Gee Jon was ordered by Hip Sing officials to perform a gang hit on 74-year-old
Chinese laundry proprietor Tom Quong Kee (), a nominal member of the Bing Kong Tong, as well as the
Four Brothers Tong. Hughie Sing, a 19-year-old from
Carson City, newly recruited to the Hip Sing Tong and Gee's apprentice of two months, pointed Tom out as a target, having lived with Tom as an apprentice for two years before. They traveled to Mina from
Reno on the 18th or 20 August, reportedly being seen by deputy sheriff W. J. Hammill asking about work at the local Palace Café. By then Hammill had heard rumors that the men he had seen were Tong members in town to kill Tom Quong Kee and were pretending to be job-seekers on their way to
Tonopah as a cover. On the night of August 27, 1921, Gee and Sing knocked on the door of Tom's cabin, the former armed with a
.38 caliber Colt revolver. When Tom answered the door in his pajamas, Gee, who was standing behind Sing, killed the elderly man with two shots to the heart. Tom's body was discovered the next morning by one of his friends, reporting his find to
justice of the peace L. E. Cornelius, who in turn alerted Hammill. After finding two sets of footprints at the crime scene, Hammill made a possible link to the presence of two strangers he had seen the week before. Gee and Sing were apprehended the next morning on August 28 in Reno after Hammill phoned chief of police John Kirkley about two possible murder suspects driving back from Mina. Their arrests were considered unusual, as other Tong killings typically went unsolved, with at least three additional murders with suspected Tong involvement being reported by the end of August. However, Tom's murder was of particular interest as it was one of the few instances where violence between the warring factions took place outside of California. During interrogation, Sing confessed to his role in the murder and implicated Gee as the one to fire the fatal shots, under the belief that this would lead to his immediate release from custody. Both were held without bail at Mina jail. The
Lung Kong Tin Yee Tong and Guan Kong Yee Tong had already issued rewards of $500 and $300 respectively for the capture of Tom's killers, but accepted a trial through the official courts. During their preliminary hearing on September 8, 1921, Sing recanted his confession and entered a not guilty plea along with Gee. That same year, trial took place from November 28 to December 3 at the Seventh Judicial District Court for
Mineral County in
Hawthorne, Nevada. A jury found them guilty of first-degree murder and on February 1922, both were sentenced to death by Judge J. Emmet Walsh. A
motion for a
new trial by Frame was denied. A bill authorizing the use of lethal gas had passed the
Nevada State Legislature in 1921, making Gee and Sing eligible to become the first people to be executed by this method. They were incarcerated at the death row of
Nevada State Prison in Carson City. While on death row, Gee's weight dropped from The
Supreme Court of Nevada instead complimented the state legislators for "inflicting the death penalty in the most humane manner known to modern science". In an attempt to have Gee resentenced as well, three final appeals were launched by Frame to the state supreme court, the
Ormsby County District Court and the U.S. District Court in Carson City, but all were denied between February 4–7, 1924. ==Death==