Justice Buttrose began his summing up on the afternoon of 17 May 1965. He dealt first with what he called the propriety and wisdom of Mr Coomaraswamy, the defence counsel, interviewing the key witness for the prosecution, the boatman, after the accused had been charged with the offence. He repeated that he accepted Mr Coomaraswamy’s explanation, in that, according to his lights at any rate, he did what he thought was proper in the interests of his client. He told the jury to dismiss the incident completely from their minds. The boatman never changed his story, nor did anyone, he said, ever ask him to do so.
Next the judge warned the jury to ignore completely any rumours they may have heard during the past 21 months that Jenny was still alive. He reminded them that they were concerned only with the evidence. They must be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that Jenny was dead. What the prosecution had to do was to prove that she was dead. It was not necessary to produce a body. “The absence of a dead body makes the proof of death, of course, more difficult and the onus on the prosecution of proving it heavier. But that is all.” The two questions they must ask themselves were: were they satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that Jenny was dead? Were they satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that she was murdered by the prisoner? There was no actual eye-witness as to how she died. “There is no one who can tell you what happened down on the sea-bed some 30–40 feet below the surface, to this young girl of 22 years of age on this fateful afternoon of 27 August 1963. Only Jenny herself could have told us, but, according to the prosecution, her lips have been sealed for ever.” The judge explained the importance of circumstantial evidence. “The fact of death may be proved, and proved quite adequately, by circumstantial evidence, as may the fact that murder has been committed be proved, and proved quite adequately by circumstantial evidence.”
Justice Buttrose drew the jury’s attention to the disparity in general background between Jenny the bar waitress who could speak only very, very little English, and Ang, a well-educated and knowledgeable young man, then 26 years old. “Jenny you may think felt highly flattered by the attention of this, in her eyes at any rate, young and more mature, better educated and experienced young man. She might-you may not unreasonably, I suggest, conclude-have entertained views of matrimony with him.” The judge referred to Ang’s evidence that there was a tacit understanding between them to marry and that they were in love with each other. “They were also on terms of complete intimacy.”
The judge said there was no dispute over what he called the “extraordinary series of insurance transactions entered into by Jenny, or in her name, or on her behalf. Nevertheless he went through them all, coming finally to the $150,000 policy for five days from 27 August 1963, at 11:00 am, ‘the very day that this tragic occurrence took place, the actual day of the tragedy, when he went to the office of the American International Underwriters alone, bringing with him an application form duly filled in and signed by Jenny’. The beneficiary was again Jenny’s estate. Within three weeks of Jenny meeting the accused she had been insured for very large amounts of money with five different. insurance companies. At the time of the tragedy Jenny had been covered by insurance ‘to the tune of something not far short of half a million dollars’. In some cases, Ang’s mother was the beneficiary, in others, Jenny’s estate. “But the whole of her estate was to go to the accused’s mother by the will that she had drawn up in August.’
Thus, within the short space of three months, Ang had got the whole of Jenny’s estate in his hands, ‘the very substantial benefit of all her insurance policies, and, when we come to his defence, not only had he been paid $2,000 by this bar girl on account of the purchase of the poultry farm, but there was a further $8,000 still due to him by Jenny on account of the balance of the purchase price’. “One must, I think,” added Justice Buttrose, “agree that by any standards, this was quite an achievement and when one considers the youth and age of the accused it is staggering. I don’t think it unfair to say to you, members of the jury, that in the short space of two and a half months he had got the lot. Jenny, so far as the evidence goes, had never before taken, or considered taking out any insurance policies, or of making a will, and it was only after she had met Ang that she did so. And this, gentlemen of the jury, is, according to the prosecution, the motive, the overwhelming motive, for this crime: the golden hope of gain by this undischarged bankrupt with high ambitions.”
The judge drew the jury’s attention to the three letters which Ang sent to three insurance companies the day immediately following the tragedy. They were identical. Jenny had met with a tragic accident while scuba-diving off one of the islands south of Singapore at about 3:00 pm on 27 August 1963. The letter went on, ‘She is presumed to have either drowned or been attacked by a shark. Her body is yet to be found.’
And there the judge stopped, promising to ‘pick up the threads again’ at 10:30 am the following morning, when he pointedly reminded the jury that the insurance policies had all been not endowment policies but accident policies. He questioned whether Ang had in fact sold the poultry farm to Jenny. “One is tempted,” remarked the judge, “to wonder what the accused’s mother would have thought of this sale of the poultry farm to a bar girl, or ex-bar-girl, whom she had never met in any real sense of the term at all?” Jenny’s half-sister said Jenny owned no property, no poultry farm and was always short of money. “Eileen said Jenny did not know how to swim, but used to play about in the water.” Jenny was unable to pay half the rent of the flat because she was unemployed and had no money. Ang paid her share. Does this sound to you like Jenny being able to enter into an arrangement to buy a poultry farm for $10,000 and to have paid, on account of that sum, $2,000 to the accused?”
Justice Buttrose went into some detail about the evidence given by David Henderson, the RAF scuba-diver, who found the flipper on the sea-bed. “At the point where he found it, the sea-bed, he said, was rough. There was little mud over it, but it was plain to see. The heel-strap was severed, although the rubber was in good condition.” There were no barnacles. By that Henderson meant there was no sea-growth or fungus attached to that flipper on 3 September, when he discovered it, nesting by the side of these rocks. That was why, he told us, it was because of these rocks that the flipper had not been swept away. He said there was nothing whatever to indicate to him that the flipper had been there for any length of time.’ Henderson had said he found the current to be three or four knots and difficult to swim against. There was also an undertow, and a very powerful undertow because he could not stem it and was carried some 150 yards away. “That is the evidence, members of the jury, of an expert, first-class scuba-diver. If he couldn’t stem the tide and he was swept away 150 yards, what chance do you think a novice scuba-diver would have in those circumstances?” The judge reminded the jury that in Henderson’s considered opinion the area between the two islands was quite unsuitable for a novice scuba-diver.
Justice Buttrose dealt briefly with Henderson’s tests on the tanks. Henderson had dived, using a piece of string as a washer, to a depth of 100 feet and remained there for 21 minutes. “Is this not an outstanding instance of the old saying that ‘where there’s a will there’s a way’? The prosecution in this case say there was a way, but that the accused had not the will.” The judge suggested to the jury-“it’s entirely a matter for you to decide”-that Jenny was undoubtedly a novice diver and should never have dived alone. “You will ask yourselves: was not the accused an experienced diver and well aware of this?”
Coming back to the nipper, the judge said that the chemist, Phang Sin Eng had found that two areas of the heel-strap had clean cuts. Under microscopic examination, they were found to contain striations, or fine-line markings. The presence of these fine-line markings, in the opinion of the chemist, was consistent with the two cuts being caused by a sharp instrument, such as a knife, a razor blade or a pair of scissors. He said that the strength of the strap would obviously be weakened by these cuts and would require little effort to tear. In his opinion it was most unlikely that the two cuts were caused by coral, firstly because of the position of the two cuts, one from the top down and the other from the bottom up, and the presence of these striations, or fine-line markings: secondly the top cut had two directions, one vertically downwards and a second continued on at a slight angle downwards indicating two separate and independent actions in producing it. Finally, the chemist had given evidence that under the microscope there was no trace whatever of any particles of coral. There were no traces whatever of calcium carbonate in either of these cuts.
As to the argument of the defence that if the strap could easily be broken by stretching once it was cut-as the chemist demonstrated in court-then it could just as easily be broken putting it on, the judge demolished it by explaining that the chemist had performed his experiments 21 months after the flipper had been found. “Rubber does perish and if that flipper had been kept in a store in a police department for 21 months what effect do you think it would have on the resiliency of the rubber itself? Would it not have grown much more fragile, much more wasted and much easier to snap than it would have on 27 August 1963?” Besides much depended upon the way in which the heel-strap was put on. “If you use your right hand and use the right side of the heel-strap to lever it over your heel, and the cut is on the left side of the heel-strap, isn’t the tension likely to be far stronger on the right side which you are pulling round to fit on your heel than on the left?” The judge added. “These are matters for you to consider.”
Coming to the fateful day, the judge said that the party pushed off from Jardine Steps at 2:30 pm that afternoon. Ang was paying the boatman $12 for three hours hire on what was, ‘for all intents and purposes, to be a pleasant afternoon’s outing and some scuba-diving’.
The judge paused. “I pause here,” he explained, “to remind you that but some three hours earlier that very same morning the accused called at the offices of the American International Underwriters, taking with him Jenny’s application form already filled in, renewing the $150,000 policy which had expired the day before. You may think it odd why he did not himself renew his own policy with the same company which had expired the previous day also, for the sum of $10,000, but he did not.” The judge paused again. “And so,” he continued slowly, “at that precise moment Jenny was insured to the tune of some $450,000.”
They dropped anchor in mid-channel at Ang’s direction, and Jenny donned her scuba-diving equipment and went overboard. Jenny was underwater for some eight to 10 minutes and, said the judge to the jury, “you may agree with me that while some eight to 10 minutes had elapsed the accused did not appear to be in any hurry to show any enthusiasm in getting ready to go down and join Jenny. For the next half an hour, they were laughing and chatting in the boat. “How comes it then, that during that half-hour the accused was not able to be ready? What attempt, if any, did he make to get himself ready during that half-hour? The boatman did not see him making any preparations during that time, except that, at the expiry of the half-hour, he helped to change Jenny’s tank because he said there was insufficient air in it. After it was fitted on her back, Jenny went overboard for the second and last time. She never surfaced again. You will ask yourselves, again, as to why it was that the accused did not ask Jenny to wait so that they could go down together this time, for, after all, this was a joint coral hunt, in which presumably, they were going to enjoy themselves?”
Justice Buttrose said that he found Ang’s ‘ladies’ first’ excuse for not going down himself to investigate the perils of the deep ahead of her a little thin, but that was a matter for jury to decide. ‘But,’ he added, ‘can that possibly apply the second time as well? Does it not, gentlemen of the jury, force you to the conclusion that the accused had no intention whatsoever of going down under the water that day at all? That is the question you must ask yourselves.”
When Jenny went down the second time, the accused, according to the boatman, had no equipment on at all. Why not? This was important. Why not? Why didn’t he put it on while Jenny was in the boat with him during the half-hour they were chatting together? It was only after Jenny had gone down the second time that Sunny Ang asked the boatman to assist him to fit on the big tank, and then it was found, so Ang said, to have a leak and could not be used, the accused telling the boatman there was no washer in the tank. “You will ask yourselves: why? What was it that Sunny Ang was doing to the tank when the boatman saw him working on it? Was Ang deliberately removing the washer?”
An improvised washer was made but there was still a leak and Ang decided he could not use the tank. During the whole of this operation Jenny had not surfaced. Then, apparently, and only then, did he decide he might as well pull the guide line. Having done so three times he returned to the tank and detached the assembly, the breathing apparatus. Then he asked the boatman, ‘Where is the girl?’ Ang pulled the guide line again, and yet again the girl failed to surface. Ang told the boatman to look for bubbles. Then Ang said, ‘What do we do now?’ and the boatman replied, ‘Nothing’. But the boatman suggested they had better go to St John’s Island to phone the Marine Police. And this they did. They returned with some Malay pawangs. They searched for half an hour for the girl, but no sign of her was found. On the evidence of the 63-year-old pawang, a strong current was running.
“Now,” continued the judge, “while this search was going on for the girl, whom Sunny Ang said he was in love with, and intended to marry, he was apparently having a conversation with a man named Jaffar, in the boat, as to whether the small tank the girl had first used, would float. Ang said maybe it would.” To test his belief he placed it in the sea and it promptly sank. It disappeared under the surface of the sea, “and has never been seen from that day to this-like the girl. The accused does not know what happened to the girl after she went down the second time, nor did he appear to have made any real attempt to find out. That is the boatman’s evidence.”
Coming back to the green flipper, Inspector Richard Lui was handed the flipper on 3 September 1963 by David Henderson, when Inspector Yeo was also present. The strap had been severed. Justice Buttrose said the defence had made some point because the inspector had said in the Lower Court that he had been handed the flipper on the 4th and not the 3rd of September. “Mr Coomaraswamy has told you that this is an unsatisfactory matter and must influence your minds in considering the whole question of the flipper. Is it unsatisfactory, members of the jury? A mistake in the date, by an inspector starting an investigation into one of the most difficult cases it has ever been my experience to try?” The judge indicated his own view by adding that he would not waste any more time with that aspect of the case. Inspector Lui handed the green nipper to the chemist on 25 September, though the chemist did see it a week or two before, perhaps three weeks earlier; but it was only a cursory glance because the inspector wanted to get his views on the flipper before he took it back to continue with his investigation. There was, therefore, no substance in the comment that the chemist only saw it really for the first time on 25 September 1963. On 21 December 1964, the inspector arrested the accused at Sennett Road. The judge reminded the jury that it was Inspector Lui who found the improvised washer in Ang’s swimming bag which he left at the police station on the night of the tragedy.
Justice Buttrose concluded his review of the case for the prosecution bv summarizing briefly, “the links in this chain of circumstantial evidence which the prosecution says binds the accused tight in its coils.” He listed 16. 1. The first was motive, which the judge described as ‘powerful and compelling’. Ang was a bankrupt, in need of large sums of money to carry out his ambitious plans for the future. ‘That is the motive for this crime.’ 2. On the very day Jenny disappeared Ang had made sure that a policy which had lapsed the day before was renewed ‘to the tune of $150 000 by the girl but he did not renew his own’. That was the second link. 3. The third link was the opportunity to commit the crime. He picked a weekday. On Tuesday no other boats were likely to be in the vicinity of the Sisters Islands. 4. Fourth link was the dangerous, hazardous waters. There could be no dispute about that, or that the accused knew they were dangerous, hazardous waters. This was not the place to swim, let alone scuba-dive. 5. Fifth link: Jenny was a novice, barely able to swim and Sunny Ang knew this. 6. Sixth link: he sent Jenny down alone when he knew scuba-diving should not be done alone ‘let alone when you are a novice and in these dangerous waters’. 7. Seventh link: Ang did not go down himself and had no intention whatever of going down ‘or, as it was put to you, even wetting his feet that day’. 8. Eighth link: on Jenny surfacing he sent her down again, because, he said, his equipment was not ready. 9. The ninth link, the judge continued, was that the prosecution said that the accused contrived to render the remaining two tanks in the sampan useless so that they could not be used, or at least to the eyes of the unsuspecting boatman, who knows nothing about scuba-diving or its equipment. 10. The 10th link was that Sunny Ang made no attempt himself to use Jenny’s first tank, ‘which we know’ must have been more than a quarter full of air. “He did not make any attempt to use the tank before he, according to the prosecution, ruined the washer by prising and hacking it out with a knife.” 11. The vital green flipper was the 11th link in the circumstantial chain. It was found within six days after ‘the accident, or the tragedy’. The heel-strap had been severed, cut by a knife or other sharp instrument-‘and I don’t see how you can escape this conclusion’-and it had been identified conclusively as one of the flippers which Jenny was wearing that day. But, once more, the judge reminded the jury that this was entirely a matter for them to decide. 12. Twelfth link was the attitude and demeanour of Sunny Ang at, and after, the disappearance of the girl. Apparently utterly calm and unmoved, ‘as he has been throughout this trial, not, as I suggest you might expect, in a state of utter grief and despair at the loss of this girl whom he loved and intended to marry’. The judge drew the jury’s attention to the fact that while the pawangs were diving, looking for Jenny’s body, Ang was calmly discussing with Jaffar and the boatman the sinkability or floatability of the tank. 13. Less than 24 hours after this tragedy, with what has been described as somewhat ‘indecent haste’, he made formal claims on the three insurance companies. “You may think these letters show a somewhat casual and coldblooded approach to the matter.” That was the 13th link in the chain. 14. The 14th was Ang’s ‘hot pursuit’ of the insurance money. There was the compromise plan to stifle the probate proceedings which the insurance companies were going to contest: this compromise plan would have given him half the insured money for a quick pay-off. There was the telephone call to one company about a mis-description of Jenny in the policy. There were the series of letters to the coroner exhorting him to hurry to complete his inquiry. There was the fact that Ang had been round to a number of solicitors to enlist their aid. 15. Fifteenth link was the prosecution’s statement that the accused did not dive in at all because he wanted to remain in sight of the boatman. The boatman was his alibi, ‘and so it could never be said, gentlemen of the jury, that he went into the water himself after Jenny and killed her under the water. By remaining on the sampan throughout the whole incident, it was always open, he hoped, for him to say that it was an accident in which he was in no way concerned’. 16. Finally, the 16th link, the washer, one of the washers improvised in the sampan by the boatman and Sunny Ang: “It was tested here before our very eyes, gentlemen of the jury, both by David Henderson and by the accused himself. The washer worked perfectly on this very tank and never leaked at all.”
Justice Buttrose reminded the jury again about circumstantial evidence: one of its points was its cumulative effect. “The question for you is: where does the totality of them, the total effect of these links, lead you to? Adding them together, considering them, not merely each one in itself, but altogether, does it, or does it not, lead you to the irresistible inference and conclusion that the accused committed this crime? Or is there some other reasonably possible explanation of those facts? The prosecution case is that the effect of all this evidence drives you inevitably and inexorably to the one conclusion, and one conclusion only: that it was Sunny Ang, the accused, who intentionally caused the death of this young girl.”
Justice Buttrose went on to examine the defence. He said that Ang’s evidence on oath from the witness-box was, the gist of it, that this was an accident. “He cannot tell us what sort of an accident it was because, of course, he did not see it. He said she might have got tired of waiting for him and, I use his own words, ‘she may have wandered off on her own on the sea-bed and got swept away by the tide or current’.”
Ang completely excluded the possibility of Jenny swimming underwater to one or other of the Sisters Islands, ‘because he said that he and Yusuf examined them from the sampan for any sign of life or for footprints. There was no vestige of either. He did not however discard or discount the possibility of sharks. He, at any rate, is quite certain that she is dead and was of that same opinion right from the start’. The judge reminded the jury of the three letters to the insurance companies.
Ang denied that he cut the strap of the flipper which he admitted looked like the one that Jennv wore on the fateful day. The judge told the jury he could not see how on the evidence they could escape the conclusion that it was. Ang denied in any way tampering with her equipment so that she would drown.
Ang’s evidence, the judge said, was that he met Jenny when she was a bar girl at the Odeon Bar. She showed an interest in his poultry farm, and expressed a desire to own the farm herself. Eventually it was agreed he would sell it to her for $10,000 payable over a period of time. At the date of her disappearance, according to Ang, she had paid him $2,000 on account. “How this bar waitress, earning $90 a month and some $10 a day in tips when she worked, was going to find the money to pay $2,000, let alone the remaining $8,000, is a matter which I find difficult to understand or appreciate, particularly when you bear in mind her sister Eileen’s evidence that Jenny was always short of money.” Furthermore, on the accused’s own admission, Jenny knew nothing about, and had had no experience whatever, in chicken farming. “Again, what do you think the accused mother’s views on this transaction would have been? You must ask yourself whether or not you can accept this evidence. Ang was not going to help this girl. He was going to use the money to go to the United Kingdom to further his studies. Ang said that it was Jenny who paid the insurance premiums. He had said that Jenny wanted to make him the beneficiary and he had suggested his mother’s name instead. All his other property was in his mother’s name. This was because he was a bankrupt.”
Justice Buttrose referred to Ang’s car trip to the Federation with Jenny and remarked, “I am bound to say I find that a most remarkable tale, but,” he told the jury, “it is your views, not mine, that count.”
The judge continued, “Quite glibly, the accused told us of some incidents on the way up, of a few narrow shaves. He said he overtook cars quite recklessly and skidded once, but managed to recover. Why should he want to overtake cars quite recklessly, I cannot conceive. Or, gentlemen of the jury, was it to prepare, so to speak, for the inevitable accident that subsequently happened on the way back?” They originally planned, so Ang said, to go to the Cameron Highlands for a holiday. But what did they do? The next morning Ang took out a travel accident insurance policy for himself for $30,000, and a $100,000 policy for Jenny for 14 days. Ang had said in the witness-box that Jenny was quite fearful of driving back with him. She told him, he said, they would have an accident on the way back and she insisted on him taking out an insurance policy to cover medical and other expenses should they get involved in a serious accident. “Does that ring true?” asked the judge. “I find it myself wholly extraordinary. What do you, the jury, think? Did the accused take Jenny to Kuala Lumpur for their holiday to the Cameron Highlands, or was it merely to obtain further insurance on her because Singapore was getting a bit hot for him? That the news might be getting round the Singapore insurance companies that here was a young man and a young girl, large policies were being effected-accident policies in the girl’s name-and that their chance of getting further insurance in Singapore was getting more and more remote. Was this, therefore, purely a venture to get insurance in Kuala Lumpur?”
On the way back, sure enough, they had the accident which if not regarded as a ‘moral certainty’ was anticipated by them both. The judge directed the attention of the jury to the contrast of the police evidence concerning the accident and the evidence given by Sunny Ang. He asked them to keep in mind the fact that the car, badly damaged, would not be ready before the middle of September. Yet, the judge went on, Ang gave as the reason why he extended Jenny’s insurance on the morning of 27 August for five days-to use his own words-‘We might have to go to Seremban that night by night train and drive the car back if it was ready and, if not, to see that the workmen are getting on with the job of repairing the damaged car’. The judge said he found this explanation extraordinary. “Was that the real reason for extending this policy for a further five days? What had the accused in mind? Had he decided that very afternoon, while scuba-diving in this dangerous channel, that a golden opportunity presented itself to him for getting rid of her, while cunningly contriving to give it the appearance of an unfortunate but innocent accident? That is the question you must ask yourselves.”
The judge carefully examined Ang’s version of what happened on the spot, ‘in mid-channel to which he had directed the boatman’. Their intention according to the accused was to go down and collect coral together, a joint expedition, ‘an intention that was never carried put’.
Jenny went down first and surfaced after 10 minutes, Then, Ang said, it had been his intention that they would both go down together to collect coral. He turned on Jenny’s air valve to her tank and down she went. “And it is important, gentlemen of the jury, to note that the accused said that at that time his tank was then on his back. He said he let Jenny go down first on the principle of ‘ladies first’, a matter of courtesy.” Here the judge paused. He said he wanted to remind the jury of the boatman’s evidence which was that when Jenny went down the second time Sunny Ang had none of his equipment on at all. All he had on were his bathing trunks. “Now, someone is, therefore, lying. Is it the accused or is it the boatman? Why should the boatman be lying? It is of no interest to him, one way or the other.”
The judge went on to examine Ang’s version of the washers and the tanks, recalling his attempts to fix the leak and the successful efforts of the experts. “At this stage,” remarked the judge, “Ang had apparently been successful in putting out of action all the available scuba-diving equipment. They could no longer be used and Ang said he couldn’t use them.” “It was then,” recalled Justice Buttrose, “that I asked Sunny Ang what he thought Jenny would be doing all this time, and he gave the astonishing reply, ‘Oh, Jenny was a patient sort of girl’; she would be waiting for him, hanging on to the bottom of the guide line rope on the sea-bed for some 10 or 15 minutes. He considered that quite a reasonable time. What do you think, members of the jury? Is it not only possible, but probable, that having waited for a short while her curiosity got the better of her and she got a little more bold by then? She might have decided to let go of that guide line for a little while and gone to have a look to see what was about. And was it not then that one of the undertows got her and swept her away? With her flipper heel-strap broken, then as a purely unskilled novice scuba diver, she in fact, before seeing where she was, was swept hundreds of yards away? The air in her tank then ran out and she died. Is that a possible explanation for there being no air bubbles seen by anyone at any time?”
The judge pointed out that even at that stage the accused said he had not become anxious. He was in no way perturbed or alarmed. He pulled the guide line three times to signal to her to surface and then went back to attend to his tank. Two minutes later he again pulled the guide line and even at that stage, he said, he had not decided to abandon the expedition, let alone become alarmed about Jenny. He said he wanted her to come up to preserve the air in her tank so that they could go down again together. “What do you think of that, gentlemen of the jury? If that was a genuine reason why then did he not signal to her to come up long before? He said he had seen no air bubbles breaking on the surface of the water. He was still not alarmed and he made, to me at any rate, an astonishing statement: that she might have wandered off on her own or that she was playing a game with him and hiding under the boat. It seemed to me quite remarkable. He even said that she might have swum underwater and landed at one or other of the islands. He said he seriously thought so at the time, but he definitely did not think so now. So what do you think?”
Ang said he looked under the sampan on both sides but could see no air bubbles. He and the boatman scanned the shore on both sides to see if there were any traces of footsteps or other signs of life. “It was only then, and then only, for the first time, that the accused realized that Jenny might have got into trouble. You may think he took a long time to do so.”
Then Ang became alarmed and they looked for air bubbles. He vaguely remembered a telephone on St John’s Island. Yusuf confirmed this and off they went to phone the Marine Police. “Ang told us he never asked Yusuf to go faster because, he said, the sampan was going flat out. He said he might have shed a tear, but without knowing it. He maintained that he did run to the phone, but Jaffar denied he ran at all.”
The judge returned to the scene of the tragedy and the ‘curious discussion’ about the weightlessness of a tank in water. “He thereupon took the small tank that Jenny had used on her first time down and placed it in the sea. The tank sank because, according to Ang, it had been painted-painted, if you please, gentlemen of the jury. He put it in the water because he was under the impression that tanks could float, whether full or empty. Do you think a coat or two of paint would have any effect?”
Here the judge erred. As defence counsel pointed out during the appeal, one of the accused’s brothers had said the tank was painted. “I asked one of the experts if painting the tank was likely to increase its weight. But the accused never said so,” explained Mr Coomaraswamy.
Justice Buttrose said that Sunny Ang’s explanation for not going into the water himself was because he saw no air bubbles: that was the main reason. He presumed she was not there, and there was no point in diving to look. He also thought she might have been attacked by sharks. He also told us he could only hold his breath underwater for some three-quarters of a minute to a minute.
The judge called attention again to the three letters Ang wrote to the insurance companies the following day claiming under the policies. “That, gentlemen of the jury, in brief is the outline of his defence: an accident in which he was not concerned in any way, and had no part. He does not know what happened. He did not intend or contrive her disappearance. He neither cut the flipper, nor in any way tampered with the equipment. He explained why he did not go down to look for her.”
Ang called three witnesses, firstly a gentleman by the name of Yeo Tong Hock, who described himself as, in effect, a brothel-keeper, and admitted he was a pimp. What joy the defence got out of his evidence, the judge said, was something he failed to understand. “Because if he came to bless the case for the defence, he left to curse. How can you be left under any doubt, members of the jury, that now he is quite sure, absolutely sure, that the girl whom he saw in Penang and later in Kedah is not Jenny?”
The judge was highly critical of Mr Coomaraswamy’s statement that the witness had been kept out of the way, incommunicado, by the Penang police for 10 days before the trial. “You heard Mr Coomaraswamy say that from the Bar. Now, a more ill-considered and irresponsible statement from the Bar I have yet to hear in a case of this gravity and magnitude. There is not a shred of evidence to support it. It was emphatically denied by the witness himself.”
The judge went on to deal briefly with the evidence given by Ang’s younger brother, Richard Ang, and the two police officers called by the defence to give evidence about the car accident. Justice Buttrose said he failed to appreciate the relevance of that evidence at all; he did not intend, he said, to waste any time on it, ‘except to remind you again that the corporal said it was not a sharp bend in the road but a gentle bend’. Ang had said the bend was sharp.
What reliance, asked the judge, could be placed on Sunny Ang’s evidence? He said he was a truthful person. He did, however, admit to telling a few white lies. ‘That was the opening gambit. On being pressed he admitted to telling lies to the insurance companies, not white ones, but full-blooded red ones. What he told the insurance companies were quite untrue. ‘Yes, I lied to them, but they were necessary because I had to get my commission’, he explained, in a sort of off-handed manner, as if that not only explained them but excused them. But what you must consider, in weighing up his evidence, is: if the accused will lie in order to get commission on the sale of insurance policies, what will he do for half a million dollars, or for even higher stakes?”
The judge, nearing the end of his summing up, came to the gloves. Ang had admitted that he brought two pairs of gloves with him in the sampan on 27 August 1963, one dark blue and the other dark brown. He said they were to wear them because the coral they were going to collect were sharp and the gloves would prevent their hands being cut. Ang had said this was an expedition for the express purpose of going coral-hunting. “When Jenny went down the second time the intention was to collect coral, and she was to help Ang carry them. Ang said it was necessary to wear these gloves and he said that Jenny did wear them when she went down on the second occasion, never to return. That,” said the judge, “would appear to be a complete falsehood, gentlemen of the jury, because both pairs of gloves were still in his bag which he had left that night at the police station. They were produced before you. If Jenny had been wearing the gloves there would have been only one pair left for you to see.” When he saw them in court, Ang was forced to admit that they appeared very new, that they had never been in the water. What then, became of his evidence that they were going down to collect coral? “Did he ever intend that afternoon that they should? Ang was unable to offer any explanation as to how the gloves came to be in the bag.”
Ang denied ever telephoning Rutherford (of one of the insurance companies). He was shown his diary, ‘that red-back diary’. He admitted that it was his and in his handwriting. “And then we had a succession of astonishing answers which speak much for his powers of improvisation and ingenuity under pressure.” The judge thought his reference to Ruth-R-U-T-H-as Ruth Tan a remarkable effort. “Finally on being shown the entry alleged to be referring to Rutherford and beside it ‘on leave in the United Kingdom’, that did stump him. He said he did not know what it meant. The only thing he did maintain was that it did not refer to Rutherford, who was on leave in the United Kingdom.”
The judge dealt briefly with the ‘astonishing episode of the letters’ which Ang wrote to the Under-Treasurer of Gray’s Inn. One of Ang’s ambitions was to become a barrister-at-law. “Though never a student at the University of Singapore he wrote that he was. What a sorry performance this was! First of all he said he never sent the letter: then he could not remember if he sent it: then, on being shown the letter he said he did not think he sent it because it was torn. He said he never despatched torn letters. Finally, on being shown the postmark he said, ‘I must have sent it’. Quite a remarkable performance, don’t you think?”
The judge told the jury that these were matters selected at random, as instances, ‘instances only’, of Ang’s lack of regard for the truth. Justice Buttrose told the jury that when they came to consider Ang’s evidence they must take these matters into consideration. “How much reliance can you place on his evidence? That is the question you must ask yourselves. How much weight can you attach to his evidence that Jenny had made amazing progress in her swimming and scuba-diving? That he and Jenny had been to the Sisters Islands two days before with the boatman Yusuf? That he had his tank on his back when Jenny went down a second time, and was ready to go down with her? That he had sold Jenny his chicken farm?”
The judge instructed the jury that if they were in any reasonable doubt as to whether Jenny was dead, or that Sunny Ang murdered her, they would resolve that doubt in favour of Ang and acquit him. “But equally, gentlemen of the jury, on the other hand, if you are satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that Jenny is dead, and that the accused murdered her, you will, of course, do your duty and return a verdict of guilty accordingly.”
The jury retired at 12:13 PM and luncheon was sent in. They were out for less than two and a half hours. At 2:38 PM they returned with a unanimous verdict. They found the accused guilty.
Ang stood stiffly in the dock, his hands clasped before him as the judge sentenced him to death. It was the 13th day of the trial.
Ang showed no emotion when he was taken in a green prison van for the 10-mile ride to Changi Jail. He was checked in at the main gate. His details were recorded in the normal manner. He asked for a meal and then listened impassively as the prison routine was explained to him. Prison officials told a Straits Times reporter that the calmest prisoner in the prison that day was Sunny Ang. He was still supremely confident he would not hang. There were 18 other condemned prisoners in the prison, and ‘an air of tension prevailed within the prison walls’.
A medical officer examined him after his personal clothing and other articles were taken away from him. He had a bath and a shave, in accordance with prison regulations. Escorted to his sparsely furnished cell in a concrete block, Ang looked around as the door slammed behind him. He was told that he would be allowed newspapers, books and periodicals; relatives and friends could visit him. He would be allowed to write and to receive letters. His day, officials told him, would begin at 6:30 AM every morning with a cup of tea, but he would not be wakened if he was still asleep. There would be three meals a day, and twice a day he would leave his cell, for a bath and for exercise. Lights out at 10:00 PM.