A woman was tortured and her body dismembered, cooked and dumped - with her head stuffed inside a Hello Kitty doll, a jury heard yesterday on the opening day of her murder trial.
The exact cause of 23-year-old Fan Man-yee's death remains a mystery as only the skull, a tooth and her internal organs have been recovered. Her other body parts 'disappeared among rubbish' in Tsim Sha Tsui after being dumped at a refuse collection point, the Court of First Instance heard.
Police found Fan's badly decomposed heart, lungs, liver and intestines in a bag on the canopy of a Granville Road building on May 26 last year. Prosecutor Michael Arthur said the bag was dumped there on April 16 when police arrived at the building to investigate an unrelated case.
The doll, inside which was Fan's skull with the lower jaw bone missing, was recovered from the hallway of a third-floor flat above the canopy. The tooth was found next to the doll.
Chan Man-lok, 34, Leung Shing-cho, 27, and Leung Wai-lun, 20, all unemployed, have pleaded not guilty to murder but admitted preventing the lawful burial of Fan. They were further charged with one count of false imprisonment, to which Leung Shing-cho pleaded not guilty, while his co-accused pleaded guilty.
'This is a murder trial. Murder is never pleasant, but I must warn you that this is one of the most unpleasant cases - it is a sordid case,' Mr Arthur told the jury.