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?”
On the way back, sure enough, they had the accident which if not regarded as a ‘moral certainty’ was anticipated by them both. The judge directed the attention of the jury to the contrast of the police evidence concerning the accident and the evidence given by Sunny Ang. He asked them to keep in mind the fact that the car, badly damaged, would not be ready before the middle of September. Yet, the judge went on, Ang gave as the reason why he extended Jenny’s insurance on the morning of 27 August for five days-to use his own words-‘We might have to go to Seremban that night by night train and drive the car back if it was ready and, if not, to see that the workmen are getting on with the job of repairing the damaged car’. The judge said he found this explanation extraordinary. “Was that the real reason for extending this policy for a further five days? What had the accused in mind? Had he decided that very afternoon, while scuba-diving in this dangerous channel, that a golden opportunity presented itself to him for getting rid of her, while cunningly contriving to give it the appearance of an unfortunate but innocent accident? That is the question you must ask yourselves.”
The judge carefully examined Ang’s version of what happened on the spot, ‘in mid-channel to which he had directed the boatman’. Their intention according to the accused was to go down and collect coral together, a joint expedition, ‘an intention that was never carried put’.
Jenny went down first and surfaced after 10 minutes, Then, Ang said, it had been his intention that they would both go down together to collect coral. He turned on Jenny’s air valve to her tank and down she went. “And it is important, gentlemen of the jury, to note that the accused said that at that time his tank was then on his back. He said he let Jenny go down first on the principle of ‘ladies first’, a matter of courtesy.” Here the judge paused. He said he wanted to remind the jury of the boatman’s evidence which was that when Jenny went down the second time Sunny Ang had none of his equipment on at all. All he had on were his bathing trunks. “Now, someone is, therefore, lying. Is it the accused or is it the boatman? Why should the boatman be lying? It is of no interest to him, one way or the other.”
The judge went on to examine Ang’s version of the washers and the tanks, recalling his attempts to fix the leak and the successful efforts of the experts. “At this stage,” remarked the judge, “Ang had apparently been successful in putting out of action all the available scuba-diving equipment. They could no longer be used and Ang said he couldn’t use them.” “It was then,” recalled Justice Buttrose, “that I asked Sunny Ang what he thought Jenny would be doing all this time, and he gave the astonishing reply, ‘Oh, Jenny was a patient sort of girl’; she would be waiting for him, hanging on to the bottom of the guide line rope on the sea-bed for some 10 or 15 minutes. He considered that quite a reasonable time. What do you think, members of the jury? Is it not only possible, but probable, that having waited for a short while her curiosity got the better of her and she got a little more bold by then? She might have decided to let go of that guide line for a little while and gone to have a look to see what was about. And was it not then that one of the undertows got her and swept her away? With her flipper heel-strap broken, then as a purely unskilled novice scuba diver, she in fact, before seeing where she was, was swept hundreds of yards away? The air in her tank then ran out and she died. Is that a possible explanation for there being no air bubbles seen by anyone at any time?”
The judge pointed out that even at that stage the accused said he had not become anxious. He was in no way perturbed or alarmed. He pulled the guide line three times to signal to her to surface and then went back to attend to his tank. Two minutes later he again pulled the guide line and even at that stage, he said, he had not decided to abandon the expedition, let alone become alarmed about Jenny. He said he wanted her to come up to preserve the air in her tank so that they could go down again together. “What do you think of that, gentlemen of the jury? If that was a genuine reason why then did he not signal to her to come up long before? He said he had seen no air bubbles breaking on the surface of the water. He was still not alarmed and he made, to me at any rate, an astonishing statement: that she might have wandered off on her own or that she was playing a game with him and hiding under the boat. It seemed to me quite remarkable. He even said that she might have swum underwater and landed at one or other of the islands. He said he seriously thought so at the time, but he definitely did not think so now. So what do you think?”
Ang said he looked under the sampan on both sides but could see no air bubbles. He and the boatman scanned the shore on both sides to see if there were any traces of footsteps or other signs of life. “It was only then, and then only, for the first time, that the accused realized that Jenny might have got into trouble. You may think he took a long time to do so.”
Then Ang became alarmed and they looked for air bubbles. He vaguely remembered a telephone on St John’s Island. Yusuf confirmed this and off they went to phone the Marine Police. “Ang told us he never asked Yusuf to go faster because, he said, the sampan was going flat out. He said he might have shed a tear, but without knowing it. He maintained that he did run to the phone, but Jaffar denied he ran at all.”
The judge returned to the scene of the tragedy and the ‘curious discussion’ about the weightlessness of a tank in water. “He thereupon took the small tank that Jenny had used on her first time down and placed it in the sea. The tank sank because, according to Ang, it had been painted-painted, if you please, gentlemen of the jury. He put it in the water because he was under the impression that tanks could float, whether full or empty. Do you think a coat or two of paint would have any effect?”
Here the judge erred. As defence counsel pointed out during the appeal, one of the accused’s brothers had said the tank was painted. “I asked one of the experts if painting the tank was likely to increase its weight. But the accused never said so,” explained Mr Coomaraswamy.
Justice Buttrose said that Sunny Ang’s explanation for not going into the water himself was because he saw no air bubbles: that was the main reason. He presumed she was not there, and there was no point in diving to look. He also thought she might have been attacked by sharks. He also told us he could only hold his breath underwater for some three-quarters of a minute to a minute.
The judge called attention again to the three letters Ang wrote to the insurance companies the following day claiming under the policies. “That, gentlemen of the jury, in brief is the outline of his defence: an accident in which he was not concerned in any way, and had no part. He does not know what happened. He did not intend or contrive her disappearance. He neither cut the flipper, nor in any way tampered with the equipment. He explained why he did not go down to look for her.”
Ang called three witnesses, firstly a gentleman by the name of Yeo Tong Hock, who described himself as, in effect, a brothel-keeper, and admitted he was a pimp. What joy the defence got out of his evidence, the judge said, was something he failed to understand. “Because if he came to bless the case for the defence, he left to curse. How can you be left under any doubt, members of the jury, that now he is quite sure, absolutely sure, that the girl whom he saw in Penang and later in Kedah is not Jenny?”
The judge was highly critical of Mr Coomaraswamy’s statement that the witness had been kept out of the way, incommunicado, by the Penang police for 10 days before the trial. “You heard Mr Coomaraswamy say that from the Bar. Now, a more ill-considered and irresponsible statement from the Bar I have yet to hear in a case of this gravity and magnitude. There is not a shred of evidence to support it. It was emphatically denied by the witness himself.”
The judge went on to deal briefly with the evidence given by Ang’s younger brother, Richard Ang, and the two police officers called by the defence to give evidence about the car accident. Justice Buttrose said he failed to appreciate the relevance of that evidence at all; he did not intend, he said, to waste any time on it, ‘except to remind you again that the corporal said it was not a sharp bend in the road but a gentle bend’. Ang had said the bend was sharp.
What reliance, asked the judge, could be placed on Sunny Ang’s evidence? He said he was a truthful person. He did, however, admit to telling a few white lies. ‘That was the opening gambit. On being pressed he admitted to telling lies to the insurance companies, not white ones, but full-blooded red ones. What he told the insurance companies were quite untrue. ‘Yes, I lied to them, but they were necessary because I had to get my commission’, he explained, in a sort of off-handed manner, as if that not only explained them but excused them. But what you must consider, in weighing up his evidence, is: if the accused will lie in order to get commission on the sale of insurance policies, what will he do for half a million dollars, or for even higher stakes?”
The judge, nearing the end of his summing up, came to the gloves. Ang had admitted that he brought two pairs of gloves with him in the sampan on 27 August 1963, one dark blue and the other dark brown. He said they were to wear them because the coral they were going to collect were sharp and the gloves would prevent their
