Content warning: This story incorporates descriptions of violence that readers might discover disturbing.
Hong Kong
Mahaz News
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The postcard picture of Hong Kong is one among glitzy skyscrapers towards lush mountains, dim sum eating places and funding bankers in fits.
But in current weeks, the worldwide monetary hub has once more been within the headlines for one thing darker: the loss of life of mannequin and influencer Abby Choi, whose dismembered physique elements had been discovered together with a meat slicer and electrical noticed in a rental unit final month.
The loss of life of the 28-year-old mom has not solely horrified a metropolis repeatedly 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 circumstances of dismemberment within the metropolis – many concentrating on younger girls and virtually all perpetrated by males.
There’s the so-called “Hello 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 loss of life and dismemberment. Her cranium was ultimately discovered sewn inside a Hello Kitty plush doll.
There had been the 4 girls, the youngest solely 17 years outdated, killed by a taxi driver who saved their dismembered physique elements in jars earlier than his arrest in 1982.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 had been murdered and dismembered by their 28-year-old son, a criminal offense described by the decide as “evil” and “absolutely hideous.”
Reams of headlines adopted every homicide. But for all of the media consideration, consultants level out such circumstances 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 every year, in comparison with a number of hundred in New York. And it recorded solely 77 robberies final 12 months – in comparison with greater than 17,000 in New York and 24,000 in London.
So why the massive curiosity in these last few circumstances? Their rarity, mixed with their brutality, is one issue, consultants say.
But there could also be one other at play: That buried beneath all of the grim particulars of loss of life 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 National University 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 circumstances 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 circumstances in his 40-year profession.
Both consultants emphasised that Hong Kong continues to be very protected, and that these numbers are comparatively low. Indeed, Hong Kong’s repute for security meant the few circumstances that did happen left a stronger “imprint” on town, Broadhurst stated.
But each additionally advised the grotesque nature of those previous circumstances – particularly, the dismembering of limbs – replicate the realities of life in Hong Kong.
Simply put, it’s a lot more durable to cover a physique within the tightly packed metropolis, house to tiny residences and among the world’s most densely populated neighborhoods.
Someone making an attempt to get rid of a physique in rural areas of Australia, Canada or the United States has “a very good chance of getting away with it,” due to the ample area and open terrain, Beh stated.
Not so in Hong Kong.
“These are essentially people who are trying to get away with a crime, but failing to do so,” stated 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 get rid of a corpse – prompting some to interrupt victims into smaller elements for disposal.
“Most people live in apartment blocks on top of each other. We don’t have individuals with houses and gardens where you can go out and dig a hole and try to bury a body,” Beh stated. “You’re never really alone; your neighbors are above you, below you, next to you. Anything out of the ordinary will catch someone’s attention.”
Broadhurst agreed, stating that in residence buildings, a assassin may need to get into an elevator shared by greater than 100 households simply to go exterior.
Several earlier circumstances have concerned killers who cooked or boiled physique elements – particulars which have horrified the general public, and certain fueled by unsubstantiated rumors surrounding circumstances 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.
But the reason is much extra mundane most often, Beh stated.
In Hong Kong’s subtropical, humid local weather, “the smell of the body very quickly captures attention,” he stated – therefore why some murderers would possibly try and take away the odor by cooking dismembered elements.
As for why these killers didn’t use strategies generally seen in different nations – preserving the physique within the freezer, dumping them within the water late at night time – Hong Kong’s density poses one more problem.
In its notoriously costly housing market, residences are often too small and cramped for giant furnishings or kitchen home equipment.
“Very few individuals have large refrigerators at home,” Beh stated. “Even fewer have freezers. You can’t even keep the body if you wanted to.”
He added that the identical shortage applies to vehicles – and thus the identical problem in discreetly transporting a physique.
Few residents personal automobiles since buildings with locations to park are at a premium – in 2019, a parking area offered for almost $1 million {dollars}, a file – and town has an intensive, environment friendly public transit system anyway.
These mixed components might clarify varied circumstances through the years the place killers used weird, grotesque strategies to take care of their victims’ our bodies – resembling 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 live in a place where essentially, if you have killed someone, your next very pressing question is: What do you do with the body?” Beh stated.
“There are very few options.”
Source web site: www.cnn.com
