Suicide Manuscript Depicts Immigrant's Failed Dreams

By SCOTT GLOVER and SOLOMON MOORE

Oct. 23, 1997 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

A week before John En allegedly killed his family and then turned the gun on himself, an old friend of his received a manuscript in the mail with a chilling title: “Last Dream Broken.”

The typewritten biography documents En’s personal troubles that apparently came to a tragic climax early Tuesday in the fatal shooting of his wife and 15-year-old son. It is the story of a man who overcame great odds to find financial success half a world away from his homeland, but failed to secure a peaceful family life.

Los Angeles police found the body of En, 70, in an upstairs bedroom of the family’s Porter Ranch hilltop home, a handgun on his chest. The bodies of his 42-year-old wife, Nancy, and son, Franklin, were downstairs. Authorities say they believe En committed the killings.

Los Angeles Police Det. Marshall White said police are contacting relatives of the dead couple, hoping their information will shed light on what neighbors described as a tumultuous spousal relationship.

Notes were found in John En’s pocket, on which he scribbled about how unhappy he was about his marriage, White said.

“We believe and are confident that this is a murder-suicide. There is nothing else to show us that it is anything else at this time,” White said, adding that the investigation continues.

That theory coincides with En’s written biography.

His life story begins this way: “I realized many impossible dreams. I reached unreachable stars. Then during my last journey a traitor blew me up into pieces,” which was written as a preface to the 31-page document.

The document was received by Westside attorney Marvin Bernstein last week. He said the document was mailed to him “out of the blue.” While it did cause him to be concerned, Bernstein said he had no way of contacting En. Nowhere in the document did En say that he wanted to harm his family, Bernstein said.

In the autobiography, En described a classic immigrant’s tale. As a young man, he took a steamer across the Pacific Ocean to flee the Communists in China, chasing his dream of becoming an inventor in America. He spent years looking over his shoulder, an illegal immigrant seeking work as a houseboy and cook to support himself while attending night classes.

Eventually, En earned an engineering degree at Stanford University. He worked in the defense industry, eventually earning his U.S. citizenship and qualifying for secret government work.

Despite his career successes, the one dream En called “my life’s last goal”--a happy family--remained elusive.

In his memoir, En blames Nancy, his second wife, for his troubles after she told him in May she wanted a divorce. He accuses her in the document of entering into a loveless marriage in order to immigrate to the United States from her native Taiwan.

“She was making practical moves to leave as soon as her wings were strong enough for her to fly,” En wrote of his wife, nearly 30 years his junior. “For the first time in my life I had no dreams. I realized with a broken heart that I could change neither Nancy nor erase the difference in our ages.”

En said he met Nancy after taking out an ad for a secretary in a Taiwanese newspaper. The ad was a ruse En used to meet hundreds of women, one of whom he hoped to select as his wife.

Nancy, he said, was first hired as an assistant to help arrange interviews and evaluate candidates. After a yearlong search and numerous trips to Taipei to interview applicants, En decided Nancy was the best choice. The two were married in Taipei City Hall on Feb. 22, 1981.

“She was young and sweet,” En recalled. “I treated her like a princess. We were very happy.”

But the bliss soon dissolved into suspicion, En wrote. He said Nancy “betrayed” him by telling her sister of their secret plan to obtain permission for Nancy to become a legal U.S. resident and for the couple to move to America.

“That night I felt my head was cracking and I was tossing like crazy,” En wrote. “All of her promises of marriage forever might be fake too. After two years of an all-out effort to find the best match, I had been trapped with the worst of them all!”

Despite “dark clouds . . . gathering,” the couple moved to the United States after an elaborate marriage celebration in Taiwan.

“She was delighted to see Disneyland for the first time,” En wrote. “Still, she was unhappy in heart for having . . . married an older husband.”

In court papers, Nancy En told a different tale. “I am completely utterly terrified of [John En],” Nancy wrote in a declaration seeking a restraining order in July. “I moved out of the house after years of physical and emotional abuse . . . primarily directed at me but also, at times, toward our son.”

The couple separated in May.

Nancy En said the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services became involved after Los Angeles police officers were dispatched to a particularly violent outburst at their home in 1991.

County welfare workers encouraged the family to seek counseling but John En refused. Nancy En attended along with their son.

Franklin En was in the 10th grade at the San Fernando High School math, science and technology magnet school. .