did not intend to get married for five years. He agreed that Jenny had no experience in running a chicken farm.
Shortly after lunch on the third day of the defence, the 10th day of the trial, crown counsel cross-examined him about the fateful Tuesday afternoon. Ang said he knew it would take at least half an hour for the sampan to get to St John’s Island, and half an hour to get back. “Time was of the essence if this girl is to be rescued?” asked Mr Francis Seow. “Yes,” said Sunny Ang.
Asked why he did not use Jenny’s tank to dive down to search for her, he said it did not occur to him. His Lordship: Why not? Sunny Ang: If she had been anywhere round the boat I would have seen her air bubbles. His Lordship: Did you realize that this girl, whom you love and whom you were going to marry, had gone down and disappeared, and you calmly turn round to the boatman and said, ‘All right. Go to St John’s’? Sunny Ang: If she was anywhere around the boat we would have seen her air bubbles. His Lordship: It didn’t occur to you to go down and search for her? Sunny Ang: No. His Lordship: Why? Sunny Ang: Because I thought there was obviously a leak and also if she was anywhere around the boat we would have seen her air bubbles. Mr Francis Seow: But the point remains that the Sealion tank of Jenny in the boat could have been used if you had used it? Sunny Ang: Yes. Mr Francis Seow: And it had seven minutes of air or more? Sunny Ang: Yes. Mr Francis Seow: And your answer is: ‘It never occurred to me’? Sunny Ang: Yes. Mr Francis Seow: You had skin-diving equipment with you in the boat? Sunny Ang: Yes. Mr Francis Seow: The girl you were going to marry was obviously in difficulty, if not actually dead already. Why didn’t you use your skin-diving equipment to go down?
Sunny Ang paused for several long minutes. The courtroom was hushed when he replied, “I was not quite sure what sort of difficulties she was in. It occurred to me-it was a vague thought-that she might have been attacked by sharks. In fact, I remarked upon that to Yusuf. Not then, but long after the incident.”
His Lordship: You could have gone down to find out? Sunny Ang: She might have been attacked by sharks. Mr Francis Seow: Was one of the main reasons that sharks may be lurking where your boat was? Sunny Ang: Yes. Mr Francis Seow: Why did you bring her there in the first place, if sharks were lurking there? Sunny Ang: The idea of sharks being there never occurred to me. In fact, it was Yusuf who recommended the spot to me-I mean the Sister Islands. Mr Francis Seow: When did you change back into your street clothes? Sunny Ang: I think I remember I put them on, on my way to St John’s Island. Mr Francis Seow: So that when the Malay divers were going in you were then in your street clothes, and you saw no point in joining them? Sunny Ang: I do not say I saw no point. I was in my street clothes and there were more experienced skin-divers, and there were five of them. Besides I knew the chances of finding her were very slim. His Lordship: You never got into the water at all that day? You never got your feet wet? Sunny Ang: That is so.
Sunny Ang admitted to crown counsel that on 28 August 1963 (the day after Jenny’s disappearance), Robert Cheok, brother of Jenny, came to his house and insinuated that Ang had murdered her.
Mr Francis Seow: And didn’t you tell him that if you had gone down together with Jenny, and if you had surfaced without her, then he could suspect you, and not otherwise? Sunny Ang: Yes. Mr Francis Seow: I put it to you that, after you insured Jenny heavily, you deliberately took her out to Pulau Dua where you tampered with her scuba equipment so that she would drown underneath the sea? Sunny Ang: I did not. Mr Francis Seow: So that you could collect the money? Sunny Ang: No.
Ang was in the witness-box for eight hours over three days. His counsel did not re-examine, and, when Ang returned to the dock, called Yeo Tong Hock of Penang. Yeo gave his evidence in Hokkien. He said he was a food hawker, but in 1963 a brothel-keeper, and a pimp. At first he claimed that he had seen a woman similar to Jenny alive in Penang, and later in Kedah, after her reported disappearance. Later, shown a picture of Jenny, he agreed it was not the same girl.
He agreed with defence counsel that a photograph was first shown to him by an insurance investigator. He went to the High Court in Kuala Lumpur to make an affidavit.
Cross-examined by crown counsel, Yeo admitted he had bad eyesight. In September 1964, he met Stephen Lim, an investigator from Malayan Adjustment. He was shown a photograph. The investigator suggested it might be Jenny Cheok. He said he was prepared to make a statement but not swear an affidavit. Crown Counsel: And Lim told you that if you did not swear an affidavit, and if the girl was subsequently found, you would not be entitled to any award? Yeo: Yes. Crown Counsel: And he told you that $25,000 would be for you if you swear out this affidavit? Yeo: No. He said if this person were to be found then there would be a reward for me. Crown Counsel: The insurance company would pay you $25,000? Yeo: Yes. His Lordship: Can you say, looking at this photograph now, in this court, at this moment, that it is the same girl you saw in Penang? Defence Counsel: Could he look at both the photographs? His Lordship: Certainly. (Photographs shown to witness.) Tell me. on sober reflection, now, with the greatest care with your answer-can you say absolutely whether or not that is the girl? Yeo: Not the same.
As Mr Coomaraswamy rose to re-examine the witness. the judge told Yeo that he need fear no consequences of any answer he may give to any question he may be asked. Mr Coomaraswamy: Now, where have you been living for the past 10 days? Mr Francis Seow: I object to that- His Lordship: How does this come up in cross-examination? Mr Coomaraswamy: My instructions are that he was held incommunicado by the Penang police and threatened that he would be in trouble if he gave evidence in support of what he said in the affidavit. His Lordship: Where have you been for the past 10 days? Yeo: I left Penang on 2 May for Taiping. From Taiping I went to Kuala Lumpur. Last night I received a phone call saying I was wanted in Singapore. His Lordship: I am bound to say, exercising all the restraint I can, that I think it was, Mr Coomaraswamy, a most unhappy remark for you to say that this witness had been kept incommunicado by the Penang police for 10 days. There is not the slightest evidence to support it. I shall have a lot to say about this to the jury when I come to sum up. Mr Coomaraswamy: I was doing it on instruction, my Lord, and the instructions were given to me by a responsible person.
On the 11 ^ th day of the trial (the fourth day of the defence), Mr Coomaraswamy drew the court’s attention to a report in The Straits Times that Richard Ang was facing charges in connection with a witness in the case. The judge called for a copy of the paper and ordered the jury not to read the report.
Defence counsel said that Richard Ang had been arrested on 22 April and produced in court on 23 April. The case was mentioned on 30 April and hearing fixed for August. (Subsequently the case against Richard Ang was dropped). Mr Coomaraswamy complained that it was significant that the report should have appeared when his intention of calling him as a witness had already been known. Mr Seow assured the judge that the prosecution had nothing to do with the report. “I should be horrified if you had,” said the judge.
Mr Coomaraswamy closed his case after calling three more witnesses: two police officers who gave evidence about the car accident, and 16-year-old William Ang. One policeman said he had never in two and a half years in the area even seen dogs in the vicinity of the accident and William Ang said that Jenny had learned to swim ‘quite fast’. He said he had seen Jenny scuba-diving twice off Changi Beach.
Both Mr Coomaraswamy, for Ang, and Mr Francis Seow addressed the court on the 12 ^ th day of the trial. Defence counsel spoke for two hours. Crown counsel spoke altogether for an hour and a quarter. Then the judge began his summing up. He addressed the jury for three-quarters of an hour on Monday, 17 May 1965, and for another hour and three-quarters on Tuesday morning.
The Trial: The Defence
In his two-hour speech for the defence, Mr Coomaraswamy spoke from rough notes. He submitted there were numerous ways in which Jenny could have met her death-if, in fact, she was dead. She could have been swept away, or struck her head against some coral and become unconscious and subsequently lost her flipper. She might have been attacked by a shark. She might have been suffering from nitrogen narcissus (a form of numbness). “In a case like this, you cannot act on evidence that maybe she is dead. You cannot even act on evidence that allows you to say, ‘You may be pretty sure she is dead.’ You have to go beyond that and act only if you can be morally certain beyond reasonable doubt that she is dead.”
He submitted that on the evidence, the jury could not say beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused did kill Jenny in the manner alleged by the prosecution.
Quoting extensively from a law book on the assessment of circumstantial evidence, Mr Coomaraswamy said that the prosecution evidence, put simply and stripped of all the trimmings, was that the accused stood to gain by the death of Jenny, that he was with her when she disappeared, that after her disappearance he made representations that he presumed her to be dead, and that he had told untruths in the witness-box. “On this basis the prosecution is going to ask you to return a verdict that he is guilty of murder.”
Dealing with the allegation that Ang told untruths in the witness-box, Mr Coomaraswamy read extracts from accused’s diary and submitted that if the diary was a ‘diary of truth’, as the prosecution contended, it was strange that it contained no entry on 8 June of a telephone call to McDougall (a director of Edward Lumley Limited, the
