Sunny Ang

For decades since its occurrence, Ang's case remained as a landmark in both Singapore and Malaysia as he was the first murderer to be convicted and sentenced to death solely based on circumstantial evidence and the first to be convicted of murder without a body. Due to its significance, Ang's case was recalled 54 years later when another murderer named Leslie Khoo Kwee Hock was convicted of his lover Cui Yajie's murder without her body on 12 July 2019, making it the second case of a murder conviction without a body after Ang. Khoo was said to have started the affair with Cui in 2015 despite having a wife and son, and he also lied to Cui that he was divorced. It was due to Cui having argued with Khoo over personal issues before Khoo strangled her in the heat of the moment. The only difference was, while Ang was executed in 1967 for Cheok's murder, Khoo was sentenced to life imprisonment by the High Court on 19 August 2019, as he was found to have no intention to cause her death and did not display viciousness or a blatant disregard for human life, and having burnt her body into ashes after killing her during an argument near Gardens by the Bay, the fatal injuries sustained by the victim and their nature could not be ascertained to enable the court to determine if the death penalty was more appropriate in Khoo's case. Currently, Khoo is incarcerated at Changi Prison, where he is serving his life sentence since 2016.

In Malaysia, lawyer N. Pathmanabhan and his two farm hands – T. Thilaiyalagan and R. Kathavarayan – were accused of murdering a millionaire Datuk Sosilawati Lawiya and her three companions - bank officer Noohisham Mohamed, lawyer Ahmad Kamil Abdul Karim, and her driver Kamaruddin Shamsuddin – in 2010, purely based on circumstantial evidence and without the bodies of the victims. All three accused, who burnt the bodies before their arrests, were found guilty of murder and sentenced to death, and their death sentences were finalized and upheld by the Federal Court of Malaysia in March 2017. Ang's case was recalled in news reports covering the millionaire's murder.

Ang's case was not going to be the only murder case where a person would be convicted based on circumstantial evidence in both Singapore and Malaysia. Ang's case was recalled in another alleged murder case from Singapore in 1989. In this case, a school bus driver named Oh Laye Koh was charged with the murder of Liang Shan Shan, a 17-year-old student from Mayflower Secondary School. Liang, a Malaysian from Sabah, was said to be missing since 2 October 1989, and her highly decomposed body was found around two weeks later in Yishun Industrial Park by National Servicemen who were training nearby that area. Forensic pathologist Chao Tzee Cheng could not ascertain the cause of death; he could not tell whether it was a suicide, murder or accident due to the state of decomposition, some body parts were missing and the injuries he found on the skull and ribs were not sufficient to cause death. Later police investigations revealed that Liang was last seen boarding Oh's school bus at around 1 pm by her classmate, and Oh was later charged with murder. Oh was initially acquitted in 1992, but he was brought back to court in 1994 for a re-trial after the prosecution appealed against the acquittal. When he was told to enter his defence, Oh chose to remain silent. From his decision to remain silent and also his failure to submit additional evidence in his favour, as well as the circumstantial evidence pointing to Oh's possible guilt, the High Court made an inference that Oh had indeed killed Liang and her death was not suicidal or accidental, and thus sentenced Oh to death after finding him guilty of murder. Oh Laye Koh was executed together with two drug traffickers on 19 May 1995. Oh's lawyer Peter Fernando also stated that Oh Laye Koh did not show remorse for his actions and continued to deny his crime till the end.

Another case that recalled the trial of Ang was the alleged murder of Ayakannu Marithamuthu, which was reported as the “curry murder” case in 1987. Ayakannu was said to have gone missing since 12 December 1984, but in March 1987, following a tip-off, the police arrested at least four suspects (including the missing Ayakannu's wife), and charged them with murder. One of the suspects allegedly confessed that Ayakannu, who often got violent when drunk and abused his wife, was murdered and had his body chopped up before they were cooked in curry and rice. The suspects had allegedly packed them in plastic bags and disposed of them in the roadside dustbins all over Singapore, which made headlines in Singapore, as well as making it one of the most notorious murders without a body. However, on the first day of the trial, the prosecutors admitted that the evidence was insufficient and the judge in charge of the case released the suspects after granting them a discharge not amounting to an acquittal. The case remains unsolved.

Sunny Ang Soo Suan (Chinese: 洪书宣; pinyin: Hóng Shūxuān; c. 1939 – 6 February 1967), alias Anthony Ang, was a Singaporean racing driver and part-time law student who gained notoriety for the alleged murder of his girlfriend Jenny Cheok Cheng Kid near Sisters' Islands. Ang was charged and tried for murder in the High Court of Singapore solely based on circumstantial evidence and without a body, and his case attracted a lot of attention in Singapore given that he was the first to be tried for murder without a body in these two countries.

A few days later, on 6 February 1967, 28-year-old Sunny Ang Soo Suan was hanged at dawn. His sister, Juliet Ang, who was called to the Bar not long ago, waited outside Changi Prison to claim her brother's body, which was later buried in the Bidadari Cemetery.

On 5 October 1966, Ang's appeal to the Privy Council in London was also rejected. Ang, who was then detained on death row in Changi Prison, made one final attempt to escape the gallows by appealing to President of Singapore Yusof Ishak for clemency. Ang's 3,000 family members, friends and sympathisers also sent another clemency petition to President Yusof to plead for mercy. If successful, Ang's death sentence would be commuted to life imprisonment. However, on 31 January 1967, President Yusof refused to grant Ang clemency and rejected both his petitions. President Yusof later authorized the execution to be carried out on the Monday morning of 6 February 1967.

During his time on death row, Ang was initially remorseless over the murder of his girlfriend, and he was certain that he would not be hanged even after the High Court passed its judgement on him. It was only when he received news that the Privy Council rejected his appeal, Ang slowly began to resign to his imminent fate. He even broke down in front of his estranged father, whom he by then felt guilt for his misguided youth, during a prison visit in late 1966. Three days before his execution, Ang, who was an atheist, converted to Christianity and began to seek forgiveness from God for his crime. He also expressed his regret to his family in his will made before his hanging.

On 19 May 1965, Ang was found guilty of murder by a unanimous decision in one of Singapore's last jury trials before its abolition in January 1970. The jury recommended the mandatory death sentence, which the High Court imposed on Ang. His case became a landmark in both Singapore and Malaysia as he was the first to be found guilty of murder and undergo capital punishment solely based on circumstantial evidence and the first to be convicted and sentenced to death for murder without a body. Ang lost his appeals against the sentence and he was eventually executed on 6 February 1967. Cheok's body was never found.

On 26 April 1965, Sunny Ang stood trial for murder in the High Court before a seven-men jury and High Court judge Murray Buttrose presided over the trial. Senior Crown Counsel Francis T. Seow led the prosecution in this trial, and lawyer Punch Coomaraswamy was hired to represent Ang in the trial. Since the crime of murder was a capital offence in Singapore (inherited from the laws of British colonial rule), Ang would undergo mandatory capital punishment should the jury found him guilty, either by a majority or unanimous decision under the law of Singapore (before the country's abolition of jury trials in 1970).

Near the end of the trial on 19 May 1965, Justice Buttrose summed up the case for the jury to consider. He made out a total of 16 crucial points of circumstantial evidence that would prove Sunny Ang guilty of murder. Two hours later, the jury unanimously found Ang guilty of murder, and recommended the mandatory death sentence. Justice Buttrose excoriated Ang in court for the crime:

Three months after Ang's conviction, Singapore became independent from Malaysia on 9 August 1965. The trial of Ang was one of the last jury trials in Singapore, as the nation fully abolished the jury system in January 1970, allowing only bench trials in all criminal and civil cases.

After he was sentenced to death, Sunny Ang filed an appeal to the Federal Court of Malaysia against his sentence. In the appeal, Ang cited a miscarriage of justice in his case among the 18 grounds of appeal. These allegations were mostly directed at the trial judge Murray Buttrose, whom he alleged had prejudiced his case in a way that denied him a fair trial. However, on 19 November 1965, the Federal Court decided that the evidence, including Ang's true motive behind the murder of Jenny Cheok, was overpowering enough to prove Ang guilty and thus dismissed his appeal.

It was only on 21 December 1964 when police arrested Ang, and brought him to court to face a murder charge the next day. Ang was initially discharged (but not acquitted) of the murder charge on 29 December 1964, as the judge did not accept the prosecution's request for more time to prepare their case. However, the police re-arrested him again an hour later, and detained him for a day before charging him with murder a second time. This time, the magistrate approved some time for the prosecution to build their case given that it involved a possible, but serious offence of murder and ordered Ang to be remanded at Outram Prison (now defunct since 1973) to await trial.

In May 1963, at Odeon Bar and Restaurant at North Bridge Road, Sunny Ang, then 24, first met Jenny Cheok Cheng Kid (石清菊; shí qīngjǘ), a 22-year-old bar waitress who worked in the restaurant.

On 27 August 1963, Sunny Ang and Cheok hired a boatman, Yusuf bin Ahmad, to take them to Sisters' Islands, where they planned to go scuba diving and collect corals. Ang brought along a guide rope, three air tanks, two pairs of flippers, two knives, a small axe, aqualung equipment, and a transistor radio for this diving trip. The waters around Sisters' Islands were known to be dangerous and deep.

The police found out that in less than 24 hours after Cheok went missing, Ang had notified several insurance companies that Cheok was dead and demanded for insurance compensation. Ang even tried to look for lawyers to rush up the coroner's report about the conclusion of whether Cheok was dead or not. This aroused the suspicion of the police since it was not even concluded that the missing Cheok was dead when Ang went to demand the companies to issue the payouts, and that he, being an experienced diver, might conveniently stood to gain from the payouts of the insurance policies he may have bought for Cheok. The police then decided to re-classify Cheok's disappearance as murder (under the pretext of investigation purposes) on 6 September 1963, and started their formal investigations.

However, Ang ran afoul with the law twice during this period. He was first charged and convicted of negligent driving after he killed a pedestrian during an accident in 1961, and was issued a fine. The second time was in 1962, when Ang was arrested and sentenced to probation for attempting to commit burglary. After this second conviction, Ang decided to study law part-time and wanted to go to England to obtain a law degree, but he became bankrupt in 1962, due to his lavish spending on driving racing cars and girls.

Ang was English-educated, and he started school very young. With an IQ of 128, Ang was shown to be extremely intelligent and had always been among the top 10 in school. He also had a hobby of reading books. Ang completed his secondary school education at Victoria School in 1955, and he obtained his Senior Cambridge (today's GCE O-levels) Grade One certificate in the following year. He was trained to be a teacher in 1957, but he later gave up and underwent training as a pilot under a government scholarship. However, he was sacked as he repeatedly ignored safety regulations. Ang began his career as a one-time Grand Prix driver by participating in the 1961 Singapore Grand Prix – a tourism event at the Old Thomson Road circuit.

Jenny Cheok, birth name Cheok Cheng Kid, was born in 1941. Her father died when she was little, and her mother later married Toh Kim Seng and had another daughter, Irene Toh, in 1947; reportedly, Cheok was close to her half-sister. Cheok spoke little English as she had attended only three years of elementary school before dropping out. In 1957, Cheok married a man named Yui Chin Chuan by Chinese practices, and had a son and daughter with him. A few years later, Cheok became estranged from her husband. By the time she met Ang, Cheok was already separated from Yui, who took custody of their two children.

Sunny Ang Soo Suan was born in 1939, one of the children of a middle-class family in the British Colony of Singapore.