Cold Blooded Murders

by Alex Josey

  Ang denied that he cut the strap of the flipper which he admitted looked like the one that Jennv wore on the fateful day. The judge told the jury he could not see how on the evidence they could escape the conclusion that it was. Ang denied in any way tampering with her equipment so that she would drown.

  Ang’s evidence, the judge said, was that he met Jenny when she was a bar girl at the Odeon Bar. She showed an interest in his poultry farm, and expressed a desire to own the farm herself. Eventually it was agreed he would sell it to her for $10,000 payable over a period of time. At the date of her disappearance, according to Ang, she had paid him $2,000 on account. “How this bar waitress, earning $90 a month and some $10 a day in tips when she worked, was going to find the money to pay $2,000, let alone the remaining $8,000, is a matter which I find difficult to understand or appreciate, particularly when you bear in mind her sister Eileen’s evidence that Jenny was always short of money.” Furthermore, on the accused’s own admission, Jenny knew nothing about, and had had no experience whatever, in chicken farming. “Again, what do you think the accused mother’s views on this transaction would have been? You must ask yourself whether or not you can accept this evidence. Ang was not going to help this girl. He was going to use the money to go to the United Kingdom to further his studies. Ang said that it was Jenny who paid the insurance premiums. He had said that Jenny wanted to make him the beneficiary and he had suggested his mother’s name instead. All his other property was in his mother’s name. This was because he was a bankrupt.”

  Justice Buttrose referred to Ang’s car trip to the Federation with Jenny and remarked, “I am bound to say I find that a most remarkable tale, but,” he told the jury, “it is your views, not mine, that count.”

  The judge continued, “Quite glibly, the accused told us of some incidents on the way up, of a few narrow shaves. He said he overtook cars quite recklessly and skidded once, but managed to recover. Why should he want to overtake cars quite recklessly, I cannot conceive. Or, gentlemen of the jury, was it to prepare, so to speak, for the inevitable accident that subsequently happened on the way back?” They originally planned, so Ang said, to go to the Cameron Highlands for a holiday. But what did they do? The next morning Ang took out a travel accident insurance policy for himself for $30,000, and a $100,000 policy for Jenny for 14 days. Ang had said in the witness-box that Jenny was quite fearful of driving back with him. She told him, he said, they would have an accident on the way back and she insisted on him taking out an insurance policy to cover medical and other expenses should they get involved in a serious accident. “Does that ring true?” asked the judge. “I find it myself wholly extraordinary. What do you, the jury, think? Did the accused take Jenny to Kuala Lumpur for their holiday to the Cameron Highlands, or was it merely to obtain further insurance on her because Singapore was getting a bit hot for him? That the news might be getting round the Singapore insurance companies that here was a young man and a young girl, large policies were being effected—accident policies in the girl’s name—and that their chance of getting further insurance in Singapore was getting more and more remote. Was this, therefore, purely a venture to get insurance in Kuala Lumpur?”

  On the way back, sure enough, they had the accident which if not regarded as a ‘moral certainty’ was anticipated by them both. The judge directed the attention of the jury to the contrast of the police evidence concerning the accident and the evidence given by Sunny Ang. He asked them to keep in mind the fact that the car, badly damaged, would not be ready before the middle of September. Yet, the judge went on, Ang gave as the reason why he extended Jenny’s insurance on the morning of 27 August for five days—to use his own words—‘We might have to go to Seremban that night by night train and drive the car back if it was ready and, if not, to see that the workmen are getting on with the job of repairing the damaged car’. The judge said he found this explanation extraordinary. “Was that the real reason for extending this policy for a further five days? What had the accused in mind? Had he decided that very afternoon, while scuba-diving in this dangerous channel, that a golden opportunity presented itself to him for getting rid of her, while cunningly contriving to give it the appearance of an unfortunate but innocent accident? That is the question you must ask yourselves.”

  The judge carefully examined Ang’s version of what happened on the spot, ‘in mid-channel to which he had directed the boatman’. Their intention according to the accused was to go down and collect coral together, a joint expedition, ‘an intention that was never carried put’.

  Jenny went down first and surfaced after 10 minutes, Then, Ang said, it had been his intention that they would both go down together to collect coral. He turned on Jenny’s air valve to her tank and down she went. “And it is important, gentlemen of the jury, to note that the accused said that at that time his tank was then on his back. He said he let Jenny go down first on the principle of ‘ladies first’, a matter of courtesy.” Here the judge paused. He said he wanted to remind the jury of the boatman’s evidence which was that when Jenny went down the second time Sunny Ang had none of his equipment on at all. All he had on were his bathing trunks. “Now, someone is, therefore, lying. Is it the accused or is it the boatman? Why should the boatman be lying? It is of no interest to him, one way or the other.”

  The judge went on to examine Ang’s version of the washers and the tanks, recalling his attempts to fix the leak and the successful efforts of the experts. “At this stage,” remarked the judge, “Ang had apparently been successful in putting out of action all the available scuba-diving equipment. They could no longer be used and Ang said he couldn’t use them.” “It was then,” recalled Justice Buttrose, “that I asked Sunny Ang what he thought Jenny would be doing all this time, and he gave the astonishing reply, ‘Oh, Jenny was a patient sort of girl’; she would be waiting for him, hanging on to the bottom of the guide line rope on the sea-bed for some 10 or 15 minutes. He considered that quite a reasonable time. What do you think, members of the jury? Is it not only possible, but probable, that having waited for a short while her curiosity got the better of her and she got a little more bold by then? She might have decided to let go of that guide line for a little while and gone to have a look to see what was about. And was it not then that one of the undertows got her and swept her away? With her flipper heel-strap broken, then as a purely unskilled novice scuba diver, she in fact, before seeing where she was, was swept hundreds of yards away? The air in her tank then ran out and she died. Is that a possible explanation for there being no air bubbles seen by anyone at any time?”

  The judge pointed out that even at that stage the accused said he had not become anxious. He was in no way perturbed or alarmed. He pulled the guide line three times to signal to her to surface and then went back to attend to his tank. Two minutes later he again pulled the guide line and even at that stage, he said, he had not decided to abandon the expedition, let alone become alarmed about Jenny. He said he wanted her to come up to preserve the air in her tank so that they could go down again together. “What do you think of that, gentlemen of the jury? If that was a genuine reason why then did he not signal to her to come up long before? He said he had seen no air bubbles breaking on the surface of the water. He was still not alarmed and he made, to me at any rate, an astonishing statement: that she might have wandered off on her own or that she was playing a game with him and hiding under the boat. It seemed to me quite remarkable. He even said that she might have swum underwater and landed at one or other of the islands. He said he seriously thought so at the time, but he definitely did not think so now. So what do you think?”

  Ang said he looked under the sampan on both sides but could see no air bubbles. He and the boatman scanned the shore on both sides to see if there were any traces of footsteps or other signs of life. “It was only then, and then only, for the first time, that the accused realized that Jenny might have got into trouble. You may think he took a long time to do so.”

  Then Ang became
alarmed and they looked for air bubbles. He vaguely remembered a telephone on St John’s Island. Yusuf confirmed this and off they went to phone the Marine Police. “Ang told us he never asked Yusuf to go faster because, he said, the sampan was going flat out. He said he might have shed a tear, but without knowing it. He maintained that he did run to the phone, but Jaffar denied he ran at all.”

  The judge returned to the scene of the tragedy and the ‘curious discussion’ about the weightlessness of a tank in water. “He thereupon took the small tank that Jenny had used on her first time down and placed it in the sea. The tank sank because, according to Ang, it had been painted—painted, if you please, gentlemen of the jury. He put it in the water because he was under the impression that tanks could float, whether full or empty. Do you think a coat or two of paint would have any effect?”

  Here the judge erred. As defence counsel pointed out during the appeal, one of the accused’s brothers had said the tank was painted. “I asked one of the experts if painting the tank was likely to increase its weight. But the accused never said so,” explained Mr Coomaraswamy.

  Justice Buttrose said that Sunny Ang’s explanation for not going into the water himself was because he saw no air bubbles: that was the main reason. He presumed she was not there, and there was no point in diving to look. He also thought she might have been attacked by sharks. He also told us he could only hold his breath underwater for some three-quarters of a minute to a minute.

  The judge called attention again to the three letters Ang wrote to the insurance companies the following day claiming under the policies. “That, gentlemen of the jury, in brief is the outline of his defence: an accident in which he was not concerned in any way, and had no part. He does not know what happened. He did not intend or contrive her disappearance. He neither cut the flipper, nor in any way tampered with the equipment. He explained why he did not go down to look for her.”

  Ang called three witnesses, firstly a gentleman by the name of Yeo Tong Hock, who described himself as, in effect, a brothel-keeper, and admitted he was a pimp. What joy the defence got out of his evidence, the judge said, was something he failed to understand. “Because if he came to bless the case for the defence, he left to curse. How can you be left under any doubt, members of the jury, that now he is quite sure, absolutely sure, that the girl whom he saw in Penang and later in Kedah is not Jenny?”

  The judge was highly critical of Mr Coomaraswamy’s statement that the witness had been kept out of the way, incommunicado, by the Penang police for 10 days before the trial. “You heard Mr Coomaraswamy say that from the Bar. Now, a more ill-considered and irresponsible statement from the Bar I have yet to hear in a case of this gravity and magnitude. There is not a shred of evidence to support it. It was emphatically denied by the witness himself.”

  The judge went on to deal briefly with the evidence given by Ang’s younger brother, Richard Ang, and the two police officers called by the defence to give evidence about the car accident. Justice Buttrose said he failed to appreciate the relevance of that evidence at all; he did not intend, he said, to waste any time on it, ‘except to remind you again that the corporal said it was not a sharp bend in the road but a gentle bend’. Ang had said the bend was sharp.

  What reliance, asked the judge, could be placed on Sunny Ang’s evidence? He said he was a truthful person. He did, however, admit to telling a few white lies. ‘That was the opening gambit. On being pressed he admitted to telling lies to the insurance companies, not white ones, but full-blooded red ones. What he told the insurance companies were quite untrue. ‘Yes, I lied to them, but they were necessary because I had to get my commission’, he explained, in a sort of off-handed manner, as if that not only explained them but excused them. But what you must consider, in weighing up his evidence, is: if the accused will lie in order to get commission on the sale of insurance policies, what will he do for half a million dollars, or for even higher stakes?”

  The judge, nearing the end of his summing up, came to the gloves. Ang had admitted that he brought two pairs of gloves with him in the sampan on 27 August 1963, one dark blue and the other dark brown. He said they were to wear them because the coral they were going to collect were sharp and the gloves would prevent their hands being cut. Ang had said this was an expedition for the express purpose of going coral-hunting. “When Jenny went down the second time the intention was to collect coral, and she was to help Ang carry them. Ang said it was necessary to wear these gloves and he said that Jenny did wear them when she went down on the second occasion, never to return. That,” said the judge, “would appear to be a complete falsehood, gentlemen of the jury, because both pairs of gloves were still in his bag which he had left that night at the police station. They were produced before you. If Jenny had been wearing the gloves there would have been only one pair left for you to see.” When he saw them in court, Ang was forced to admit that they appeared very new, that they had never been in the water. What then, became of his evidence that they were going down to collect coral? “Did he ever intend that afternoon that they should? Ang was unable to offer any explanation as to how the gloves came to be in the bag.”

  Ang denied ever telephoning Rutherford (of one of the insurance companies). He was shown his diary, ‘that red-back diary’. He admitted that it was his and in his handwriting. “And then we had a succession of astonishing answers which speak much for his powers of improvisation and ingenuity under pressure.” The judge thought his reference to Ruth—R-U-T-H—as Ruth Tan a remarkable effort. “Finally on being shown the entry alleged to be referring to Rutherford and beside it ‘on leave in the United Kingdom’, that did stump him. He said he did not know what it meant. The only thing he did maintain was that it did not refer to Rutherford, who was on leave in the United Kingdom.”

  The judge dealt briefly with the ‘astonishing episode of the letters’ which Ang wrote to the Under-Treasurer of Gray’s Inn. One of Ang’s ambitions was to become a barrister-at-law. “Though never a student at the University of Singapore he wrote that he was. What a sorry performance this was! First of all he said he never sent the letter: then he could not remember if he sent it: then, on being shown the letter he said he did not think he sent it because it was torn. He said he never despatched torn letters. Finally, on being shown the postmark he said, ‘I must have sent it’. Quite a remarkable performance, don’t you think?”

  The judge told the jury that these were matters selected at random, as instances, ‘instances only’, of Ang’s lack of regard for the truth. Justice Buttrose told the jury that when they came to consider Ang’s evidence they must take these matters into consideration. “How much reliance can you place on his evidence? That is the question you must ask yourselves. How much weight can you attach to his evidence that Jenny had made amazing progress in her swimming and scuba-diving? That he and Jenny had been to the Sisters Islands two days before with the boatman Yusuf? That he had his tank on his back when Jenny went down a second time, and was ready to go down with her? That he had sold Jenny his chicken farm?”

  The judge instructed the jury that if they were in any reasonable doubt as to whether Jenny was dead, or that Sunny Ang murdered her, they would resolve that doubt in favour of Ang and acquit him. “But equally, gentlemen of the jury, on the other hand, if you are satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that Jenny is dead, and that the accused murdered her, you will, of course, do your duty and return a verdict of guilty accordingly.”

  The jury retired at 12:13 PM and luncheon was sent in. They were out for less than two and a half hours. At 2:38 PM they returned with a unanimous verdict. They found the accused guilty.

  Ang stood stiffly in the dock, his hands clasped before him as the judge sentenced him to death. It was the 13th day of the trial.

  Ang showed no emotion when he was taken in a green prison van for the 10-mile ride to Changi Jail. He was checked in at the main gate. His details were recorded in the normal manner. He asked for a meal and then listened impassively as th
e prison routine was explained to him. Prison officials told a Straits Times reporter that the calmest prisoner in the prison that day was Sunny Ang. He was still supremely confident he would not hang. There were 18 other condemned prisoners in the prison, and ‘an air of tension prevailed within the prison walls’.

  A medical officer examined him after his personal clothing and other articles were taken away from him. He had a bath and a shave, in accordance with prison regulations. Escorted to his sparsely furnished cell in a concrete block, Ang looked around as the door slammed behind him. He was told that he would be allowed newspapers, books and periodicals; relatives and friends could visit him. He would be allowed to write and to receive letters. His day, officials told him, would begin at 6:30 AM every morning with a cup of tea, but he would not be wakened if he was still asleep. There would be three meals a day, and twice a day he would leave his cell, for a bath and for exercise. Lights out at 10:00 PM.

  The Appeal

  FIVE MONTHS AFTER HIS TRIAL, Sunny Ang’s appeal against conviction and sentence opened on 25 October 1965, before Justice Tan Ah Tah, the Acting Chief Justice, Justice Chua and Justice Winslow. The defence presented eighteen principal grounds of appeal. The hearing lasted nine days. In a few words the Acting Chief Justice delivered the judgment of the Court. He said, “Although Jenny’s body has never been found, there is overwhelming evidence on the record that the appellant murdered her. In our judgment no miscarriage of justice has occurred in this case. The appeal is dismissed.”

  Ang was in court. He showed no emotion.

  In his petition, put forward by his counsel, Mr Coomaraswamy alleged that his conviction was a ‘substantial miscarriage of justice’ on the following grounds.