Cold Blooded Murders (20 page)

The prosecution, they said, appeared to rely
upon this evidence as showing a previous attempt by Sunny Ang to kill Jenny,
although this suggestion was never put to him in terms in cross-examination,
‘and does not appear in terms anywhere in the learned trial judge’s summing up
to the jury’.

Sunny Ang’s legal advisers argued that this
car accident was not connected with, and was removed in time from, the matters which
formed the subject matter of the charge against Ang, and could not be said to
be part of the
res gestas
(or the alleged intention of Ang to kill Jenny).

They held that the alleged acts of Ang on
the day of the road accident were not ‘similar acts’ to those that the
prosecution alleged he did in the commission of the offence with which he was
charged. The evidence relating to the motor car accident, they said, would not
have been sufficient to sustain a charge of attempted murder: at its highest it
could only have given rise to some suspicion against Sunny Ang.

Therefore, they submitted, this evidence was
irrelevant and inadmissible, and, as it was put forward in effect as evidence
of some other offence or misconduct on his part, was highly prejudicial to Ang’s
defence. Furthermore, the prejudicial effect was so disproportionate to any
possible evidential value that it ought to have been excluded in fairness to
Ang. In any event, the judge, having ruled that the evidence was admissible
gave the jury no direction whatsoever as to how it was to be treated or
applied. They submitted that if the evidence was admissible at all, he should
have directed the jury that, if they thought the occurrence might have been a
pure accident, the evidence would be of no assistance to them, and they should
also ignore it if it only gave rise to suspicion. The evidence would have been
relevant to rebut a possible defence of accident only if they were satisfied
that Ang tried to kill Jenny by deliberately causing the accident. They held
that the evidence would not sustain such a conclusion.

Ang’s petition to the Privy Council also
submitted that Justice Buttrose misdirected the jury as to the effect of
circumstantial evidence, in particular as to the way the jury should consider
and evaluate the evidence relied upon by the prosecution as showing Sunny Ang’s
guilt. Justice Buttrose had said that it was the cumulative effect of the
evidence that was important not one isolated link in the chain of
circumstantial evidence. He said it would be wrong to consider the case link by
link, and reject any one link being by itself as too weak.

While the petitioners did not dispute that
such a direction would be proper in a case ‘in which all the pieces of the
circumstantial evidence are directed to show that an accused committed the
particular act or was responsible for the particular omission which is relied
upon as being the act of murder’, it was inappropriate and misleading where, as
in Ang’s case, the prosecution alleged a number of acts or omissions, the
cumulative effect of some, or all of which is relied upon as contributing the
offence.

In Ang’s case, apart from evidence of motive
or intention, and evidence as to subsequent conduct, which the prosecution
relied upon as showing guilt, the prosecution case was that the death of Jenny
was caused by:

·
        
Ang taking her scuba-diving in what he knew were
dangerous waters and when, as he knew, she was a novice scuba-diver;

·
        
Ang cutting her flipper causing it to come off
in the water and causing her to panic and to get into greater danger; and

·
        
his delaying, on a false pretence, for some ten
minutes, instead of himself diving in or joining her, or making any effort to
rescue her.

In these circumstances the judge’s direction
to the jury as to how circumstantial evidence should be regarded was wrong. It
was incumbent upon him to consider separately the various acts and omissions
for which Ang was alleged to be responsible, and which taken together, made up
the alleged crime. Instead, the judge invited the jury to lump all the
circumstantial evidence together. He should have brought to their minds that
the various pieces of circumstantial evidence were directed respectively to
various acts and omissions, the combination of which the prosecution relied
upon as constituting the crime of murder.

The petition said that the ‘main ingredient
in the alleged crime of murder’ was the cutting of Jenny’s flipper. Ang’s act
of cutting it, they submitted, was strongly in issue, ‘and there was some
evidence to support the defence contention that it could not have been cut by
Sunny Ang at the time and manner suggested by the prosecution’. Had the judge
directed the jury correctly on the weight and effect of circumstantial
evidence, he would necessarily have invited the jury to consider how the case
stood if they were not satisfied that Ang had in fact cut Jenny’s flipper. He
should have directed the jury in this context: that they should be satisfied
that Ang induced or persuaded Jenny to scuba-dive in dangerous waters and so caused
her death. The petition also argued that there was no direct evidence that Ang
ever persuaded or induced Jenny to go to the particular spot where she made the
dive from which she did not return. There was no direct evidence that Ang cut
her flipper.

The petition complained that the Appeals
Court followed the learned trial judge in taking the prosecution’s evidence as
a whole, instead of distinguishing the various pieces of evidence in relation
to the different acts or omission which the prosecution said constituted the
offence of murder. “The cutting of the strap of the flipper, either by Ang or
with his knowledge, must necessarily have been evidence in a different
category.” The Appeals Court, the petition pointed out, said “Ang ‘allowed’
Jenny to go down into waters which he knew were dangerous.” For all these
matters complained of, submitted Ang’s legal advisers, he had suffered
‘substantial and grave injustice’, and in consequence Ang petitioned for
special leave to appeal against the judgment of the Appeals Court.

The petition was denied.

Ang
was a psychopath.
Two psychiatrists came to this
conclusion after examining him in Changi Jail,

Dr Wong Yip Chong, then the government
psychiatrist, saw Ang five times in 16 days in October 1966. He also
interviewed his father, mother, sister and two of the brothers, as well as
several members of the public with close association with Ang in the past. Dr
Wong found Ang in good physical condition, and noted that his intelligence
quotient (IQ) was recorded as 128—within the superior intelligence range.

Ang had a good academic record and was among
the first 10 in the primary classes and maintained these positions to the
secondary level except when he finished at the bottom of the class through
playing truant. He completed his Senior Cambridge in 1955, and obtained
distinctions in English and Science, and a C3 for Mathematics, thereby
obtaining a Grade I certificate. This was obtained with the minimum of effort.
Ang claimed that he never studied until the last two weeks of the examination.
According to his form master, Maurice Baker, later to become Singapore’s first
High Commissioner to India (now professor of English at the University of
Singapore), Ang was a fairly quiet boy but bright, and with a great sense of
adventure. “If there were a war, he would have distinguished himself.” He was
apparently a likeable boy, though conceited. His school records show his
conduct to have been good.

In early 1956 he went to work with Dunlops,
but resigned after three months in anticipation of discovery by the company of
his having ‘irresponsibly and improperly’ diverted some of the company’s
products to his own home. He idled away the rest of the year, and in 1957
became a student teacher at Bedok Boys’ School for about six months. His
conduct as a student teacher was deplorable. True to his philosophy of maximum
results from minimum effort he would leave his pupils’ books to be corrected by
his sister or mother. According to the records at the Teachers’ Training College,
Sunny Ang was the only student never to attend any classes throughout the term.
In 1958 he returned to teaching at St Thomas School, a private school, for one
year. There his irresponsible behaviour continued. He was often away from his
class. On one occasion he misappropriated school fees, though he later managed
to return them to the school.

But in between these two periods of
teaching, Ang had tried to become a commercial airline pilot. In May 1957 he
was released by the Director of Education from his teacher-in-training course
to train as an airline pilot with the aid of a Colombo Plan scholarship. He had
always been interested in flying, and earlier that month (on 10 May 1957), he
had qualified for his student pilot licence. He obtained his private pilot
licence on 29 November, and passed his examinations for his Restricted Flight
Radio and Telephone Operator’s Licence in May the following year.

This Colombo Plan scholarship training
programme started off with six selected students, but only four were to be
chosen for advanced training to commercial pilot level in India. In terms of
efficiency, as reflected in the number of hours registered to qualify for solo
flying, Ang ranked fourth with 13 hours. But he was not chosen. The fifth
student, with over 20 hours, was chosen in his stead. Ang was greatly
disappointed: he considered it a gross distortion of justice. He was determined
to go on with his training in Singapore, and his mother pawned her jewellery,
and borrowed money to enable him to do this. By the time he was finally
grounded in May 1959 he had completed 139 flying hours: it had cost his mother
nearly $5,000.

Ang admitted to Dr Wong that he had been
involved in a number of irresponsible flying incidents, such as skimming over
the water and the tops of coconut trees. He would come down low over house-tops
to salute friends or a relative, or to look at girls sunbathing on the
roof-tops.

Ang also admitted with nonchalance that he
was an inveterate liar. His arrogance and his conceit were noted by Civil
Aviation officials and his flying instructor. Ang was also over-confident,
which is a dangerous disposition in flying. These were in fact the reasons why
Ang was not selected for further training to commercial pilot level: an
arrogant, conceited, over-confident person, given to irresponsible behaviour,
does not often make a good pilot.

Ang was grounded in May 1959 following an
emergency landing. He misread a compass and had run out of fuel. At the inquiry
he lied and said he had a bird in his engine. This inaccurate explanation was
not accepted, and he was not allowed to fly again. He should never have been
allowed to fly in the first place because of defective eyesight. A friend took
the first examination for him. The second he passed by learning the eye-chart
by heart.

His hopes to become a commercial pilot
dashed, Ang returned to teaching for about a year. Early in 1960 he became a
chicken farmer. He cleared the land, built cages and reared thousands of
chickens, and ducks as well for a time. He managed to make about $300 a month,
and the farm thrived except when an epidemic wiped out almost all his stock.
But he carried on, in spite of a financial loss, and in 1964 he also began to
plant tomatoes. He was still farming when he was arrested and charged with
Jenny’s murder.

Ang’s sex life seems to have been normal, if
enthusiastic. He confessed to getting several girls into trouble: some of them
had abortions. He told one girl he wanted to marry her and he induced her
mother to lend him various sums of money totalling between $6,000 and $7,000.
Much of this money he spent on paying for a Sunbeam sports car which he drove
in the 1961 Singapore Grand Prix. When the girl’s mother realized his duplicity
she made him a bankrupt. He was so enamoured with another girl that he would
talk to her on the telephone when she was away for as long as two and a half
hours at a time. He ran up telephone bills of $500 a month. His diary revealed
that he had to sell about 200 chickens to settle these bills.

Ang liked girls, but not alcohol, and
neither did he gamble. He never frequented night-clubs and he did not know how
to dance. All his life he had few friends. Ang was faddish about food. He would
never eat pork, the favourite meat of practically all the Chinese. He would eat
no other meat than the meat of a chicken.

He was egocentric and vain. His physical
health and appearance meant much to him. He would keep fit with a careful diet
and regular physical exercises including running. Pimples would seriously upset
him. He paid careful attention to his teeth. He was dissatisfied with himself
for not being taller than five feet and six inches. For years he tried courses
to get taller. He tried to improve his memory and his command of the English
language. He was constantly striving to improve himself, physically and
mentally.

His fondness for cars led him into trouble.
He stole between $6,000 and $7,000 from his father, making the theft appear as
though an outsider had taken the money. The police dismissed this possibility
and a detective followed him to a car dealer where he was seen to hand over
money and take possession of a car. The following day the receipt arrived home.
Despite all this evidence, he flatly denied that he had stolen the money. An
angry, miserable father drove him out of the house. Sunny went calmly and
stayed away for a few days, coming back when his mother forgave him.