Cecilia Chang, the disgraced St. John’s University dean on trial for using her students as personal servants, was the prime suspect in the 1990 execution-style murder of her first husband, the Daily News has learned.
Chang was even fingered by the 37-year-old man in a dying declaration to detectives at the intensive care unit of Elmurst General Hospital, where he was sent after taking three slugs to his back, said sources with direct knowledge of the investigation.
Unable to speak because of the tube running down his throat, Ruey Fung Tsai — known as “Johnson” — motioned for a piece of paper, said one of the sources.
“He wrote that his wife was responsible: ‘My wife did this,’” the source said.
The source said Tsai also wrote of his wife’s business dealings with former Queens Borough President Donald Manes, who committed suicide in 1986 amid a municipal corruption scandal.
Tsai’s murder remains unsolved. But a source said the FBI was notified of the cold case after Chang was indicted by the Queens district attorney and Brooklyn U.S. attorney on separate charges in 2010. The charges included embezzling more than $1 million from the university, bribing students with scholarships and forcing them to work as personal servants in her home.
Chang is pressing to testify in her own defense this week as her team begins presenting its case in Brooklyn Federal Court, either Monday or Tuesday, sources said.
Detectives from the 83rd Precinct squad did not get a chance to question Tsai more deeply before he died July 31, 1990. He was the father of the couple’s young son, Steven.
Tsai had been shot 11 days earlier as he showed up for work at a factory on Suydam St. in Bushwick, Brooklyn, where he owned a business inside.
Around 9:30 a.m., two men delivering soda nearby watched as a young Asian man walked up to Tsai and opened fire, according to law enforcement sources and police records.
The gunman took nothing, fled around the corner and disappeared into the subway station at Wyckoff Ave.
“It was definitely a hit,” the source with direct knowledge of the case told The News, adding that robbery was ruled out.
At the time, Chang was a rising star in St. John’s University’s Asian studies department. She was questioned in the murder as the prime suspect, but claimed not to know anything, the source said. Her home in Jamaica Estates, Queens, was placed under surveillance.
But police were not able to implicate her beyond her husband’s claim.
Detectives also questioned the victim’s mistress, who mentioned that Tsai’s father was a wealthy businessman in Taiwan, the source said.
Contacted by The News yesterday, Chang clammed up. “My lawyer says I am not supposed to answer any questions,” she said.
Defense lawyers Joel Cohen and Alan Abramson responded with terse “no comments” to the late husband’s dying declaration implicating Chang.
There has been testimony during the federal trial that Chang remarried twice and put both husbands on the university’s tab, listing them as her drivers.
Her son, Steven, is a lawyer practicing in Hawaii and could not immediately be reached.
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