He was a skilful and fast driver, though shortly after the 1961 Grand Prix, driving the same Sunbeam he had raced in that event, he killed a pedestrian. He drove the car on to a road island. He claimed he was avoiding the man who, he said, had suddenly stepped onto the road. The coroner returned an open verdict. Ang was subsequently fined $30 for negligence.
At home, Sunny was obedient and helpful to his mother. He was the odd-job man in the house. He was kind to stray cats and dogs. Even during his trial he was concerned for a sick dog on the farm, and from the prison gave detailed instructions for its proper care.
There is ample evidence to show that Sunny Ang’s lying and thieving began at about the age of 10. The thefts started in his own home, then the homes of neighbours, and eventually in shops in the city and society at large. He was in his teens when he bought a set of oxyacetylene cutting instruments to better equip himself for future burglaries; but he sold them before he could use them, to help a friend who had lost his bicycle.
He stepped up his burglary activities after he was grounded from flying. He chose shops in the main shopping centres which were empty at night; he abhorred physical violence. At 1:00 AM in the morning of 12 July 1962, he was caught trying to burglarize a radio shop. David Marshall, Singapore’s foremost criminal lawyer, defended him and successfully saved him from a prison sentence, Ang being placed on probation. Staring at Mr Marshall coldly and with disdain (when counsel had expected a smile and a sigh of relief), Ang walked out of the dock without a word of thanks. He had apparently expected to be acquitted. That night David Marshall said to his wife, “Today I got a man off, and for the first time in 25 years’ practice at the Bar I will live to regret it.”
On probation, Ang worked hard on his farm, though he exasperated his probation officer. He also took stock of himself. He had left school seven years and had achieved very little. He would like to study law, and was confident that he could get a degree within 18 months if he went to Britain for his studies: but he did not have a Higher School Certificate. Nor the money to travel. He now felt that he would like to do well in society. “If I cannot beat them,” he told the psychiatrist, and by ‘them’ he meant the police, society, “then I will join them.” He probably remembered the words of his father the very morning of the day he was arrested in the radio shop. “Do not underestimate the ability and the power of the police,” his father had warned him. Ang made inquiries at the University of Singapore, but met with no encouragement. He read law books in his spare time. And then, sometime in 1963, his father introduced him to a friend, an insurance agent. Sunny began to sell insurance policies. It was about then that he conceived the murderous idea of a quick way to raise money to finance his trip to England to get his law degree.
Dr Wong came to the conclusion that in the legal sense Ang was not of unsound mind. He had no psychotic illness or insanity. There was no defect in his reasoning. In the context of the M’Naughten’s Rules for Criminal Responsibility he would be considered fully responsible for his actions.
As Ang was a psychopath, Dr Wong felt that the abnormality of his mind would be such as to have substantially impaired his mental responsibility. On medico-legal grounds he recommended a reprieve, but hastened to add that, with the facilities available in Singapore at that time, he saw little hope for a cure for Ang. He felt that a sentence of life imprisonment for Ang, ‘with his superior intelligence and his almost classical degree of psychopathy’, should mean what it says. “He is a dangerous person, if released prematurely. Ang has said simply but significantly, ‘I would do it again.’”
The End
When it was known that the Privy Council had rejected Ang’s appeal, friends and relatives at once began to organize a petition to President Yusof bin Ishak to spare his life. Late in October 1966, this petition, and a plea from Ang for clemency, were submitted to the President. The President must accept the advice of the Cabinet. On the last day of January 1967, Ang was told that President Yusof bin Ishak had rejected his appeal for clemency. He would be executed on Monday, 6 February.
Even then Ang did not abandon hope. He was planning a dramatic escape. During exercise time a helicopter would fly over the jail compound, with a rope dangling down, and Sunny would be whisked away to freedom. The coded letters failed to get to his accomplice.
On Friday he was told there was no hope. He accepted this unemotionally and requested the prison chaplain, the Rev. Khoo Siaw Hua, to baptize him. Then he wrote the chaplain the following letter: Dear Rev. Khoo, There is so much that I want to say to you but I am finding it very difficult to put my thoughts into words. So forgive me for this, my farewell letter, being so brief, and, 1 fear, incoherent. Do you remember the day you first saw me here, how I kept repeating to you ‘I’m an atheist!’, almost with pride? But as I watched you come here so often, spending so much of your time and giving so much of yourself to the Pulau Senang boys and the rest of us, expecting and receiving nothing in turn, I asked myself, ‘What is it that motivates this man to such altruistic acts? Is there really a God as he so undoubtedly believes?’ This, plus my brother Victor’s example, led me to spend hours on end pondering over the question of Life. Death, the Existence of God, truth of the Bible and other related matters, my mind ranging far and wide into hitherto unexplored realms. The conclusion I came to were foregone, but I still refused to open my heart to God as I had some unfinished business to carry out, viz. a vendetta. Months passed without any change: but one day, the 17th of December 1967-for no apparent reason I was overwhelmed by a desire to kneel down in prayer and pour out my heart to God, surrendering myself to Him and admitting to Him that revenge was in my heart He listened and understood and as I got to know Him better through the succeeding days and weeks, He told me that I should be above revenge and hate, that only love and understanding should occupy my thoughts and guide my actions. How I wish I could have met you in less tragic circumstances and derived the benefit of your courses. But I nevertheless thank you for everything you have done for me and will be doing for me in the next few days. Through you I found Christ and through Him I shall find the Kingdom of Heaven. We’ll meet again in happier circumstances. Till then, fare thee well. Yours in Christ Sunny Ang
Sunny Ang spent the last few hours of his life praying with the Rev. Khoo, and reading the Bible. The chaplain said, “We talked only about religion and nothing else. He was all the time calm and smiling.”
Ang was told that acccording to prison regulations he could have a last meal to the value of $5. He said, “I just want a nice cold glass of milk.” Milk is not a popular drink with Asians.
Shortly before dawn, Ang, apparently unrepentant and unafraid, walked steadily the 100 paces from his cell to the gallows. The noose was slipped around his neck, the trap-door opened, and at 5:55 AM, on the morning of Monday, 6 February 1967, Sunny Ang paid the penalty for his crime.
The hangman grimly closed the final chapter of a murder case that made legal history in Singapore. This had been the first murder trial without the body of the victim: it was the first time a man charged with murder had been found guilty entirely on circumstantial evidence. The case was also unusual in that it was a crime of coldly calculated murder for greed and gain, a crime in which the death of the victim, and not robbery, was the primary consideration.