Content material warning: This story accommodates descriptions of violence that readers might discover disturbing.
Hong Kong
CNN
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The postcard picture of Hong Kong is one in every of glitzy skyscrapers towards lush mountains, dim sum eating places and funding bankers in fits.
However in latest weeks, the worldwide monetary hub has once more been within the headlines for one thing darker: the dying of mannequin and influencer Abby Choi, whose dismembered physique components have been discovered together with a meat slicer and electrical noticed in a rental unit final month.
The dying of the 28-year-old mom has not solely horrified a metropolis recurrently ranked as one of many world’s most secure, however gripped a lot of the world’s media with the grisly particulars of her alleged killing.
For Hong Kongers, it has additionally resurfaced painful recollections of earlier instances of dismemberment within the metropolis – many focusing on younger girls and virtually all perpetrated by males.
There’s the so-called “Whats up Kitty” homicide of 1999, when 23-year-old Fan Man-yee was kidnapped by gang members and brutally tortured for a month earlier than her dying and dismemberment. Her cranium was ultimately discovered sewn inside a Whats up Kitty plush doll.
There have been the 4 girls, the youngest solely 17 years previous, killed by a taxi driver who saved their dismembered physique components in jars earlier than his arrest in 1982. Then got here 16-year-old Wong Ka-mui, who was strangled and dismembered in 2008 and her stays flushed down a bathroom.
And in 2013, Glory Chau and Moon Siu have been murdered and dismembered by their 28-year-old son, against the law described by the decide as “evil” and “completely hideous.”
Reams of headlines adopted every homicide. However for all of the media consideration, specialists level out such instances are exceptionally uncommon in Hong Kong, a metropolis with an extremely low price of violent crime for its inhabitants of seven.4 million.
Hong Kong sees only some dozen homicides annually, in comparison with a number of hundred in New York. And it recorded solely 77 robberies final yr – in comparison with greater than 17,000 in New York and 24,000 in London.
So why the large curiosity in these previous couple of instances? Their rarity, mixed with their brutality, is one issue, specialists say.
However there could also be one other at play: That buried beneath all of the grim particulars of dying is a peculiar perception into dwelling in one of many world’s most densely populated cities.
Roderic Broadhurst, an emeritus professor of criminology at Australian Nationwide College beforehand based mostly in Hong Kong, the place he based the Hong Kong Centre for Criminology, estimated there had been a dozen or so dismemberment instances within the metropolis over the previous 50 years.
Philip Beh, a semi-retired forensic pathologist who has beforehand labored with the Hong Kong police, gave a barely decrease estimate, saying he might recall fewer than 10 such instances in his 40-year profession.
Each specialists emphasised that Hong Kong continues to be very secure, and that these numbers are comparatively low. Certainly, Hong Kong’s popularity for security meant the few instances that did happen left a stronger “imprint” on the town, Broadhurst stated.
However each additionally recommended the grotesque nature of those previous instances – particularly, the dismembering of limbs – replicate the realities of life in Hong Kong.
Merely put, it’s a lot tougher to cover a physique within the tightly packed metropolis, residence to tiny residences and a number of the world’s most densely populated neighborhoods.
Somebody attempting to eliminate a physique in rural areas of Australia, Canada or the USA has “an excellent probability of getting away with it,” because of the ample house and open terrain, Beh stated.
Not so in Hong Kong.
“These are basically people who find themselves attempting to get away with against the law, however failing to take action,” stated Beh.
A killer in Hong Kong extra probably than not will stay inside just some toes of dozens of people that might spot them attempting to eliminate a corpse – prompting some to interrupt victims into smaller components for disposal.
“Most individuals stay in house blocks on prime of one another. We don’t have people with homes and gardens the place you may exit and dig a gap and attempt to bury a physique,” Beh stated. “You’re by no means actually alone; your neighbors are above you, under you, subsequent to you. Something out of the extraordinary will catch somebody’s consideration.”
Broadhurst agreed, declaring that in house buildings, a assassin might need to get into an elevator shared by greater than 100 households simply to go exterior.
A number of earlier instances have concerned killers who cooked or boiled physique components – particulars which have horrified the general public, and sure fueled by unsubstantiated rumors surrounding instances just like the 1985 “pork bun murders” in neighboring Macao. A person killed a household of 10 together with the house owners of a restaurant, and – because the city legend (and the film it impressed) goes – supposedly served them up in buns.
However the rationalization is much extra mundane most often, Beh stated.
In Hong Kong’s subtropical, humid local weather, “the scent of the physique in a short time captures consideration,” he stated – therefore why some murderers would possibly try to take away the scent by cooking dismembered components.
As for why these killers didn’t use strategies generally seen in different international locations – retaining the physique within the freezer, dumping them within the water late at evening – Hong Kong’s density poses yet one more problem.
In its notoriously costly housing market, residences are normally too small and cramped for giant furnishings or kitchen home equipment.
“Only a few people have giant fridges at residence,” Beh stated. “Even fewer have freezers. You’ll be able to’t even maintain the physique for those who needed to.”
He added that the identical shortage applies to vehicles – and thus the identical problem in discreetly transporting a physique.
Few residents personal autos since buildings with locations to park are at a premium – in 2019, a parking house bought for practically $1 million {dollars}, a file – and the town has an intensive, environment friendly public transit system anyway.
These mixed elements might clarify numerous instances over time the place killers used weird, grotesque strategies to take care of their victims’ our bodies – similar to the girl murdered by her husband in 2018 and her physique saved in a suitcase, or the 28-year-old man whose physique was present in a block of cement in 2016.
“We stay in a spot the place basically, if in case you have killed somebody, your subsequent very urgent query is: What do you do with the physique?” Beh stated.
“There are only a few choices.”
