Cold Blooded Murders (17 page)

Justice Buttrose reminded the jury again
about circumstantial evidence: one of its points was its cumulative effect.
“The question for you is: where does the totality of them, the total effect of
these links, lead you to? Adding them together, considering them, not merely
each one in itself, but altogether, does it, or does it not, lead you to the
irresistible inference and conclusion that the accused committed this crime? Or
is there some other reasonably possible explanation of those facts? The
prosecution case is that the effect of all this evidence drives you inevitably
and inexorably to the one conclusion, and one conclusion only: that it was
Sunny Ang, the accused, who intentionally caused the death of this young girl.”

Justice Buttrose went on to examine the
defence. He said that Ang’s evidence on oath from the witness-box was, the gist
of it, that this was an accident. “He cannot tell us what sort of an accident
it was because, of course, he did not see it. He said she might have got tired
of waiting for him and, I use his own words, ‘she may have wandered off on her
own on the sea-bed and got swept away by the tide or current’.”

Ang completely excluded the possibility of
Jenny swimming underwater to one or other of the Sisters Islands, ‘because he
said that he and Yusuf examined them from the sampan for any sign of life or
for footprints. There was no vestige of either. He did not however discard or
discount the possibility of sharks. He, at any rate, is quite certain that she
is dead and was of that same opinion right from the start’. The judge reminded
the jury of the three letters to the insurance companies.

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?”