than is actually recognized."
Other pathology texts' authors freely admit that 'dry-drowning' may be just a myth, a "hypothesis not yet proven".
3) the lack of any records or personal observations (except for an undocumented call to and by one New York neurologist that supposedly broke many tenets of patient-doctor privilege to divulge details of Lingyan's psychiatric history) that actually show Lingyan was the suicidal maniac that LPD painted her to be. In fact, Vivian Yennior, Dawn Nicewander, John Rull, and "Old Amy" all mentioned a playful, cheerful Lingyan at their last viewing. The money and personal effects she left behind, the full stomach she had of her vegetarian foods seem to point away from taking her own life when she wouldn't likely even know that the water was deep enough to submerge her there.
Death by suicide seems a long shot, and yet the investigation didn't even attempt to rule out the more logical possibilities. As an investigator, you look at all the facts and let them lead you to the deduction of what happened. Not deduce what happened, and overlook any fact that controverts that deduction.
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Our investigation will continue into this death. We have sent further query to the LPD about the extent of their communications with New York entities , and are in the process of getting more facts out of New York.
More efforts will be put forth by the Ludington Torch to make the transient docks less of a safety hazard to the general public, and pending our inquiries, re-opening the case and getting a legitimate, non-conflicted investigation into this unfortunate death.
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