On 12 November 2003, 59-year-old Hans Herzog, a German-born Australian businessman, was found dead with multiple slash and stab wounds on his body at his residence at USJ, Subang Jaya in Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia.

[1][2] Although Herzog's stepdaughters were acquitted of abetting the killing,[3] the two boys - Tan Pei Yan and Low Kian Boon (刘健文 Líu Jiánwén) - were found guilty of manslaughter in 2006 and sentenced to ten years' jail each by the Shah Alam High Court.

[6] On 12 November 2003, in Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia, a 59-year-old German-born Australian businessman was murdered after falling victim to a parang attack at his home in USJ, Subang Jaya.

Shortly afterward, Herzog's wife heard him shouting, and he approached her with a severe slash wound on his face, telling her to call the police.

The police recovered a bloodstained parang left abandoned on the sill of a window in the house, which was assumed to be the murder weapon used to kill Herzog.

[18][19][20] On 19 August 2004, the trial of Low Kian Boon, Tan Pei Yan and Herzog's two stepdaughters began at the Shah Alam High Court.

The prosecution's case was that the Ku sisters, who were resentful towards their stepfather for allegedly abusing them and being too strict and controlling towards them in their lives, had informed the boys their grievances and hence, they helped the boys to commit the murder of Herzog, with Low Kian Boon, the only adult of the four, acting as the ringleader of this murderous scheme, which was executed successfully with the juvenile and Low entering the sisters' house and slashing Herzog to death with parangs.

[25] Karpal Singh and his fellow counsel sought to argue that the Ku sisters were not involved in the killing of their stepfather because there was no direct evidence adduced by the prosecution to link the two of them to the murder itself.

[27][28] On the other hand, both Low Kian Boon and Tan Pei Yan were ordered to enter their defence after the trial court ruled that a prima facie case was made out against the pair.

He stated that on the facts presented to him, he was not convinced that Low and Tan were absent from the scene at the time of the murder since the DNA tests confirmed that they had stains of Herzog's blood on their clothes they wore at the house on the day in question.

Given that both Low and Tan served with good behaviour while behind bars, they both became eligible for parole after completing at least-two thirds of their sentence and were set to be released in February 2010.

Justice Gopal, who pronounced the verdict in court, found that the killing of Hans Herzog was an act of premeditated murder, as the two youths in this case clearly shared the common intention of causing his death, given that regardless of whoever was responsible for causing the fatal wounds, the boys had intentionally and violently inflicted serious injuries on Herzog by using parangs, and the attack itself was not only pre-planned but savage, and resulted in the death of the victim.

However, under the Child Act 2001, given the fact that Tan Pei Yan was 17 years old when the crime of murder was committed in 2003 and he had not reached 18, he was spared the mandatory death penalty and instead, he was sentenced to be indefinitely detained at the pleasure of the Sultan of Selangor.

The Federal Court dismissed the appeals of the boys on 17 March 2010, which thereby finalized the death sentence of Low and the indefinite detention order issued to Tan.

During this period, Low appealed to the Yang di-Pertuan Agong for a royal pardon twice, with hopes of commuting his death sentence to life imprisonment.

Under the revised laws, a person found guilty of murder would face either the death penalty or a custodial sentence of 30 to 40 years' imprisonment, with caning for male offenders aged less than 50.