A Report On Reporters Reporting On Reporter's Source Material Or Holy Po-Mo Yo!

By Sam Bakken in News on Jun 10, 2005 7:49AM

Chai Vang—the St. Paul, Minn. man that allegedly murdered six hunters in Sawyer County, Wisc. during a dispute over a deer stand—told a Chicago Tribune reporter in a letter that he'd had a dream the night before the incident that foreshadowed it. He told Colleen Mastony that in the dream he found himself in the jungles of Laos in a gun fight with Vietnamese soldiers. He wrote, about the dream, "We shot each others so -- I shot most of them and some escape to get help, then later I ran into a Lake, there I was surround by Vietnam soldier Tank and Armor so they take me as a prisoner." He also mentioned "I almost didn't want to go hunt that day because I never have that kind of dream in my life."

Vang told the reporter during a phone call that he regretted shooting some of the hunters he allegedly murdered, but that he had to "defend [himself] and [his] race" after some of them called him a "gook" and a "chink" and one fired a shot at him. Survivors maintain that Vang fired first. Vang has admitted that some of the people he shot were unarmed and that he shot some in the back.

Apparently six other reporters contacted Vang, but he only responded to Mastony's letter—you can read her letter to Vang here (all of the links in this paragraph require subscription so bugmenot it biotches!). You can read Vang's letters to Mastony here and here. Mastony wrote the letter to Vang to try and firm up details about that day and his life for an article she planned to write reconstructing the events that occurred on the day of the shootings.

The letters came out because they, along with a transcript of the phone call between Vang and Mastony, were filed in court yesterday after the Wisconsin attorney general asked that they be admitted as evidence in Vang's trial. And it kind of sucks for the Tribune because it appears that they got scooped on their own scoop. As of very early Friday morning there's still no mention of the letter on the Trib's Web site. Chicago Tribune's associate managing editor for metropolitan news told the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune that Mastony's story has not yet run and no date has been set to publish it. We'd bet Mastony is working her ass off to get it ready for the Saturday or Sunday edition.