THE HONOR ROLL MURDER // STUART TAY'S SHATTERED LIFE //
Adolescence: Trouble on the horizon
DATE 01/16/93
NEWSPAPER THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
SECTION NEWS
EDITION MORNING
PAGE a01
STORY LENGTH 79 INCHES
HEADLINE THE HONOR ROLL MURDER // STUART TAY'S SHATTERED LIFE //
Adolescence: Trouble on the horizon
BYLINE/CREDIT Dan Froomkin: The Orange County Register
SUBJECT TERMS OC:MURDER:FAMILIES:STUDENTS:COMPUTERS:REACTION
KEYWORD-HIT.
Stuart Tay's life was never better and never worse than it was
in the months before he died.
He was dating a beautiful Foothill High School cheerleader. He
crafted an impressive application to Princeton. His proud parents
bought him the cherry-red Nissan 300ZX of his dreams.
But at the same time, he talked to friends about dying young.
And according to police, he decided to burglarize the home of his
computer dealer.
One day, his girlfriend told Stuart she had once dated someone
who claimed to be a member of the "Chinese Mafia."
Stuart asked for the guy's phone number.
Today, Stuart Tay is dead. And the guy he called _ fellow honor
student Robert Chien-nan Chan _ is in jail charged with his murder.
The news that Stuart was murdered _ and that Chan is only one
of several high-achieving high school students accused of his
murder _ has left many Orange County parents reeling.
It has left them worried that, without their knowledge and
without any hint at all their children could become victims. Or
criminals. Or both.
The story of Stuart's murder could be seen as good kids gone bad.
Was Stuart one of them?
Listen to his parents, and you hear that nothing was wrong with
their boy as he entered his teens, that he was as he appeared to
be: a Boy Scout, an honorable honor student.
Listen to his high school friends, and you hear about an
alienated young man who left his parents in the dark about his
increasingly dark thoughts.
Listen to four of the boys accused of his murder, and you hear
that he was, up to a point, one of them _ that he was hip-deep in a
plan to burgle the home of a computer-parts dealer Stuart knew kept
inventory there.
A TOP STUDENT WHO DIDN'T FIT IN
At Foothill High School, Stuart was a high achiever. When he
died, he was enrolled in six classes, five of them either honors or
college-level.
But students said his character seemed to transform as the years
went by.
As an underclassman, he often dressed the part of the honor
student, wearing conservative clothes.
But by his senior year, he was also playing the role of
"techno-punk."
He would stroll into school wearing a black trench coat and
black combat boots, then pull out his expensive laptop computer and
take his class notes on it. Once he shaved the side of his head.
Administrators noticed that Stuart didn't always fit in with the
other students. "He wasn't necessarily with the in crowd," said
Janis Jones, the school principal. "He stood off by himself."
English teacher Joan Kasper called him "one of my brightest
stars."
But she also described Stuart's sometimes wild, even reckless
ways. Once, he almost ran over the homecoming princess in the
school parking lot. He loved to drive his parents' minivan down the
street fast, then "show off the anti-lock brakes," she said.
As the years passed, Stuart bounced from one obsessive passion
to another. There was Scouting, there was skiing, and most lately
his great interests had been computers and music.
Most everyone who knew Stuart pegged him as a computer whiz. He
sold other students computer systems he put together from
components, and he did repairs. There were times when he spent
hours trying to decipher bits of software or hardware.
He made some of his best friends by trading electronic messages
on computer bulletin boards.
The Anaheim man police say Stuart would later target for
burglary said Stuart first contacted him about six months ago to
buy computer parts. The two soon telephoned each other often.
The man, who did not want his name used for fear that others
would be tempted to rob him, said he often helped Stuart figure out
how to fit parts together and how to remove the little gremlins
common to modern computer systems.
"He wanted to learn everything in a day. He was like a kid in a
candy store."
And recently, Stuart's friends said, he was absolutely crazy
about Depeche Mode, a British band dependent on synthesizers and
lyrics full of alienation.
Virtually ever wall in his room is covered with the group's
posters. So is the ceiling.
He admired the band's keyboard player so much that he often
borrowed his name: Martin Gore. At school, some students called him
Martin Gore. Some of his sister's friends called him Martin Gore.
He even asked his parents to call him Martin Gore.
A LATE BLOOMER WITH VALUES
From childhood all the way through the high school years,
Stuart's parents said, they tried to pass on a strong set of values
to their son.
"Stuart was brought up with very good knowledge of what we
consider right and what we consider wrong," Alfred Tay, Stuart's
father, said the other day as he sat somberly on a couch in his
living room.
"It was obvious you don't go off stealing for someone, or go
beat someone up," the Orange gynecologist said. "Stuart has never,
as far as I know, stepped beyond what is right in that sense."
His application to Princeton was largely about how he felt his
role in life was to goad people into recognizing their
responsibilities to society.
"It was so idealistic that I was very proud," his mother, Linda
Tay, said.
But in the essay, Stuart also wrote about himself as being
different, an outsider.
"He said he needed to be the boy who was different," his mother
said.
She said said Stuart was a late bloomer. In pictures taken only
a year and one-half ago, he still looks like a little kid. More
recently, he looked strikingly like his dad, just "a little more
puppy-faced, still," his father said.
"Just before he died, he had gone to about 5-foot-9, he was
probably 170 pounds, only he wouldn't tell me," his mother said. "I
thought he should lose weight, maybe."
Even at age 17, Stuart still loved Ben, his well-worn brown
teddy bear. He made a special bed next to his own for Ben. And he
continued dressing Ben up in clothes like his own.
His latest outfit was a mod purple shirt with a navy blue tie.
"We used to laugh about that, and say, `You can't take Ben to
college!' " his mother said. "But he was going to put him in a
suitcase and take him along."
How was love expressed in the Tay family?
"I share my love for Stuart and he shares his love for me in
very basic ways," Alfred Tay said, still speaking of his son in the
present tense. "You know, hugs."
But recently, he said, when Linda Tay tried to hug her son, he
would wriggle away. "He would go `ee-yoo' _ he would giggle,"
Alfred Tay said. "But I think it was a phase he was going through."
The one person Stuart apparently had no problem expressing
affection toward was his grandmother. He would frequently give her
huge hugs, hugs that lifted her up off the ground. Using a Chinese
term for grandmother, he would tell her: "I love you, Popo."
A DARK SIDE WITHIN SHELL
During his high school years, Stuart had cobbled together a
handful of close friends, some of them from Foothill, and some he
met through the electronic bulletin board via his home computer.
And those friends paint the portrait of a teen-ager whose quirks
had a dark side.
They spoke of his fascination with death, his "stoicism," and
his habit of quoting Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher
famous for espousing the triumph of will over passion.
Friend Leo Kim described how Stuart would deny that he had good
intentions, even when they were apparent.
"He wanted to be an opthalmologist," Kim said. But when Kim
asked why, Stuart replied that "he wanted to fix up my eyes because
I was a stupid nerd."
Janet Lin, a fellow Foothill student, said Stuart often hid
behind a tough exterior. "Sometimes he was afraid and he would hold
up a shell around his heart," she said.
Stuart's girlfriend, Jennifer Lin, said she managed to get past
that shell. "I always felt really lucky that he let me into his
heart and into his life," she said.
His girlfriend also said they had talked of getting married on
New Year's Eve, 1999, "so we could start the millenium together."
PHONE CALL TO CHAN
As it turned out, it was through Stuart's relationship with
Jennifer _ with whom he thought of spending the rest of his life _
that he met the people who police believe ended it.
Her mention of Chan, whom she had dated a few times almost two
years ago after they met in traffic school, led him to get Chan's
phone number, call and set up a meeting.
As Stuart was an unlikely victim, Robert Chan is an unlikely
accused murderer.
Even more brilliant _ at least scholastically _ than Stuart,
Chan was alternately described by schoolmates as a scholar with a
heart of gold and a strange and angry young man who frequently
claimed membership in the Wah Ching, a Chinese criminal society.
The circumstances of Stuart's first meeting with Chan are still
unclear. The story culled from police reports and the statements of
four of the five suspects is that Stuart introduced himself to Chan
as Martin Gore.
Eventually, four other Sunny Hills High School students
allegedly joined the two young men in preparing for the burglary.
Police believe that Chan became angry at the quality of Stuart's
planning for the heist, and grew furious when he learned that
Stuart had given a false name.
Then, police said, he planned Stuart's murder, rehearsed it with
his accomplices, and lured Stuart to the Buena Park home where
Stuart's corpse would later be recovered, on the pretext of selling
him a Beretta handgun.
PARENTS MAKE A DISCOVERY
There are some parts of the police story that Stuart's parents
believe. They heard from Stuart's friend Kim that Stuart was on his
way to pick up a gun that night.
"I can't even begin to guess why he would want to go," Linda Tay
said.
But the rest, they won't even talk about.
"It's not like Stuart," Alfred Tay said emphatically. "I would
be shocked to think that Stuart would think that his parents would
think it's OK to do that."
The Tays had never heard of Robert Chan until after Stuart
disappeared. That night, they searched his room for phone numbers
of friends they could call, in desperation, for some word of where
he might have gone.
They found a slip of paper bearing Chan's name and number.
The last time Stuart's family saw him was in the afternoon on
New Year's Eve.
What would his mother have told him, if she had known she would
never see him again?
"I would have said I love him. But I don't think I would even
have needed to. He always knew that Mommy loved him."
When Stuart left the house at 4 p.m., he told his sister he'd be
back in time to greet 1993 with the family. But he would'nt leave
1992 alive.
Dan Froomkin is a Register education reporter. Register staff
writers Jeff Brody, Robert Chow, Jeff Collins, Donna Davis, Tony
Saavedra and Melissa Balmain Weiner contributed to this series.
CHART:
Alfred and Linda Tay
Ages: Alfred Tay is 45; Linda Tay is 44.
Home: An 11-room, 7,557-square-foot residence in the Orange hills,
assessed at $786,394. Built for the family in 1986, it has a
four-car garage, pool and tennis court.
Background: Immigrants who left Singapore in their teens, the Tays
attended college in Canada. They were married in 1972, and moved to
Los Angeles, where Alfred Tay could continue his medical studies.
In 1975, they had their first child and only son: Stuart. In 1976,
they moved to Fullerton, and Alfred Tay began what would become a
lucrative private practice in obstetrics and gynecology. In 1978,
they had a daughter, Candice.
CHART:
Robert Chien-nan Chan
Age: 18
Birthplace: Taiwan
Home: A seven-room, $264,000, ranch-style house with a pool owned
by his parents on a cul-de-sac on a quiet street in Fullerton
Academic background: A senior at Sunny Hills High School, he was
enrolled in the rigorous International Baccalaureate Program and
maintained the second-highest grade-point average on campus. His
score of 1,480 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test put him in the top 1
percent of college-bound seniors.
Extracurricular activities: Member of Academic Decathlon team,
president of German club, two-year player on football team
Favorite book: "The Joy-Luck Club" by Amy Tan
Hobbies: Listening to music, drawing flowers, weight lifting,
eating out
College of choice: Princeton University
Career goal: Pediatrician
Police record: Chief suspect in October beating of Sunny Hills High
School student who reportedly had bad-mouthed the Wah Ching, the
Chinese criminal society to which Chan told some friends he
belonged. Incarcerated in Orange County Jail, charged with the
murder of Stuart Tay.