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The body in the bag

The remains of a corpse was a drugs-related murder
By David Cocksedge

On 1ST SEPTEMBER 1979 a green canvas bag was found washed in from the sea onto a remote beach at Castle Peak in Hong Kong. A construction worker that first saw it noted a foul smell coming from the bag and alerted local police. The bag contained a grisly mixture of a human skull wrapped in adhesive tape, a human pelvic bone and several ribs which clearly showed that the body had been hacked to pieces with no particularly skill. Both lower limbs were detached and were missing. A local pathologist determined that the remains were those of a male aged between 25 and 40 years old.

The Hong Kong Homicide Bureau combed through hundreds of files of men who had been reported missing in recent months. The skull was photographed and the prints shown to many people, and they were also put on show outside police stations in the British colony (as it was until 30 June 1997).

The first breakthrough came when the wife of one of the missing men told police that she thought she could recognize the ear-lobes, teeth and the nose of her missing husband, Peter Chan Woon-hing, who was 29 years old.

The Chinese woman named Wong Suet-hing was only 17 and had been married for only a few months. She was shown the picture of the skull again in much better lighting - and was certain that it was that of her husband. It was lucky for local police that Chan Woon-hing had told his young wife a great deal about his dangerous and illegal profession. She now revealed that he had been engaged in trafficking hard drugs to Europe and that he had been fearful of a revenge killing because one of the gang involved believed that he had been double-crossed. If this was the body of Chan, his fears had been well founded.

To ensure positive identification Detective Inspector Li Sung of the HK Police took the skull to London to be examined by the distinguished criminal pathologist Professor James Malcolm Cameron (see “Shootout at Smiths Club”, True Crime, January 2003). Li also took a photograph of Chan when he was alive. This had been taken in the Hong Wong studio by a photographer who confirmed that it had been shot from a distance of about 14 to 16 feet using a flash bulb. These details were important because Professor Cameron had to prove identification by superimposition. The technique he used was to superimpose the negative of the skull over the positive of the face and then fit the pair together using the eyes, ears, nose, mouth and cheekbones as points of focus.

Professor Cameron, working with his photographer Ray Ruddick produced enough points of similarity to state that the skull indeed belonged to the man photographed. He also discovered a bruise on the skull, which was from a heavy blow delivered one minute to five minutes before death.

Now that the victim was positively identified Hong Kong police began a full-scale investigation of one of the colony’s most gruesome murders. The trail was to lead to France, Holland and back to Hong Kong.

Chan’s wife revealed that Chan had flown to Holland a few months earlier with a consignment of heroin, which he had handed to a distributor. He waited three days for the money to be paid, as has been arranged, but was then told that a rival gang had stolen the drugs. The heroin had been handed to a man named Chan Wai, and, under the rules of the drug smugglers, it was his responsibility to pay compensation to the men that Chan was working for. But despite heavy pressure on Wai there was no money forthcoming and Chan Woon-hing returned to Hong Kong. Whilst he was planning to return to Amsterdam to collect his money he was asked by another drug dealer, Siu Chi-Kai, to take over another consignment of heroin to France, and he agreed. Siu Chi-Kai and another man bought five pounds of the class one drug and recruited a courier (a “mule” in drugs slang) to carry the package. The young lady recruited was thought to be ideal as she was unknown to the Hong Kong police and wanted to go to Europe to work as a croupier or a hostess. She was to receive US $3,000 for moving the heroin to France.

Kong Lai-king was an attractive 26-year-old woman who had worked in Kowloon bars and in the Golden Majestic Escort Agency. Chan’s associates packed the drugs in a suitcase with a false bottom and in May 1979 four gang members plus Ms Kong Lai-king flew to Paris from Hong Kong. They left in two groups and arranged to meet at a hotel in Holland after the heroin had been sold in France.

But at Charles de Gaulle airport their plan came unglued. Ms Kong walked to the customs hall into the “Nothing to declare” lane, but a French Customs Officer noticed her nervous manner and decided on a routine search of her suitcase. The false bottom and the heroin were quickly found and she was placed under arrest. Kong Lai-king was later found guilty by the Tribunal of Dobigny in France and sentenced to six years in jail. Her subsequent appeal was denied.

The other gang members had seen the bust in France and flew on separately to a pre-arranged meeting place in Amsterdam. Once there they again tried to locate the man who had bought the earlier consignment. Chan managed to collect 9,000 guilders on account and remained in Holland to collect another 10,000 guilders. The rest of the gang returned to Hong Kong and found that the backers of the enterprise were furious and thirsting for blood.

Siu Chi-Kai and his partner, Li Kwan-fan who had both put up the cash for the heroin, found out that the drugs had been seized in Paris. And they also learned that Chan Woon-hing was suddenly in possession of a lot of money. Siu refused to believe that the drugs had been seized and became convinced that Chan had double-crossed them. He approached a friend named Tam Ho-kin and asked him to recruit some hit men to ensure Chan's death. As Li and Siu were unable to put up enough cash for the hit, the three men had a long meeting and planned to carry out the killing themselves. They then went to a fortune teller in a temple to find an auspicious day to go through a religious ceremony which would bind them together as brothers in this bloody enterprise.

Chan returned to Hong Kong not knowing that 7 August 1979 was the day set for his execution. He was invited to a flat in the On-Look Building at Yuenlong to discuss further skag* deals, and walked unsuspectingly into the trap. When the killers suddenly fell on him, Chan struggled and shouted loudly until Siu cracked him hard on the head with a wooden pole. He collapsed and died minutes later. This was too much for Tam, who fled the scene. The two others then procured a meat-grinder and proceeded to dismember Chan's body and with a chopper strip the flesh from the bones. This was fed through the grinding machine and then flushed down the toilet in the flat. As Chan's head and bones could not be put through the grinder they were packed into two traveling bags and dumped in the sea off Butterfly Bay. Sea currents later swept the green bag containing the head and torso to Pillar Point where it washed up on the beach. The second bag was never found despite an extensive search in the waters off Hong Kong by Royal Navy divers.

Tam Ho-kin turned States’ evidence during the following trial. He had been part of the murder plot but had refused to take part in the disposal of the body. Tam testified that after the killing he was at a dinner party and saw Siu Chi-Kai and Li Kwan-fan changing the dressings on each other’s fingertips which had been sliced off when they were stuffing Chan’s body into the grinder after the murder on 7 August.

Both men were charged with murder and tried at the High Court of Hong Kong in October 1980. Professor Cameron traveled from south London to give vital evidence on the identification of the victim’s skull. He was questioned and cross-examined for over two hours, mainly on the superimposition technique. This evidence was crucial to the Crown’s case and was heard for the first time in a Hong Kong court. Cameron was also asked about the use of a meat cleaver for the chopping of the bones and the removal of the flesh from the bones. He stated that in his opinion, neither of these operations would have been difficult if carried out by determined men. Further forensic evidence at the murder scene also heavily implicated the three killers.

The court was satisfied that the skull was that of Peter Chan Won-hing, and the two defendants were found guilty of manslaughter and jailed for eight years apiece. This verdict was very lenient considering that Tam's evidence pointed clearly at a case of premeditated murder - “Murder in the first degree” or “Murder One” in American legal parlance. (When they saw the wealth of evidence against them, and heard Professor Cameron's testimony, defense lawyers decided to plea bargain). Two other defendants were sentenced to ten years each for conspiracy to traffic in hard drugs and a fifth defendant was acquitted for lack of evidence.

To help prove the drug conspiracy two French police officers also gave evidence at the trial, the first time that French policemen had talked on the record in a Hong Kong courtroom. The Frenchmen handed into evidence the heroin which had been seized in Paris from Ms Kong Lai-king. The consignment was said to be worth two and a half million Hong Kong dollars. On the day that the killers and the drug traffickers went to Stanley Island Prison on the colony, the heroin literally went up in smoke. It was burned by the Hong Kong police.

(*: ‘Skag’ is criminal underworld slang for heroin)

(Research: “Clues to Murder” by Tom Tullett, Grafton Books, 1987).

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