How a Hong Kong University researcher was murdered in 1999 in a robbery gone wrong, after being lured to holiday villa
- Connie O Tan was lured to a rented room in a villa on Cheung Chau island, where she was subdued with chloroform and robbed by three assailants
- When she recognised two of them despite being semi-conscious, they suffocated her with a pillow
In a series of articles in the South China Morning Post between late 1999 and early 2001, a murder unfolded like a soap opera, each report adding intrigue, from a killing that occurred on October 21, 1999 to discovery of the body on October 29, and the three suspects’ trial in 2001 at Hong Kong’s Court of First Instance, before Justice Verina Bokhary.
Beginning with the headline “Three quizzed over body in island burner” on October 31, 1999, the Post reported the proceedings in the case of the accused, first identified in the paper on November 6, 1999 as, “Hero Cheng Man-kit, 30, his former lover, shop assistant Leung Yee-wah, 23, and accounts clerk Yeung Ka-yee, 23”, who had allegedly “murdered Connie O Tan, a researcher […] at the University of Hong Kong”.
O, the Post reported on March 10, 2001, “knew Cheng and Yeung through a male friend she met in an internet chat room, the court was told. Prosecutor Joseph Pethes has said Cheng lured O, 35, to a rented room in a villa on Cheung Chau, where the trio subdued her with chloroform with the intention of robbing her.
“The unconscious victim was then gagged and bound. But later, in a semi- conscious state, she recognised the two of them and where she was, the court heard. Mr Pethes said the defendants then decided to kill her by suffocation. Leung and Yeung held O’s arms and legs while Cheng put a pillow over her face and sat on it until she died.
“They dumped her body in a hole 200 metres from the villa.