Murder most predictable

A hit man gets hit in a popular dance club

By A.C. Thompson

› acthompson@hushmail.com

"I'm in complete shock," the clubgoer told the local TV news shortly after a man was shot to death on a basement dance floor at 1015, a popular after-hours nightclub in SoMa.

But the bloody demise of Hao Tu, 29, was shocking only to those who knew nothing about him — or about the recent history of the club, which is located at 1015 Folsom St.

See, Hao Tu, well-informed sources say, was a hit man, a drug peddler, and an organized-crime figure who used 1015 as a base of operations; knowledgeable sources told the Guardian he had carried out at least three stabbings inside the club since July 2004.

One alleged victim was a man named Ban Tsan, who was knifed twice on July 24, 2004, in an attack that left his small intestine hanging out through a stab wound in his stomach. That incident and its anemic police investigation were the subject of our Jan. 11 cover story, "Crime and Impunity."

Fellow clubgoers transported Tsan to San Francisco General Hospital, where surgeons diagnosed him with a "massive evisceration of the small bowel" before cutting a foot-long incision in his stomach and proceeding to stitch his guts back together.

In multiple interviews with the police, Tsan identified Tu as his assailant, yet for some inexplicable reason, the San Francisco Police Department has been shockingly slow to investigate — in fact, as we reported, it took them a year and a half to even generate a written police report on the near fatal attack. (In our earlier report, Tu was described as "Mr. X" for legal reasons.)

Though Tu was a notorious figure in the Bay Area's Asian underworld — and, according to a law enforcement source, was deep in the drug game — he didn't have an extensive criminal record. We only found one arrest report for him: a 1998 bust for threatening three Latino men in Daly City with a machete and possessing a concealed, loaded handgun in his car. He eventually pleaded guilty to one minor weapons charge, paid a small fine, and went free.

Another anonymous source familiar with the organized crime scene told us Tu was responsible for "at least a couple of murders," was involved in a triple shooting in 2000 in front of a bar called Attitudes, and stabbed two more people at 1015 late last year. In an earlier interview, the source said, "What can you do with this guy? You either kill him or wait for him to kill you."

Evidently, somebody chose the former tack. No arrests have been made, either for Tu's slaying or for the crimes he's been linked to.

For 1015 security manager Dave Helm, characters like Tu pose a special challenge. "There's obviously some kind of gang thing going on," Helm said. "The Asian gangs show up, and they're not flying colors. They're not advertising that they're gangsters. They're very polite. They don't throw attitude."

While Helm was familiar with Tu, he said the man wasn't a regular at the club and wasn't somebody the security detail had pegged as a threat. "I'd seen him a couple of times but never had any real interaction with him," Helm told us, adding, "We've got a very strict door and very strict security."

At the Entertainment Commission, the city body that oversees nightclubs, executive director Robert Davis said, "We're awaiting additional information. It's basically in the hands of the police."

It seems the cops are keeping their mouths shut. The SFPD declined to comment for this story.

We did speak to attorney Charles Bourdon, who represents the man Tu allegedly gutted, Ban Tsan. (Tsan, who has been arrested several times, is himself in trouble with the law, currently facing an attempted murder charge.)

Bourdon says it's clear from his conversations with an SFPD detective that the department never questioned Tu about stabbing Tsan. "We gave them the names and addresses of eyewitnesses to the stabbing," Bourdon said. "What excuse do they have for not confronting this guy? ... It's mind-boggling."

According to Bourdon, the cops managed to interview one person: a reputed mob associate who may have hired Tu to do the stabbing. A few days later, Tu was dead. *