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 among glitzy skyscrapers in opposition to 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 commonly 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 concentrating on younger girls and nearly all perpetrated by males.
There’s the so-called “Howdy 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 Howdy Kitty plush doll.
There have been the 4 girls, the youngest solely 17 years outdated, killed by a taxi driver who saved their dismembered physique components in jars earlier than his arrest in 1982.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 rest room.
And in 2013, Glory Chau and Moon Siu have been murdered and dismembered by their 28-year-old son, a criminal offense described by the choose 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 fee 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 massive curiosity in these last few 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 residing in one of many world’s most densely populated cities.
Roderic Broadhurst, an emeritus professor of criminology at Australian Nationwide College beforehand primarily based 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 protected, and that these numbers are comparatively low. Certainly, Hong Kong’s fame for security meant the few instances that did happen left a stronger “imprint” on the town, Broadhurst mentioned.
However each additionally advised the ugly nature of those previous instances – specifically, the dismembering of limbs – mirror the realities of life in Hong Kong.
Merely put, it’s a lot more durable to cover a physique within the tightly packed metropolis, house to tiny flats and a number of the world’s most densely populated neighborhoods.
Somebody making an attempt to eliminate a physique in rural areas of Australia, Canada or the US has “an excellent probability of getting away with it,” due to the ample house and open terrain, Beh mentioned.
Not so in Hong Kong.
“These are basically people who find themselves making an attempt to get away with a criminal offense, however failing to take action,” mentioned Beh.
A killer in Hong Kong extra seemingly than not will reside inside just some ft of dozens of people that might spot them making an attempt to eliminate a corpse – prompting some to interrupt victims into smaller components for disposal.
“Most individuals reside 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 mentioned. “You’re by no means actually alone; your neighbors are above you, under you, subsequent to you. Something out of the bizarre 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 certain 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 homeowners of a restaurant, and – because the city legend (and the film it impressed) goes – supposedly served them up in buns.
However the clarification is much extra mundane usually, Beh mentioned.
In Hong Kong’s subtropical, humid local weather, “the scent of the physique in a short time captures consideration,” he mentioned – therefore why some murderers may try and take away the scent by cooking dismembered components.
As for why these killers didn’t use strategies generally seen in different nations – retaining the physique within the freezer, dumping them within the water late at night time – Hong Kong’s density poses yet one more issue.
In its notoriously costly housing market, flats are normally too small and cramped for big furnishings or kitchen home equipment.
“Only a few people have giant fridges at house,” Beh mentioned. “Even fewer have freezers. You’ll be able to’t even preserve the physique for those who wished to.”
He added that the identical shortage applies to vehicles – and thus the identical issue in discreetly transporting a physique.
Few residents personal autos since buildings with locations to park are at a premium – in 2019, a parking house offered for practically $1 million {dollars}, a file – and the town has an intensive, environment friendly public transit system anyway.
These mixed elements might clarify varied instances over time the place killers used weird, grotesque strategies to take care of their victims’ our bodies – akin to the lady 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 reside 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 mentioned.
“There are only a few choices.”