Cold Blooded Murders (3 page)

Mr Coomaraswamy replied that although Sunny
Ang was arrested on 21 December, the police must have started their
investigation long before then. The magistrate decided to grant the week’s
adjournment, and Ang was remanded in Outram Prison. His request for bail was
refused.

Fixed for 24 February 1965, the preliminary
inquiry into ‘a tentative murder charge’ did not in fact start until the
following day. This was because Mr Punch Coomaraswamy failed to turn up. He was
engaged on another case in Kuala Lumpur. Mr Francis T. Seow, senior crown
counsel, spent almost the entire day in Court, and protested that Mr
Coomaraswamy should at least have had the courtesy to inform him he was on
another case. Mr Coomaraswamy apologized when the inquiry began the next day.

The inquiry lasted seven days and Ang was
committed for trial. Mr Seow started off by asking the Court to warn ‘in the
strongest terms’ parties concerned against what he called any future suborning
of prosecution witnesses. Mr Seow also asked the Court to exclude from the
hearing Ang’s mother, Madam Yeo Bee Neo, whom, he said, stood to benefit by
$400,000 from the death of the murdered girl. In addition he wanted the Court
to exclude all members of the Ang family, as well as any other persons who
might be called by the defence as witnesses.

Mr Seow alleged that attempts had been made
to suborn his witness, Yusuf bin Ahmad, a boatman of Pulau Brani. Mr Seow
protested that Yusuf, his main witness, had been approached on two separate
occasions by Ang’s mother and his brother Richard after Ang’s arrest. “Money in
fact had been given to this witness, and a gift in kind, before this witness
was brought to counsel for the defence. Money had also in fact been given to
Yusuf after he had seen counsel.” Mr Seow said the implications were very
clear. “It is nothing but an attempt to suborn a witness for the prosecution.”

After an exchange between the two counsels,
Mr Seow said, “Mr Coomaraswamy saw Yusuf in his chambers. He had no business
whatsoever to interview or record a statement from this witness. What is the
object of giving this witness money? Not only money, but also a gift in kind?”

Mr Coomaraswamy replied, “In view of Mr
Seow’s categorical statement I am happy to say that I did see this witness. I
did it knowing full well what I was doing, and after obtaining professional
advice on the matter. I am conscious that an allegation of this nature would be
made without any foundation. I have taken the fullest precautions and am prepared,
if necessary and at the appropriate time when asked, to state that I have acted
with the utmost propriety, both as an officer of this Court, and also as an
honest man.”

Yusuf told the Court that after Ang’s
arrest, Ang’s younger brother saw him at his house. The brother brought him a
tin of powdered milk ‘for my family’. He accepted the tin, but ‘being afraid to
consume it’, he later sold it for $4.50—less than market price. Yusuf added
that Ang’s brother said he would take him to see a lawyer ‘to make a
statement’. Later the brother called again and gave him $10. On another
occasion, Ang’s mother took him to see Mr Coomaraswamy. After interviewing him,
Mr Coomaraswamy gave him $30 to compensate for his loss of earning for the day,
and his fare. Yusuf added that his minimum earnings were $3–4 a day. The
highest he had ever earned was $20. He agreed that Mr Coomaraswamy told him not
to receive any money from any other persons in connection with the case.

The magistrate issued a general warning that
it was most serious for anyone to try to suborn any witness, but he did not
address his remarks to anyone in particular. He thought that at this stage it
would not be justifiable to exclude Ang’s relatives from the Court, or indeed
anyone wishing to attend.

But he did, the following day, on the ground
that if the case went up to the High Court Madam Yeo would almost certainly be
a witness. Mr Coomaraswamy said he could not speak for Madam Yeo, as she was
not his client, but he said the hearing must be open to all, and there should
be no breach of that principle.

What
The Straits Times
called
‘another highlight’ of the day’s proceedings at the inquiry, was the sudden
collapse in the witness-box of the crown’s principal witness, the boatman
Yusuf. Yusuf fell to the floor with a thud as Mr Coomaraswamy began to
cross-examine him. Yusuf was taken in an ambulance to the General Hospital,
where he was X-rayed and later sent home by the police. He was not injured.
Under cross-examination, Yusuf revealed that an insurance company had offered
him $6,000 to tell the truth, the whole truth. He said he told the police about
this.

Another prosecution witness, Captain Vernon
Bailey, of the Singapore Marine Department, testified that the waters around
the Sisters Islands were extremely hazardous. He produced an admiralty chart
which showed that the straits had a minimum depth of 30–35 feet. He gave
details of tidal streams and eddies.

Lee See Hong, managing partner of the Odeon
Bar and Restaurant, said that Jenny worked only a couple of months in his bar.
She left in mid-July 1963. Her salary was $90 a month. He estimated that her
daily tips from customers came to about $10.

“This Court,” declared Mr Francis Seow, on
the seventh and last day of the inquiry, “is not being asked to make any
finding of facts. It is only a Court of Inquiry, and all that you need to do is
to be satisfied that there are sufficient grounds to commit the accused for
trial. We are only asking you whether the evidence so far is credible enough,
and that is all.”

Mr Seow spoke of what he called the
‘overwhelming, the overpowering, motives’ in the case. He asked, “Why should an
ex-waitress, with little or no money of her own, be insured to the tune of
$400,000? Why should the accused pay the premiums? Why should all the lies have
to be told to various insurance companies?”

Earlier, evidence had been given that Jenny
left all her money to Ang’s mother, whom Jenny had never met. Evidence was also
given that Madam Yeo, Ang’s mother, applied to the High Court on
4 November 1964, for a motion to have Jenny presumed dead. Jenny went
skin-diving on 27 August 1963 and failed to surface. Eileen Toh, unemployed,
told the Court that Jenny was her half-sister. They had grown up together. She
said Jenny was married, and had a son and a daughter. Both children were with
her husband from whom Jenny was separated. Jenny’s spoken English was not good
because she had left the English school at Standard Three, “We were very close,
and we previously lived together in Lim Liak Street, and later in Tanglin
Halt.” Toh said that Jenny met Ang for the first time in the Odeon Bar. “Ang
then became Jenny’s boyfriend. She was very fond of him.” Ang visited Jenny
three or four times a week.

Among the exhibits produced at the inquiry
was a skin-diver’s flipper, with clean cuts on a strap. The prosecution claimed
that this had been recovered, near where Jenny failed to surface, by David
Henderson, formerly of the RAF Changi Sub-aqua Club. He was one of the divers
who took part in attempts to find Jenny. Phang Sin Eng, a government chemist,
told the Court that the flipper had two clean cuts on the top and the bottom of
a strap, and a tear right across it. He said it was most unlikely from the
positions of these cuts, and the tears that followed them, that the cuts could
have been made by coral. But the cuts could have been made by any sharp
instrument, like a pair of scissors, a knife, or a razor blade.

A schoolboy, David Benjamin Woodworth,
identified the flipper. He was a classmate of Ang’s brother William, in
Singapore, in 1963, and he also knew Sunny Ang. He said he lent two pairs of
flippers to William: this was one of them.

Another important exhibit were the four
books which Inspector Richard Lui of the Special Investigation Section of the
Criminal Investigation Department seized at Ang’s home when he arrested him on
21 December 1964. The books were Atkinson’s
Skin-Diving
, Hampton’s
The
Master Diver and Underwater Sportsman
, Ivanovic’s
Modern Spear Fishing
,
and Du Ros’s
Skin-Diving in Australia
. These books, one in particular,
were to play a vital role in the case against Sunny Ang at his trial.

Altogether, the prosecution called 39
witnesses at the inquiry. Several were from the insurance companies. An
official from an insurance company produced a letter dated 28 August 1963, the
day after Jenny disappeared. It was from Sunny Ang, writing from 57 Sennett
Road, Singapore 16. The letter was read in Court. It said:

This is to inform you that
Madam Cheok Cheng Kid, who is insured with your company bad met a tragic
accident while scuba-diving in one of the islands off Singapore at 5:00 pm
yesterday.

She is presumed to have been
either drowned or attacked by sharks. Her body is yet to be found. Further
information about the incident can be obtained from Inspector Aziz of the
Marine Police.

Please acknowledge receipt of
this letter. Thank you.

Another letter, from Ang, written the same
day to a different insurance company referred to ‘a tragic accident at sea’.

Mr Coomaraswamy addressed the Court for an
hour. He dealt exhaustively with the functions of a magistrate in an inquiry of
this nature. He explained why he had cross-examined only some witnesses, and he
finally submitted that the prosecution had not made out a case for committal.
The evidence, he said, was not of a nature which would lead a Court to say that
the only one and irresistible inference was that Jenny was dead. Even assuming
she was dead, it had not been ascertained how she died. Even if there had been
a death, there must be evidence that it resulted from a voluntary act on Ang’s
part. Counsel argued there was no such evidence.

Mr Saurajen adjourned the Court for 20
minutes and then gave his verdict. He said, “Having heard the evidence in
support of the prosecution case, I am of the opinion that on the evidence as it
stands the accused should be committed for trial.”

Mr Coomaraswamy said that Sunny Ang reserved
his defence.

Singapore’s criminal law follows
closely the pattern of British law upon which the Singapore legal system is
structured. Over the 140-odd years of Singapore’s existence in a legalistic
sense, first as a British trading post, then as a colony which rapidly
developed after the Second World War into a protected self-governing state
before becoming part of independent Malaysia (Singapore became an independent
sovereign state in August 1965), there had been many murder trials. But there
had always been a body. This was the first time a man stood in a Singapore
Court charged with the murder of a person whose body could not be produced.

And no one saw the murder. No one saw the
girl die.

At the time Jenny died, her body swept out
to sea, her air tank probably exhausted and her flipper lost, Sunny Ang was
talking to the boatman. The prosecution argued that Ang did not dive in at all
that afternoon because he wanted to remain in sight of the boatman, his alibi.
It could therefore never be said of him that he went under the water and killed
Jenny. He was with the boatman all the time. By remaining in the sampan throughout
the entire incident he could always say it was an accident with which he was in
no way concerned.

Thus, not only did the prosecution have to
satisfy the jury that Jenny Cheok was dead, a conclusion to be reached only
through circumstantial evidence, for her body had disappeared, but the
prosecution, by the same means, by circumstantial evidence, had also to prove
that Sunny Ang was responsible for the accident which was intended to cause
Jenny’s death.

“Murder,” Justice Buttrose told the jury,
“is the unlawful killing or causing of death of one human being by another
human being with the intention of doing so. An accidental killing or causing of
death is not murder because, in such a case, the intention to cause death was
absent. The intention to kill, therefore, is of the essence of the offence.”

On the question of intention, the judge said
that “every person is presumed to intend the natural and probable consequences
of his acts. In other words, that he intends to do what he in fact does.” He
gave an example. “If two persons are walking together along a high cliff-top,
with the sea and the rocks hundreds of feet below; and as they approach a
certain point on the cliff which is known to one of them to overhang the rest
of the cliff and to be in a dangerous condition; and he turns to the other—his
intended victim, whom he intends to murder—and says, ‘You go along the edge and
have a look over because the view is superb and you can see the breakers
crashing on the rocks below’; and the unsuspecting victim goes on, while the
other who has asked him to go on has conveniently discovered a pebble in his
shoe, and he steps behind to take off his shoe and to get rid of this imaginary
pebble; and his victim on reaching the cliff-edge, it caves in, and he is dashed
to his death on the rocks below—now that, members of the jury, is murder, just
as if the other had gone along and pushed his victim over the edge.”

“Similarly,” explained Justice Buttrose, “if
you take a novice scuba-diver to waters which you knew to be inherently
dangerous with the intention that this novice scuba-diver shall dive into those
waters, and you intend that by so doing she will never come up again, that she
will be killed—for whatever reason at all is quite immaterial—if that is your
intention, that this novice diver should go down into those waters and you
intend that she should be killed, then that is equally murder as if you had
accompanied that novice diver down to the bottom of the sea-bed and strangled
her with your own hands.”