Cruel Crimes – The Hello Kitty Murder

In May 1999, a 13-14 year old Melody (name changed) walked into a police station in the Tsim Sha Tsui area of Hong Kong. She told the attending officers that she was being haunted by the ghost of a young woman she had helped torture. A fairly far fetched story – ghosts and torture, but still the officers followed up on Fong’s story.

When they investigated a third floor flat, located in the middle of the Tsim Sha Tsui shopping district, they found every indication of a shocking crime. There was evidence of a corpse hidden about the apartment, parts of internal organs kept in the fridge, and some teeth were located. Most shocking of all was the discovery of a human skull, found in a large, stuffed ‘Hello Kitty’ mermaid toy.
Three men and Fong were arrested and soon the full scale of the horrific crime came to light. The victim was 23 year old Fan Man-yee, also known as Ah Map. Ah Map had been left to a girl’s home as a child, after being abandoned by her parents. By the time she was 16, she had turned to a life of small crime, sex for sale and various addictions. She worked the assorted clubs and brothels of the Tsim Sha Tsui/Kowloon district of Hong Kong, and many of her clientele were known in the various circles of the Chinese underground societies. Ah Map met 34 year old Chan Man-lok in 1997, at one of the various brothels she worked in. He became a regular client, and had violent tendencies when he was on one of his many methamphetamine binges.
It must have been after one of these violent outbursts that Ah Map felt she did not want to see Chan again. Unfortunately she made a mistake; she stole his wallet which contained $4000. Although she did pay back the money, and $10,000 in interest, Chan still wanted more.

Ah Map was unable to pay the extra $16,000 Chan demanded, so on 17th March, 1999, Map was located and abducted from her home by two of Chan’s accomplices, Leung Shing-cho (27) and Leung Wai-lun (21). Ah Map had now entered a world of depravity, torture and eventually, death. During the investigation and trial Melody, the 13 year old girl who led police to the crime, gave intricate details on what horrors Ah Map went through over the next month, leading up to her death. She was there for the entire event, she was Chan’s girlfriend. Originally Chan had abducted Ah Map in order to hold her and work her, taking all of her earnings until the debt had been repaid in full. However, with the repeated beatings Map suffered, no one really wanted to pay for the services, so Chan and his two friends used her as a personal play thing instead. At first the torture was limited to repeated beatings, first with bare hands, but soon this escalated to hitting her with furniture and then metal bars. They would force Map to smile, laugh and say how happy she was, during the beatings. If she didn’t, the beatings would get worse.
Between beatings she would be left in the kitchen, while the trio (and Melody) would continue on their meth binges and play video games. When the games got boring, they would revisit Ah Map and continue her torture.

They found uses for every kitchen appliance or item of food kept in the fridge and in the cupboards. At times they would melt plastic onto her body, and then, running out of things to melt, they would just burn her directly, followed by smearing different foods into the wounds in some sort of sick experiment in pain. The torturers soon discovered it was easier to get to Map if she was suspended, so using electrical cabling they tied her to a hook in the ceiling, and between bouts, would leave her hanging in the air. The torturing got worse and worse, and from here I’ll leave out the details, as to be honest, their sick ingenuity does not need to be further written about. Eventually (and no doubt mercifully), after a month of extreme torture, Ah Map passed away. She had been left in the bathroom, and died during the night. The torturers could not work out what to do, so they went back to playing video games. The following day, after another all-night binge, Chan decided that Ah Map needed to be further destroyed. She was placed into the bathtub, where she was dismembered. Her parts were boiled down, in an effort to cover the smell, the head was stripped of all flesh and placed into the Hello Kitty doll. As Chan and his associates were boiling body parts on one hot plate, they would be preparing their own meals on the other… at times, using the same utensils in both. Although most of the parts of Ah Maps body were disposed of, there were some remains left in the flat when the police started their investigation, along with the head in the ‘Hello Kitty’ doll, from which the crime received its name.

After the trial, the three men were handed life sentences with no review for parole, for a minimum of 20 years. Although the testimony from Melody was found to be sound, and the evidence found in the flat spoke volumes, the three men were only convicted of manslaughter and unlawful imprisonment. The jury found that the men had not killed Ah Map with intent, but was rather just an affect of the continual abuse. Before the apartment block where the crime took place was demolished, it became a ground for many people who wanted to make contact with the spirit of Ah Map. People who visited the flat, specifically the kitchen, say that many candles could be found burning in small circles on the floor and on cupboards. When Melody was asked how they could all take part in such a horrific crime she replied “She was broken and playing with her wasn’t so much fun after that, but we carried on anyway. There wasn’t anything else to do” “I did it for fun. Just to see what it was like to hurt someone.” For her testimony Melody received total immunity from prosecution.
Photo: The ‘Hello Kitty’ mermaid doll
Inset Upper: Fan Man-yee aka Ah Map, the victim of one months extreme torture and eventual death.
Inset Lower: The apartment where this cruel crime took place.