Judge’s Retirement Comes Amid Array of Allegations

The tangled tale of George W. Trammell III’s abrupt retirement from the Superior Court bench involves a Taiwanese cardsharp, his wife, their live-in baby sitter, a kidnapping, rumors of Chinese mobsters and competing allegations of sexual misconduct and extortion.

Not to mention the 60-year-old judge’s confession, unprompted one day in court, that he doesn’t make his bed. Or his assertion that he came home one evening and found a loaded shotgun in that bed.

Or the allegation, detailed by the Taiwanese husband in court papers filed Friday, that his wife was seduced by the judge and that they then carried on an affair. Trammell had already sentenced the wife to probation; he was due to sentence the husband, who had been convicted by a jury in the same case and faced life in prison.

The very day the judge stepped down, detectives served a search warrant on his home and chambers as well as on the jail cell of the husband, Ming Ching Jin, and the home of his wife, Pifen Lo, according to law enforcement officials.

In tendering his retirement Jan. 9, according to a source familiar with events, Trammell admitted that he had developed an amiable relationship with Lo but adamantly denied that it had turned sexual.

Instead, the source said, Trammell maintained that he feared retribution from Chinese mobsters and became friendly with the 37-year-old Lo as a means of protection--apparently believing that she would warn him if there was impending trouble.

Meanwhile, the baby sitter has lodged separate allegations. The jury that convicted Jin of kidnapping a La Puente couple convicted her of the same charge. In court papers, Yu Ching Chu, 33, alleges that Trammell brought her in mid-September from jail to the Pomona courthouse where he was based and spoke with her in chambers--without any attorneys present.

Such a conversation, no matter the substance, would violate judicial ethical rules. According to Chu’s lawyer, Enid Ballantyne, Trammell “said he’d get her out of jail and set her up in an apartment.” In exchange, he wanted information about Jin.

Prosecutors are investigating Trammell’s conduct as well as the allegation that audiotapes exist that document the alleged affair with Lo, sources said.

Yet law enforcement officials wonder that if such tapes exist, isn’t one possibility the notion that they were made with the intent of blackmailing the judge?

Trammell could not be reached for comment despite phone calls and visits to the Pomona courthouse and his home. His attorney, Jack Quinn, declined to comment.

A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office also declined to comment.

And Lo, reached at her Monrovia home, said, “I can’t talk.” An attorney for Jin declined to comment.

At the center of the convoluted sequence of events and cast of characters stands Jin, 38. A probation report describes him as a gambler suspected of ties to Asian organized crime.

In March 1995, sheriff’s deputies arrested Jin, his wife Lo and Chu after the kidnapping of the La Puente couple.

According to court papers, the couple was held at Jin and Lo’s house, which was then in Rowland Heights. Jin and Lo have three young children who remained in the home at the time, according to court documents.

After the couple was freed and arrests were made, according to court papers, deputies searched the house and found four 1 1/4-pound blocks of plastic explosives, a variety of loaded and unloaded weapons, handcuffs, an armor vest, $400,000 worth of counterfeit copies of Microsoft’s Encarta ’95 CD-ROM encyclopedia and 47,000 fake Microsoft holograms.

The cache represented the first time such counterfeit software had shown up in the United States, authorities said at the time.

The discovery of the weapons and explosives prompted authorities to investigate possible links to the Wah Ching Chinese organized crime syndicate. The Wah Ching is a United States-spawned Asian crime group with links to the 300-year-old criminal societies in Hong Kong.

In court, the case was assigned to Trammell, a judge since 1971.

In January 1996, Lo pleaded guilty to lesser charges, including child endangerment.

In April, over the objection of prosecutors who had asked for prison time, Trammell sentenced her to five years probation.

In July, Jin and Chu were convicted by a jury of kidnapping. Both face prison terms of life without the possibility of parole. Both have also asked for new trials, and in court last Tuesday before Judge Robert W. Armstrong, a hearing was set for March 3.

In August, Trammell told the sheriff’s court services unit that he believed he had been targeted by Chinese mobsters, said Bob Pash, chief of the unit.

One day a few weeks later in court, speaking to Jin and Chu and to the lawyers in the case, Trammell detailed his security concerns.

According to a transcript, he said he had gotten a mysterious birthday card. His daughter’s home alarm system was shut off. He arrived home from work and tripped his own home alarm, which had been turned on--though he leaves it off during the day.

Someone “messed up” the bed in the guest room. Another day, “I found my bed made.” And then, “I go to bed, pull back the comforter and what do I find in my bed? A loaded shotgun.”

At that, according to the transcript, Jin laughed.

Trammell went on to say in court that he had asked the Sheriff’s Department for protection and had been told by deputies that these were “tactics that the Asians in the Asian organized crime might very well use to intimidate.”

He added: “I have had deputies stake out my house, armed deputies day and night. Unfortunately, not on the right days or nights.”

Meanwhile, on Sept. 20, Trammell met alone in chambers with Chu, according to court papers filed by her attorney, Ballantyne.

Chu said in the papers: “I was very frightened, as in my country being summoned into the office of a judge can mean death.”

Ballantyne says Chu hails from mainland China. And though Chu’s English is limited, she apparently understood one point clearly: Trammell “told me not to tell anyone” about the meeting.

On Oct. 3, Chu was again brought out to Pomona. According to the court papers, she refused to see Trammell--but his bailiff told her that if she would cooperate with the judge by providing evidence against Jin, she would receive a better diet in jail and her $500,000 bail would be reduced.

The bailiff declined Friday to comment on those allegations.

That same day, Trammell ordered that Chu was to receive a vegetarian diet in jail, according to court records. Two weeks later, her bail was reduced to $25,000, records indicate.

Jin--also convicted of kidnapping--asked for a bail reduction. On Dec. 9, Trammell denied it. Court records reflect that the judge indicated that Jin “is convicted of serious crimes and bail remains as set--no bail.”

At a hearing three days before, Trammell had returned to Lo various items seized by deputies after the March 1995 arrests. Among the items: a black 1988 Mercedes-Benz 560, a computer, two Rolex watches, a TV, a VCR and various photos.

In the appeal Jin filed Friday with the 2nd District Court of Appeal in downtown Los Angeles, in which he asked to be released from jail, Jin alleged that Trammell told Lo what bank documents she needed to make it easier “for judge to grant a motion to return the car.”

In broken English, Jin also alleged that his wife had sex “several times” with Trammell, but that “it was against her will” and she submitted because Trammell promised that Jin would get a new trial.

Then, though, Trammell fell in love with Lo, Jin alleged. “He told [Lo] to marry with him, or [I] would never go home.”

Jin also alleged that Trammell worked out an arrangement with Lo so that he could send her a coded message on her beeper that meant, “I love you 100%.”

He alleged further that “the telephone recording tape” and phone records would document the affair. He provides no further details about such a tape.

He does, however, provide a series of phone numbers for Lo and for Trammell--including the correct number for the private line in the judge’s chambers.

An early draft of Jin’s appeal--which a source said offers a detailed chronology of the alleged affair, with sex purportedly beginning in October--somehow made its way to authorities a few weeks ago. How remains unclear.

The same day the warrant was served, with courthouses downtown and in Pomona aswirl with rumor, Trammell decided to retire after being asked whether he had developed a relationship with Lo, according to a source. His retirement was effective the next day.

Trammell was not forced to step down, sources said. But one source added that Trammell has already begun reflecting on his decision to cultivate a relationship with Lo: “He said in retrospect it was probably poor judgment.”