Top AI Scientist "Gone Mad" and Executes His Nephew In Front Of Courthouse

Rotten Mango

Prominent Chinese-American AI researcher Dr. Chen, known for groundbreaking work in bioinformatics and cancer research at Harvard and Cold Spring Harbor Lab, allegedly murdered his 23-year-old nephew Cohen outside a Mass

Key takeaways

• Dr. Chen was a postdoctoral researcher at Tsinghua University and Cold Spring Harbor Lab, with 15+ peer-reviewed papers on cancer and AI-driven cell biology

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Bada being, baddaboo. One prominent UFO researcher once said, if you start looking for patterns, you're going to find them. And people think one of the worst patterns to emerge in 2026 is, the pattern of important scientists going missing or ending up dead, is it a fear-mongering conspiracy where netizens are connecting together a few dots and calling it a link? Or is it a real legitimate theory? I mean, I can't be the one to tell you. However, it does seem that any scientist or researcher studying something important to the greater safety of humankind or the detriment of humankind, anyone, scientist, researcher, involved in some sort of death, it's going to be investigated by some curious netizens. So Chen, a Chinese researcher based in the United States, he has the exact type of resume where if something happens to him, it makes you want to throw a coincidence out the window and sign up for like a front row seat at conspiracy con. Chen has a research role at Cassia, which is basically China's flagship AI research institution right now. Although they were first formed, I will say, to help China build nuclear missiles and satellites. Their first program was actually called two bombs, one satellite, which is like... Two bombs? Yeah, two bombs, one satellite. Yeah. And Cassia's signature specialty is actually biometrics, which is how they teach computers, how to identify humans by face. by their iris and even their gate, how they walk. They had this whole thing where they could identify you. They don't even know you. They don't know what your face looks like, but they could identify you from like a mile away on CCTV footage if they like follow certain gate patterns. Yeah. They have a free data set of people's faces that have become one of the most widely used training set in the entire world for facial recognition. He was a postdoctoral researcher in the bioinformatics division at Qinghua Universe. What does that even mean? What is bioinformatics? It sounds kind of like cute, but it's not cute at all. It's a very interesting role. It's not just data. It's not just AI, machine learning. You have to specialize in all of that, but you also have to specialize in molecular and cell biology. Researchers in the bioinformatics division at Tsinghua are working on projects like the Human Cell Atlas, which is actually a giant international project, like a global initiative. It's to catalog every cell type, describe its molecular fingerprint, if you will, and notate where it lives and what it does. Basically, Google Maps for the human body, which the human body is made up of roughly 37 trillion cells. So this is going to take a minute. The goal would be to give every biologist like a shared reference. So if they find a weird cell in their own experiment, they can look it up against the master map. It would also make it easier to find out which cells changed how, you know, which could help find cell signatures at flag. early cancer before it's dangerous. But if you're not working on the single-cell Atlas, they could be in any number of different AI and biology research programs. The whole idea is LLM, large language models, so chat GPT, cloud, but instead of being trained on human language, they're going to be trained on the human body. Biology, like a language. Create a foundational model, a cloud for cells, chat GPT, for cells. They train on cells and patterns of which genes turn on together in which cell types, under which conditions. The ultimate goal, they said, is to have a digital patient. So everybody has a patient profile, and now they have one for AI, and you run experiments and medications through the digital patient before the real patient, which sounds like it could also save lives, but also sounds really fucking terrifying at the same time. But after those research positions in China, Chen gets invited to come to the United States. He doesn't try to immigrate. He gets an invitation. It's like a Hogwarts invitation in the mail for a research role for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, which has been dubbed the birthplace of molecular biology. So there is that. They've been around since like 1890. They're a world-renowned nonprofit, private research and education institution. The lab today focuses on five distinct areas, cancer, neuroscience, genomics, plant biology, and quantitative biology. They do a lot of important work. Also, they were the epicenter for the American eugenics movement at one point. So the lab did preserve all its records for teaching and research while openly discussing it. So I guess they're trying to be transparent about one of the darkest chapters of American history and science. But, I mean, who's to say, right? Chen gets an invitation from that lab, the Cold Spring Harbor Lab, to come study in the U.S. do research for them. He moves to Long Island, New York. His research direction is so complicated. He's focusing on providing systematic solutions for, early diagnosis and precision treatment and cancer research using bioinformatics technologies. Yeah, it's a very important role. He also joins Harvard as a research scientist in the Department of Statistics. Throughout his entire career, he has published, co-authored at least 15 papers in notable peer-reviewed international journals in subjects like cancer, basically like trying to cure cancer. He starts his own company in China called My Health Gene. the company uses huge amounts of biological data, DNA, genes. They analyze to help doctors catch diseases early on and pick treatments tailored to each individual patient. So he's got the type of resume where if he's involved in a death, people are going to start a conspiracy theory online. April 7th, 2022, outside the Cambridge District Courthouse in Medford, Massachusetts. It's like a small courthouse with three courtrooms. There's two jury deliberation rooms. It's 12 holding cells. It's not like a big giant fortress building, like a lot of federal courthouses. You get a free parking lot. There's restaurants right next to it. You go pay your ticket and then you go eat. I don't know, but jangles. Okay, that's the vibe. Researcher Chen is walking towards his car. A white Chevy equinox is like an SUV. And as he's walking, getting ready to get into the driver's seat, he, I don't know if he does, but he must, right? He must sense something. Like something must shift in that exact moment. It is believed that as he's getting into his car, he locks eyes with this young man who also just stepped out of the courthouse. And there must be something that happens between the two of them. Nobody hears any sort of exchange. Nobody hears them talking. Or at least I haven't reported it. But something must happen. Some reports describe it as they share a look. Whatever it is, it's like something activates inside a researcher Chen. He gets in the car, turns the engine on, and before anyone else can react, he slams the foot down on the accelerator. he's not booking it to leave the courthouse. He's accelerating and ramming straight into the young man who just walked out of the courthouse that he just locked eyes with. He's not honking for the young man to get out of his way. This is not like a road rage incident either. Chen, the brilliant researcher, drives directly into this young man. He basically has him trapped. So this young man is now trapped in between the Chevy Equinox, Chen's car, and another parked car. He's trapped. Chen reverses, rams it back into him, until the front of Chen's SUV is completely dented like the surface of the moon. And then Chen steps out of his car. Slamming into the young man and another car? Yeah, but mainly the young man. Then he steps out with a black handgun and fires into the young man five to six times. This is a courthouse. Where the hell are the cops? Why isn't anybody stopping Chen? Police officers are circling him within seconds. You know, they're pointing their own weapons while ordering him to drop his. But it's not the police that stopped Chen. It's very interesting. it's a tall man in a suit walks up. He approaches Chen, restrains him almost calmly. Like he's just pinning Chen on the ground. He uses his knee. So Chen is face down. And this man in the suit has his knee on Chen's back. And then using one of his hands, he's kind of rubbing Chen's back, almost soothing him. Okay. And then finally, the police come over, handcuffed Chen. Who the hell is this man in the suit? This is Chen's attorney who was just representing Chen in the courtroom. Chen, the brilliant researcher, is now being arrested, and the young man laying dead in the parking lot of the courthouse is Wang Kong, otherwise known as Cohen. He's 23 years old, and he's Chen's nephew. But with this scientist killed his own nephew, his sister's own son, it doesn't make any sense. Well, it is believed that Cohen wanted a wife. He wanted a woman to marry, but like, what does that have to do with Chen? It is reported that Cohen didn't just want anyone to marry. He wanted to marry scientist Chen's wife, his aunt. We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mango to support Nami National, also known as the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Nami is the nation's largest mental health organization dedicated to improving the lives of individuals. This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rot Mingo's team of dedicated researchers. We would also like to thank you guys for your continued support. As always, full show notes are available about rotmingo podcast.com. Today's episode includes brief mentions of stalking behaviors, gun violence. Some quotes or statements may be condensed for brevity. And a lot of the research, even though this case does take place in the United States, a lot of the research was done with the help of our Chinese translators, because there's just a lot more information in China. You'll see why in a second. But with that being said, let's begin. The setup for Chen, it's just not ideal. It's not ideal. He has his wife, Michelle. They have, Michelle is a pseudonym. Her name is, I wouldn't say it, it's not widely circulating, so we're going to keep it, Michelle. She has two young kids, and Chen is barely home. Now, to be fair. How old is Chen and Michelle, though? They're like in their late 30s by this point, early 40s. Okay. How old are they're too young? Elementary school. So they're pretty young, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And Chen is, like, barely home. He's never home. He's not doing school pickup and drop off. To be fair, he is the sole breadwinner and his most lucrative business appears to be the one in China, where he has the biotech company. He has all these research roles in the United States, but you're not getting paid a bazillion dollars to be in the Department of Statistics at Harvard, but you probably will get paid a billion dollars to own a private company in China that helps cure people of certain diseases. Yeah, half time in China, half time in Boston. And it's doing really well. He's even being invited to speak as the guest at the Tsinghua, Beijing, Tanjin, Tai Bay Healthcare Big Data Summit forum. The amount of ink that they would need to just like have a letterhead's with that entire. It's unclear exactly how his time is divvied up. But I would say it's like closer to 50-50. But it has been established that Michelle Chen's wife, she is adamant that she wants her children raised in the United States. So it's not like Chen leaves her without a choice. It's not like Chen is like, well, you have to stay here. I'm going to go. In fact, if Chen had it his way, they would all move back to China. Because not only does he have his company, he's been offered really crazy, prestigious roles in research and things that would give him a lot of funding to do, I guess, his life's dreams and goals, whatever that may be. It has been said that the longer this back and forth goes on, Chen senses some tension with his wife, Michelle, because every time it comes back to Boston, she does seem a little bit distracted. She does seem a little bit distant. but that could also be because she's just freaking exhausted. She's holding the house down by herself. She just might be awash with dilemmas and deficiencies, you know? However, it is noted that Michelle is the one that also wanted him to go to China to start this lucrative business. And she did not want to go with him. So technically, it is a compromise. Chen does make it back to the family to spend all the big holidays. So he's back for Christmas. He's back for Chinese New Year. And sometimes he likes to keep it fresh. He wants to surprise his kids. In 2019, after finishing up this year, huge project with his company in China. Chen decides, I got time. Sure, I was going to stay in China for an extra three days to wrap up the project, but it's already wrapped so I can go home three days earlier than I expected. The name of the game is surprise. I'm going to go surprise my wife and kids. He quietly boards a flight home, gets to the airport, drives back home in Boston, and when he slips his key into the front door, all is quiet. Everything's good. He walks up the steps, opens the door to the primary bedroom and there in his bed is his wife, his 39-year-old wife, Michelle, and his 19-year-old nephew. And that is how Chen finds out that the last year of his life has been a lie. Okay? Well, over a year, like a year and a half because the nephew is almost turning 20. But in his house, it's his wife and nephew. They've been having an affair in his house. Not only is he betrayed by his wife, he's also betrayed by his nephew. It's not just his marriage that blows up that night. his entire extended family. Now, this is not incestual in the sense that the nephew is Chen's sister's son. So his wife has no blood relation to the nephew. So I guess that's the only silver lining is this is not an incestuous affair. But I mean, that's like a really low bar to set. It's his wife and it's his sister's little brother at the end of the day. To Chen, it probably feels like a multifaceted attack on his psyche. On top of that, affairs are always very tricky when it's happening inside the shared marital home because that's supposed to be your safe space. Moreover, moreover, Chen is the one that invited his nephew to come live with them out of the goodness of his heart so that his nephew could go to college in the United States. So in 2016, back in 2016, Chen gets a call from his older sister and she's telling him that her one and only son, Cohen, the only nephew that Chen has, because he only has one older sister and this is the only son that she has. He's ready to go to college now. But the problem is he wants to study abroad in the U.S. But the problem with that is that his English is not good enough to yet apply to most of the colleges that he wants to attend. So probably the fastest way to learn English would be going to the United States, taking a gap year, immersing himself in the culture and the language and going to like an English program. Would Chen mind if Cohen could come stay with him in Boston for a year to learn English? Just provide housing and food and we're going to send a little money for transportation. Like the setup is a lot of Asians have probably experienced the setup, okay? and then he gets to college, we'll go from there. That's it. Just like a year, really, is what we're asking. We're not asking you to put him through high school. It's just a year, and then he's going to dorm in college. That's the plan. Cohen joins the Chen family in Boston. Michelle doesn't like this. She is not happy. She's got two kids. Now she has to watch this random-ass teenager, okay? Not blood relation. She's never even really met the kid like that. And now she has to watch him. In fact, this is a huge point of contention for them early on. Michelle is arguing, like, I don't even want him to be here. First of all, why are you even saying yes if you're not even here to help take care of him? You're going to be in China most of the time. So it doesn't make sense. Now she's doing chores, cooking, cleaning, managing the entire household with some teenagers she barely knows adding on to all of it. But Chen convinces his wife. His older sister is the only reason that he was able to go to college. She paid most of his tuition and this is her son. So he owes it to his sister. Also, Chen's been with Michelle since college, so she kind of knows. So she's like, okay, you know what? Fine. Chen leaves for China, and at first he's very worried that every time he calls Michelle, it's just going to be screaming on the other line. She's going