On Thanksgiving Day in 2017, 68-year-old Robert Wong, a male Air Force veteran, was found murdered in his Memphis, Tennessee, home. His family had left for a couple of hours to get brunch, a tradition of theirs, and when they returned around noon, they discovered him unresponsive in the living room. Wong, who was also undergoing treatment for cancer, had been shot in the shoulder. Investigators determined he was killed sometime between 8:30 a.m. and 10:30 a.m.
The side doors to the house were unlocked, and Wong's keys and the family's Honda Odyssey minivan were missing.
The investigation into the death of the beloved husband of 45 years, father, and grandfather initially had very few leads. The day after the murder, some items from the stolen minivan were found in the Fox Hollow Townhomes. Later that same day, the damaged minivan was discovered abandoned in the 5500 block of Crepe Myrtle. Despite a public call for tips, the case went cold for a period, causing distress for his family and the community who remembered him as a loving family man and a patriot.
Four years later, in November 2021, a breakthrough in the cold case led to an arrest. The Memphis Police Department, through new evidence and witness interviews, identified Dallas Perkins as the suspect. At the time of Wong's murder, Perkins was 15 years old. When he was charged with the murder, Perkins was 19 and already incarcerated at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, serving a sentence of more than seven years for other crimes, including the armed robbery of a pizza delivery driver in 2018.
Perkins was charged with first-degree murder, first-degree murder in the perpetration of theft, and theft of property in connection with Robert Wong's death. Due to his age at the time of the offense, the initial legal proceedings were slated to take place in Juvenile Court. A grand jury had sent a request for his prosecution to the District Attorney General's Office.
