CHAPTER 1

A woman living one door down from the Spreckels Mansion tells investigators, “I heard her scream, ‘Ah ah! Help me! Help me!’ She sounded late twenties, early thirties, an adult woman.” This account is from the night Rebecca died. The San Diego Sheriff’s Office (SDSO) concluded the neighbor could not have heard Becky scream.

Chin Hills, 1992. We would gather skinny bamboo sticks and tie them together. Some of my cousins would make them really long so they could reach up high in the trees. Then, we’d put something sticky, like tree sap, at the end. Cicada hunts were a daily event of the children living in the Chin Hills.

In Burma,Huechys sanguinea is also known as the “medicinal cicada” because people use it as a medicine. Some just eat it as a snack. It is a meaty insect with wings and six legs. Male cicadas make several types of sounds for mating or defense. They have sound boxes in their abdomens and make a noise by expanding and contracting that organ. Females make clicking noises when they are ready to mate.

There was no real trick to catching one. We would just walk around all day listening for them. Every day, all the kids would pick berries or hunt for cicadas. I think the adults made us do this so we would stay out of their business, or maybe it was something they preferred not to do themselves. Some days we would only catch five; some days, up to two dozen. They were about the size of a thumb, sometimes a little bigger. Cooking them was pretty simple—we just roasted them over the fire. I saw the wings and heard people crunching on them and couldn’t do it. I never tried one, but Becky did.

My family is originally from the Chin Hills of Burma, what is now called Myanmar. At the time of our visit in 1994, it was Burma. I was close to sixteen then, and Becky was fifteen. We are nineteen months apart. I’m the oldest, then Becky, then Snowem, who was almost fourteen in the summer of 1994, and Solomon, who was twelve. My youngest two siblings, Joseph and Xena, weren’t born yet. We had taken a trip back to the Chin Hills from where we were living in Nepal to visit my grandmother before we migrated to Germany. I hadn’t been back to the village since I was three.

The British had ruled the region since 1885. My dad got involved in a political movement to establish Burmese independence, ending British control. He became an active member of the parliament to Aung San, who is considered the “Father of the Nation” of modern-day Myanmar. San was assassinated in 1947, six months before a new independent government was established in Burma. A Jeep carrying armed gunmen in military fatigues drove into the courtyard where San was meeting with his new cabinet and advisors. San was killed along with eight other political leaders in a spray of bullets. My dad was away from the area for a business trip and was spared from being in that meeting and potentially being killed.

When he came back, authorities of the new military militia were waiting for him and other members of the San movement. He and several other individuals were arrested and thrown into prison. For more than seven years, he was tortured and kept in isolation by the regime of military dictatorship. While in isolation, my father somehow got ahold of an English dictionary, Oxford edition. That’s how he learned English. He said he read it to keep sane and to learn a new language. Since he learned the British form of English, he would refer to pants as trousers.

Becky and I learned English in Nepal from missionaries and in school. Our primary language came from our tribe, Zahau. The language of Zahau was never written down, so when missionaries came to the Chin Hills, we used the English alphabet to transcribe Zahau words onto paper. For example, “Na dam maw?” translates to “How are you?” in English. Our language does not have the appearance of a dialect originating from an Asian continent as does the mainland language, which is very similar in characteristics.

At the time of our visit back to the Chin Hills in 1994, my dad had been granted asylum and was in Germany, already starting the process for our family to make the move from Nepal. My mom wanted to see her mother and her siblings before moving to Germany. So, it was just my mom and us four kids. We traveled across India through Mizoram, a landlocked northeastern state that borders Burma and Bangladesh. We were trying to go unnoticed and slip beneath the radar of the Burmese government and soldiers. Because of the military rule in Burma, if they th