Yusuf was Ang’s regular boatman. He remembered having taken Jenny and Ang together only once before: that was to Pulau Tekukor, about two months before 27 August 1963, and on this occasion Jenny did not scuba-dive. The boatman did however have an opportunity of observing Jenny’s prowess at swimming. He described this as ‘unskilled’. The only occasion Yusuf had taken Jenny and Ang scuba-diving was on 27 August, which was Jenny’s first scuba-venture out at sea. Eileen Toh, who was at a picnic at Tanah Merah Besar, noticed that Jenny could barely swim as late as August.
Counsel made much of what he called ‘the cursory search’ for Jenny when she failed to respond to Ang’s jerking on the rope. Ang was in his swimming trunks: he was a very good swimmer and yet he did not go into the water in search of Jenny. In fact he never got his feet wet at all that day. Why did he not go in himself in search of Jenny? “You are left with the inescapable feeling that the prisoner was reluctant, most reluctant to look for her. And indeed we have his own word for it. Astonishing as it may sound, he saw no point in diving to look for her because he could not see her air bubbles anywhere near the boat, and because visibility in that depth could be only a few feet.” Ang further thought that sharks might have attacked her and his instinct for self-preservation prevented him from diving down.
Counsel said that it took Ang some 15 minutes or more to realize that he had an emergency situation on his hands. “And, upon that realization, was he galvanized into immediate action to save the girl he says he loved, and whom he says he had intended to marry? With all the scuba-diving equipment on board, all he did was vaguely to recall that there was a telephone on St John’s Island, some distance away, and, upon confirming this with the boatman, went there to summon the police for help. On the way, Ang apparently found time to change back into his street clothes.”
At St John’s Island, Jaffar bin Hussein, the guard, advised Ang that, until the police arrived, some pawangs (sea witch doctors) should be summoned to help, and accordingly five were brought to the spot where Jenny disappeared. They did not find her.
“What,” asked Mr Seow, “were her chances of survival in those treacherous waters? The torn and cut flipper, which Ang does not dispute was worn by Jenny, which was recovered near the spot where she last dived, suggests unmistakably that Jenny, as intended by Ang, swam into difficulties. Having regard to the strong currents known to be prevalent in that area, to her inexperience in swimming and in scuba-diving, the sudden and unexpected loss of the flipper triggered off a chain of panic-stricken reaction, with the inevitable result that she drowned.”
There was, remarked counsel, never any doubt in Sunny Ang’s mind that Jenny was dead. To put the matter of Jenny’s death beyond any doubt, Ang and his mother instructed their counsel to instigate and to expedite a coroner’s inquest into Jenny’s disappearance so that a formal finding of her death could be returned, failing which they next attempted to move the High Court by way of probate proceedings to presume that Jenny had died on 27 August 1963. “That was the degree of their certainty that Jenny was dead.”
Counsel said that it was incredible that after Ang had asserted, not only in various letters and documents, but also in the witness-box, that Jenny is dead, he should call as his witness Yeo Tong Hock to suggest in effect that a girl whom he once saw in Penang in 1963, and presumably again in Kedah in 1964, was in fact Jenny. “Yeo Tong Hock now affirms before you quite positively that the girl he saw was not Jenny.”
Mr Seow permitted himself to be amazed that the defence ‘should be in such confusion, such disarray, that in one breath it asserts that Jenny is dead, and in the next breath that she is still alive.’ He argued that if Jenny was alive it meant that she was hand-in-glove with Ang in a conspiracy to cheat the insurance companies. “Now assuming the evidence of the boatman is a truthful account of what took place, which I submit it was, there are two possible ways in which the deception could have been achieved. Firstly, Jenny swam the four miles back from the Sisters Islands to Singapore, which, having regard to her known swimming or scuba experience, was most unlikely. Or, secondly, she swam underwater part of the distance, surfaced, and was picked up by a boat lurking nearby. Here again, her scuba, swimming prowess precludes any such spectacular effort. No such boat, or anyone nearby, was seen by the boatman that day (which was confirmed by Ang in his own diary), and you may therefore rule out that possibility.”
The prosecutor went on to argue that if, for argument’s sake, Jenny did somehow manage to get back to Singapore and was alive, surely Ang would have told the police by now that she was alive? “Do you not think that, if he could, he would have produced Jenny and thus provided a complete defence to the charge that he had murdered her?” Mr Seow addressed the jury, “Ask yourselves: would not Jenny, were she alive, have walked through the very doors of this Court by now, to save Ang?”
Counsel dealt briefly with the insurances on Jenny’s life. He said that a matter that called for some comment was Jenny’s conduct. Did she know what was happening? He thought not. “The picture which emerges from the evidence is that of a young and lowly educated and impressionable girl with an unhappy past (although Ang describes her as simple), who, it seems, could be as easily fascinated by a typewriter as by a poultry farm, and who could be as equally interested in flying as in scuba-diving. Contrast her with Ang. Is it any wonder that within a month of meeting her he was able to sell an insurance policy and persuade Jenny to name his mother as her beneficiary-a woman Jenny never met? She thought he was going to marry her. In such circumstances, it is not difficult to imagine this ignorant and love-struck barmaid signing her life away. Ang virtually supported her, paid all the subsequent accident policies. Jenny had no poultry farm and Ang’s assertion that she had was another figment of his vivid imagination.”
Ang, said Mr Seow, was an expert and skilled motorist. He had been among the first 10 in the 1961 Singapore Grand Prix of 180 miles. Was not the so-called accident, in which he and Jenny were involved, contrived by him? Was this not a brazen attempt by Ang to kill Jenny? Within 13 days of that accident, Jenny was involved in another accident-this time at sea. After the first abortive attempt on her life, this unsuspecting bar waitress without any visible means of support was heavily insured by Ang and taken out scuba-diving by him. Ang knew the treacherous nature of the waters, especially the undertows. And it was to this very place that he brought his inexperienced pupil on a quiet and lonely Tuesday afternoon to scuba-dive. Against all rules of safety, he instructed her to dive in alone. Against all rules of safety, she was allowed to put on her weight belt first, after which her air-tank was harnessed on her back. After her tank was changed by Ang, Jenny went below alone and never surfaced again. Counsel said that Ang had never satisfactorily explained why he had changed her tank when it still had a lot of air in it.
“It would have been awkward for Ang if both he and Jenny had gone down together and only he came up. He had to create an alibi that he was in the boat when she swam into difficulties, and was drowned. Ang also had to create an excuse for himself for not going into the sea when Jenny failed to surface-an alibi and an excuse which could be vouched for by a third party, the boatman Yusuf. What was the alibi? What was the excuse? Well, washers do not normally drop out by themselves. How, then, did the washer of Ang’s tank come to be missing? It was deliberately removed by him. “Nevertheless the fact remains that, due to wear and tear, washers do occasionally drop out-and therein lies the ingenuity of Ang’s stratagem.