According to the Los Angeles District Attorney's response to Williams' petition for clemency:
On March 15, 1979, Sergeant Hetzel and Deputy Fueglin of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department interviewed Stanley Williams in an interview room at Firestone Station.
After completing the interview, Williams, Deputy Fueglin and Deputy Jones had the following conversation:
WILLIAMS: How many shots were fired at the motel? Five?
FUEGLIN: What did you say?
WILLIAMS: How many shots were fired at the motel? Five?
FUEGLIN: How many shots do you think were fired at the motel?
WILLIAMS: I don't know.
JONES: You just told us 'five' twice.
WILLIAMS: I didn't say no numbers, man, you are crazy.
As the evidence at the subsequent trial made clear, five shots were fired at the Brookhaven Motel (two were fired at Yen-I Yang, two were fired at Tsai-Shai Yang, and one was fired at Yee-Chen Lin). In the above-referenced dialogue, Williams, in a moment of mistaken candor, provided detectives with information only the killer would know. Moreover, he repeated that knowledge twice.
When confronted with this apparent knowledge, Williams, again acting as the guilty party, retracted the statements and denied saying what he had just been heard to say. These statements and Williams' immediate retraction of them, are admissions to the Brookhaven murders. Williams knew five shots were fired because it was Williams who pulled the trigger each of those five times.
