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Clifford Lo

A fung shui master was being sought last night by police investigating the deaths of three women and two teenage girls in a Kowloon Bay flat.

 Police are also trying to discover what happened to $1.2 million withdrawn by the three women days before they were found dead in an apparent suicide pact on Thursday night.

 Two of the women told their friends they had spent about $500,000 for 'goodwill'. The other withdrew $700,000 from her bank account an hour after leaving work on Tuesday claiming to be on her way to a business meeting.

 Police want to contact several people, including a fung shui master, in connection with the case.

 A police source said the three women had recently visited a friend in a flat in Hau Wong Road, Kowloon City, where they met a fortune-teller with whom they carried out a ceremony and drank 'holy' water.

 One of the victims, Becky Lam Chun-lai, 49, was yesterday revealed to be the wife of the chairman of Kith Holdings, listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange last month.

 The group is principally engaged in the printing and manufacturing of high-quality, multicolour packaging products on the mainland.

 Lam was executive director of the company and responsible for human resources and setting up policy.

 She lived with her husband, Andrew Hui King-chun, and their three daughters in House 3, the Beachfront, 7 Belleview Drive, Repulse Bay.

 The five bodies were found on Thursday evening, about 36 hours after Lam's husband went to the Waterfront police station in Sheung Wan, at 4am on Wednesday, and reported her missing.

 The businesswoman disappeared after she left her Bonham Strand office at about 10am on Tuesday. She told her husband that she was going to a business meeting in Kowloon Bay.

 Investigations show she withdrew more than $700,000 from a bank in Kowloon Bay at about 11am on Tuesday. She made arrangements to withdraw the cash last week and told the bank she would pick up the money from the Kowloon Bay branch.

 Police searching for her were unable to contact her two close friends, Choi Sau-chun, 44, and Tsui Shun-kam, 40.

 Choi, who is separated from her husband and lived with her daughter in a flat in Telford Gardens, went missing after leaving home on Tuesday afternoon.

 Choi withdrew about $200,000 from a bank on Monday and told a friend that she used the money for 'goodwill'. Police were told that Tsui also spent about $300,000 the same way.

 Tsui was divorced and lived with her two daughters, Lee Ying-fai, 17, and Ying-hei, 13, in a fifth-floor flat of Block C, Telford Gardens, where police found their bodies and the bodies of the two other women at 5pm on Thursday.

 They were found in the two bedrooms, the kitchen, the bathroom and the lounge.

 Three suicide notes saying they were unhappy with their marriages and relationships were found in the flat.

 Post mortem examinations conducted between 4am and 2pm yesterday gave no conclusive evidence of their causes of death.

 Detective Superintendent Cheung Yuk-fung said the five victims were believed to have been poisoned.

 'We are investigating what sort of poison killed them. The results of toxicology examination will be ready next week,' he said.

 'It is believed they took poison orally because no syringe holes were found on their bodies.'  No poison was found in the flat. He said there was no indication that any religious cult had been involved in the incident.

 A police source said they were still investigating why the five bodies were in separate rooms.

 'There was no sign showing that the bodies had been moved around in the premises. And there was no sign of a struggle or of anything being broken.'  The three women were close friends and were described as traditional Chinese women believing in fung shui and Buddhism.

 They sometimes met and went together to visit fung shui masters for advice.

 Relatives of the three families yesterday identified the bodies at the mortuary.

 Mr Hui identified his wife and confirmed that she had no injuries on her body when found.

 He declined to answer reporters' questions but confirmed he had arranged to have his wife's body be taken to the Hong Kong Funeral Home, North Point. An altar is expected to be put up today.

 It was not known last night whether the other two women and the teenage sisters' bodies had been claimed from the mortuary.

 An informed source said that all the three dead women were known to have shared the same religion - said to be a 'branch-off' from Buddhism.

 The source said that when the bodies were found on Thursday night, Lam was wearing her usual business suit and Tsui was wearing a purple Chinese-style shirt and pants.

 Choi was wearing bright orange pants the same colour as the cloak of a Taoist priest. Tsui's daughters wore T-shirts and jeans, the source said.



Fung shui master linked to deaths