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SCMP Reporter

Huang Bao-lin and Chau Sau-yu are two mothers united by agony - and the horrors that took place in this Yuen Long house in December 2002.

Every day, Ms Huang weeps for her daughter, Yim Pui-shan, who was murdered by black-magic killer Duong Vinh Cuong. 'The quarrel was between him and his wife, why did it have to relate to our daughter?' she asks herself, over and over.

'She was just 10 years old. Why was our daughter the one who had to be sacrificed?'

Pui-shan, the younger of Ms Huang's two daughters, had dreamed of becoming a motorcycle policewoman.

A short taxi ride away, Ms Chau, the mother of Duong's first victim, spends most of her time in bed. Her eyes are dull as she casts her mind back to times when her daughter, Chan Lok-man, 11, brought laughter into the family home.

For two weeks, the mothers' wounds have been re-opened as their daughters' murders were vividly described in court. Details of their deaths, the sexual interference with their bodies and claims by Duong, 39, that his victims provoked him into killing them have angered and stunned the families.

It is the black magic beliefs that inspired Duong to kill - in the hope of creating ghosts that would torment his wife, who had left him - which have cast an even darker pall over the loss of two young lives.

Stories of Duong's occult practices now haunt Yuen Long, where belief in demons and ghosts still runs deep in some areas. When Pui-shan's mother shu-ffles to the door at 3pm, she is still wearing her bluebird pyjamas. Ms Huang attempts small talk but it isn't long before her thin frame is shuddering with sobs. 'She was too young to disting-uish between good and bad,' Ms Huang says of her daughter. 'She did not know. We told her that some Hong Kong men are perverts.

'I taught her many times, many times. I did not know it would end up like this.'

Ms Huang last saw her daughter at the gates of the girl's school around 12.30pm on December 19, 2002. When she failed to return home from school, she was alarmed.

The next day, the family learned she had been killed.

Ms Huang wants to ask Duong, himself a father of three: 'Why choose innocent girls as a sacrifice? I would like to know, do you even think about the feelings of the parents? You bring so much pain to the families of the victims and we will never be happy, not for the rest of our lives.'

The mother hugs herself and rocks forward as she thinks about her 'Ah Shan'. From the time Pui-shan was an infant, the two had shared a bed. But Ms Huang's nights are empty now. Her house is quiet.

Ms Huang believes her daughter's beauty sealed her fate. 'I was happy when people saw my two daughters - they used to say all the time that they were very pretty,' she says.

'But now I know that it was a warning. Some people said he chose my daughter because my daughter's name is Ah Shan and his wife is Ah Shan and my daughter had long hair like the wife.

'I would rather know less, I would like not to know so much because the more I know, about how he touched her after she died...'

Her voice trails off into silence.

The grieving mother has found no solace with the only other people who can truly understand her pain, the torment which unites them. She has never contacted Lok-man's parents because she says they were even more upset than her after the terrible events of December 2002.

Lok-man's mother Ms Chau can only see her daughter's killer as a 'ruthless animal'.

'If your wife changed her love for you, there are other ways to solve the problem. Using children as a tool is not a solution to bring her back,' she whispers. 'I feel so helpless because we know we can do nothing to him. Lok-man is dead, nothing is recoverable. No one can give me comfort. He took away all I had in life.'

The curtains are drawn in her house, shutting out the world. Before December 2002, one of Ms Chau's favourite times of the day was after school when her daughter would climb on to her lap. Lok-man's absence is most noticeable at meal times. Since the day she disappeared, a place has been set for her at the dinner table. Without fail, her teenage brother goes to the door and yells out his sister's name, inviting her spirit back for a meal.

Ms Chau's listlessness gives way to anger when discussing the 'lies' Duong told during the trial. She wants the world to know her daughter is not the greedy child portrayed by Duong, who says she tried to blackmail him because she was envious of his daughter's game card collection. 'Duong knows what he has done,' Ms Chau says.

'I need to find justice for my daughter. Why did he put the blame on my daughter and lie? She would not follow him because of the cards. Lok-man was afraid of strangers.'

The Pak Sha Tsuen home in which Pui-shan and Lok-man perished looks like an unloved doll house. Its white facade is faded and peeling. The bright blue door that was left open for Duong's children remains ajar, while broken windows hang from their hinges.

There are no children here now.  Only press photographers tramp up the narrow steps of House No278 to stare and photograph the room where two girls died.

Neighbours are still trying to come to terms with what happened.  Villagers have made three offerings to appease the spirits of the dead girls.

'This area was quite peaceful up until those events,' one villager says. 'There was discomfort in the village for a few days afterwards but the killings are not related to us, we are not the ones who were responsible for the killings.

'The ghosts will find the one who killed them.'



Huang Bao-lin and Chau Sau-yu are two mothers united by agony - and the horrors that took place in this Yuen Long House in December 2002