A man who strangled an airline ground crew worker last year and then persuaded her family to pay a ransom for her safe return was found guilty of murder yesterday.
In a unanimous verdict, jurors in the Court of First Instance convicted So Kam-tong, 25, of killing Yau Hiu-yin, 21. Mrs Justice Judianna Barnes Wai-ling gave So an automatic life sentence for the murder conviction.
So received a sentence of five years and four months for blackmailing Yau's family, to which he had pleaded guilty. The judge described the blackmail as cruel since So knew the woman was dead.
Yau's high-profile disappearance on May 15 last year was 'particularly horrible' because So had promised the woman that he only wanted her ATM card number, Mrs Justice Barnes said.
Yau was strangled shortly after she had revealed the number. Her badly decomposed body was found in a culvert near a Tai Po housing estate about one week later.
'Words fail to describe the crime you committed,' Mrs Justice Barnes said. 'By telling her she could not go home if she did not reveal [the PIN] to you, you gave her a false hope that she would be all right.'
