User:Ashleyglim/Hello Kitty murder

The Hello Kitty murder was a 1999 case in which a nightclub hostess was abducted and tortured in an apartment in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong, after stealing a wallet owned by one of her frequent customers. On 17 March, Fan Man-yee (樊敏儀) was captured, kidnapped, and tortured by three men and one girl before dying a month later. She was then decapitated and her skull was placed inside of a Hello Kitty doll, which symbolized and gave the name for the murder case.

Background
Fan Man-Yee suffered throughout her early childhood and teenage years. As a child, she was raised in an all girl's home as she was abandoned by her family. As the orphanage had an age restriction of the age 16, Fan Man Yee became homeless and developed a drug addiction, turned to illegal sex-work and prostitution in the streets for survival. At the age of 21, Fan Man-Yee began working at a brothel as a sexworker.

Kidnapping
Chang Man-Lok (陳文樂), a 34-year-old (sources mention that he was member of the Chinese mafia, a drug dealer, and a pimp ), was one of Fan Man-Yee's usual clients for her sexwork. It was said that she was his personal favorite in the brothel and he'd seek her out for her services. Fan Man-Yee decided to take advantage of his favoritism and steal his wallet that contained about 500 US Dollars (4000 Hong Kong Dollars). As Chan Man-Lok realized that his money was gone, he knew who had stolen it and demanded her to return the money with an interest fee of 10,000 HK Dollars. Although Fan Man-Yee returned the stolen money immediately, she begged for additional time to gather the interest payment.

At first, Man-lok had thought about turning Fan Man-Yee into his own prostitute, and make money off of her earnings, but the plan got turned into a kidnapping. This was when she was kidnapped by three men and one girl: 34-year-old Chan Man-lok (陳文樂), 27-year-old Leung Shing-cho (梁勝祖), 21-year-old Leung Wai-lun (梁偉倫), and Chan Man-lok's 14-year-old grooming victim known as “Ah Fong”. They took her to an apartment at No. 31 Granville Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, where they imprisoned her for a month.

Torture
During her imprisonment, Fan was subjected to torture. According to Chan Man-lok's grooming victim, they beat her with metal bars, kitchen utensils, and furniture pieces, sometimes while hanging her and using her as a punching bag. In one occasion, they had kicked her head around 50 times, in which Ah Fong had joined in. They rubbed spices into her wounds, burned her with candle wax and hot plastic (specifically on her legs and feet so she couldn't walk), raped her, forced her to consume human feces and urine, and forced her to smile and say she enjoyed the beatings; if she refused, they subjected her to even harsher torture.

Murder
After a month of imprisonment and torture, Fan succumbed to her wounds and passed away while her captors were out. Other references say she died overnight. Upon returning home, they discovered her deceased body in the bathroom they had locked her in. Her body was then dismembered and boiled. Her captors then sewed her boiled skull inside of a Hello Kitty mermaid doll and discarded the rest of her remains. Only her skull, one tooth, and some internal organs were recovered in a plastic bag.

Fan's remains were found only after Chan's grooming victim led police to the scene.

Trial
After a six-week and four days trial, the three men were convicted of manslaughter, as the jury ruled the remains were not sufficient to show whether Fan was murdered or died in another way, such as a drug overdose. The jury could not rule that the men intended to kill 23-year-old Fan Man-yee, which would have meant a mandatory life sentence, but it was determined she died as a result of their abuse. The grooming victim, Ah-Fong, testified at the trial in exchange for immunity.

Justice Peter Nguyen, who sentenced the trio to life in prison with the possibility of parole, stated, "Never in Hong Kong in recent years has a court heard of such cruelty, depravity, callousness, brutality, violence, and viciousness. Psychiatric reports described the three, members of a secret triad society, as "remorseless". There would be no review for parole for 20 years, i.e. until 2020.

Aftermath
The apartment building, in which the crime took place, was demolished in September 2012 and has been rebuilt as a hotel in 2016.

The publicity around the case resulted in the production and release of films that told the story. Both Human Pork Chop (烹屍之喪盡天良) and There is a Secret in my Soup were released in 2001.