Police turn to rapist for help in murder hunt

DETECTIVES hunting the brutal sex killers of 14-year-old Ho Wing-sze have sought help from the jailed Tuen Mun rapist, say police.

Lam Kwok-wai is serving 11 life sentences for killing three women and raping eight. But officers, desperate for leads in the new murder inquiry, have adopted an approach like the one in the hit film, The Silence Of The Lambs, in which the FBI uses a convicted serial killer to track down another murderer.

'They spoke to Lam hoping that he might be able to shed some light on the case,' said a source. 'They want to know if he can come up with any names of possible suspects. With an investigation like this you need to get into the minds of criminals.' Lam took less than three seconds to strangle his victims in a killing spree lasting from April 1992 to August 1993.

Wing-sze was abducted only metres from her home on November 13, driven to a remote spot, then beaten, sexually assaulted, dragged behind a car and run over. Her horribly battered body was found at a nearby car park at the Hong Kong United Dockyard west of Tsing Yi.

Wing-sze, said to be a timid, well-behaved girl, lived with her mother in the Riviera Garden housing complex in Tsuen Wan, a stone's throw from the Tsuen Tsing Bridge. She was last seen within yards of her front door at 9.45 pm. A post-mortem examination revealed she died 15 minutes later. Police held a reconstruction of the crime last Sunday to jog people's memories.