Brian Cranston Says Police Looked Into Him After Peter Wong Killing

brian cranston said police looked into him and his brother after Peter Wong, the head chef at the Hawaiian Inn in Florida, was killed in a robbery in the mid-1970s. The case moved fast enough that an all-points bulletin followed the brothers as they headed north on motorcycles.

Hawaiian Inn jokes in Florida

Cranston said on Jesse Tyler Ferguson's Dinner's on Me podcast in 2024 that he and Kyle Cranston had stopped in Florida while traveling the country and worked as waiters at the Hawaiian Inn. He described Wong as "awful" and said the staff held meetings where they joked about how they could "get rid of him."

One staff member suggested using a meat grinder on Wong, while another proposed hitting him with his own wok. Those comments did not stop the brothers from leaving Florida on motorcycles for Maine, and they became part of the lead that later put police on their trail.

Peter Wong found in a trunk

Roughly a week or two after the Cranston brothers left, Wong's body was found in the trunk of a car after he had been hit over the head with a board during a robbery. When homicide investigators asked people at the Hawaiian Inn whether anybody had talked about doing Wong harm, the Cranstons came up immediately.

That is the part that turned a bad joke into a real investigation. Police had a reason to look at the brothers because the restaurant staff had already been trading violent ideas about Wong before his death, and the brothers were still making their way through the Carolinas when the bulletin went out.

Billy Wayne Waughtel case

Witnesses and surveillance footage led police to the actual culprits. Billy Wayne Waughtel pleaded guilty to killing Wong with the help of two accomplices, and he was later murdered in prison while serving his sentence.

The practical read here is simple: Cranston's story is not about a cold case lingering for decades, but about how quickly a careless workplace joke can put the wrong names in a murder inquiry before evidence points elsewhere. By the time the investigation caught up with the real suspects, the brothers had already moved on by motorcycle and were no longer the focus.