The postcard picture of Hong Kong is certainly one of glitzy skyscrapers towards lush mountains, dim sum eating places and funding bankers in fits.
The loss of life of the 28-year-old mom has not solely horrified a metropolis recurrently ranked as one of many world’s most secure, however gripped a lot of the world’s media with the grisly particulars of her alleged killing.
For Hong Kongers, it has additionally resurfaced painful reminiscences of earlier circumstances of dismemberment within the metropolis – many concentrating on younger girls and nearly all perpetrated by males.
There’s the so-called “Hello Kitty” homicide of 1999, when 23-year-old Fan Man-yee was kidnapped by gang members and brutally tortured for a month earlier than her loss of life and dismemberment. Her cranium was finally discovered sewn inside a Hello Kitty plush doll.
There had been the 4 girls, the youngest solely 17 years outdated, killed by a taxi driver who stored their dismembered physique components in jars earlier than his arrest in 1982.
Then got here 16-year-old Wong Ka-mui, who was strangled and dismembered in 2008 and her stays flushed down a rest room.
And in 2013, Glory Chau and Moon Siu had been murdered and dismembered by their 28-year-old son, a criminal offense described by the decide as “evil” and “absolutely hideous.”
Reams of headlines adopted every homicide. But for all of the media consideration, consultants level out such circumstances are exceptionally uncommon in Hong Kong, a metropolis with an extremely low fee of violent crime for its inhabitants of seven.4 million.
Hong Kong sees just a few dozen homicides every year, in comparison with a number of hundred in New York. And it recorded solely 77 robberies final yr – in comparison with greater than 17,000 in New York and 24,000 in London.
So why the large curiosity in these previous couple of circumstances? Their rarity, mixed with their brutality, is one issue, consultants say.
But there could also be one other at play: That buried beneath all of the grim particulars of loss of life is a peculiar perception into dwelling in one of many world’s most densely populated cities.
Roderic Broadhurst, an emeritus professor of criminology at Australian National University beforehand primarily based in Hong Kong, the place he based the Hong Kong Centre for Criminology, estimated there had been a dozen or so dismemberment circumstances within the metropolis over the previous 50 years.
Philip Beh, a semi-retired forensic pathologist who has beforehand labored with the Hong Kong police, gave a barely decrease estimate, saying he might recall fewer than 10 such circumstances in his 40-year profession.
Both consultants emphasised that Hong Kong continues to be very secure, and that these numbers are comparatively low. Indeed, Hong Kong’s repute for security meant the few circumstances that did happen left a stronger “imprint” on town, Broadhurst mentioned.
But each additionally instructed the grotesque nature of those previous circumstances – specifically, the dismembering of limbs – mirror the realities of life in Hong Kong.
Simply put, it’s a lot tougher to cover a physique within the tightly packed metropolis, house to tiny residences and a number of the world’s most densely populated neighbourhoods.
Someone attempting to get rid of a physique in rural areas of Australia, Canada or the United States has “a very good chance of getting away with it,” because of the ample house and open terrain, Beh mentioned.
“These are essentially people who are trying to get away with a crime, but failing to do so,” mentioned Beh.
A killer in Hong Kong extra doubtless than not will dwell inside just some toes of dozens of people that might spot them attempting to get rid of a corpse – prompting some to interrupt victims into smaller components for disposal.
“Most people live in apartment blocks on top of each other. We don’t have individuals with houses and gardens where you can go out and dig a hole and try to bury a body,” Beh mentioned.
“You’re never really alone; your neighbours are above you, below you, next to you. Anything out of the ordinary will catch someone’s attention.”
Broadhurst agreed, mentioning that in house buildings, a assassin may need to get into an elevator shared by greater than 100 households simply to go exterior.
Several earlier circumstances have concerned killers who cooked or boiled physique components – particulars which have horrified the general public, and sure fueled by unsubstantiated rumours surrounding circumstances just like the 1985 “pork bun murders” in neighbouring Macao.
A person killed a household of 10 together with the house owners of a restaurant, and – because the city legend (and the film it impressed) goes — supposedly served them up in buns.
But the reason is way extra mundane usually, Beh mentioned.
In Hong Kong’s subtropical, humid local weather, “the smell of the body very quickly captures attention,” he mentioned – therefore why some murderers may try to take away the scent by cooking dismembered components.
As for why these killers did not use strategies generally seen in different international locations – protecting the physique within the freezer, dumping them within the water late at night time – Hong Kong’s density poses one more issue.
In its notoriously costly housing market, residences are normally too small and cramped for giant furnishings or kitchen home equipment.
“Very few individuals have large refrigerators at home,” Beh mentioned.
“Even fewer have freezers. You can’t even keep the body if you wanted to.”
He added that the identical shortage applies to automobiles – and thus the identical issue in discreetly transporting a physique.
Few residents personal automobiles since buildings with locations to park are at a premium – in 2019, a parking house bought for greater than $1 million {dollars}, a report – and town has an intensive, environment friendly public transit system anyway.
These mixed elements might clarify numerous circumstances over time the place killers used weird, grotesque strategies to take care of their victims’ our bodies – equivalent to the lady murdered by her husband in 2018 and her physique stored in a suitcase, or the 28-year-old man whose physique was present in a block of cement in 2016.
“We live in a place where essentially, if you have killed someone, your next very pressing question is: What do you do with the body?” Beh mentioned.
“There are very few options.”
Source: www.9news.com.au