The father of a family of four who were killed and buried in a New Territories village last year was stabbed 79 times, his wife and two daughters were bound and gagged and one daughter was put in a nylon bag, a court heard yesterday.
The allegations were made on the first day of the trial of the father's cousin, Xu Shengqi, 43, who was charged with four counts of murder.
Xu, a decorator from the mainland who had been in Hong Kong on a seven-day, two-way permit at the time of the killings on July 5 last year, pleaded not guilty in the Court of First Instance to all counts. He admits killing the four, but not murdering them.
The bodies of Tam Shing-fai, 43, his wife Helen Tong Yan-yee, 34, and their two daughters, Tam Hiu-man, 10, and Tam Hiu-ying, seven, were excavated from a pit that had been covered in concrete in the courtyard of their house in Ping Che village.
Opening the prosecution's case, Peter Chapman said a postmortem examination found Tam Shing-fai was stabbed more than 60 times in the abdomen, nine times in the head and neck, three in his upper limbs and seven times in his lower limbs.
His wife and daughters were bound and gagged with various items, including tape and yellow cable, Chapman said. The younger daughter was placed in a nylon bag. Tong was found with a white vest stuffed in her mouth, and her head was wrapped in a woollen jacket, followed by a plastic bag, and bound with adhesive tape and cable.
Tong had cuts on the fingers of her right hand consistent with defence injuries, and a cut on her head that appeared to have been from a struggle.