From horrendous torture to brutal murders, the following horror stories are seriously scary – because they actually happened as true crime in Hong Kong. So, be warned: these mysteries are not for the faint-hearted.
You know what’s scarier than ghosts in Spook-tober? Humans. Yeah, we’re serious. Even though we’re all about good food and good vibes at Honeycombers, we must admit that Hong Kong has its fair share of ‘demons’ – those who commit heinous crimes against humanity – just like any other city in the world. And below are some of the most infamous true crime cases in the history of Hong Kong.
Wait – before we begin…
This is your warning that there will be graphic details and mentions of gore, violence, and sexual crimes. Also, we mean for this article to be informative, rather than to entertain. Please proceed with caution and with respect towards the victims and their families. Stay safe, everyone.
The most infamous true crime cases in Hong Kong
1. Braemar Hill murders (寶馬山雙屍案)
The Braemar Hill murders is one of the most notorious true crime cases that occurred during the British colonial rule of Hong Kong. On 20 April 1985, five young local gangsters killed two British teenagers, Kenneth McBride (aged 17) and Nicola Myers (aged 18) in the Tai Tam Country Park, near the Braemar Hill Mansions where McBride lived. The teenage couple were popular students at Island School and they were simply studying together for their A-Levels at the park when five members of the local triad passed by and decided to provoke them – or as one of them said, ‘to have some fun.’ Finding barely any money on the couple, the angry mobsters attacked and murdered the victims. They found McBride bound and badly beaten with over 100 bodily injuries, Myers raped, her jaw broken, and her left eyeball avulsed out of its socket.
After committing the crime, the gang left the park and destroyed some evidence. However, one of the members, Tam Sze-foon (aged 20), kept McBride’s Nike shoes and even showed them off to his friends a few weeks later. With a handsome financial reward to lure those with information, a fellow triad member eventually gave an anonymous tip to the police regarding the Nike shoes. This finally led to the arrest of the four culprits alongside Tam: Pang Shun-yee (aged 24), Chiu Wai-man (aged 25), Cheung Yau-hang (aged 17), and Won Sam-lung (aged 16). As of now, Pang and Chiu are still serving life sentences; Tam died of cancer in prison; and authorities released the two younger criminals in the mid-2000s.
2. The Tuen Mun Rapist (屯門色魔)
Between April 1992 and August 1993, fear ransacked the Tuen Mun neighbourhood, due to a series of rapes, robberies, and murders in the area. The perpetrator was Lam Kwok-wai (born 1971), also known as the Tuen Mun Rapist, who was 21 years old when he committed his first crime. On 24 April 1992, Lam stalked a 19-year-old girl back to her apartment building before sexually assaulting her in the stairwell and robbing her. He repeated his crimes in a similar fashion, totalling up to 13 victims, including three whom he killed.
On 5 August 1993, Lam raped his (final) victim and forced her to give him her phone number. The next day, he called the girl and asked her out on a date to the movies. Fortunately, as the victim had already reported the incident to the police, authorities were able to trap Lam and arrest him on the spot. In the end, authorities convicted the serial killer and rapist of three counts of murder, eight counts of rape, and seven counts of robbery. He was sentenced to life in prison.
3. The Milkshake Murderer (奶昔殺夫案)
While the Milkshake Murderer is not as popular among the locals compared to the other criminals on the list, this case caused an uproar in the expat community in Hong Kong when it occurred in 2003. It continues to gain infamy with the ongoing appeal. The disreputable murderer was American expatriate Nancy Kissel (born 1964), who bludgeoned her husband, Robert Kissel, to death after incapacitating him with a strawberry milkshake laced with sedatives. Even though Nancy pleaded not guilty to murder, claiming that she killed Robert in self-defense, it’s believed that Robert knew about her infidelity and the couple was on the verge of divorce. The authorities found Robert’s body wrapped in a rug inside the family’s apartment just four days after he’d gone missing.
Although the case seems relatively straightforward with direct evidence pointing to Nancy being the offender, this true crime story has garnered so much attention partly because locals enjoyed getting a glimpse of the world of the rich and privileged in Hong Kong. Also, some expat families could see the startling parallels between themselves and the Kissels. Robert was an accomplished investment banker and his wife was a tai tai leading the perfect life; and yet the couple suffered from a rocky marriage behind closed doors. This whole incident reminded people of American soap operas – but one that’s gone horribly wrong.
4. The Hello Kitty murder (Hello Kitty 藏屍案)
We’re not gonna lie – reading up on the research about the Hello Kitty murder wasn’t particularly pleasant, even for mystery fanatics like us. Why? Because it’s probably the most graphic and brutal true crime on this list. You’ve been warned!
When the murder occurred in 1999, the nightclub hostess, Fan Man-yee, was 23-year-old. Perpetrators abducted and imprisoned her in an apartment in Tsim Sha Tsui. Three men tortured the woman to death over the course of one month by constant beating, burning, raping, and even making her consume excrement. After Fan died as a result of her injuries, the perpetrators decapitated and dismembered her. The captors cooked her remains in a pot, then placed her skull inside of a Hello Kitty mermaid doll and discarded the rest of her body. In May 1999, the girlfriend of one of the perpetrators led the police to the scene, finally uncovering the heinous crime. The trio – Chan Man-lok, Leung Shing-cho, and Leung Wai-lun – were all convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to life in prison. However, Leung successfully appealed to the court, thereby reducing his jail time. He was released in April 2014.
5. The Jars Murderer (雨夜屠夫)
We gave you some MTR urban legends; now prepare yourself for this taxi horror story, which took place between February and July 1982. Also known as The Rainy Night Butcher, Lam Kor-wan (born 1955) was a taxi driver who picked up female passengers and attacked them on rainy evenings. He would strangle his victims to death with an electrical wire before taking their bodies back home. As an avid photographer, Lam liked to take pictures and videos of himself dismembering his victims; he even filmed himself performing necrophilia with his fourth (and final) victim. Lam also claimed that he consumed part of the intestines of the third victim. Afterwards, the man would hoard their sexual organs in Tupperware, dispose of the rest of the remains, and develop his photographs.
When Lam tried to develop photographs of his dismembered victims at a Kodak shop, the manager suspected foul play and tipped off the police. And so, the demon was finally arrested on 17 August 1982 when he returned to pick up his photos. In the end, Lam was found guilty of four counts of murder and sentenced to death by hanging. His sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment without parole.
If you’re curious about other true crime stories in Hong Kong, the Catching Worms podcast is worth a listen. As of October 2021, this new local English podcast has covered the Braemar Hill murders and The Jars Murderer.
6. The Yoga Ball Murders
Khaw Kim Sun was an associate professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), wholived with his wife and four children in Sai Kung. In 2014, Khaw faked a research proposal to obtain a cylinder of carbon monoxide. In the following year, he filled two yoga balls with carbon monoxide to take home. When questioned, he explained that he planned to kill mice in his house.
The next day, Khaw’s wife was about to drive the two youngest kids to school as usual. When Khaw realised his second oldest child, Lily, was off from school that day, he insisted she stayed home to study, even asking his wife to make sure she doesn’t leave. This would become one of Khaw’s most incriminating actions, as it showed that he’d planned to kill his wife and their two youngest children with carbon monoxide but, for whatever reason, wanted to spare Lily. Unfortunately, Lily accompanied her mother on the afternoon school run.
A jogger found the two unconscious in the car. Ambulances arrived and pronounced them dead due to carbon monoxide poisoning. Khaw was sentenced to life imprisonment after trial and is now serving time in prison. In 2023, Khaw submitted an appeal, but his request was (thankfully) denied. To this day, nobody is exactly sure why Khaw decided to commit such a heinous crime against his own family, but this case was the classic scenario of “it’s always the husband”.
7. The Microwave Murders (大角咀肢解父母案)
On 7 March 2013, Henry Chau Hoi-leung and his older brother filed for their parents’ disappearance after they’d been missing for five days. The brothers also approached Apple Daily and created a Facebook page titled “My Missing Dad and Mum” in hopes of getting news about their parents. Another five days later, the police invited younger brother Henry Chau for an interview, as he confessed to murdering his parents in a Whatsapp group chat with his friends. The next day, authorities arrested Chau and his friend, Angus Tse Chun-kei, for murdering and dismembering Chau’s parents.
Chau and Tse invited Chau’s parents into Tse’s flat in Tai Kok Tsui. Then, Tse slashed Chau’s mother’s throat while Chau stabbed his father on the back of the neck. Tse dealt with the bodies while Chau left the flat. When he returned four days later, Tse had already dismembered, salted, microwaved, and refrigerated the body parts. Police also discovered the heads of the victims stored in two refrigerators during a search.
Apparently, all this was spurred on by Chau’s hatred of his parents, whom he blamed for his unsuccessful life. While the court thought Tse played a larger role in the murders, they decided otherwise when an IQ test ruled Tse as prone to manipulation by scoring much lower than Chau. The authorities sentenced Chau to life and Tse to one year in prison for preventing the lawful burial of bodies. However, they released Tse immediately in 2015, as he already served for two years during trial.
8. Six States Installation of Minister Murder (六國大封相兇殺案)
Despite occurring in the 1950s, the Six States Installation of Minister Murder remains one of the worst true crimes in Hong Kong. Chinese immigrant, Chu Shing-choi, fled to Hong Kong to stay with his brother in 1949. Since his brother was working in the US, Chu stayed at his sublet apartment with other tenants. This included his nephew, sister-in-law, her sister’s family of five, her brother’s family of two, a maid, a widow, and a young woman named Wong Yee-man. After gambling away his fortune, Chu would borrow money from his sister-in-law. Because of this, the women in the flat belittled and berated Chu. Chu eventually planned to move out with Wong, whom he was in a relationship with.
When he returned to collect his belongings on 5 November 1951, Chu got into an argument and, agitated, cut his sister-in-law in the head and on the arms with a butcher’s knife. Chu also killed her three-year-old daughter and her sister-in-law while injuring the maid. After that, Chu doused the apartment in petrol and started a fire before fleeing the scene. He ran into her sister-in-law’s sister’s son and threw him out from the 4th floor apartment, injuring the boy.
Three days later, Chu turned himself in. Apparently, he’d planned to burn down the apartment when he returned on 5 November and commit suicide by jumping out of the window, but the gathering crowd on the street stopped him. The authorities tried Chu, found him guilty, and sentenced him to death. They hanged him on 23 May 1952.
[This article was originally published in October 2021 and updated in 2024 by Celia Lee.]
