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?”