Mystery swirls
around suicide
in isle prisonAn analyst suspects tight-lipped
officials are concealing a case
of spying or tech theft
They won't say why he was jailed, when he was jailed or who found the body.
Almost everything about the circumstances leading to the death in April of Chen Chi Huang, a 58-year-old Chinese immigrant, is a mystery -- at least from the public's perspective.
Federal officials acknowledge that Huang was the first inmate at the 2 1/2-year-old federal detention center in Honolulu to commit what the city Medical Examiner's Office determined was suicide. They also have confirmed that the FBI is investigating the case, even though nine months have passed since the death and foul play already has been ruled out.
Beyond those and a few other details, little else is being disclosed. Not even the government of Taiwan, Huang's native country, has been told much.
Huang's death is all the more mysterious given what few details, pieced together through government documents and other sources, are known about his life.
Huang, a Taiwanese national, was returning from his native country in mid-April when he was whisked from the Honolulu Airport to the nearby federal jail, allegedly for an undisclosed immigration violation.
Huang traveled frequently between Taiwan and Honolulu, where he has owned a Salt Lake condominium unit with his wife since the late 1980s.
This time he was returning to Honolulu right before a momentous occasion for his family. One of his three sons was about to graduate as a valedictorian at Moanalua High School. But Huang never made the May graduation ceremony.
On April 20, about a week after his confinement began, he was found by an unidentified inmate hanging from a bed sheet attached to the top bunk in his cell, according to a city autopsy report on his death and other sources. Huang, in a coma, was rushed to the hospital and died April 24.
A month later at the graduation ceremony, Huang's son gave a touching valedictory speech, paying tribute to his late father but not mentioning the unusual circumstances under which he died.
Federal officials won't release even basic details of Huang's case -- information that would be readily accessible under normal circumstances. The reason for and date of his arrest, for instance, weren't disclosed.
That the case is cloaked in such secrecy and involved a well-traveled foreign national leads some observers to speculate that a clandestine overseas enterprise is the focus of the investigation.
"From the outside, it looks like an espionage or technology-theft operation in the process of being unraveled," said John Pike, an intelligence analyst in Alexandria, Va.
Given the dearth of details, the case raises many questions that can't be answered based on what's in the public record.
Among the most perplexing:
Why would a father return to Hawaii a month before his son's graduation, be arrested and jailed upon arrival, then kill himself a week later?
Huang himself may have provided some clues in a suicide note that the Medical Examiner's Office says he left in his cell. But like most everything else about this case, the note is under wraps.
An official at the detention center declined to discuss the case, referring questions to immigration authorities. Immigration officials referred questions to the FBI, saying that agency took over the case.
An FBI spokesman would only say that the agency looked into whether foul play was involved in Huang's death. Once the death was determined to be a suicide, that inquiry was wrapped up, said Arnold Laanui, the FBI spokesman.
Laanui wouldn't say whether the FBI was continuing to investigate other aspects of Huang's case. "The FBI is in no position to give any comment," he said.
But an immigration official confirmed that an FBI probe was ongoing. For that reason, he added, any comment from his agency would be inappropriate.
It's not clear how much Huang's family knows about the federal case. His wife didn't respond to two Star-Bulletin requests seeking comment.
Adding to the mystery surrounding this case is what the Taiwan government is saying. Its local office was given a general reason for Huang's detention, but Chun-Ting Lin, a consular officer in Honolulu, declined to say what that was, deferring to the U.S. government.
"We fully respect the due process of U.S. legal procedures and look forward to working closely with law enforcement to protect our nationals in Hawaii," Lin said.
Such respect, however, didn't allay concerns that Taiwan officials had about the way the Huang case was handled.
The local office didn't learn that Huang had been detained until after he hung himself, according to Lin. That meant the office wasn't notified until a week after Huang's initial confinement. In past detention cases, consular officials in Honolulu were notified by the immigration agency as soon as a national was taken into custody, Lin said.
After Huang's death, Raymond Wang, Taiwan's consul general here, wrote U.S. immigration authorities to request that his office be notified immediately whenever a Taiwanese national was detained, Lin said. Wang also questioned whether Huang was treated properly while incarcerated, according to Lin.
"We don't want this kind of incident to happen in the future," he said.
Once the local office was informed of Huang's situation, several staff members, including Wang, went to the hospital to assist the family and extend condolences on behalf of the Taiwanese government, Lin said. The staff helped arrange a local memorial service for Huang.
That Huang died from injuries sustained in one of the newest facilities in the nation's federal prison network raises questions about how adequately he was monitored, particularly if the detention staff had assessed Huang as being suicidal.
The detention center, which opened in 2001, has a high-tech surveillance system with scores of video cameras around the facility.
"The biggest question is, was he or should he have been identified as potentially suicidal and, if so, what happened?" asked Lindsay Hayes, a national expert on prison suicides.
Even under the best of circumstances, however, an inmate who is determined to commit suicide usually can do so, Hayes said.
Among the many missing pieces of the Huang mystery is what he did for a living.
State records show that Huang registered a trade name for a wholesale pet-supplies business in 1993, but that registration expired the following year. Department of Taxation records, however, indicate his excise tax license for that business is still active.
State records also show that Huang and his wife purchased their three-bedroom, two-bath condo in Salt Lake in 1988.
About a month before his arrest in Honolulu, Huang took his name off the title to their condo, according to state records. That left ownership in his wife's name only.
The Salt Lake condo is only a few minutes drive from the Moanalua school where Huang's son graduated last year with top honors.
During his valedictory speech, the son mentioned his father prominently, people in the audience recalled. He spoke fondly of him.
Then he noted his father's absence from the ceremony, solemnly explaining that his father had passed away a few weeks earlier.
Gasps were heard throughout the crowd and people dabbed tears from their eyes.