Another important exhibit were the four books which Inspector Richard Lui of the Special Investigation Section of the Criminal Investigation Department seized at Ang’s home when he arrested him on 21 December 1964. The books were Atkinson’s Skin-Diving, Hampton’s The Master Diver and Underwater Sportsman, Ivanovic’s Modern Spear Fishing, and Du Ros’s Skin-Diving in Australia. These books, one in particular, were to play a vital role in the case against Sunny Ang at his trial.
Altogether, the prosecution called 39 witnesses at the inquiry. Several were from the insurance companies. An official from an insurance company produced a letter dated 28 August 1963, the day after Jenny disappeared. It was from Sunny Ang, writing from 57 Sennett Road, Singapore 16. The letter was read in Court. It said:
This is to inform you that Madam Cheok Cheng Kid, who is insured with your company bad met a tragic accident while scuba-diving in one of the islands off Singapore at 5:00 pm yesterday. She is presumed to have been either drowned or attacked by sharks. Her body is yet to be found. Further information about the incident can be obtained from Inspector Aziz of the Marine Police. Please acknowledge receipt of this letter. Thank you.
Another letter, from Ang, written the same day to a different insurance company referred to ‘a tragic accident at sea’.
Mr Coomaraswamy addressed the Court for an hour. He dealt exhaustively with the functions of a magistrate in an inquiry of this nature. He explained why he had cross-examined only some witnesses, and he finally submitted that the prosecution had not made out a case for committal. The evidence, he said, was not of a nature which would lead a Court to say that the only one and irresistible inference was that Jenny was dead. Even assuming she was dead, it had not been ascertained how she died. Even if there had been a death, there must be evidence that it resulted from a voluntary act on Ang’s part. Counsel argued there was no such evidence.
Mr Saurajen adjourned the Court for 20 minutes and then gave his verdict. He said, “Having heard the evidence in support of the prosecution case, I am of the opinion that on the evidence as it stands the accused should be committed for trial.”
Mr Coomaraswamy said that Sunny Ang reserved his defence.
What is Murder?
Singapore’s criminal law follows closely the pattern of British law upon which the Singapore legal system is structured. Over the 140-odd years of Singapore’s existence in a legalistic sense, first as a British trading post, then as a colony which rapidly developed after the Second World War into a protected self-governing state before becoming part of independent Malaysia (Singapore became an independent sovereign state in August 1965), there had been many murder trials. But there had always been a body. This was the first time a man stood in a Singapore Court charged with the murder of a person whose body could not be produced.
And no one saw the murder. No one saw the girl die.
At the time Jenny died, her body swept out to sea, her air tank probably exhausted and her flipper lost, Sunny Ang was talking to the boatman. The prosecution argued that Ang did not dive in at all that afternoon because he wanted to remain in sight of the boatman, his alibi. It could therefore never be said of him that he went under the water and killed Jenny. He was with the boatman all the time. By remaining in the sampan throughout the entire incident he could always say it was an accident with which he was in no way concerned.
Thus, not only did the prosecution have to satisfy the jury that Jenny Cheok was dead, a conclusion to be reached only through circumstantial evidence, for her body had disappeared, but the prosecution, by the same means, by circumstantial evidence, had also to prove that Sunny Ang was responsible for the accident which was intended to cause Jenny’s death.
“Murder,” Justice Buttrose told the jury, “is the unlawful killing or causing of death of one human being by another human being with the intention of doing so. An accidental killing or causing of death is not murder because, in such a case, the intention to cause death was absent. The intention to kill, therefore, is of the essence of the offence.”
On the question of intention, the judge said that “every person is presumed to intend the natural and probable consequences of his acts. In other words, that he intends to do what he in fact does.” He gave an example. “If two persons are walking together along a high cliff-top, with the sea and the rocks hundreds of feet below; and as they approach a certain point on the cliff which is known to one of them to overhang the rest of the cliff and to be in a dangerous condition; and he turns to the other-his intended victim, whom he intends to murder-and says, ‘You go along the edge and have a look over because the view is superb and you can see the breakers crashing on the rocks below’; and the unsuspecting victim goes on, while the other who has asked him to go on has conveniently discovered a pebble in his shoe, and he steps behind to take off his shoe and to get rid of this imaginary pebble; and his victim on reaching the cliff-edge, it caves in, and he is dashed to his death on the rocks below-now that, members of the jury, is murder, just as if the other had gone along and pushed his victim over the edge.”
“Similarly,” explained Justice Buttrose, “if you take a novice scuba-diver to waters which you knew to be inherently dangerous with the intention that this novice scuba-diver shall dive into those waters, and you intend that by so doing she will never come up again, that she will be killed-for whatever reason at all is quite immaterial-if that is your intention, that this novice diver should go down into those waters and you intend that she should be killed, then that is equally murder as if you had accompanied that novice diver down to the bottom of the sea-bed and strangled her with your own hands.”
Justice Buttrose said the prosecution had to prove three things. First, that the death of a human being had taken place. Second, that such death was caused by or in consequence of the act of the accused. Third, that such act was done with the intention of causing death.
On the first point, the judge went on, “If no death, then of course no murder. You will observe that I have deliberately and intentionally said, ‘If no death, then no murder’, not ‘If no dead body, then no murder’. The difference in phraseology is vital because the distinction is very real. It seems to have become a popular fallacy that there can be no conviction for murder unless the body of the victim is found and produced. Nothing could be more fallacious or more untrue. I direct you, as a matter of law, that a person may be convicted of murder without the body of the victim being found or produced.” Justice Buttrose said that what the prosecution must do was to prove the death of a human being, not to produce a dead body. The production of the dead body, of course, made the proof of death very easy. The absence of a dead body, of course, made the proof of death more difficult, and the onus on the prosecution of proving it, heavier. But that was all.
The judge warned the jury they must be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that Jenny was murdered by Ang, in that he caused her death with the intention of causing her death. “There is no actual eye-witness as to how she died. There is no one who can tell us 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, the 27 of August 1963. Only Jenny herself could have told us, but, according to the prosecution, her lips have been sealed forever.”
The prosecution case was that Jenny was dead, and that Ang deliberately and intentionally caused her death. They relied entirely on circumstantial evidence to prove it. “Now,” said the judge, “in case there should be any idea in your minds that circumstantial evidence is intrinsically or necessarily of any less value than the direct testimony of eye-witnesses, let me at once disabuse you on it.” Justice Buttrose said that the fact of death may be proved, and proved quite adequately, by circumstantial evidence, as may the fact that murder had been committed be proved, and proved quite adequately, by circumstantial evidence.