Sunny Ang Soo Suan (Chinese: 洪书宣; pinyin: Hóng Shūxuān; c. 1939 – 6 February 1967), alias Anthony Ang, was a Singaporean racing driver and part-time law student who gained notoriety for the murder of his girlfriend Jenny Cheok Cheng Kid near Sisters' Islands.
[1] Sunny Ang Soo Suan was born in 1939, one of the children in a middle-class family in the British Colony of Singapore.
[3] Due to his hobby of driving race cars, Ang had once resorted to stealing his father's money, which amounted to $7,000, and fabricated it so that someone else was held responsible.
From the time they first met, Cheok and Ang slowly developed a close, romantic relationship that surpassed that of friends.
Due to Ang's charming nature, his education, and his intelligence, Cheok became completely attracted to him; he often flattered her with close attention.
[1] On 27 August 1963, Sunny Ang and Cheok hired a boatman, Yusuf bin Ahmad, to take them to Sisters' Islands, where they planned to go scuba diving and collect corals.
Ang brought along a guide rope, three air tanks, two pairs of fins, two knives, a small axe, aqualung equipment, and a transistor radio.
Thirty minutes later, when they reached Sisters' Islands, after putting on her dive belt and taking the axe, a knife, and a metal weight, Cheok went into the water alone for the first time.
The flipper was found to be severed cleanly at the top and bottom, possibly by a sharp instrument such as a knife or razor blade.
Since Jenny Cheok was inexperienced in swimming and diving, she might have panicked and got swept away and drowned in the strong ocean currents around the islands.
This aroused the suspicion of the police since it was not even concluded that the missing Cheok was dead when Ang went to demand the companies to issue the payouts.
Ang was initially discharged (but not acquitted) of the murder charge on 29 December 1964, as the judge did not accept the prosecution's request for more time to prepare their case.
Senior Crown Counsel Francis T. Seow led the prosecution, and lawyer Punch Coomaraswamy was hired to represent Ang.
Since the crime of murder was a capital offence in Singapore (inherited from the laws of British colonial rule), Ang faced mandatory capital punishment should the jury find him guilty, either by a majority or unanimous decision under the law of Singapore (before the country's abolition of jury trials in 1970).
[8] It was rumoured that Ang's father, who worked as a civil servant, had unsuccessfully tried to plead to Seow in private on his son's behalf.
Ang had once driven a car in Malaysia, returning from a holiday trip with Cheok in Kuala Lumpur, but they had an accident, in which the passenger side was severely damaged.
He said he put his mother's name on the beneficiaries' list for the insurance policies to avoid arousing suspicion should anything happen to Cheok.
Justice Buttrose excoriated Ang in court for the crime: You have killed this young girl Jenny, whose only fault apparently was that she had the misfortune to fall in love with you, and to give you everything she possessed: her all.
[21] Ang, who was then detained on death row in Changi Prison, made one final attempt to escape the gallows by appealing to President of Singapore Yusof Ishak for clemency.
[24] During his time on death row, Ang was initially remorseless over the murder of his girlfriend, and he was certain that he would not be hanged even after the High Court passed its judgement on him.
Three days before his execution, Ang, who was an atheist, converted to Christianity and began to seek forgiveness from God for his crime[citation needed].
His sister, Juliet Ang, who was called to the bar not long ago, waited outside Changi Prison to claim her brother's body, which was later buried in Bidadari Cemetery.
Having burnt her body into ashes after killing her during an argument near Gardens by the Bay, the fatal injuries sustained by the victim and their nature could not be ascertained to enable the court to determine if the death penalty was more appropriate in Khoo's case.
One of the suspects allegedly confessed that Ayakannu, who often got violent when drunk and abused his wife, was murdered and his body chopped up before being cooked in curry and rice.
However, on the first day of the trial, the prosecutors admitted that the evidence was insufficient and the judge in charge of the case released the suspects after granting them a discharge not amounting to an acquittal.
Liang, a Malaysian from Sabah, went missing on 2 October 1989, and her highly decomposed body was found two weeks later in Yishun Industrial Park by National Servicemen who were training near the area.
Forensic pathologist Chao Tzee Cheng could not ascertain the cause of death; he could not tell whether it was a suicide, murder or accident due to the state of decomposition.
From his decision to remain silent, his failure to submit additional evidence in his favour, as well as the circumstantial evidence pointing to Oh's possible guilt, the High Court made an inference that Oh had indeed killed Liang and her death was not suicidal or accidental, and thus sentenced Oh to death after finding him guilty of murder.
Oh's lawyer Peter Fernando stated that Oh Laye Koh did not show remorse for his actions and continued to deny his crime till the end.
[32][33][34][35][36][37][38] In Malaysia, lawyer N. Pathmanabhan and his two farm hands – T. Thilaiyalagan and R. Kathavarayan – were accused of murdering millionaire Datuk Sosilawati Lawiya and her three companions - bank officer Noohisham Mohamed, lawyer Ahmad Kamil Abdul Karim, and her driver Kamaruddin Shamsuddin – in 2010, purely based on circumstantial evidence and without the bodies of the victims.