All the photographs of Kenneth McBride and Nicola Myers are haunting but there is one image, taken on a spring day, which can make the heart stop for a long, disbelieving moment. They are standing, with a friend, on the beach at Middle Island. A rowing boat is resting on the sand behind them. Nicola, 18, all curls and wide smile, is wearing an Island School Rowing Club T-shirt, as is the unnamed girl beside her. Kenneth, dark-haired, pensive and 17, is also wearing a T-shirt. It is printed with an enlarged still from one of those science-fiction comics that were so popular in the 1950s and it is headlined 'Teenage Terror'.
That picture appeared in the South China Morning Post on May 19, 1985, by which time Kenneth and Nicola had been dead for nearly a month. They died on Braemar Hill in circumstances so appalling that, to this day, people draw in their breaths when the tragedy is mentioned. Nicola had at least 500 lacerations on her body and had been raped; Kenneth had more than 100 injuries. A police press officer fainted at the scene where their bodies were found.
Half a million dollars, the biggest murder-case reward in Hong Kong's history, was offered for information but it wasn't until November 1985 that the police arrested five suspects. A statement written by one of them, a 16-year-old called Won Sam-lung, was read to the court the following year. It perfectly illustrated both the banality and the brutality of what had happened: the five had seen the two teenagers sitting on the hill and spontaneously decided to 'have some fun' with them and to see if the pair had any money. Matters escalated dreadfully from that barely formed whim.
In 1987, three of the five accused - Pang Shun-yee, 24, Tam Sze-foon, 20, and Chiu Wai-man, 25 - were sentenced to death; their sentences were commuted to life imprisonment in 1989. The other two, Won and a 17-year-old called Cheung Yau-hang, were sentenced to be detained at Her Majesty's pleasure because they were under 18 at the time of the murders. They are now held in Stanley Prison at the discretion of the Chief Executive.
While forensic matters associated with the deaths ground on, more immediate decisions had been taken by the two families. The Myers, who also had a 15-year-old son, Joel, left Hong Kong within a year. They have been back once. The McBrides, whose daughter, Marion, turned 14 the week after her brother's death, decided to stay. It was also agreed that a memorial fund in memory of Kenneth McBride and Nicola Myers should be set up to benefit local students who might otherwise find it difficult to continue their studies in Form 6.
It says a great deal about the forceful spirit behind the memorial fund that it was implemented within a year of the murders - long before the outcome of the court case - and that it has continued, unwavering in its intentions, ever since. Money is raised by Island School's Parents-Teachers Association, by the Island School Student Union, by the Island School's annual fair (half of the proceeds are donated to the fund) and by private donations. Last Saturday, in the school's assembly hall, 135 students from Hong Kong's secondary schools each received $2,500.