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Houses of horror

The stench was overpowering: a noxious odour that clung to your nostrils and clawed at the back of your throat until you retched. It was the unmistakable reek of putrefying flesh, of a body that had been left to rot in a small, unventilated storeroom in Hong Kong's heat and humidity.

Trussed up in a rug, each end covered by plastic bin bags and tightly bound with tape, the fetid corpse festered for days before it was found. Police officers who were called to uncover it will never forget that smell.

It came from the decomposing body of millionaire banker Robert Kissel, who had been battered to death by his glamorous wife, Nancy, after she'd spiked his drink with a cocktail of drugs. The so-called 'milkshake murder' of 2003 is among Hong Kong's most notorious crimes and the case continues to make headlines as Nancy Kissel's lawyers seek a retrial.

Her husband's body had been moved to a storeroom but, according to forensic reports, the murder took place in the main bedroom of the couple's home, in one of Hong Kong's most prestigious housing developments.

Parkview, a cluster of imposing tower blocks favoured by affluent expatriates, is situated amid the lush, rolling hills of Tai Tam Country Park, close to Stanley and, beyond that, Repulse Bay, with its exclusive stores and restaurants. Parkview is the kind of property estate agents term 'sought after'.

The complex offers all the facilities a well-to-do family would expect, including swimming pools, tennis courts, a clubhouse and manicured gardens. Few who can afford it would turn down the chance to live here and Tower 17, where the Kissels lived, is especially desirable. Residents in the lower-numbered blocks can spend years gazing uphill, for, as affluent Hongkongers appreciate, the higher up you go physically, the greater your status. It's literally social climbing.

When the apartment on the 21st floor became available, following the Kissels' unscheduled departure, it was leased for a knock-down rent because 'haunted' homes are difficult to let.

A Land Registry search reveals that the apartment belongs to a company registered in the British Virgin Islands and a Companies Registry search shows its authorised representative in Hong Kong is a resident of Parkview's Tower 14. He was unavailable for comment.

However, Anthony Kwok Chong, associate director of corporate affairs for Centaline Property Agency, says, 'No Tower 17 apartments are currently for sale but they are the most expensive, with the best views. An apartment the size of the Kissels' will rent for about HK$100,000 per month. For the Kissels' former apartment I would expect a tenant to pay HK$80,000 to HK$90,000.'

The current tenants in the 'murder mansion' are a middle-aged couple with four young children. He is an Indian-born businessman and she is British. They asked not to be named but say they knew all about the murder before they moved in. In fact, they were living in one of the other towers when it happened.

The wife laughs off suggestions that Robert Kissel's blood-spattered spectre might be stalking the spacious four-bedroom apartment, saying, 'When I asked my husband to find us a bigger home for our growing family, I did ask him not to consider this apartment. But he persuaded me to look at it and when I came here I realised it's just a building like any other. I've never felt uncomfortable here. Not even in the bedroom. I didn't see it when the Kissels lived here, so to us it's just a bigger version of our last apartment. It's got all our furniture in it and there's lots of space for the children.'

But standing in the bedroom where the murder took place is an eerie experience even if you don't believe in ghosts. There is a queen-size bed and, although the blood-stained carpet was removed long before the current tenants took over the lease, there is a large red rug at the foot of the bed which is easily big enough to wrap a body in. Even on a sunny day, the room feels chilly and uninviting.

The current tenant doesn't agree. 'I'm never scared, even when I'm here on my own. This is our home now. When friends come to stay, I give them a book all about the murder,' she laughs.

It's a pragmatic attitude that's rarely shared by other prospective residents of 'crime scene' homes. Hongkongers are a superstitious lot, with a strong belief in spirits and fung shui.

Taoism, the region's most popular religion, holds that when a person dies, the spirit separates from the body but stays nearby until the body is buried. To believers, the worst place to live, work or build is where someone has been buried or died by violence, such as by murder, suicide or an act of war, because it's deemed difficult to 'spiritually cleanse' the land or building. Taoists believe that the way the basic elements and the yin and yang are distributed in a house can make it either appealing or inhospitable for ghosts. Yin is a cold and dark feminine aspect while yang is the warm and active masculine one. Houses for the living are yang and the places ghosts inhabit are yin.

Fung shui master and Post Magazine columnist Jin Peh says, 'When there is a grisly murder, the energy of the person who was murdered - the chi - will linger at the scene of the crime. This chi is extremely negative as it is a combination of the person's fear, horror, pain, sadness, surprise and anger ... and it will persist at the location unless the area is cleansed.

'This negative energy can be detected through the fung shui compass - the central needle will rotate haphazardly and will read the south as north and vice versa. A Buddhist/Taoist monk can then be called in to carry out a ceremony. This will include reciting chants that will enable the energy to dissipate. The souls of those who have been murdered will be asked to move on to the next stage of life, or the yin world, where they may be reincarnated.'

So strong are these beliefs that one local woman issued a writ to a Hong Kong estate agent after the company tried to sell her an apartment without revealing that there had been a death in it, albeit a non-violent one. In 2007, Ho Chow-lan demanded the return of her deposit and legal fees after she learned that a dead body had lain undetected for several days in the North Point flat she wanted to purchase.

According to the code of ethics issued by the Estate Agents Authority (EAA), the industry's governing body, agents are under no legal obligation to tell prospective tenants if there has been a death at a property. However, it does state: 'Estate agents must serve their clients with honesty, fidelity and integrity, protect their clients against fraud, misrepresentation or any unethical practices, protect and promote their clients' interests, and act in a fair and impartial manner to all parties involved in the transactions.'

Connie Law, corporate communications manager for the Hong Kong branch of the EAA, says, 'Under the Estate Agents Ordinance (EAO), licensees must provide a copy of the land search to prospective buyers or tenants immediately before the signing of a provisional sale and purchase agreement or a provisional tenancy agreement. If death certificates are registered against a particular property in the Land Registry, the land search record of that property will show such registration by a memorial number.

'However, whether there has been a death in the property is not a piece of information which must be provided by estate agents under the EAO. Whether an estate agent has a duty to disclose that piece of information depends on the circumstances of the case. Generally speaking, if consumers have not made direct enquiries with their agent, the agent may not be held accountable for not providing such information.'

Sylvia Chan, a property agent with more than 20 years' experience, who works for New Latin Realty, in Causeway Bay, says that agents will usually know a property's history but, generally, only if the information has been volunteered. Agents won't necessarily ask outright if there has been a death. 'If you know, you tell. If you don't, you can't,' she says.

However, Chan says agents do communicate with each other and with caretakers of buildings. She says that if a crime has taken place in a property, an e-mail will quickly circulate, especially if the crime has been reported in the media. That's when agents will be forced to drop the price of the property. Chan says the figures are negotiable but between 10 per cent and 20 per cent is usual. It's also incremental.

According to Chan, accidental deaths are not 'worth' as much as suicides, which won't justify as much of a discount as a violent murder. Also, the effect of murders and suicides on property prices is greater than that on rent. She says banks may not give a mortgage if a house has a 'bad' history, which includes being the scene of a crime or an unnatural death. 'That's because it affects the value of the property,' she says.

Such properties include an apartment at 31 Granville Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, the site of a gruesome crime that took place in 1999: the Hello Kitty murder. It has not been lived in since.

A nightclub hostess was kidnapped and tortured in the apartment for more than a month. The woman's three male abductors eventually dismembered her body, decapitating her and inserting her head into a Hello Kitty doll. The presiding judge at the trial said: 'Never in Hong Kong in recent years has a court heard of such cruelty, depravity, callousness, brutality, violence and viciousness.'

Today, 31 Granville Road houses a hair and beauty salon on the first and second floors. But climb the stairs to the third floor and there you will find the empty apartment in which the horrific crime took place.

Its interior has been completely gutted and every shred of evidence removed: the floors have been stripped to concrete and the walls are nothing but bare plaster. There are no doors, save for flimsy, unlocked front and back entrances. Some windows are slightly open and a through-wind blows the dust into whirls. There's a printed notice on the back door, dated April, 1999 - the month after the murder - which reads: 'Dear Tenant, Please put the domestic waste at the stairs of the back exit. Thank you for your co-operation. Yours truly, The Landlord.' For those who know the details of this macabre murder, 'domestic waste' is an unpleasantly ambiguous term.

Such was the nature of the crime, which wreaked so much suffering on its victim, that it's difficult not to conjure up an image of a mournful spirit while standing in the apartment.

So, how much time needs to have elapsed after a death for a home to be deemed livable again?

A little more than 21 years ago, a resident of Kornhill, in Taikoo Shing, murdered her husband, then cut up his body with an electric saw, boiled the parts and dumped them on a rubbish tip.

Flat 312 of Block D has been traded a number of times since the crime took place inside it but it continues to be valued below market price. Lydia Leung of the Kornhill Plaza branch of letting agent Ricacorp Properties says, 'The apartments in Block D are still cheaper than the ones in the other blocks. Two-bedroom apartments at Kornhill are being let for about HK$11,000 to HK$13,000 at the moment but in Block D they can be as low as HK$8,500 if you negotiate. Even apartments on the top floor are cheaper; it doesn't matter that floor 27 is so far away from floor three [where the murder took place], Chinese people still don't want to live there.' Leung says 'a foreigner' is the current tenant of apartment 312.

In the 1950s, there was a case known as the 'six states installation of minister' murder. The name derived from a Chinese opera with a similar title, because the murderer warned one of the victims - his sister-in-law - that he was about to carry out a real-life rendition of the performance.

According to reports at the time, the perpetrator was a military officer who had left the mainland to stay with his brother and his brother's wife in an apartment on the fourth floor of 359 Lockhart Road, Wan Chai. The soldier fell out with his sister-in-law and moved out of the flat, returning a few days later to collect his belongings. There was a row and in a frenzied attack, he stabbed and killed her, along with a neighbour and her three-year-old daughter. Then he poured petrol on the bodies and set fire to them.

Since the murders, the phrase 'six states installation of minister' has entered the vernacular in Hong Kong as a reference to heated arguments.

There's now a lighting shop at 359 Lockhart Road and three floors above it are two apartments. The tenants were not available to comment but one neighbour knows of the crime.

Mrs Chan lives on the seventh floor and says she remembers being told about the deaths when she moved into the building 15 years ago.

'I did not know who was living there at the time and I have not seen who lives there now but I did feel bad and so I lit some joss sticks and prayed. I wouldn't live there.'

When it comes to getting a discounted rent, suicides may not be as valuable a negotiating tool as murders but there is still superstition surrounding such deaths.

Jumping from a height is the most common form of suicide in Hong Kong, which is perhaps not surprising for a city that accommodates some of the world's tallest buildings. Of our 7 million-plus inhabitants, a daily average of three take their own lives, usually by this method.

But not everybody worries about unnatural deaths or their ghosts. Hong Kong's first website database for 'cursed' flats, hk-compass.com, is evidence of that. It has hundreds of flats and houses listed.

Loosely translated, the introduction to the website states that it has been set up because of the importance of religious/spiritual beliefs, such as fung shui, and it exists for the purposes of checking to see whether a property you are interested in buying or renting has been the site of a death, either by murder, suicide or natural causes.

Some are on sale for up to 30 per cent below market price - even taking into account the economic downturn, that's a hefty discount.

If there's one thing Hongkongers believe in more than the presence of spooks, it's the power of money. When it comes to doing a deal, the ghouls don't stand a ghost of a chance.

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