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.”