The Hello Kitty Murder case took place in Hong Kong during the spring of 1999, where Fan Man-yee, a 23 year old nightclub hostess, was abducted in Lai Yiu Estate and was tortured and raped in a apartment located in Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, after stealing a wallet owned by one of her frequent customers. She was in captivity by three men who were identified as Chan Man-lok, Leung Wai-Lun, and Leung Shing-cho. Fan Man-yee was abducted from her flat, where the three men took her to an apartment on Granville Road in Tsim Sha Tsui. The apartment was rented by one of the perpetrators, Chan Man-lok, but was eventually owned by two other men, Ah Sam and Ah Kao, who weren’t involved in gang activities. At first, Chan Man-lok wanted to make money off Fan Man-yee by eventually pimping Fan Man-yee to the two owners of the apartment.
During Fan Man-yee’s captivity she was tortured and raped which got increasingly more violent each time. She was beaten with metal bars, she was hanged and used as a punching bag, and the men would rub spices on her wounds. She experienced getting kicked on her head fifty times, along with burning her legs and feet with hot candle wax in addition to some hot plastic, so Fan Man-yee couldn’t walk. During the abuse, the three men would make her smile and act like she’d enjoy the beating they would give her, and if she ever declined, then the men would turn the abuse into even harsher torment. After a period of time, the abuse Fan Man-yee went through eventually led to her traumatic shock and her death. Due to her many wounds on her body, Fan Man-yee died between April 14 and April 15 of the year 1999. After her perpetrators found her dead body, they decided to cut off her body and boil her remains. Not only that, but they stuffed her skull into a mermaid Hello Kitty plushie, which was filled with insects.
Officers from the Yau Ma Tei Police division, who were Chiu Ka-hsue, Sin Tim-wah, and Andrew Yip Yan-ling, arrived at the scene, discovering only her skull, one tooth, and some internal organs that belonged to Fan Man-yee. Later on, further investigation of other body parts of Fan Man-yee was discovered in a few dumpsters located in Sham Shui Po, Wan Chai, and Tai Kok Tsui. During the arrest, one of the perpetrators, Chan, was living with his wife Ah Pui along with his newborn baby at an apartment in the Shek Ning section in Shek Lei Estate. In the early morning on May 28, the apartments were searched by the SWAT, who at first thought they had a suspect but ended up finding no evidence of murder. After the police found clues each time they finally found who was responsible for this murder, which eventually went out to the media via a Macau-based local newspaper.
As the news spread, one of the perpetrators, Leung Wai-lun, fled to mainland China before he was caught on 14 February 2000 after finding irregularities in his passport. Later, after a few days, the three perpetrators were sent back to Hong Kong for the trial, in which they were convicted of manslaughter and were sentenced to life in prison. The Hello Kitty murder case remains one of Hong Kong’s most haunting crimes, not just for its brutality, but for what it reveals about the darkest corners of human nature. While the killers were brought to justice, the true horror lies in the fact that such unimaginable cruelty exists.
