Explainer | The ‘bizarre murder’ of a Hong Kong schoolgirl whose body was stuffed in a TV box
- In 1974, the body of 16-year-old Pin Yuk-ying was found in a box on the side of a road in Hong Kong
- Au Yeung Ping-keung was convicted and sentenced to her death, before his sentence was commuted
“Bizarre body-in-carton murder,” ran a South China Morning Post headline on December 18, 1974. “Homicide squad detectives were trying frantically last night to identify a young woman whose naked, sexually mutilated body was found stuffed inside a television set carton in Wongneichong Road, Happy Valley, yesterday morning,” reported the paper. “The bizarre murder came to light about 10am when a woman cleaner found the carton tied with string.”
“She was brutally tortured before being killed,” said a senior detective.
The deceased was identified the following day as 16-year-old schoolgirl Pin Yuk-ying, who had been reported missing on December 16. Her parents only “learned their daughter was murdered when they saw her photograph on television”, the Post reported.
A funeral for Pin was held on December 20 “and her sobbing mother hoped her daughter’s spirit would assist the police in their investigations”.
On March 29, 1975, the Post reported that Au Yeung Ping-keung, 28, had been accused of Pin’s murder. He denied the charge and was refused bail.
The trial began in October. With no direct evidence linking Au Yeung to the murder, the prosecution based its case “on the scientific examination of material collected from the scene of the crime, from the body of the girl and from Au Yeung”, contending that Pin was killed in the workshop of the ice cream company where the accused worked, according to a November 4 Post article.