What Kills Us This Week!

The trial of Charitar's killer is being run in the "City" section of South China Morning Post right above updates on the Nancy Kissell "Milkshake Murder" retrial.  Yup, it's in the social pages!

It's Entertainment, folks!

Honestly!  Don't you just want to hit someone!


And the stories feature Charitar's glamorous sister - here to represent the family at the trial - which I can forgive, but if they start running "What She's Wearing Today", I'm going straight down to SCMP and punching someone in the nose.  Don't care who!

SCMP, you have been warned!

If you've read my post "The Girl is the Jeweled Shoes" you'll know why this murder means so much to me and why I'm just so angry about the way they're handling this.  Yes, it's that I really feel for what Charitar went through but also - do I dare confess this? - it's the horrible and downright selfish thought that if I'd arrived at Floor 15 only ten minutes earlier, this could very well have been me SCMP is skewering this way.

But you don't want to know how angry I am, do you! You just want to know what's happening, right?  

Well, so far, air-conditioner repairman So has pleaded not guilty, despite them having him on film on the afternoon of the murder at the bank unsuccessfully trying out her ATM card, and they also have a fellow workman - Kwok - who says he helped So take the body upstairs and put it atop the air-conditioning unit in the utilities room  - and the fact this guy didn't demur makes you ask yourself just how many sociopaths are there out there? - and since So also had her mobile phone back at his house, discovered during the second police raid, I think that's enough evidence, so So's soooo going down for it. However, as everyone who isn't Chinese is saying "Since she's not Chinese, they'll probably only find him guilty of improperly disposing of waste."

Thus once again non-Chinese folk are being very cross and cynical and, really, who can blame us! It's the police killing of the Nepali guy for public urination all over again; part of the same Chinese mindset that we Foreign Devils aren't quite real and therefore don't deserve the same consideration and respect the Chinese population does.

"If you prick us, do we not bleed?"

Oh, and although the police previously took credit for finding her body, turns out it was another workman, who, since he was coming back the next day, was looking for a safe place to stash his tools overnight, came across it by accident, so the police actually didn't even LOOK for her even after they promised her family they'd take the case.


Also, as it turns out from the coroner's report, Charitar's murder was most likely a Hate Crime because there was way too much "KILL" involved. I don't want to talk about how he killed her - I don't even want to think about how he killed her - but it's clear from what came out there that what had me so worried  didn't occur.

OK, I'll tell you: what was sickening me was the thought that maybe he was just robbing her when the 'ping' of my lift doors opening made him panic, or maybe that she heard the doors and tried to scream so he shut her up.  But it's obvious now from the level of violence involved this isn't what happened.

But this whole "too much kill" is a worry, isn't it?  I don't know a lot about murder, but to me it seems like a person would build up to that. They'd be a series of murders, yes? Or maybe a series of violent acts against women which didn't involve murder?  But, as far as I know, there's none of that here. Yes, there has recently been an almost year-long series of killings of lone prostitutes, but they got him and it turned out to be a young Indian man.

But to come out of nowhere? A burst of crazy 'play' mega-violence?  How does someone, particularly a simple workman, do that?  How could anyone be suddenly so angry; so suddenly capable of doing so much harm? Mmmm, I think they need to get his wife on the stand and find out more about So's 'private downtime'!

Or maybe the wife isn't such a good idea.  Many decades back, there was HK's "Body in the Box" murder: a young girl killed in a burst of mega-violence and stuffed into a box left next to a dumpster.  Turned out she was murdered, inexplicably, by a normally honest and humble radio repairman.  The crime was so horrible no one could understand it until police interviewed his wife and said she was truly the nastiest and savagest person they had ever come across - and they'd met some doozies in their time - and that the burst of rage against this young girl was undoubtedly a reaction to the years of abuse the husband had suffered at his wife's hands.

Hong Kong is a very safe place to live, although, as I tell folks who are fooled by this preternatural calm, "It's because the Triads don't permit freelance crime." Yes, we are unusually safe here but it's not because we are all saintly and law-abiding citizens; it's because our local Criminal Organisations don't want police snooping around and so themselves hunt down and dispose of anyone who commits crimes, and everyone local knows it so it's really only we Foreign Devil types who do all the sorts of random bad stuff that occurs so often and so freely in other countries.

Hey, did you know that HK has an entire unit that deals only with crimes committed by Indians? The local Indian Community recently found out and is up in arms about it, but, what with those series of  robberies at Starbucks across HK and South China of women's purses - crimes most likely committed by gangs of young Pakistani fellows - and, yes, I was robbed up in China most likely by one of these Pakistani gangs - and, since they all had very "London" accents, I too think "al qaeda" - I am pleased HK has set up a special unit specifically for this sort of thing ... and who are hopefully working on these Starbucks robberies ... and thus I end up getting my gorgeous red Coach sackbag back again.

That's me! The eternal optimist! Living in hope!

But this is about Charitar, the girl in the jeweled shoes.  No, that's it.  There's nothing more I can tell you since that's where we're up to in this case.  Naturally I'll tell you more when it happens so this post will be on-going and without my choice of Threatdown for the moment.

Of course, if I was choosing a Threatdown it would be something about Chinese racism ... but I'll, for now, give everyone the benefit of the doubt and await the outcome.

Update: 

China Daily, the Communist Party newspaper, is giving far better, more detailed and more sensible coverage of the case, so this update comes from there. And here's what they're saying:.

Kwok, school friend of So, also an electrician working on the same problem in the same building, is currently on the stand and, in exchange for immunity from prosecution, is saying that So told him, at dinner one night sometime between 12 October and Kwok's birthday on 17th October, that he'd tried to rob someone and they'd accidentally died and he didn't know what to do with the body and so Kwok, as a good and loyal friend, went back with him to the utilities room on the 33rd floor and together they'd lifted the body up atop the air-conditioning unit.

I'm not buying it.  I'm not buying any of it.

He's also saying that So was determined to do a robbery - had been talking about it for years - so was riding the lifts to select a victim, and had told him that he chosen Charitar the moment he saw her enter the lift, so, as Charitar was exiting the lift, he pulled out his knife and held it in her back. He then pulled her back in and took her to the 33rd floor where ... he didn't know what happened because he left the room and when he came back she was dead. Just dead. Just like that.

I don't even have to tell you that I'm buying not even a second of that.

Kwok and So would, back then, have been 22 years old, which is, in HK years - since people grow up so much slower here - about ...  mmmm, 16 or 17? Teenagers anyway. And teenage boys in this day and age, zonked out on computer games and violent movies, don't talk about "robbing people"; they talk about how they want to do a murder.

I'm a highschool teacher.  I know these boys.  I've tried to teach these boys. I'm perpetually disgusted by these boys.  I've already told you how, years ago, I was helping a bunch of 'at risk' teenage boys write a short film script and all they could talk about, in the most delicious and relishing tones, was how much they wanted to do a murder.

However I haven't told you how, also many years ago, when we were teaching in the Australian Outback, we housed a team of visiting soccer players - from Darwin, by the way, so you have been warned - and for the entire week these horrible 16 year olds talked about nothing else except how much they wanted to commit a murder, how they would commit a murder, what pleasures they expected from committing this murder, blah, blah, blah, and I thought it was all silly talk until, about four years later, while watching a news item about a particularly stupid and senseless Outback killing, I recognised several faces and a couple of their names.

Boy-brains coupled with boy-hormones living in a culture that feeds them a steady diet of second-hand violence! Of course it would be only a matter of time until they'd want to do it for themselves; do it for real. And I think this is what's happened here.  So wanted to 'do it for real' and Kwok, all now nicely protected by his immunity from prosecution, was his enabler.

And the rest of that claptrap! So told him about it over dinner?  Maybe days later?  And at night?  And then they together went back to move the body?  Um, excuse me?, during the night government offices are closed! And bodies days later, so I imagine, not having the experience myself, stink unbelievably and also fall apart when you try to lift them over your head to stash them away up high.

And then there's that 15th floor all in darkness!  And "a lot of you are getting it wrong today" which means, surely, that Charitar had been on the 15th floor.  And what she would have done was the same thing I did: she'd have got the correct address and gone straight down in the lift to the ground floor, and I know, since I was there, that the ground floor around those lifts was crawling with Nepali security officers, and they would have noticed surely a man with a knife pulling a woman into a lift.

Nah, this is all too silly.

This whole thing was set up.  Someone with access to the utilities room turned off those 15th floor lights, cameras, and air-conditioning which would have cleared the floor of workers ... and then So lurked around that floor and just waited.

And Kwok is lying through his teeth because he'd most likely been the one waiting up there in the 33rd floor utility room, manipulating the equipment, so he's yakking on about So riding around in lifts because he doesn't want anyone to ask about his involvement in the whole affair and ...

... mmm, I just hope they haven't given this blanket immunity to the actual Mastermind.

So that would have to be my choice for this week:

Threatdown

Stupid and immature 'teenage' boys

left to work 

without adult supervision.

Later:

So has been found guilty of murdering Charitar and sentenced to life imprisonment; his second life sentence! Now that the trial is over, police have told the court that So is already in prison for the horrible crime that appalled us two years ago: killing a young airline hostess, Yau, and holding the body of his victim to ransom, making her family pay through the nose to find out where he'd hidden her. 

He was caught after that murder but let's not be cynical and say how it was because that victim was Chinese that the police bothered to investigate properly.

Oh, and here's something very interesting indeed.  You know how HK police caught the two "acid bomber" copy-cats?  Through movements of their Octopus cards?  Well, that was such a success - although it's a pity they can't catch the real Acid Bomber that way - police tried using the same technique for all their other cold cases, and that's how they discovered Kwok.  Yup, based on various Octopus card movements, they pulled Kwok in for questioning for Charitar's murder and recognised him as someone they'd interviewed already as a suspect for the Yau murder/ransom case, that's when, in exchange for immunity, Kwok spilled the beans and ratted out So who was already in prison for the killing/ransom of Yau, so I guess it really didn't matter if he was put away for a second life sentence for the crime.

Kwok! A suspect in TWO vicious and nasty murders with hideous sociopathic overtones. I strongly think this fellow is someone the police need to keep a very close eye on in the future.  Agree?