Cold Blooded Murders (15 page)

Counsel reminded the jury that the
improvised washer in question was put in as an exhibit by the defence. “And
with that very same washer, on that very same Healthway tank—which Ang said
leaked—Henderson demonstrated before your very eyes and ears that the tank did
not leak. But Yusuf also said he heard it leak. What then is the explanation?
It is very simple. The washer was fixed on the tank by Ang but he deliberately
did not clamp it tight, so that when the valve was turned on, the tank was
bound to leak. Henderson was himself able to cause a deliberate leak on his own
tank in that manner when he dived on 26 April 1965 off Pulau Dua. And, to prove
it beyond doubt, you have seen in this Court how with its proper washer the
Healthway tank leaked if it was not clamped on tight. Yusuf of course had no
means of knowing this. Firstly because he knew nothing of scuba-equipment (a
fact known to Ang), and secondly, it was Ang who had fitted it on.”

Counsel recalled that they had examined the
improvised washer before and after Henderson’s demonstration in Court “so that
you could see a slight impression on it whereas there was none before. This
indicates that the washer was never clamped on tight as it should have been on
27 August 1963. Ang said he next attempted to prise out the washer from the
40-cubic-feet Sealion tank (originally used by Jenny) with a knife which had
cut the washer. Ang had said that relying on common sense he knew he was unable
to use it on his own Healthway tank. Yusuf did not remember this.”

On instructions from the police, Bertrand
had experimented with cut washers, and washers which had been gouged or prised
out from their seats, after which he had used them on his tank. In all
instances there was no perceptible leak. “Henderson has also told you how, with
an improvised rubber washer in his own tank, he had been able to dive to a
depth of 45 feet, where he remained for 10 minutes. And how he repeated this
experiment with a string, reaching a depth of 100 feet, where he remained for
22 minutes without any apparent discomfort. If you accept the evidence of
Henderson and Bertrand on this—and also the evidence of your own eyes and ears,
it shows conclusively that Ang had been lying about the washer, about the leak,
and about the unservice-ability of his scuba equipment. Why should he lie? This
was an emergency. His best girl had not surfaced. She had been down some 15
minutes or so, and, on his own calculations, there would be little or no air
left in her tank—if nothing else in the meanwhile had happened to her. This was
the girl he was going to marry. He was a very good swimmer. He was also a
skin-diver. He had all the equipment on board. He was an instructor in
scuba-diving. And yet he never dipped one little finger into the water, so to
speak, to render her immediate assistance. He never made so much as a token
dive to look for her. His bathing trunks never got wet.”

Counsel asked the jury: “What would you have
done if your best girl, someone you love most dearly had gone down and not
surfaced for 15 minutes? Would you not have been frantic with fear, with
anxiety, for her safety? If you were a very good swimmer and a skin-diver,
would you not in the circumstances have plunged into the sea to search for her?
Why did Ang not do so? The boatman saw moisture below Ang’s eyes. He was not
sure whether this was sea water or tears. I suggest to you that this moisture
was in fact sea water from his diving mask. Yusuf never heard him weep. If Ang
had been truly concerned over Jenny, he would have bestirred himself into
greater energy than he had shown. He did not in fact appear a bit concerned or
alarmed at Jenny’s disappearance. He did not urge the boatman to hurry to get
to St John’s Island. On the contrary, he appeared to have found time to change
back into his street clothes. At St John’s Island, Jaffar walked with him to
the telephone, and back to the jetty. Ang did not hurry the boatman back to
Pulau Dua. Ang wanted her to die. He wanted to make sure she really died. If he
had carefully planned her death there was not much point in him going down to
look for her—and that, I suggest, was the reason he did not do so.”

Mr Seow said that Ang had told the Court
that they were at Pulau Dua to collect corals. Because they were sharp it was
necessary to wear gloves. Ang had therefore brought two pairs of gloves. Jenny
had gone below to wait for him: they were to collect corals. Yet she never wore
her gloves. Ang could not explain how, if Jenny had indeed worn them, they were
found in his swimming bag later. “This was no coral-collecting excursion. This
was an excursion where, at the end of it, Ang was to collect $400,000 for
himself.” Ang had also brought along two improvised weight belts. They had been
specially improvised for Jenny. Ang never used a weight belt. The weights were
tied at Jenny’s back, but as water is a lubricant it was possible, owing to
gravity, for the belt to swing round back to front. “In that eventuality I
think you would agree that it would be extremely difficult for Jenny, in an
emergency, to jettison the belt, and surface.”

Mr Seow turned next to the flipper. “Who cut
the strap? The person who engineered her death. There were three persons in the
boat. One of them is the killer. Why was the strap cut? Who had an opportunity
of cutting it? Who had the strongest motives to want Jenny’s death? Sunny Ang
was the answer to all those questions.’” Counsel argued that all the evidence
led to the irresistible inference that Sunny Ang knew that Jenny was dead, and
that Ang had killed her, and that he was determined to profit as speedily as
possible from her death. “This is a case of a man who planned, and carefully
planned, to murder for gain, for $400,000, and who hoped to succeed, as he
thought he would, if no trace of the body of his victim could be found.”

Justice Buttrose began his summing
up on the afternoon of 17 May 1965. He dealt first with what he called the
propriety and wisdom of Mr Coomaraswamy, the defence counsel, interviewing the
key witness for the prosecution, the boatman, after the accused had been
charged with the offence. He repeated that he accepted Mr Coomaraswamy’s
explanation, in that, according to his lights at any rate, he did what he
thought was proper in the interests of his client. He told the jury to dismiss
the incident completely from their minds. The boatman never changed his story,
nor did anyone, he said, ever ask him to do so.

Next the judge warned the jury to ignore
completely any rumours they may have heard during the past 21 months that Jenny
was still alive. He reminded them that they were concerned only with the
evidence. They must be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that Jenny was dead.
What the prosecution had to do was to prove that she was dead. It was not
necessary to produce a body. “The absence of a dead body makes the proof of
death, of course, more difficult and the onus on the prosecution of proving it
heavier. But that is all.” The two questions they must ask themselves were:
were they satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that Jenny was dead? Were they
satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that she was murdered by the prisoner?
There was no actual eye-witness as to how she died. “There is no one who can
tell you what happened down on the sea-bed some 30–40 feet below the surface,
to this young girl of 22 years of age on this fateful afternoon of 27 August
1963. Only Jenny herself could have told us, but, according to the prosecution,
her lips have been sealed for ever.” The judge explained the importance of
circumstantial evidence. “The fact of death may be proved, and proved quite
adequately, by circumstantial evidence, as may the fact that murder has been
committed be proved, and proved quite adequately by circumstantial evidence.”

Justice Buttrose drew the jury’s attention to
the disparity in general background between Jenny the bar waitress who could
speak only very, very little English, and Ang, a well-educated and
knowledgeable young man, then 26 years old. “Jenny you may think felt highly
flattered by the attention of this, in her eyes at any rate, young and more
mature, better educated and experienced young man. She might—you may not
unreasonably, I suggest, conclude—have entertained views of matrimony with
him.” The judge referred to Ang’s evidence that there was a tacit understanding
between them to marry and that they were in love with each other. “They were
also on terms of complete intimacy.”

The judge said there was no dispute over
what he called the “extraordinary series of insurance transactions entered into
by Jenny, or in her name, or on her behalf. Nevertheless he went through them
all, coming finally to the $150,000 policy for five days from 27 August 1963,
at 11:00 am, ‘the very day that this tragic occurrence took place, the actual
day of the tragedy, when he went to the office of the American International
Underwriters alone, bringing with him an application form duly filled in and
signed by Jenny’. The beneficiary was again Jenny’s estate. Within three weeks
of Jenny meeting the accused she had been insured for very large amounts of
money with five different. insurance companies. At the time of the tragedy
Jenny had been covered by insurance ‘to the tune of something not far short of
half a million dollars’. In some cases, Ang’s mother was the beneficiary, in others,
Jenny’s estate. “But the whole of her estate was to go to the accused’s mother
by the will that she had drawn up in August.’

Thus, within the short space of three
months, Ang had got the whole of Jenny’s estate in his hands, ‘the very
substantial benefit of all her insurance policies, and, when we come to his
defence, not only had he been paid $2,000 by this bar girl on account of the
purchase of the poultry farm, but there was a further $8,000 still due to him
by Jenny on account of the balance of the purchase price’. “One must, I think,”
added Justice Buttrose, “agree that by any standards, this was quite an
achievement and when one considers the youth and age of the accused it is
staggering. I don’t think it unfair to say to you, members of the jury, that in
the short space of two and a half months he had got the lot. Jenny, so far as
the evidence goes, had never before taken, or considered taking out any
insurance policies, or of making a will, and it was only after she had met Ang
that she did so. And this, gentlemen of the jury, is, according to the
prosecution, the motive, the overwhelming motive, for this crime: the golden
hope of gain by this undischarged bankrupt with high ambitions.”

The judge drew the jury’s attention to the
three letters which Ang sent to three insurance companies the day immediately
following the tragedy. They were identical. Jenny had met with a tragic
accident while scuba-diving off one of the islands south of Singapore at about
3:00 pm on 27 August 1963. The letter went on, ‘She is presumed to have either
drowned or been attacked by a shark. Her body is yet to be found.’

And there the judge stopped, promising to
‘pick up the threads again’ at 10:30 am the following morning, when he
pointedly reminded the jury that the insurance policies had all been not
endowment policies but accident policies. He questioned whether Ang had in fact
sold the poultry farm to Jenny. “One is tempted,” remarked the judge, “to
wonder what the accused’s mother would have thought of this sale of the poultry
farm to a bar girl, or ex-bar-girl, whom she had never met in any real sense of
the term at all?” Jenny’s half-sister said Jenny owned no property, no poultry
farm and was always short of money. “Eileen said Jenny did not know how to
swim, but used to play about in the water.” Jenny was unable to pay half the
rent of the flat because she was unemployed and had no money. Ang paid her
share. Does this sound to you like Jenny being able to enter into an
arrangement to buy a poultry farm for $10,000 and to have paid, on account of
that sum, $2,000 to the accused?”

Justice Buttrose went into some detail about
the evidence given by David Henderson, the RAF scuba-diver, who found the
flipper on the sea-bed. “At the point where he found it, the sea-bed, he said,
was rough. There was little mud over it, but it was plain to see. The
heel-strap was severed, although the rubber was in good condition.” There were
no barnacles. By that Henderson meant there was no sea-growth or fungus
attached to that flipper on 3 September, when he discovered it, nesting by the
side of these rocks. That was why, he told us, it was because of these rocks
that the flipper had not been swept away. He said there was nothing whatever to
indicate to him that the flipper had been there for any length of time.’
Henderson had said he found the current to be three or four knots and difficult
to swim against. There was also an undertow, and a very powerful undertow
because he could not stem it and was carried some 150 yards away. “That is the
evidence, members of the jury, of an expert, first-class scuba-diver. If he
couldn’t stem the tide and he was swept away 150 yards, what chance do you
think a novice scuba-diver would have in those circumstances?” The judge
reminded the jury that in Henderson’s considered opinion the area between the
two islands was quite unsuitable for a novice scuba-diver.

Justice Buttrose dealt briefly with
Henderson’s tests on the tanks. Henderson had dived, using a piece of string as
a washer, to a depth of 100 feet and remained there for 21 minutes. “Is this
not an outstanding instance of the old saying that ‘where there’s a will
there’s a way’? The prosecution in this case say there was a way, but that the
accused had not the will.” The judge suggested to the jury—“it’s entirely a
matter for you to decide”—that Jenny was undoubtedly a novice diver and should
never have dived alone. “You will ask yourselves: was not the accused an
experienced diver and well aware of this?”