Metro

End of her rope: St. John’s ‘Dean of Mean’ hangs herself

SHOCK ENDING: Morgue workers yesterday remove the body of former St. John’s dean Cecilia Chang, who killed herself a day after testifying at her own embezzlement trial.

SHOCK ENDING: Morgue workers yesterday remove the body of former St. John’s dean Cecilia Chang, who killed herself a day after testifying at her own embezzlement trial. (Ellis Kaplan)

SHOCK ENDING: Morgue workers yesterday remove the body of former St. John’s dean Cecilia Chang (left), who killed herself a day after testifying at her own embezzlement trial. (
)

On Monday, she dug her own grave. On Tuesday, she jumped in it.

Disgraced St. John’s University dean Cecilia Chang, 59, was found dangling by the neck from a stereo cord tied to the attic folding stairs in her Jamaica Estates home yesterday.

Her shocking suicide came one day after the accused embezzler catastrophically took the stand in her own defense against forced-labor and tax-evasion charges in Brooklyn federal court, defying the advice of her own legal team.

Instead, Chang essentially conceded to jurors that she’d lied on tax returns and to the FBI about some $1 million she was accused of embezzling from the Queens Catholic university — and her sometimes loud, defensive testimony was repeatedly interrupted by the judge’s admonitions, courtroom laughter and her own contentious shouts of “No!”

“Look, she was making sure she didn’t have to go to jail,” one law-enforcement source noted wryly of the former dean of Asian Studies’ self-imposed death penalty — a grisly end that left nothing to chance.

Prior to hanging herself, Chang had slit her wrists and cranked on the gas in her fireplace, law-enforcement sources said.

“She was covering all the bases,” said one source.

Chang had faced as many as 30 years in prison.

Two of her friends said Chang not only feared prison, but was bitter that school officials had testified against her after a 30-year career during which she had raised an estimated $20 million and recruited hundreds of students from Asia.

Chang had lavished gifts on many officials, later submitting phony invoices for reimbursement, according to testimony. The biggest beneficiary was the university’s president, the Rev. Donald Harrington, who later testified against her. She provided him more than 40 custom-made suits from Hong Kong, along with pricey Patek Philippe watches and lavish stays at The Four Seasons hotel in Hawaii, according to testimony.

Chang did pretty well herself. She kept a stable of “work-study” students as house maids, chauffeurs and personal assistants, jurors were told by prosecutors and witnesses — including the students.

Among the chores were hand-washing Chang’s underwear and driving clean clothes to her at Connecticut’s Mohegan Sun casino.

Chang left a suicide note, written in Chinese, law-enforcement sources said. While the contents were not made public, “She felt she was the victim,” one source said.

Her suicide scuttled the trial and shocked its participants. “A Shakespearean tragedy,” Brooklyn federal Judge Sterling Johnson called it, musing aloud that Chang testified “to get it off her chest.”

“That could be why she wanted to testify,” Johnson said. “Sayonara. She wanted to get it off her chest. We never know how an individual handles pressure.”

Jurors told reporters they were puzzled when the judge told them, “Mrs. Chang is no longer with us.”

“We were stunned,” said juror Joan Brophy, of Staten Island. “It was a shame because she probably punished herself more than anyone could.”

Said Chang lawyer Alan Abramson, “She was the second-leading fund-raiser after Father Harrington . . . Her whole life was St. John’s.”

The suicide caused an immediate mistrial. Prosecutors in Queens are expected to dismiss the related, 205-count embezzlement indictment against Chang on Nov. 13.

Chang had also faced a related, pending 205-count embezzlement indictment in Queens.Law-enforcement sources said there are no ongoing investigations into Chang’s fellow administrators or her son, Steven, 27, who was also the beneficiary of one of his mother’s work-study grants.

Chang has had at least three husbands. The first, Johnson Tsai, died in a 1990 contract-hit murder, and Chang was an initial suspect, sources said.

While Tsai was still clinging to life, he managed to scrawl a note that fingered Chang in his shooting, saying, “My wife is the one behind this.” Chang was questioned but never arrested.

Her second husband, Danny Lao, was vice president of Chang’s Global Development Initiative charitable foundation, deemed a fraud by prosecutors; Lao is a reputed mobster, prosecutors have alleged.

As for husband No. 3, Jingua Tang, Chang all but told jurors she married him for immigration purposes. Chang did not deny it — insisting she really did “like” him.

Additional reporting by Jamie Schram