The Mysterious Mr Prentice

One of the big questions about the Pamela Werner murder case is the role of the dentist Wentworth Prentice. Paul French, the author of Midnight in Peking and Graeme Sheppard, author of A death in Peking disagrees very much on his involvement. Whereas Paul French is pointing as the murderer Graeme Sheppard believes that he probably had very little to do with the murder. Paul French bases his theory on the independent investigations by Pamela’s father E.T.C Werner,  and he believed that Prentice was a kind of middleman providing sexual entertainment for people in high places inside the Legation Quarter of Beijing. We recently discovered an article the Huabei Newspaper printed on February 28 1937, that at least shows us that the Chinese police had an invested interest in what took place in Prentice’s apartment in the Legation Quarter.

“Two prostitutes are interrogated as part of Pamela’s case:

Pamela Werner, daughter of the former British consul in Fuzhou E.T.C. Werner who now lives at No.1 Mapichang Hutong, was murdered on January 8th. The police now have several suspects including a dentist named Wentworth Prentice who is living at Dongjiaominxiang. The British embassy also think he has something to do with the case, so they interrogated him. But he claimed that he is only a dentist, not in any organization and never did anything illegal, only sometimes he and some friends will go to a brothel at Baishun Hutong outside Qianmen and got to know two prostitutes there. At around 9:40 pm the day before yesterday (26th), the two prostitutes were taken to the British embassy by the police. They were panicky when the police suddenly appeared, and their mother started crying because they have been arrested last year for gambling and now the police are here again. Yesterday (27th) morning around 00:30 am, they came back by rickshaw. It is said that they were interrogated by someone from British embassy. They were asked if they knew Wentworth Prentice, they answered that they were old friends with him, two years ago he often came to the brothel to meet them, but he had not come recently. They were also asked if they knew anything more about his recent situation. They said no. They were then released after the interrogation.”

- Huabei Ribao, February 28, 1937