Ronald Ebens

In June 2012, just before the 30th anniversary of the killing and in the wake of a prominent retrospective opinion piece in The New York Times, Ebens expressed regret on a phone interview from his home in Nevada with writer Emil Guillermo, saying killing Chin was "the only wrong thing I ever done in my life."

Ebens and Nitz searched the neighborhood for 20 to 30 minutes and even paid another man $20 to help look for Chin, before finding him at a McDonald's restaurant. Chin tried to escape, but was held by Nitz while Ebens repeatedly bludgeoned Chin with a baseball bat. A policeman who witnessed the violent beating said Ebens was swinging the bat like he was swinging "for a home run." When rushed to Henry Ford Hospital, he was unconscious and died after four days in a coma on June 23, 1982. Ebens was arrested for the initial assault. After Vincent Chin's death, Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz were charged with second-degree murder.

Ebens claimed that Chin walked over to Ebens and Michael Nitz and threw a punch at Ebens' jaw without provocation, although witnesses at the ensuing trial testified that Ebens also got up and said, "It's because of you little motherfuckers that we're out of work," referring to the Japanese auto industry, particularly Chrysler's increased sales of captively imported Mitsubishi models rebadged and sold under the Dodge and now-defunct Plymouth brands and Nitz's layoff from Chrysler in 1979, despite the fact that Chin was Chinese, not Japanese. It is disputed whether Ebens uttered other racial slurs.

His work with Chrysler brought him to Detroit, Michigan, where he owned a bar, Ron's Place, located on Van Dyke Avenue during the 1970s. In 1982, he was a superintendent at the Warren Truck Assembly Plant.

Ronald Madis Ebens (born October 30, 1939) is an American criminal. Ebens, with his stepson Michael Nitz as an accomplice, murdered Vincent Chin, a Chinese American man, on June 19, 1982. This led to a federal indictment for violating Chin's civil rights, but only after public outrage at the probationary sentence and small fine imposed by Michigan Third Circuit Court Judge Charles Kaufman. Ebens was found guilty on one count of violating Chin's civil rights and was sentenced to 25 years in prison, but the conviction was overturned on appeal.

Ronald Ebens was born on October 30, 1939, in Dixon, Illinois and raised in Oak Park, Michigan. He served 2½ years in Army Air Defense School. On August 25, 1965, Ebens started work at Chrysler Corporation's plant in Belvidere, Illinois, and was promoted to salaried trim foreman on November 8, 1965. He married Juanita Ebens in 1971, his second marriage after a brief marriage at the age of 18.