COURT: No one who has seen what the defendant did to the murdered victim can be in any doubt at all that he is a highly dangerous killer.
This was a contract killing. It was carried out in cold blood for what was, according to what he said to the police, a killing for $10,000, and the victim was completely defenceless. She was a sex worker who had obviously upset someone, and for that she was given a death sentence.
In order to carry out his task, the defendant pretended to be a customer who wanted the victim’s services. Together they went up to her room in Shanghai Street. When she was completely naked, he used a heavy sharp-bladed weapon, that he must have been carrying in his shoulder bag, and with it he cut the victim’s neck so deeply that he even severed her spinal cord. He delivered six blows with such force that this left a gaping wound on her neck.
The photographs provide a horrific scene of murder.
It goes without saying that this was a cowardly attack which gave the woman he killed absolutely no chance whatsoever. There was not even a struggle. And it was quite clearly a carefully planned matter because the defendant wore one shirt when he went into the premises and quite a different one when he came out.
I have said this before and I am going to say it again because it needs to be repeated. There is probably no section of society in Hong Kong more in need of protection than the sex workers. They often operate alone and in dismal circumstances, and it must be a constant nightmare for them that one day they will meet someone who has posed as a genuine customer with a normal appearance, just like this defendant, who turns out to be homicidal predator.
The defendant is 50 years old, and it seems from what he told the police that he has worked in vice establishments, and certainly his criminal record, which is filled with a number of relatively minor offences, shows that he has wasted much of his life.
The evidence which enabled the police after careful inquiry to prove their case against the defendant was largely a combination of commercial CCTV video film and forensicevidence which linked the defendant to the murder.
In the end, the circumstantial evidence was overwhelming, and it is to be hoped that the police will not close their file on this case until those who put the defendant up to doing what he did are tracked down and caught.
There is only one sentence for murder and that is that you go to prison for life.