Cold Blooded Murders (14 page)

Defence counsel also touched on the theory
that the accused had designed an accident on the road to kill Jenny so that he
could get the insurance money, but having failed in that had set up another
device. “It is my submission that accused’s story of the accident is the
correct one, that he was driving fast round this notorious bend,” said Mr
Coomaraswamy. Another improbability of the prosecution theory on this was that
the accused would design a serious motor accident with himself as the driver.
“My submission is that the prosecution theory is as fanciful as the rest of their
case.”

In his argument on the evidence regarding
one of the flippers which was found, counsel said there were three
possibilities:

·
        
the flipper was not cut when Jenny went down for
her first dive;

·
        
the flipper was cut between the first and second
dives; and

·
        
the flipper was not cut at all.

He asked the jury to dismiss the second
possibility and to consider whether or not the flipper was cut before the first
dive. If, as the prosecution alleged, it was the accused’s object to kill Jenny
on her first dive, the accused could have tampered with either her aqualung,
weight belt or flipper.

If the flipper had been cut the first time,
Jenny would have discovered it, and the flipper would not have withstood the
tensions applied to it while it was being put on. But she went into the water
and came up again with no apparent sign of difficulty.

Counsel submitted that if the prosecution
theory was true, the only possible assumption about the accused was that he was
a calculating and cold-blooded killer. “Would accused have taken the risk of
Jenny detecting the cut flippers?” he asked. “In the light of the evidence it
is my submission that the evidence of this flipper is not enough and it is
highly dangerous to act on it.”

Defence counsel said that the speculation in
the case finally crystallized on the answers to two questions. The first was:
is Jenny dead? “On this, you will have to disregard anything you have heard
outside this court, and the views of all other persons,” he told the jury, “and
you will have to come to a conclusion upon the hard facts of the evidence
adduced before you.”

“It is not my task, nor that of my client,
to explain the non-production of the body but the task of the prosecution to
satisfy you that Jenny is, in fact, dead, although her body has not been
found.”

He referred to the evidence of a witness,
Yeo Tong Hock, who in November 1964 was willing to swear an affidavit that the
person whom he knew to be Jenny was seen by him in late August 1963, in Penang,
and subsequently in Alor Star. This was the only evidence available of whether
Jenny was alive or not.

Mr Coomaraswamy said it was possible that
Jenny was carried by currents, but did not find her air-tank unserviceable. The
theory was not too far-fetched. It was strange that her body had not been found
if, in fact, she was dead.

“In a case like this, you cannot act on
evidence that maybe she is dead,” he submitted. “You cannot even act on
evidence that allows you to say, ‘You may be pretty sure she is dead.’ You have
to go beyond that and act only if you can be morally certain beyond reasonable
doubt that she is dead.”

He submitted that the jury could not reach
that conclusion on the evidence given. He reminded them that the accused was
not being charged with fraud or telling lies, which carried penalties of
imprisonment on conviction. Accused was charged with the most serious offence.
The more serious and grave the punishment, the more careful they must be in
making inferences.

If the jury came to the conclusion that
Jenny was dead, they must reach a further conclusion. How did she come by her
death? “Unless you come to the conclusion where you feel that the accused is
responsible for her death, you cannot find him guilty of murder,” said counsel.

Even assuming for a moment that accused did
cut Jenny’s flipper, could the jury say with moral certainty and beyond a
reasonable doubt, after eliminating all other things that could have happened,
that the accused was responsible for her death? “Can you, acting so that you
are morally certain beyond a reasonable doubt, come to the conclusion that the
accused did kill Jenny in the manner put forward by the prosecution?”

Mr Coomaraswamy concluded, “It is my
submission that there are many explanations to the disappearance that are
possible, and even on the assumption that she is dead, there are many ways in
which she could have come to her death.”

In his closing speech, Mr Seow
argued that it had been clearly established that, until Jenny met Ang, she did
not know how to swim or scuba-dive. Ang had apparently taught her to do both in
the short space of three months. “Do you think she could have possibly reached
that degree of proficiency in scuba-diving to make it safe for her to dive in
the channel between the Sisters Islands? Jenny was at best still a novice in
scuba-diving, and Sunny Ang her instructor knew this.”

Yusuf was Ang’s regular boatman. He
remembered having taken Jenny and Ang together only once before: that was to
Pulau Tekukor, about two months before 27 August 1963, and on this occasion
Jenny did not scuba-dive. The boatman did however have an opportunity of
observing Jenny’s prowess at swimming. He described this as ‘unskilled’. The
only occasion Yusuf had taken Jenny and Ang scuba-diving was on 27 August,
which was Jenny’s first scuba-venture out at sea. Eileen Toh, who was at a
picnic at Tanah Merah Besar, noticed that Jenny could barely swim as late as
August.

Counsel made much of what he called ‘the
cursory search’ for Jenny when she failed to respond to Ang’s jerking on the
rope. Ang was in his swimming trunks: he was a very good swimmer and yet he did
not go into the water in search of Jenny. In fact he never got his feet wet at
all that day. Why did he not go in himself in search of Jenny? “You are left
with the inescapable feeling that the prisoner was reluctant, most reluctant to
look for her. And indeed we have his own word for it. Astonishing as it may
sound, he saw no point in diving to look for her because he could not see her
air bubbles anywhere near the boat, and because visibility in that depth could
be only a few feet.” Ang further thought that sharks might have attacked her
and his instinct for self-preservation prevented him from diving down.

Counsel said that it took Ang some 15
minutes or more to realize that he had an emergency situation on his hands.
“And, upon that realization, was he galvanized into immediate action to save
the girl he says he loved, and whom he says he had intended to marry? With all
the scuba-diving equipment on board, all he did was vaguely to recall that
there was a telephone on St John’s Island, some distance away, and, upon
confirming this with the boatman, went there to summon the police for help. On
the way, Ang apparently found time to change back into his street clothes.”

At St John’s Island, Jaffar bin Hussein, the
guard, advised Ang that, until the police arrived, some
pawangs
(sea
witch doctors) should be summoned to help, and accordingly five were brought to
the spot where Jenny disappeared. They did not find her.

“What,” asked Mr Seow, “were her chances of
survival in those treacherous waters? The torn and cut flipper, which Ang does
not dispute was worn by Jenny, which was recovered near the spot where she last
dived, suggests unmistakably that Jenny, as intended by Ang, swam into
difficulties. Having regard to the strong currents known to be prevalent in
that area, to her inexperience in swimming and in scuba-diving, the sudden and
unexpected loss of the flipper triggered off a chain of panic-stricken
reaction, with the inevitable result that she drowned.”

There was, remarked counsel, never any doubt
in Sunny Ang’s mind that Jenny was dead. To put the matter of Jenny’s death
beyond any doubt, Ang and his mother instructed their counsel to instigate and
to expedite a coroner’s inquest into Jenny’s disappearance so that a formal
finding of her death could be returned, failing which they next attempted to
move the High Court by way of probate proceedings to presume that Jenny had
died on 27 August 1963. “That was the degree of their certainty that Jenny was
dead.”

Counsel said that it was incredible that
after Ang had asserted, not only in various letters and documents, but also in
the witness-box, that Jenny is dead, he should call as his witness Yeo Tong
Hock to suggest in effect that a girl whom he once saw in Penang in 1963, and
presumably again in Kedah in 1964, was in fact Jenny. “Yeo Tong Hock now
affirms before you quite positively that the girl he saw was not Jenny.”

Mr Seow permitted himself to be amazed that
the defence ‘should be in such confusion, such disarray, that in one breath it
asserts that Jenny is dead, and in the next breath that she is still alive.’ He
argued that if Jenny was alive it meant that she was hand-in-glove with Ang in
a conspiracy to cheat the insurance companies. “Now assuming the evidence of
the boatman is a truthful account of what took place, which I submit it was,
there are two possible ways in which the deception could have been achieved.
Firstly, Jenny swam the four miles back from the Sisters Islands to Singapore,
which, having regard to her known swimming or scuba experience, was most
unlikely. Or, secondly, she swam underwater part of the distance, surfaced, and
was picked up by a boat lurking nearby. Here again, her scuba, swimming prowess
precludes any such spectacular effort. No such boat, or anyone nearby, was seen
by the boatman that day (which was confirmed by Ang in his own diary), and you
may therefore rule out that possibility.”

The prosecutor went on to argue that if, for
argument’s sake, Jenny did somehow manage to get back to Singapore and was
alive, surely Ang would have told the police by now that she was alive? “Do you
not think that, if he could, he would have produced Jenny and thus provided a
complete defence to the charge that he had murdered her?” Mr Seow addressed the
jury, “Ask yourselves: would not Jenny, were she alive, have walked through the
very doors of this Court by now, to save Ang?”

Counsel dealt briefly with the insurances on
Jenny’s life. He said that a matter that called for some comment was Jenny’s
conduct. Did she know what was happening? He thought not. “The picture which
emerges from the evidence is that of a young and lowly educated and
impressionable girl with an unhappy past (although Ang describes her as
simple), who, it seems, could be as easily fascinated by a typewriter as by a
poultry farm, and who could be as equally interested in flying as in
scuba-diving. Contrast her with Ang. Is it any wonder that within a month of
meeting her he was able to sell an insurance policy and persuade Jenny to name
his mother as her beneficiary—a woman Jenny never met? She thought he was going
to marry her. In such circumstances, it is not difficult to imagine this
ignorant and love-struck barmaid signing her life away. Ang virtually supported
her, paid all the subsequent accident policies. Jenny had no poultry farm and
Ang’s assertion that she had was another figment of his vivid imagination.”

Ang, said Mr Seow, was an expert and skilled
motorist. He had been among the first 10 in the 1961 Singapore Grand Prix of
180 miles. Was not the so-called accident, in which he and Jenny were involved,
contrived by him? Was this not a brazen attempt by Ang to kill Jenny? Within 13
days of that accident, Jenny was involved in another accident—this time at sea.
After the first abortive attempt on her life, this unsuspecting bar waitress
without any visible means of support was heavily insured by Ang and taken out
scuba-diving by him. Ang knew the treacherous nature of the waters, especially
the undertows. And it was to this very place that he brought his inexperienced
pupil on a quiet and lonely Tuesday afternoon to scuba-dive. Against all rules
of safety, he instructed her to dive in alone. Against all rules of safety, she
was allowed to put on her weight belt first, after which her air-tank was
harnessed on her back. After her tank was changed by Ang, Jenny went below
alone and never surfaced again. Counsel said that Ang had never satisfactorily
explained why he had changed her tank when it still had a lot of air in it.

“It would have been awkward for Ang if both
he and Jenny had gone down together and only he came up. He had to create an
alibi that he was in the boat when she swam into difficulties, and was drowned.
Ang also had to create an excuse for himself for not going into the sea when
Jenny failed to surface—an alibi and an excuse which could be vouched for by a
third party, the boatman Yusuf. What was the alibi? What was the excuse? Well,
washers do not normally drop out by themselves. How, then, did the washer of
Ang’s tank come to be missing? It was deliberately removed by him.
“Nevertheless the fact remains that, due to wear and tear, washers do
occasionally drop out—and therein lies the ingenuity of Ang’s stratagem.

But if it did drop out, you would
immediately be aware of this, before you fixed the breathing assembly to the
tank. How was it that Ang was not immediately aware of this? Why did he not
test the tank after he had fixed the breathing assembly to see if it leaked?
This would have been the most natural thing to do before he put the tank on his
back. But he says he did not. Why? After the tank had been harnessed on he
asked the boatman to turn the valve on, as it was tight. Then he heard the loud
outrush of escaping air. When he discovered that the cause of the leak was the
missing washer, Ang, oddly enough, did not remark to Yusuf that it might have
dropped out in the sampan, or start a search for it. Does not his behaviour
strike you as that of a person who knew that the washer was not there? Because
he had deliberately removed it? What he did was simply to go through the
motions of play-acting for the benefit of the unsuspecting boatman. A washer
was improvised from a rubber strap of a diving mask. But the tank still
leaked.”