Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime an d can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
In may 1999 14 year old lau ming-fong alias ah fong.
walked into a police station in the Tsim Sha Tsui area of hongkong and told confused detectives
that she was being haunted by a ghost.
instead of being laughed out of the station , detectives let fong continue to ralk. fong told officers that she was being followed by the ghost of a women she had helped to murder.
the woman played fong’s mightmares was in thecorner of every dark room she entered and she even heard the women screams ringing in her ears.
the only solution, confessed to the crime.
police were skeptical until the young girl led them a third floor apartment
in hongkong’s shoppers paradise . on Grandville Road.
once inside they dicovered a large stuffed version of the fictional white cat. hello kitty popularized in japan and then worldwide.
but this version of the toy contained more than just stuffing.
the stuffed kitty had been crudely sewn shut
and and once they opened it they discovered the skull of 23 year old Fan Man-yee.
today we’ll be talking about one of hongkong’s most gruesome killings commonly referred to as Hello kitty murder.
be sure to stick around till the end to hear how prison life differs form most cases we’re used to hearing about…….
Growing up in hongkong fanman yee hadn’t had a easy childhood. at a young age her parents abandoned her.
so she was raised in Ma Tau Wai an all -girls orphanage.
betwwen the unforgiving punishments
the unhygienic living quarters and the limited education fan eas left in in dire straits by the time she was evicted when she turned 16.
left on the street to fend gor gerself fan develoded a drug addiction and became a sex worker with no home ,job or qualifications.
she walked the thin grayline of the law regularly coming into contact with rgw polixw doe string of petty crimes commited in order to survive.
by 1997 fan now 21 years old found workd at a brothel. due to the loopholes in hongkon’s prostitution laws sellng sex was legal
but pimping or acting as an agent for prostitutes and keeping part of there earnings was not.
to get around this ,the pimps would by multiple apartments within a complex and rent out cheap rooms to prostitutes only calling themselves landlords instead of pimps.
this is where fan was working believing it to be safer in one of these apartment turned brothels than living on the street.
despite feeling safer in an appartment fans clientele ranged from members of chinas mafia to outright criminals.
by 1996 fan got a job at the empress karaokee night nightclub where she met Ng Chi-yuen
by 1997 the pair were married and had a child together and fan was fnally living a ife free from the streets. unfortunately the marriage was not happy one.
the wot were both heavy drug users and neighbors would hear them argueing late into the night. Ng Chi-yuen abusin fan.wanting to provide a better life for her son fan decided to leave Ng Chi-yuen and she stopped taking drugs.
she was also got a job as a nightclub hostess where she would earn more money to be able to provide for herself and her son.
while some reports suggest that at this time fan was only working as a hostess earlier reoprts and witness statements claimed that fan was still working as a prostitute at the nightclub.
after two years working at the nightclub fan caught the attention of 34 Chan Man-lok.a rutless pimp loan chark ,drug dealer.
and a member of the triads an organized crime syndicate in hongkong.
Chan Man-lok often requested the services of fan and would brag to her about the
extensive wealth as illegal professions provided him
it’s not known why chan man- lok prefered fan but for weeks she entertained him and he was eager ,that is until everything went terribly wrong
March 1999.
Fan hit an an all -time low.she couldn’ afford to feed herself or her son
desperate for cash fan went back to the work that she knew paid well where she once again encountered chan man- lok.
as she undressed she caught a glimpse of his wallet sticking out of his pants.this was her chance once they were finished and chan man lok got up to get dressed and leave fan pocketed the wallet and waited for chan man- lok to realize it had gone .
when he didn’t , she’d breathed a sight of relief and hoped that chan man-lok would think he’d lefthis wallet at home or it had been stolen before or after his visit with her.
she reassured hereslf that this client had taken a liking to her and wouldn’t think she could have done such a thing.
as chan man-lok left the nightlub he headed to the nearest 7-eleven to get a drink before continuing with his night. as he went to pay he realized his wallet was missing. worried telling himself hed had left it at his apartment.
chan man-lok began ealking home before suddenly stopping in his tracks.he distinctly remembered payingfan with that wallet.
he stormed back into the nightcub shouting profanities relating to fan stealing his money. his started screaming at fans locked door , threatening to pull itoff of its hinges.
finaly fan opened the door and admitted she hadstolen 4 oo0 jhongkong dollars.which roughly equated to around 500 US dollars. fan gave chan man-lok’s his wallet back.but that wasn’t enough.
instead hedeamnded she paid interest on what she stole to the sum of 10 .000 hongkong dollars or lose her life.
fan promixed to pay but instead fled the brothel and began living on the street again ,fearful that chan man-lok would come after her.
when chan man-lok dicovered she had disappeared he enlisted triad members 27 ,year old leung shin-cho and 21 year old leung wai-lun .to track fan down and bring her to him .
after days of searching. te two men found fan and obducted her taking her to a third floor apartment in shoppers paradise on Granville Road.
once she was returned to chan man -lok he devised a plan for her to pay him back the dept she own along side itsever increasing interest.
chan man-lok decided to poen a brothel with fan as the only prostitute and for punishment for running off. fan spent her first night in the apartment being brutally beaten and repeatedly raped by chan man-lok and his two acquaintance, high on methamphetamines.
unfortunately the horrifying torture was not limited to a single night of drug fuel barbarism. fan was subjected to indescribable torment on a regular basis by the group while still servicing the customers who came to this one person brothel.
her treatment got worse over time as word got out that there was a prostitute who could be roughed up without her pimp objecting.
as she became more and more beaten ,brusied and unable to think straight , due to the pain she was in the more conventional clients who just wanted sex stopped coming by and were replaced by sadistic clients who got off on the sexual abuse they viciously inflicted on fan.
watchin all of this abuse unfold was 13 year old lau ming -fong alias ah fong
ah fong had been raised in the slums of hongkong.with parents who ostracized her and having had brothers who hated her ,
fong ran awy from home .just berfore the Lunar new year in 1998. with no plan and no money.
fong found herself sitting in a cheap resturant praying for help.
while leung wai-lun chan man-lok’s triad mameber was sitting at the table across her from her and came over and introduce himself.
he was wearing a fake armani suit ,gold chain and bracelet.
he introduced himself to fong by his nickname of gangster and the pair quickly began a relationship
fong stopped going to school and instead. turned her admiration toward her new boyfriend and the triad he was involved in
one night while out at a karaoke bar .
leung wai-lun introduced fong to histriad big brother chan man-lok who told her
“you must come and stay at my place”
from then on fong went with the three men pretty much everywhere .
and when they later brought fan back to torture her. fong was a willing participant.
fong would burn and beat fan jeering as the young women screamed out in pain. but what fong did was tame.
compare about the men put her through.drinking straw wer set on fire and fan was held down while burnt plastic was dripped onto the soles of her feet leaving her unable to walk.
when that got boring they just set fire to her feet directly instead. and beat her until she was blue
with anything they could use in the apartment from wather pipes to kitchen utensils.
chili oil was smothered into her wounds making fans feel like she was burning from the inside out.
hot oyster sauce was thrown over her face.
fan was forced to smile and laugh throughout the torture. with fong later recounting
” they told herto smile while they burnt her.it was a fun atmosphere”
the men would urinate over her face and into her cuts.
and on one occasion fong defecated into a shoebox and then watch as fan was forced to eat it in its entirety.
if there was nothing good to watch on TV, they would use fan as entertainment.
stringing her her up with electrical wire
and hanging her from the ceilling.
they would beat her with iron bars or pipes until they grew bored and
and simply left her hanging there over night.
within a months the torture wastoo much for fan ans she was on edge of death. the brutal beatings had left her bloodied and deformed
as a result no clients were willing to pay chan man-lok for services from a half dead women lying on the floor.
knowing fan was dying , none of the four perpetrators in the apartment did anything to attempt to save her life.
instead ,they hung out together in other rooms playing video games, watching films and binging on ice a popular methamphetamine.
April 15th.1999.
chan man-lok his two cronies and ah fong decided to head out for the day.with fan barely alive they locked her ina bathroom just in caswe she made an attempt to escape.
when the four got back to the apartment hours later fong discovered fan dead in the bathtub.
a foul stench in blood were already emanating from fan before she died and was even worse now.
the groupe acted fast to try and dispose of the body chan man-lok’s two cronies were tasked with dismembering her body in the bathtub.
slicing her flesh off and boiling her body parts along side their dinner until only the bones were left.
at one point during the dismemberment shing- cho chouted for fong to come over telling her:
” come here, take a look . fong replied ” no, i´m scared.”
and ching-cho simply told her ” just pretend you’re watching television.
they threw the bones in the trash
but saved a few internal organs and a single tooth.
fan’s scull was placed inside of a large mermaid hello kitty toy and sawn back together.
as we mentioned at the begining of this story
fong turned up at the Yau Ma Tei police station with that the police believed was a tall tale about ghosts murder and drugs from a young child .
fong explained to the officers that the ghost of fan was haunting her amd the pmöy way she knew to get rid of ghost of the women she watched dies was to confess to her part in the crime and ensure fan received justice
police organized a manhunt to find the three men fong implicated.
after going to the shoppers paradise apartment
and finding the partial remains of fan
police immediatelly got to work to track down man-lok, ching.-cho and wi–lun.
chan man-lok was picked up a few streets away from his apartment while enjoing dim sum at a local eatery. as he turned to leave an armored vehicle came to a screetching halt infrotn of him
as dozens of armed police burst out grabbing chan man-lok
and securing him in the back of the vehicle
chin cho and wai lun was arrested later that day
and thre men were brought to yau ma tei police station for questioning where fong was being held.
the trhee men told police a similar story.that the only crime that they had committed
was operating an illegal brothel out of the apartment.
they told detectives that fan was a willing participant and cited her previous years as a sex worker as proof of this.
the man told police that fan had died as a result of an accidental overdose and they concealed her death to avoid trouble with police.but the police weren’t bying it.
the boild bones and the organs in the freezer were indicators
that these men had committed acts of unspeakable evil against the 23 year old
and they had fong’s testimony.to prove it.in pre-trial proceedings all thre men was
interviewed by several psychiatrists in case they tried to plead insanity as the reason behind their crime.
each man was deemed fit to stand trial.before the trial began
before the trials befan ah-fong was offered a full immunity by the courts in exanchange for her terstimony. she accepted and proceeded to testify against the the three defendants detailing each and every heinous act that was committed in the month -long torture of fan.
the trials of chan man -lok leung chin cho and leung wai-lun lasted six weeks. during the proceedings each of the men tried to pin the blame on one another . none of them accepting guilt for their role in fans death.
their defense team worked overtime and almost convinced the jury that fan died of a drug overdose rather then torture.bringing up her past history to defame her.
fan’s ex-husband took the stand and told thecourt she had come off drugs since having their son and was working to improve her life.
medical evidence was presented during the trial .but since fan had been dismembered and boild they couldn’t determine her exact cause of death.
as ta result the jury was unable to say without a dout that these men had killed fan. the jury decided that regardless of how she died or who had the biggest role to play all of them would take accountability for he dead.finding each of them guilty of manslaughter and unlawful imprisonment.
each of the three men recievie life sentences with the possibility of parole after 2o years. which would be in the year 2020.
after the trial was over the apartment where fan had been killed was put up for sale. for years it stood empty with nobody or rent the property.
, when tenants in other apartments int the same building moved away no one moved in to replace them
by 2012 the building was demolished by an investor
and rebuilt in 2016 as a hotel
after a successful appeal leung wai -lun’s sentence was shortened to 18 years.
Leung Shing-cho was released early at some point ,because in august of 2022. he was convicted of indecent contact with his friends daughter ,a 10 yea old. during his sentencing the magistrate stated that what he did was beyond giving the young girl a massage and hthat he took advantage of the trust of the victim
the 18 year prison sentence he served for fans murder obviously did not rehabilitate him
now 48 Leung Shing-cho was sent back to prison for one year.
Inside The Hello Kitty Murder Case’s Unimaginable Horrors:crime scene footage
the hello kitty trophy.
Fan Man-yee was abducted by three triads after stealing a wallet, then held in a flat in the crowded Tsim Sha Tsui area of Kowloon and tortured for more than a month before she died.
Unit 3B of a tenement building at 31 Granville Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, where the Hello Kitty Murder took place. The building is four floors high, with two units on each floor. The first to second floors are shops, and the third to fourth floors are residential. The unit on the right is Block A and the unit on the left is Block B. The murder occurred in the Unit B on the third floor.
Left, Chan Man-lok, and one of his henchmen, right.
A police officer carries the Hello Kitty doll, into which victim Fan Man-yee’s head was stuffed, from the High Court during the trial of her killers. Photos: SCMP Pictures
time line of the trial
On December 7, 2000, after a trial which started on October 20 the three men were convicted of manslaughter with a vote of 6:3 as the eight-man and one-woman jury ruled the remains were not sufficient to show whether Fan was murdered or died from a drug overdose.
While the jury could not rule that the men intended to kill Fan, they did determine that she had died as a result of their abuse. Lau testified at the trial in exchange for immunity.During the trial, Chan and Leung Shing-cho denied killing Fan, although they did not deny dismembering her body.
Chan’s wife Tse Pui-ling, Fan’s husband Ng Chi-yuen and Fan’s aunt also testified in court. After the guilty verdict, Leung Wai-lun’s sister reportedly experienced a mental breakdown, while Leung’s brother slammed and broke the court door, causing damage.
Justice Peter Nguyen, who sentenced the trio to life in prison with the possibility of parole, stated, “Never in Hong Kong in recent years has a court heard of such cruelty, depravity, callousness, brutality, violence, and viciousness.”Psychiatric reports of Castle Peak Hospital and Siu Lam Hospital described the three as “remorseless”.
There would be no review for parole for twenty years, i.e. until 2020.Chan Man-lok and Leung Wai-lun are currently serving their life sentences in Stanley Prison.
Former TVB reporters Carmen Luk and Mimi Yeung attended the trial, with Luk describing the court scene as “crazy and scary”.
Chan lost his appeal on 13 August 2007, by the request of the court
Aftermath
Fan’s skull was the only exhibit in the case. After the trial, it was kept by the forensic pathologist in the Kowloon Public Mortuary until the appeal process of the prisoners was completed, and her birth family was notified in March 2004 that the skull would be returned and cremated on March 26.
The apartment building in which the crime took place was demolished in September 2012 and has been rebuilt as a hotel named Soravit in 2016. Three buddha portraits were placed in the hotel as a memorial.
A necklace that belonged to Fan was handed over to Fan’s son after it was discovered in the refrigerator during the investigation. It is rumored that Fan’s son and husband now reside in Singapore.
The publicity around the case resulted in the production and release of films that told the story. Both Human Pork Chop (烹屍之喪盡天良) and There is a Secret in my Soup were released in 2001.
Leung Shing-cho, who managed to reduce his sentence from life to eighteen years on appeal in March 2004, was released in April 2014. Eight years later, Leung was arrested and sentenced to jail once again for twelve months in August 2022 for sexually assaulting a ten-year-old gir