Joyce Chiang - Disappearance and Death

Disappearance and Death

On January 9, 1999, the day of Chiang's disappearance, she had met with several friends for a movie and dinner, and one of those friends offered Joyce a ride home. Joyce asked her friend to make one quick stop at the Starbucks at the intersection of Connecticut Avenue NW and R Street NW. Joyce told her friend that she would walk the four blocks home from the coffee shop, but she never made it to her apartment. Her brother Roger was her roommate and reported her missing. Because Joyce was a federal employee, the FBI took the lead in investigating the case.

A couple walking through Anacostia Park the next day found Chiang's billfold and turned it in to park police, who filed it in the park's lost and found. Four days later, the couple recognized Chiang's photo in media coverage and alerted the FBI, who arranged a search of the park and discovered her apartment keys, video and grocery cards, and gloves. The jacket in which Chiang was last seen was also found, torn down the back.

During the three month span in which she was missing, a candlelight vigil was held every Saturday night in Dupont Circle. Her brother Roger was instrumental in several televised and print appeals for more information on her case and disappearance.

Three months after the disappearance and eight miles away, a canoeist on the Potomac River found a badly decomposed body later identified through DNA analysis as Chiang's. The cause of death could not be determined, and for more than 12 years, the case was considered a cold case.

In 2001, at the height of the media frenzy surrounding the disappearance of Chandra Levy, police had attempted to defrock a serial killer theory by stating that Joyce had committed suicide. Joyce's family turned to the media to dispel that notion. In January 2011, WTTG-Fox 5 reported that the police had solved Joyce's murder, identifying two suspects who attempted to rob Joyce on the night she disappeared.

In May 2011, the Washington Post and other media reported on the press conference at which DC police acknowledged that Chiang had not committed suicide. Instead, the case was ruled a homicide. They said one suspect was in prison in Maryland for another offense and that another suspect was living in Guyana, which has no extradition treaty with the U.S. According to WTTG-Fox 5, an unnamed "source familiar with the case has identified the men as Steve Allen and Neil Joaquin, two men who worked as a team abducting people off the street with the intention of robbing them." Partly based on similarities to another attack committed by the two men after Chiang's disappearance, police hypothesized that the men drove Chiang to the Anacostia River. The day of the press conference, John Walsh stated that at the river either the men threw her into the water, or Chiang attempted to escape but slipped on the icy river bank and drowned. Although the police did not confirm or deny Walsh's theories, nor were any charges filed, Chiang's family expressed thanks for the closure of the case.