WEST COVINA — A Los Angeles County Sheriff’s spokesman said Friday recordings of a 911 call that captured the slaying of a woman calling for help won’t immediately be made public.

Hsiao Hong Hsu, 45, was shot to death Wednesday while on the phone with a 911 dispatcher to report a break in. Hsu was shot as many as five times, authorities said. Two shots occurred while Hsu was on the phone.

The gunman delivered three more shots while chasing Hsu through her home in the 19700 block of Cameron Avenue in an unincorporated portion of Los Angeles County known as the Covina Hills, authorities said.

“The 911 tapes may not ever be released,” said Steve Whitmore, a spokesman for Sheriff Lee Baca. “That’s according to the homicide lieutenant. The calls are part of the investigation. I’m not going to get into the why.”

Dispatchers in West Covina and Los Angeles County received at least two calls related to the case, officials said. One from the Hsu home; and at least one, if not more, from witnesses who claimed to see as many as three Hispanic men fleeing the area, police said.

Detectives are examining the possibility that the men used a van to make their get away, authorities said.
During their initial crime scene investigation, detectives discovered a gun and gloves along Via Caballos, a secluded road that leads to the rear of Hsu’s home, according to neighbor Irene Marquez.

A total of eight evidence markers lay strewn on the road Friday. One, marked “A” is attached to a low fence at the back of a vegetable garden in the rear of the Chien home.

The seven other evidence markers follow the semi circular Via Caballos for about 600 feet and abruptly come to an end. Across the road from the last marker, tall weeds have been clearly trampled in a path that leads downhill to an unmapped gravel driveway.

The long driveway winds behind homes on adjacent Quail Valley for about 1/10 mile. The area was cordoned off for a time after the discovery of Hsu’s body. The Chien's owned a home on Quail Valley, according to public records.

In separate interviews, two former homicide detectives said the driveway and Via Caballos were likely points of entry and exit from the home because Hsu and her husband Robert Chien had not secured that portion of their property.

It is unclear if the motive was burglary, or if anything was taken. Detectives have not said if Hsu was targeted.
With the initial investigation of the crime scene pretty much complete, detectives will now focus on motive, means and opportunity, said Judd N. Green, president of The Green Consulting Group in Indianapolis, Ind.

Green is both a former homicide detective and former deputy coroner who specializes in death investigations. After 31 years in law enforcement he retired eight years ago to pursue a career in the private sector.

“The homicide detectives are going to focus on the last person to see victim alive and the closest person emotionally,” Green said. “That is usually the spouse and he becomes the prime person of interest.”

Sheriff’s homicide Lt. Dan Rosenberg said Chien is “not a suspect at this time.”

Green said detectives would also likely perform a “psychological autopsy” of Hsu — reconstructing the last 24 hours of her life.

He said homicide investigators are somewhat like art connoisseurs.

“When an art critic looks at a painting he can tell by the subject matter and the brush strokes, without reading the signature that it’s a Van Gogh. “A crime scene is a painting that’s been left to dry by the killer, and killers fall into patterns.”

A second former detective, who said he routinely consults Los Angeles County investigators, said anyone with a connection to the Chien home will be interrogated by detectives.

“They are already checking on the workers, the gardener, the pool man,” said the detective who asked that his name be withheld. “Next thing will be putting everyone on lie boxes. It’s fast and it’s cheap and you don’t have to go around checking alibis.”