Hong Kong horror stories: 5 true grisly crimes and tragic deaths that haunt the city’s luxury apartments – and kill the sale price
While Hong Kong is one of the safest places in the world, the gruesome crimes of Rurik Jutting and Nancy Kissel shook the city to its core, but would you live in a house or flat where a horrible murder or suicide had taken place? What if that made it cheaper?
Hong Kong is full of “haunted” properties. While some real estate companies will not even give a valuation or take on these listings, one property website has a special category for buildings where a murder, suicide or other untimely death has occurred. Given Hong Kong’s crowded living conditions, you do not have to go far to see a building with a dark history.
It might be unfair to call them “haunted” as the word 凶 in Cantonese more commonly means death by unnatural causes more than actual supernatural activity, but the word is often used in the ghostly sense, too.
The bad juju of an unnatural death permeates so much into the public consciousness that these properties often sell or rent for 20 to 30 per cent below market price, and if it’s an apartment building unit on the same floor, directly above and below, prices are often affected too.
Read on to find out if there are “haunted” apartments near where you live.
J Residence
In the early hours of November 1, 2014, Hong Kong police received three phone calls from a disoriented man, who kept saying “something happened” in his flat. Nothing could have prepared the officers for the carnage they would encounter within the one bedroom flat in Wan Chai.
Jesse Lorena Ruri was found naked on the floor, near death with lacerations to her neck, throat and body. The flat was littered with sex toys, cocaine and a 12-inch knife. A female corpse was discovered in a large black suitcase on the balcony of the flat later, identified to be Sumarti Ningsih. Lorena was pronounced dead soon after the discovery.
British banker Rurik Jutting was convicted of the vicious murders in 2016. It was reported that his murder spree was triggered by the break up with his fiancée. He quit his job at Bank of America Merrill Lynch the Monday before the killings began and his spine-chilling out of office message read: “For escalation please contact God, though suspect the devil will have custody [Last line only really worked if I had followed through].”
3 Repulse Bay
In April 2015, a 15-year-old girl plunged to her death in the affluent area of Repulse Bay. While a teenage suicide is tragic in its own right, the family secret suspected as the motive behind the teen’s death was what made headlines.