USA Unsolved 13 (NY)- Quin Rong Wu

**Jessica** (0:00)
Hey there, welcome back to another short and not-so-sweet episode of USA Unsolved. Thank you for taking the time to look into this disappearance and unsolved cases with me. Today's case involves that of a minor, or rather, a child. She initially went missing, but only weeks later, her lifeless body would be found floating in a nearby river, already decomposing. She was just a child, and while I can ask, who would do this to a child, you know that there is no shortage of people out there who are willing to risk it all just to cause harm unto others. Her name is Wu Quin Rong, and hopefully I'm pronouncing her name right. I was unable to find her name written in Chinese, so this is my best guess. I will be referring to her as Wu going forward. Let's begin. Wu was born on January 30th, 1986 in Guangdong Province, China. As you may recall from your history class or wherever you get your information, China was at one point reinforcing the one child policy, where all families were only legally allowed to have one child. While this was the law, there were also various families that somehow got away with having multiple children. Whether it was lack of local scrutiny, perhaps paying off the government, I'm not sure, but in the case of Wu's family, they were trying their best to follow the law. When Wu was born, she already had an older sister who was six years, her senior. So perhaps in an attempt to protect her, Wu was sent to a place about an hour away to live with some relatives. I can't say whether the relatives were good to her or not, but it would seem as if Wu's parents still made the effort to connect with her daughter whenever possible, despite living apart. Her parents worked hard to provide, her father an accountant and her mother as a farmer, so most likely they did not have a lot of free time. A few years after Wu was born, her mother gave birth to her younger brother, the last of their siblings. Not sure though about the brother's living arrangements, as he would have been an additional child in their household. With that said, let's move forward with this case.
In 1995, an opportunity for the family came and they took it. Wu's parents and their three children moved to the United States, settling down in the Lower East Side of New York City. They didn't have much to start with, so they made do with what they had, which was a one-bedroom apartment located on the second floor on 199 Henry Street. To make ends meet, Wu's father worked at a noodle factory while her mother began work as a seamstress. At this point, the three children were all enrolled in school, with Wu and her younger brother both attending public school too, which was just down the street from their apartment, about five minutes on foot. Her older sister attended Seward Park High School. The three kids got along well, and they were enjoying all these new things in their new American life. Wu was said to have, quote, kept an electronic English-Chinese dictionary on a desk near her bed. She shared a bottom bunk with her sister and kept her clothing in a cardboard box on the top half of the bed. Unquote. Wu was said to have enjoyed going to school despite receiving poor grades and struggling to learn and master the English language. I'm sure with time and patience, she would have been able to pick it up perfectly. Life for the family wasn't perfect, but it was doing its thing. Things were moving in the right direction, and the family was finally able to live together as a unit.
On the morning of May 13, 1997, Wu left home in jeans, a sweatshirt, and red sneakers. Her mother was with her and the two began walking towards her school. Her mother only walked with her halfway to school, most likely assuming that nothing could go wrong in the last hundred yards. Wu had been walking by herself here and there, so no one assumed anything would be different that day. So Wu's mother turned back and went to work as a seamstress. It was later that day that the school notified Wu's parents that their daughter was absent from school. It's unlikely that she would skip school, and she never returned home either. Her frantic parents called the 7th Precinct Police, and in no time, law enforcement and the local Chinese community were all doing their best to search the streets, hoping to find the 11-year-old girl. Sadly, nothing came up. No backpack, no piece of clothing, nothing that would indicate foul play. New York is a crowded and busy city. Just the idea of trying to find one specific person in these crowds feels like Mission Impossible. But if Wu didn't run away, what happened to her? About two weeks after her initial disappearance, on May 28, she was finally found. Not safe and sound, unfortunately. The body of a young girl was reported to have been found just north of the Manhattan Bridge, and a single red sneaker, likely the one Wu was wearing the day she went missing, was also found nearby. The girl's body was already in the late stages of decomposition and had clearly been in the water for some time due to the bloating. Police believe they had found the missing Chinese girl, and after receiving dental records, they finally confirmed to the family and to the public that their little girl was finally found. Her body was of course carefully examined, and her cause of death was determined to have been from manual strangulation. I also did wonder if she was perhaps sexually assaulted, but this was not mentioned in any of the articles. Once news hit the media, many witnesses came forward, retelling what they had seen on the day Wu had gone missing. According to one witness, they had allegedly seen a middle-aged white-bearded man with a distressed Asian girl on the subway, boarding a northbound train. This incident took place about an hour after Wu was last seen by her mother. That same witness then told officials that they saw the man and the girl again later that day, but this time taking a train from Manhattan to Brooklyn. This of course is very difficult to verify, but it is nonetheless a solid lead. A few other witnesses had also come forward, stating that they had come across a strange white man who spent a lot of time staring at young girls near public school too. Assuming a white bearded man did approach Wu after her mother left, could these sightings be of the same man? Perhaps a child predator looking for a victim? Someone he can lure away? A serial rapist was said to have been running around Chinatown at the time as well, targeting many young girls around Wu's age. Was this the same person or someone else entirely?