On 4 May 1981, 25-year-old Laura Yap Fui Kheng (叶慧琼 Yè Huìqióng), an air hostess and former beauty queen, was found murdered in her home at Petaling Jaya in Selangor, Malaysia.
[2] The victim, 25-year-old Laura Yap Fui Kheng, was discovered dead in the living room by her mother, wearing only a shirt and underpants, and a piece of rope was tightly tied around her neck.
[8][9] On 12 May 1981, the suspect, identified as 21-year-old Lee Chee Wai, was officially charged with murder in a magistrate's court, before he was detained at Pudu Prison while assisting in investigations and awaiting trial.
Lee was represented by K. Pasupathy while the prosecution was led by Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Muhammad Shafee Abdullah.
Afterwards, while he was fixing the air conditioner, Lee took the chance to attack Yap, attempting to molest and rape the young woman, who resisted his advances.
[16][17] Forensic evidence presented at the trial showed that while Yap was not raped, there were stains of semen found on her clothes,[18] and the bruises on her neck, face and four limbs corroborated that she had been strangled during the course of a sexual assault.
[19] A 14-year-old student and Yap's neighbour testified that he had seen a man in a blue shirt, whom he later identified as Lee, rushing out of the house and riding away on his motorcycle.
[27] At the end of closing submissions on both sides, the trial judge summed up the case for the jury, and directed them to consider crucial parts of the evidence before reaching a verdict, mainly on the points of whether Lee had the intention to strangle Yap, whether the injuries were caused by Lee himself and Yap's cause of death in order to decide if he was guilty of murder.
Lee was reportedly calm during sentencing but teared up while leaving the courtroom, and he was subsequently transferred to the death row section of Pudu Prison.
However, on 21 March 1983, the Federal Court dismissed Lee's appeal after finding his conviction of murder safe and confirmed the death penalty in his case.