Cold Blooded Murders

by Alex Josey

  Prosecution’s Closing Speech

  In his closing speech, Mr Seow argued that it had been clearly established that, until Jenny met Ang, she did not know how to swim or scuba-dive. Ang had apparently taught her to do both in the short space of three months. “Do you think she could have possibly reached that degree of proficiency in scuba-diving to make it safe for her to dive in the channel between the Sisters Islands? Jenny was at best still a novice in scuba-diving, and Sunny Ang her instructor knew this.”

  Yusuf was Ang’s regular boatman. He remembered having taken Jenny and Ang together only once before: that was to Pulau Tekukor, about two months before 27 August 1963, and on this occasion Jenny did not scuba-dive. The boatman did however have an opportunity of observing Jenny’s prowess at swimming. He described this as ‘unskilled’. The only occasion Yusuf had taken Jenny and Ang scuba-diving was on 27 August, which was Jenny’s first scuba-venture out at sea. Eileen Toh, who was at a picnic at Tanah Merah Besar, noticed that Jenny could barely swim as late as August.

  Counsel made much of what he called ‘the cursory search’ for Jenny when she failed to respond to Ang’s jerking on the rope. Ang was in his swimming trunks: he was a very good swimmer and yet he did not go into the water in search of Jenny. In fact he never got his feet wet at all that day. Why did he not go in himself in search of Jenny? “You are left with the inescapable feeling that the prisoner was reluctant, most reluctant to look for her. And indeed we have his own word for it. Astonishing as it may sound, he saw no point in diving to look for her because he could not see her air bubbles anywhere near the boat, and because visibility in that depth could be only a few feet.” Ang further thought that sharks might have attacked her and his instinct for self-preservation prevented him from diving down.

  Counsel said that it took Ang some 15 minutes or more to realize that he had an emergency situation on his hands. “And, upon that realization, was he galvanized into immediate action to save the girl he says he loved, and whom he says he had intended to marry? With all the scuba-diving equipment on board, all he did was vaguely to recall that there was a telephone on St John’s Island, some distance away, and, upon confirming this with the boatman, went there to summon the police for help. On the way, Ang apparently found time to change back into his street clothes.”

  At St John’s Island, Jaffar bin Hussein, the guard, advised Ang that, until the police arrived, some pawangs (sea witch doctors) should be summoned to help, and accordingly five were brought to the spot where Jenny disappeared. They did not find her.

  “What,” asked Mr Seow, “were her chances of survival in those treacherous waters? The torn and cut flipper, which Ang does not dispute was worn by Jenny, which was recovered near the spot where she last dived, suggests unmistakably that Jenny, as intended by Ang, swam into difficulties. Having regard to the strong currents known to be prevalent in that area, to her inexperience in swimming and in scuba-diving, the sudden and unexpected loss of the flipper triggered off a chain of panic-stricken reaction, with the inevitable result that she drowned.”

  There was, remarked counsel, never any doubt in Sunny Ang’s mind that Jenny was dead. To put the matter of Jenny’s death beyond any doubt, Ang and his mother instructed their counsel to instigate and to expedite a coroner’s inquest into Jenny’s disappearance so that a formal finding of her death could be returned, failing which they next attempted to move the High Court by way of probate proceedings to presume that Jenny had died on 27 August 1963. “That was the degree of their certainty that Jenny was dead.”

  Counsel said that it was incredible that after Ang had asserted, not only in various letters and documents, but also in the witness-box, that Jenny is dead, he should call as his witness Yeo Tong Hock to suggest in effect that a girl whom he once saw in Penang in 1963, and presumably again in Kedah in 1964, was in fact Jenny. “Yeo Tong Hock now affirms before you quite positively that the girl he saw was not Jenny.”

  Mr Seow permitted himself to be amazed that the defence ‘should be in such confusion, such disarray, that in one breath it asserts that Jenny is dead, and in the next breath that she is still alive.’ He argued that if Jenny was alive it meant that she was hand-in-glove with Ang in a conspiracy to cheat the insurance companies. “Now assuming the evidence of the boatman is a truthful account of what took place, which I submit it was, there are two possible ways in which the deception could have been achieved. Firstly, Jenny swam the four miles back from the Sisters Islands to Singapore, which, having regard to her known swimming or scuba experience, was most unlikely. Or, secondly, she swam underwater part of the distance, surfaced, and was picked up by a boat lurking nearby. Here again, her scuba, swimming prowess precludes any such spectacular effort. No such boat, or anyone nearby, was seen by the boatman that day (which was confirmed by Ang in his own diary), and you may therefore rule out that possibility.”

  The prosecutor went on to argue that if, for argument’s sake, Jenny did somehow manage to get back to Singapore and was alive, surely Ang would have told the police by now that she was alive? “Do you not think that, if he could, he would have produced Jenny and thus provided a complete defence to the charge that he had murdered her?” Mr Seow addressed the jury, “Ask yourselves: would not Jenny, were she alive, have walked through the very doors of this Court by now, to save Ang?”

  Counsel dealt briefly with the insurances on Jenny’s life. He said that a matter that called for some comment was Jenny’s conduct. Did she know what was happening? He thought not. “The picture which emerges from the evidence is that of a young and lowly educated and impressionable girl with an unhappy past (although Ang describes her as simple), who, it seems, could be as easily fascinated by a typewriter as by a poultry farm, and who could be as equally interested in flying as in scuba-diving. Contrast her with Ang. Is it any wonder that within a month of meeting her he was able to sell an insurance policy and persuade Jenny to name his mother as her beneficiary—a woman Jenny never met? She thought he was going to marry her. In such circumstances, it is not difficult to imagine this ignorant and love-struck barmaid signing her life away. Ang virtually supported her, paid all the subsequent accident policies. Jenny had no poultry farm and Ang’s assertion that she had was another figment of his vivid imagination.”

  Ang, said Mr Seow, was an expert and skilled motorist. He had been among the first 10 in the 1961 Singapore Grand Prix of 180 miles. Was not the so-called accident, in which he and Jenny were involved, contrived by him? Was this not a brazen attempt by Ang to kill Jenny? Within 13 days of that accident, Jenny was involved in another accident—this time at sea. After the first abortive attempt on her life, this unsuspecting bar waitress without any visible means of support was heavily insured by Ang and taken out scuba-diving by him. Ang knew the treacherous nature of the waters, especially the undertows. And it was to this very place that he brought his inexperienced pupil on a quiet and lonely Tuesday afternoon to scuba-dive. Against all rules of safety, he instructed her to dive in alone. Against all rules of safety, she was allowed to put on her weight belt first, after which her air-tank was harnessed on her back. After her tank was changed by Ang, Jenny went below alone and never surfaced again. Counsel said that Ang had never satisfactorily explained why he had changed her tank when it still had a lot of air in it.

  “It would have been awkward for Ang if both he and Jenny had gone down together and only he came up. He had to create an alibi that he was in the boat when she swam into difficulties, and was drowned. Ang also had to create an excuse for himself for not going into the sea when Jenny failed to surface—an alibi and an excuse which could be vouched for by a third party, the boatman Yusuf. What was the alibi? What was the excuse? Well, washers do not normally drop out by themselves. How, then, did the washer of Ang’s tank come to be missing? It was deliberately removed by him. “Nevertheless the fact remains that, due to wear and tear, washers do occasionally drop out—and therein lies the ingenuity of Ang’s stratagem.

 
But if it did drop out, you would immediately be aware of this, before you fixed the breathing assembly to the tank. How was it that Ang was not immediately aware of this? Why did he not test the tank after he had fixed the breathing assembly to see if it leaked? This would have been the most natural thing to do before he put the tank on his back. But he says he did not. Why? After the tank had been harnessed on he asked the boatman to turn the valve on, as it was tight. Then he heard the loud outrush of escaping air. When he discovered that the cause of the leak was the missing washer, Ang, oddly enough, did not remark to Yusuf that it might have dropped out in the sampan, or start a search for it. Does not his behaviour strike you as that of a person who knew that the washer was not there? Because he had deliberately removed it? What he did was simply to go through the motions of play-acting for the benefit of the unsuspecting boatman. A washer was improvised from a rubber strap of a diving mask. But the tank still leaked.”

  Counsel reminded the jury that the improvised washer in question was put in as an exhibit by the defence. “And with that very same washer, on that very same Healthway tank—which Ang said leaked—Henderson demonstrated before your very eyes and ears that the tank did not leak. But Yusuf also said he heard it leak. What then is the explanation? It is very simple. The washer was fixed on the tank by Ang but he deliberately did not clamp it tight, so that when the valve was turned on, the tank was bound to leak. Henderson was himself able to cause a deliberate leak on his own tank in that manner when he dived on 26 April 1965 off Pulau Dua. And, to prove it beyond doubt, you have seen in this Court how with its proper washer the Healthway tank leaked if it was not clamped on tight. Yusuf of course had no means of knowing this. Firstly because he knew nothing of scuba-equipment (a fact known to Ang), and secondly, it was Ang who had fitted it on.”

  Counsel recalled that they had examined the improvised washer before and after Henderson’s demonstration in Court “so that you could see a slight impression on it whereas there was none before. This indicates that the washer was never clamped on tight as it should have been on 27 August 1963. Ang said he next attempted to prise out the washer from the 40-cubic-feet Sealion tank (originally used by Jenny) with a knife which had cut the washer. Ang had said that relying on common sense he knew he was unable to use it on his own Healthway tank. Yusuf did not remember this.”

  On instructions from the police, Bertrand had experimented with cut washers, and washers which had been gouged or prised out from their seats, after which he had used them on his tank. In all instances there was no perceptible leak. “Henderson has also told you how, with an improvised rubber washer in his own tank, he had been able to dive to a depth of 45 feet, where he remained for 10 minutes. And how he repeated this experiment with a string, reaching a depth of 100 feet, where he remained for 22 minutes without any apparent discomfort. If you accept the evidence of Henderson and Bertrand on this—and also the evidence of your own eyes and ears, it shows conclusively that Ang had been lying about the washer, about the leak, and about the unservice-ability of his scuba equipment. Why should he lie? This was an emergency. His best girl had not surfaced. She had been down some 15 minutes or so, and, on his own calculations, there would be little or no air left in her tank—if nothing else in the meanwhile had happened to her. This was the girl he was going to marry. He was a very good swimmer. He was also a skin-diver. He had all the equipment on board. He was an instructor in scuba-diving. And yet he never dipped one little finger into the water, so to speak, to render her immediate assistance. He never made so much as a token dive to look for her. His bathing trunks never got wet.”

  Counsel asked the jury: “What would you have done if your best girl, someone you love most dearly had gone down and not surfaced for 15 minutes? Would you not have been frantic with fear, with anxiety, for her safety? If you were a very good swimmer and a skin-diver, would you not in the circumstances have plunged into the sea to search for her? Why did Ang not do so? The boatman saw moisture below Ang’s eyes. He was not sure whether this was sea water or tears. I suggest to you that this moisture was in fact sea water from his diving mask. Yusuf never heard him weep. If Ang had been truly concerned over Jenny, he would have bestirred himself into greater energy than he had shown. He did not in fact appear a bit concerned or alarmed at Jenny’s disappearance. He did not urge the boatman to hurry to get to St John’s Island. On the contrary, he appeared to have found time to change back into his street clothes. At St John’s Island, Jaffar walked with him to the telephone, and back to the jetty. Ang did not hurry the boatman back to Pulau Dua. Ang wanted her to die. He wanted to make sure she really died. If he had carefully planned her death there was not much point in him going down to look for her—and that, I suggest, was the reason he did not do so.”

  Mr Seow said that Ang had told the Court that they were at Pulau Dua to collect corals. Because they were sharp it was necessary to wear gloves. Ang had therefore brought two pairs of gloves. Jenny had gone below to wait for him: they were to collect corals. Yet she never wore her gloves. Ang could not explain how, if Jenny had indeed worn them, they were found in his swimming bag later. “This was no coral-collecting excursion. This was an excursion where, at the end of it, Ang was to collect $400,000 for himself.” Ang had also brought along two improvised weight belts. They had been specially improvised for Jenny. Ang never used a weight belt. The weights were tied at Jenny’s back, but as water is a lubricant it was possible, owing to gravity, for the belt to swing round back to front. “In that eventuality I think you would agree that it would be extremely difficult for Jenny, in an emergency, to jettison the belt, and surface.”

  Mr Seow turned next to the flipper. “Who cut the strap? The person who engineered her death. There were three persons in the boat. One of them is the killer. Why was the strap cut? Who had an opportunity of cutting it? Who had the strongest motives to want Jenny’s death? Sunny Ang was the answer to all those questions.’” Counsel argued that all the evidence led to the irresistible inference that Sunny Ang knew that Jenny was dead, and that Ang had killed her, and that he was determined to profit as speedily as possible from her death. “This is a case of a man who planned, and carefully planned, to murder for gain, for $400,000, and who hoped to succeed, as he thought he would, if no trace of the body of his victim could be found.”

  Summing Up

  Justice Buttrose began his summing up on the afternoon of 17 May 1965. He dealt first with what he called the propriety and wisdom of Mr Coomaraswamy, the defence counsel, interviewing the key witness for the prosecution, the boatman, after the accused had been charged with the offence. He repeated that he accepted Mr Coomaraswamy’s explanation, in that, according to his lights at any rate, he did what he thought was proper in the interests of his client. He told the jury to dismiss the incident completely from their minds. The boatman never changed his story, nor did anyone, he said, ever ask him to do so.

  Next the judge warned the jury to ignore completely any rumours they may have heard during the past 21 months that Jenny was still alive. He reminded them that they were concerned only with the evidence. They must be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that Jenny was dead. What the prosecution had to do was to prove that she was dead. It was not necessary to produce a body. “The absence of a dead body makes the proof of death, of course, more difficult and the onus on the prosecution of proving it heavier. But that is all.” The two questions they must ask themselves were: were they satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that Jenny was dead? Were they satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that she was murdered by the prisoner? There was no actual eye-witness as to how she died. “There is no one who can tell you what happened down on the sea-bed some 30–40 feet below the surface, to this young girl of 22 years of age on this fateful afternoon of 27 August 1963. Only Jenny herself could have told us, but, according to the prosecution, her lips have been sealed for ever.” The judge explained the importance of circumstantial evidence. “The fact of death may be proved, and proved qui
te adequately, by circumstantial evidence, as may the fact that murder has been committed be proved, and proved quite adequately by circumstantial evidence.”

  Justice Buttrose drew the jury’s attention to the disparity in general background between Jenny the bar waitress who could speak only very, very little English, and Ang, a well-educated and knowledgeable young man, then 26 years old. “Jenny you may think felt highly flattered by the attention of this, in her eyes at any rate, young and more mature, better educated and experienced young man. She might—you may not unreasonably, I suggest, conclude—have entertained views of matrimony with him.” The judge referred to Ang’s evidence that there was a tacit understanding between them to marry and that they were in love with each other. “They were also on terms of complete intimacy.”

  The judge said there was no dispute over what he called the “extraordinary series of insurance transactions entered into by Jenny, or in her name, or on her behalf. Nevertheless he went through them all, coming finally to the $150,000 policy for five days from 27 August 1963, at 11:00 am, ‘the very day that this tragic occurrence took place, the actual day of the tragedy, when he went to the office of the American International Underwriters alone, bringing with him an application form duly filled in and signed by Jenny’. The beneficiary was again Jenny’s estate. Within three weeks of Jenny meeting the accused she had been insured for very large amounts of money with five different. insurance companies. At the time of the tragedy Jenny had been covered by insurance ‘to the tune of something not far short of half a million dollars’. In some cases, Ang’s mother was the beneficiary, in others, Jenny’s estate. “But the whole of her estate was to go to the accused’s mother by the will that she had drawn up in August.’

  Thus, within the short space of three months, Ang had got the whole of Jenny’s estate in his hands, ‘the very substantial benefit of all her insurance policies, and, when we come to his defence, not only had he been paid $2,000 by this bar girl on account of the purchase of the poultry farm, but there was a further $8,000 still due to him by Jenny on account of the balance of the purchase price’. “One must, I think,” added Justice Buttrose, “agree that by any standards, this was quite an achievement and when one considers the youth and age of the accused it is staggering. I don’t think it unfair to say to you, members of the jury, that in the short space of two and a half months he had got the lot. Jenny, so far as the evidence goes, had never before taken, or considered taking out any insurance policies, or of making a will, and it was only after she had met Ang that she did so. And this, gentlemen of the jury, is, according to the prosecution, the motive, the overwhelming motive, for this crime: the golden hope of gain by this undischarged bankrupt with high ambitions.”