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SCMP Reporter

Air-conditioning workman So Kam-tong murdered a Thai tourist in Revenue Tower five years ago, evaded police and killed a second woman in 2008, a court heard yesterday.
So - jailed for life in March last year for the second killing - was finally punished for his first crime and handed a second term of life imprisonment.
The 27-year-old was found guilty by a Court of First Instance jury of killing Charitar Kamolnoranath, 40, in a robbery in October 2005. He had hidden her body in an air duct.
Passing the automatic life sentence after the seven-person jury returned a unanimous guilty verdict, Madam Justice Clare-Marie Beeson said So had developed a pattern after killing for the first time.
'Clearly, you developed your scheme after you committed [the first murder],' she said. 
'The deceased in the present case was purely a random victim.'
The court heard that So rode the lift in Revenue Tower looking for a target - when he spotted Charitar, who was in Hong Kong for a holiday.
He stabbed and suffocated Charitar, the daughter of a well-known Thai gemstone dealer, Santi Jiangphanitsakon.
After killing his second victim, Yau Hiu-yin, 21, on May 15, 2008, So demanded a HK$100,000 ransom from her family for her safe return, knowing that she was already dead. Police arrested him a week later for killing Yau, an airline worker. Officers had followed So and then broke into his family's home. They found the ransom money and other cash stolen from Yau's bank account. 
They arrested him again on June 6 that year for murdering Charitar.
The arrest came three years after the decomposed body of Charitar was found on a ventilator in a utility room on the 33rd floor of the Wan Chai building by an electrician on October 24, 2005. Charitar had been reported missing since October 12. 
The debt-ridden So had just HK$59 in his bank account when he was arrested.
Speaking to the South China Morning Post, officers involved in the investigation said So had persistently refused to talk to investigators about the murder of Charitar. They also told how an Octopus card record had revitalised their three-year investigation.
Their breakthrough came when one of So's best friends, Kwok Chi-fai, who testified under immunity at the trial, revealed that he had helped So to hide the body in the air duct. The investigators said  So and Kwok were among people who could have used the utility room at the time of the killing who were questioned during the initial investigation.
Police reviewed the case in 2008 after arresting So for Yau's murder and realising they had interviewed him before.  They also found that in Kwok's alibi of 2005 he said he and So had gone to the Labour Department to look for jobs between October 12 and 15. 
But among the case papers police found records of Kwok's Octopus card that showed this could not be true. He was promptly arrested and made a frank confession. 
Kwok, who shared So's gambling habit, disclosed details about helping So to move the body and told how So confided to him about the attack on Charitar, the investigators said. He also told police they had visited prostitutes after hiding the body. 
The court heard that So abducted Charitar at knifepoint inside the lift on October 12. He dragged her into the utility room, stabbed her and suffocated her with a red plastic bag knotted under the chin. 
A postmortem examination revealed multiple bruises on her decomposed body, and a stab wound on her right chest near her armpit. Both hands had been tied behind her back with plastic strips.
No witness could be found to the attack, which did not appear on records from security cameras. 
The management office at Revenue Tower said not all lifts had security cameras in October 2005 but 31 cameras had since been installed and every lift now had one.
A spokeswoman for the government property agency  confirmed security had been stepped up with more cameras in the building, but she refused to disclose other details. 
Meanwhile, the younger sister of Charitar told how the reality of her death struck home when the weapon So used in the attack, a kitchen knife, was presented in court. 'I imagined how she was stabbed,' said Pat Custer, who had sat quietly in the public gallery with her husband Charles during the week-long trial.
'If I had a chance to talk to the accused, I would ask him: why did you kill her? Why didn't you just let her go? You could have robbed her and then let her go.'
The pair, who had been warned not to show any emotion for fear of influencing the jury, said they had heard the evidence surrounding the case for the first time since Charitar disappeared.
Police had been keeping the information secret, even from the family.
Charles Custer said: 'We appreciated we had to be patient because any leak may have jeopardised the case. It was hard but we really wanted justice and it overrides curiosity. It's the best way we could get justice.'
Back in 2005, Charitar flew to Hong Kong from Bangkok with her Australian boyfriend, Wade Muller. Before her body was found, Muller and her ex-husband teamed up to try to look for her by sticking posters around the busy district. 
A police reward of HK$700,000 had been put up with contributions from Muller and Pat Custer.



Murderer struck again after evading police