Info needed in Chinatown slayings of 2 women

NYPD detectives are asking for help from the Chinatown community in an effort to solve two particularly brutal slayings last month in which a 70-year-old dancer and her 36-year-old friend were shot dead and a fire set to mask the killings.

Police are focusing their investigation largely around the underground Chinatown credit system known as the "Hui" and sums of money the younger woman, an immigrant from Fujian province named Yong Hua Chen, may have borrowed and had in her possession when she died, an NYPD spokesman said Tuesday.

"One of the things is, they want people to come forward to call Crime Stoppers, 1-800-577-TIPS," the spokesman said. Detectives are looking for street surveillance tapes and interviewing suspects in other crimes, he added.

Investigators are now downplaying reports that Chen was connected to prostitution, although she may have known someone who was, said a law enforcement official who didn't want to be named.

Chen's body, as well as that of Xiao Ling Li, were pulled June 29 from a burning apartment at 83 Henry St. While the two were initially believed to have died as a result of the fire, police quickly determined that both women had been shot in the head.

Both Chen and Li, who sometimes cared for Chen's children, had dined the night before at a buffet in Flushing to celebrate Chen's return trip to China the next day, said Edward Chiu, an adviser to the Lin Sing Association. Li joined the group in January and had taught women traditional singing and dancing, he said. According to Chiu, Li called a friend from the restaurant to say she would be back in Manhattan that evening.

"That was the last anybody heard," Chiu said.

"I can say nothing," Li's grieving husband, Peter Mak, said Monday. Chen's family couldn't be reached.

The underground credit system being looked at by detectives has existed for decades; similar systems exist in the Korean and Taiwanese communities. Essentially, members of the credit group each regularly contribute money into a common pool. Each member then has a chance of making a withdrawal to fund a business or buy a home, paying it back later with interest, said Ko-Lin Chin, who teaches criminal justice at Rutgers University.

Cops were looking into rumors in Chinatown that someone in the credit system may have feared that Chen, who had two young children, would leave the United States and not pay back the money she borrowed, the law enforcement official added.