“A girl dies today at 3 p.m.”
—Posted on Facebook, January 14, 2012 at 1:04 p.m.
***
Joyce Hau had her whole life ahead of her. Known to everyone as “Winsie,” she had a smile that lit up her face, and she wasn’t afraid to show it. An attractive and outgoing fifteen-year-old, she enjoyed the kinds of things other young people her age enjoyed: hanging out with friends, going to parties, chatting on social media. Winsie also maintained close ties with other young people in the Chinese Dutch community and often attended Asian cultural events. Always into the latest fashions, she sported a piercing beneath her lower lip. She danced and played the piano and was even skilled at chess. Her future looked bright.
Winsie lived with her family in Arnhem, a city in the eastern part of the Netherlands about an hour from Amsterdam. Like others in her peer group, she was a regular user of social media, communicating daily with friends via WhatsApp, Twitter, Skype, and especially Facebook. She had fun chatting and gossiping and sharing her posts.
Unfortunately, one of these posts would lead to her death.
It all began one evening when Winsie commented on a Facebook post made by her sixteen-year-old best friend, “Polly W.” (Dutch law does not allow the surnames of minors to be released). The comment, made quickly and without much forethought, if any, made reference to her friend’s supposedly promiscuous behavior with boys—and its appearance both stunned and angered the recipient.
A comment made with the same carelessness social media users are accustomed to seeing turned into something that escalated into a far more sinister affair. Soon some friends of Polly’s joined the conversation, posting comments of a threatening nature toward Winsie. At the time, neither Winsie nor her friends who had seen the posts took them seriously. After all, it wasn’t unusual for teenagers (or adults, for that matter) to mouth off in order to show how tough they purportedly were. Doing so while hiding behind a smartphone or computer screen was easy.
Winsie and Polly’s friendship had now reached a breaking point, at least temporarily. Or so everyone thought.
Polly’s anger continued to brew, and a reconciliation between the girls began to look increasingly unlikely. Friends reported that the situation really escalated when the pair came face to face at a party—a party Winsie hadn’t been invited to. This was all the provocation Polly needed. A heated argument broke out between the two girls until Winsie finally left.
It was now gloves-off.
The battle on Facebook became meaner and nastier. And it was accompanied by text messages, with Polly apparently making threats about killing Winsie and even her family. Once again, no one who knew about this took it seriously, though Winsie was starting to get worried. Was her former best friend capable of causing her harm or, for that matter, causing harm to her family?
Indeed, Polly seemed to be going off the rails. Consumed with anger and obsessed with getting back at Winsie, she decided to get her seventeen-year-old boyfriend “Wesley C.” involved. Wesley, who lived in Rotterdam, considered himself a bit of a tough guy. He would often brag to anyone who’d listen about his family’s supposed ties to the Chinese mafia, though it’s doubtful there was anything to back up such bluster except perhaps a surplus of adolescent male testosterone. Although the teenage couple had only been together for a short time, Wesley was eager to do anything for his girlfriend, whose rage against Winsie had now become his to share.
Something definitely needed to be done about Winsie. So they came up with a plan.
They would hire someone to kill her.
***
January 14, 2012 was like any normal winter’s day in Arnhem: cold, damp, and gray. People went about their usual business of a Saturday, going shopping, taking care of household chores, socializing with friends and family, and simply relaxing at home after a long week at work. The peaceful residential street of Stadhoudersstraat in the district of Het Broek looked the same as it always did, as did its block of red-brick-fronted terraced houses with their identical blue front doors and their blue-framed windows. But this landscape would soon be marred by ribbons of red-and-white barricade tape as clusters of onlookers and news reporters gathered outside number 110, the usual calm of the neighborhood shattered by the blaring of sirens from police cars and emergency vehicles, and the buzzing of helicopters overhead.
Life would never be normal again for Winsie or her family, their lives changed forever at three o’clock in the afternoon with the sound of the doorbell.
A male in his early teens stood outside the Hau family home, waiting for someone to come to the door. His wait was soon rewarded when Winsie’s father, Chun Nam Hau, appeared. After asking to see Winsie, the boy found himself being invited inside. Leaving the caller alone to speak with his daughter, Hau returned to the kitchen to finish preparing some food. At that point the young teen pulled out a knife and began stabbing Winsie in the face and neck.
Hearing Winsie cry out, her father ran out of the kitchen to see what was wrong. He found his daughter lying on the floor near the stairs, covered in blood. When he tried to intervene, the boy turned the weapon on him, slashing his face and arm, then ran off, leaving his bloodied victims behind.
Winsie was hospitalized in critical condition. She died five days later. Her forty-nine-year-old father survived the attack, though his injuries would leave his face scarred for life. Winsie’s younger brother, who had witnessed the attacks, was physically unharmed.
Winsie Hau’s killer was fourteen-year-old “Jinhua K.” from Capelle aan den IJssel. Jinhua (also spelled Jinghua) was a slight-looking boy who enjoyed taking selfies with his smartphone. He aspired to be part of the cool crowd, particularly a specific group of teenage boys who were older than him, which is what led him to Wesley C., whom he saw as one of the “cool guys.” Jinhua had adopted a tough-guy persona to make up for his insecurity and young age, and he wanted very much for these older boys to approve of him.
Jinhua didn’t know his murder victim personally. There seemed to be no personal motive behind the killing at all. In fact, there was nothing to indicate the two had any connection other than both being part of the Chinese Dutch community. In an ironic twist, Jinhua had been sitting next to Winsie at an Asian cultural event the previous November, and a photograph exists to document this. However, that appears to have been the extent of any connection between the two…
…Until that Saturday afternoon when he showed up on the Hau family’s doorstep with a knife.
Later that day, police found Jinhua hiding in some bushes not far from Winsie’s home, and he was taken into custody.
The case quickly became known in the Dutch media as “Facebookmoord” or the “Facebook Murder.” The killing elicited shock and concern in the normally peaceful, low-crime Netherlands. These kinds of crimes simply weren’t the norm. The murder hit the close-knit Chinese Dutch community particularly hard. The Netherlands has one of the largest overseas populations of Chinese in continental Europe. The Chinese are also one of the oldest ethnic minorities in the country. The murder of a teenage girl from their community—especially a murder perpetrated by one of their own—felt personal.
How could someone so young be capable of committing such a brutal act?
***
Local residents placed lighted candles and flowers outside the Hau home. At Lorentz Lyceum in Arnhem where Winsie attended school, flags were lowered to half-mast. “There is so much we feel but so little we can say,” the school rector wrote in an online obituary. A makeshift memorial set up at the school displayed a photo of Winsie with a register of condolence; candles burned in sconces on a table, which held bouquets of flowers and a white teddy bear with a red bow around its neck. Elsewhere, a group of Winsie’s friends released a lighted lantern into the sky to say goodbye. In the center of town, the people of Arnhem gathered en masse to participate in a march of silence for this young girl whose life had been cut brutally short because of a conflict stemming from a thoughtless Facebook post.
Winsie’s friends would always remember her as a sweet, cheerful girl who loved to dance. Although many had witnessed the Facebook exchanges that ultimately led to the girl’s death, they never actually believed the angry threats made against their friend would end in murder.
***
Polly W. and Wesley C. spent several weeks planning Winsie’s murder. Polly initially wanted Winsie to be killed before Christmas so that she would no longer be bothered by her once school was back in session after the new year. Wesley, who was by all accounts crazy in love with Polly, was clearly willing to do anything to make her happy as well as defend her tarnished honor—even if that anything included the revenge killing of her former best friend. Whether Polly returned the intensity of her boyfriend’s feelings is open to question; some who knew her claimed she did not.
What the couple needed now was a hit man to do the job. Wesley recruited Jinhua, a young hanger-on who looked up to the older teen and desperately wanted to be a part of his group. Jinhua was allegedly offered a sum that started out high, then dropped to twenty euros a month, and then to a flat fee of one-hundred fifty euros. Free drinks were also included in the deal. Considering the paltry financial reward on offer, one can only conclude that Jinhua agreed to murder Winsie for the glory and acceptance it would bring.
Communication between the parties took place via Facebook, Skype, and text message. The teenage hit man was provided with Winsie’s address as well as the times she was most likely to be at home. A detailed description of the Hau residence was also provided, all the way down to the Snow White, Little Mermaid, and other cartoon stickers on the glass panel by the front door. Jinhua was given the bus number he’d need to take from the train station in order to reach her house. Everything seemed to have been meticulously planned. All that remained was the date in which to carry out the hit.
Meanwhile, Polly’s social media and text harassment of Winsie continued.
Jinhua had been given a big responsibility, so obviously he wanted to get things right. On at least two occasions, several residents in Winsie’s neighborhood reported having seen him in the period leading up to the crime as he scouted the area in preparation for the big day. It’s possible that one of these occasions might have been related to a failed murder attempt when Jinhua arrived at the Hau residence, intending to carry out the killing, only to find no one home.
Finally, Jinhua was given an ultimatum. Get it done or else….
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