The Witchhunters
Scandal, Secrets, and a Death That Shocked Hong Kong
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- $3.99
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
Hong Kong, 1980.
A British police officer minutes away from being arrested by colleagues for sex crimes is found dead in his locked bedroom. There are multiple wounds to his chest; his used service revolver by his side. There's only one possible conclusion: suicide.
Yet a painstaking reinvestigation of this alleged suicide uncovers a different story: one involving a secret paedophile ring servicing the city's most powerful men, high-level cover-ups, international geopolitics and the involvement of a secretive unit of police officers tasked with tracking down and arresting homosexuals – the Witchhunters.
Their aim was to eradicate all traces of organised crime within homosexual circles and procurement of youths. The operation ultimately resulted in the tragic death of police inspector John MacLennan - a watershed moment leading to the eventual decriminalisation of homosexual acts in Hong Kong in 1991.
For decades, many people have suspected that the young officer died because of information he possessed. This book reveals for the first time what MacLennan knew.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The pseudonymous Blake, a former Hong Kong police officer, and journalist Vittachi only partially succeed in solving the 1980 homicide of Insp. John MacLennan, a Scotsman living in Hong Kong who was found shot to death behind his locked bedroom door in his Kowloon apartment. The police at first believed MacLennan killed himself because he knew he was about to be arrested for sexually assaulting a boy and related crimes. The authors note the rush to judgment that avoided basic evidence collection such as testing the dead man's hands to see if there was any gunpowder residue and disregarded anomalies, such as MacLennan having been shot five times. Blake and Vittachi also explore the man's probable link to a pedophile ring, whose members included "top members of international Hong Kong society," many of whom would have wanted the inspector, who had access to sensitive secrets, dead. A prefatory note concedes the conjectures in the text, including assumptions "about attitudes, emotions, actions and exchanges," and the sourcing is less than robust. The flaws in this account leave room for a definitive look at this fascinating case.
