AS YOU drive from Central to Tuen Mun the tourist
emblems of Hong Kong disappear one by one. First go the syringe-skyscrapers,
the five star hotels and polished shopping centres. Then you lose
the designer shops, the boutique cafes, the cavernous restaurants
and their blazing neon signs.
Finally even the old style tenements, their colourful
markets and bustling streets fade away and you are left, as you complete
the journey of between two and five hours, amid a clinical arrangement
of brutal, sodium-lit, concrete tower blocks, shrivelled trees and
broken playgrounds.
Tuen Mun slid from a governmental drawing board into
the far east corner of the New Territories in the late 1970s - a brand
new satellite town for 480,000 souls with its own leisure facilities and
industries. It was supposed to be self-contained with most residents
working locally. But when China's cheap labour dragged manufacturers
over the border, Tuen Mun's residents found themselves having to make
the arduous journey into Kowloon and Hong Kong for work. Today the
satellite town's most famous local products seem to be broken families,
latch-key and home alone children.
Here, money is scarce and boredom an art form.
Truancy and juvenile crime are among the highest in the territory. On
any given day lethargic youths clog the shopping centres and playgrounds
high on prescription drugs and bottles of cough mixture bought from Tuen
Mun's notoriously lax chemists.
Heroin, "ice" and other narcotics are also available.
The Sun Yee On triad has a powerful grip on Tuen Mun, running building
sites, drugs, vice and loan-sharking. They recruit in the schoolyard. In
1992 Ip Kin-mei, a 13-year-old boy, was beaten to death by his
schoolmates for refusing to join.
The sense of community planners envisaged never
happened. At night, along the raw concrete corridors there is a sense of
siege. Every iron door is bolted shut. Televisions blare. Family
arguments rage. Gambling addiction, particularly among mahjong-playing
housewives, is commonplace and Sun Yee On's many loansharks exploit them
with ready loans. Standards of literacy and education among adults is
low. Child abuse is the worst in Hong Kong. According to Action Against
Child Abuse, Tuen Mun's problem is "inadequate parenting skills and
social isolation".
This is Hong Kong minus the money. A dormitory town
for shampoo boys, karaoke girls and building site labourers. A Hong Kong
of stone-washed denim jeans, of knapsacks, tattoos, white socks,
mainland haircuts and plastic shoes.
And it was here that Lam Kwok-wai spent his formative
years. His father, already 60, stepmother and four siblings were the
first residents in a 450- square-foot flat of Tai Hing House. When they
arrived in 1980 the block was new and the planners' delicate dreams
still intact.
But over the next 14 years their new home would decay
inexorably. The paint in the corridors would peel away and be replaced
by graffiti and brown spit stains. Adverts for "quick and easy" loans
would appear on the lift walls and, in a desperate bid to stem the
number of suicides, the management would lock the roof and brick up the
upper storey communal windows.
For the young Lam, however, life was already
miserable. His biological mother had left the family to live with
another man when he was three. His father, a hawker, was drinking a
catty of rice wine a night, his new stepmother was miserable and his
relationship with his brothers and sisters was loveless. Crammed into
their tiny one-bedroomed flat, the young Lam quickly learnt the classic
Chinese strategy for communal living - silence.
According to his sister the atmosphere in the family
flat was ugly beyond repair: "Night after night father would sit and
drink and say nothing while the rest of the family would watch
television in silence. Sometimes no more than a few words would be
spoken in that flat over the course of a week."
As time went by Lam withdrew into himself. Later he
would tell psychiatrists of "a terrible feeling of boredom and emptiness".
His school life was a disaster. The move to Tuen Mun required his third
move to a new school in as many years. His conduct was poor and after
repeating Form One and doing badly he decided to quit school forever at
15.
The same year Lam's father got into trouble with
loansharks and had to flee to Macau for a while. Lam took the chance to
get out of the house. "I began hanging out with other boys my age in
gangs in the parks around Tuen Mun," he told psychiatrists. "Sometimes
we would pass the time stealing or shoplifting. Sometimes we would beat
people up or get into gang-fights. Once or twice we chased and killed
dogs - anything to get rid of the boredom."
One time, he went too far and aged 15 was sentenced
to two months in a detention centre. On his release he drifted from one
menial job to another and continued living in silence with his family
and hanging out with his peers at night. "I started getting into
gambling - playing cards with the others in the park," he told
psychiatrists. "Then when I was 18 I tried drugs, mainly because
everyone else was." The drugs were Mandrax, cough syrup and marijuana
but none of them appealed to him as much as alcohol.
"My girlfriend Ah-sum taught me to drink every day
and I liked it very much. Beer and brandy are my favourite but wine is
good too. I liked the effect. It made me able to wander around aimlessly
without feeling bored. I liked the way it made me feel retarded."
To describe Lam's self-esteem as low is an
understatement. He dumped his girlfriend because "she was too superior
to me, from a better family and much more successful at school," and
settled instead into a patten of casual affairs and weekly visits to
Mongkok prostitutes.
Excitement and status became his Holy Grails. Playing
cards gave way to gambling trips to Macau. Petty theft gave way to "more
exciting" theft from cars. Finally he discovered his penultimate kick -
road racing. "I think he was some kind of genius at illegal road-racing,"
said Chief Inspector Wong Win-kee. "His will to win blocked out
everything else. He would rather die than lose face by doing badly in a
race. He would think nothing of causing others to crash or risk
pedestrian life. The adrenalin kick and the status he got from winning
became addictive. Afterwards, I think he found real life just too boring."
April 24, 1992 was an average day in Tuen Mun: a 13-year
old boy had tried and failed to commit suicide because his teachers
punished him for wearing hair-gel, a student doctor had tried and
succeeded because her grades weren't good enough.
Lam had been drinking heavily. Late into night he
suddenly decided to wrap his quest for power, love, status and sexual
satisfaction into one ugly, violent act. His first victim was just 19-years-old.
Lam followed her as she got out of a taxi and walked into the No 1 lift
of Oi Ming House. As the doors were closing Lam burst in and squeezed
her throat with his right hand until blood spots appeared on her cheeks
and eyelids. She awoke in a pool of blood on the third floor staircase,
her jeans pulled down, her top pulled up and her virginity gone.
Her rape was no big news in Tuen Mun, where the
number of rapes committed is double that elsewhere in Hong Kong, and
made only a couple of paragraphs in three of the Chinese papers.
Two months later almost to the day Lam struck again,
randomly tailing a woman as she returned home at 4.30 am. This woman was
32-years-old and worked as a waitress in Wan Chai's Club Versailles -
but she could have been anyone. She was grabbed from behind, his right
hand on her neck, squeezing until the blood seeped out of the veins on
her face, her eyes and her eardrums.
"I slept at home all day and woke up very late," he
rather matter-of-factly told police later. "I was bored. I walked and
walked near Tai Hing Estate until I saw a plump, shortish woman walking
in my direction. At the time I just wanted to snatch her things. But
when I went up to her she resisted. I grabbed her neck with my hands.
She got dizzy. I dragged her underneath a staircase of a nearby building.
I took off her trousers and mine and raped her."
Afterwards Lam went home, got into his bunk bed fully
clothed and slept. His family never asked him where he had been. His
family had stopped communicating with one other.
Two months later, almost to the day, he struck again.
A 39-year-old woman was grabbed from behind at 4 am. Waking 50 minutes
later she was half-naked.
Two months later a 32-year-old woman entered lift two
of Hing Ping House at 11.30.pm. As the lift doors were closing Lam
rushed in and gripped her throat until she passed out. Then he dragged
her to a stairwell on the 28th floor.
One month later he raped a 32-year-old woman, 25 days
later he raped a 28-year-old woman. She spent three days in hospital
recovering. The style - bursting into a lift on a lone woman late at
night and strangling her until she passed out - did not waver.
By now the people of Tuen Mun and the press were in a
state of panic. It was clear a brutal serial rapist was on the loose, a
rapist capable of strangling women to the point of death. His victims
had been lucky to wake up again.
Li Hing was not so lucky. The 50-year-old Yaohan
department store assistant was returning from a mahjong game at 4am when
she entered the lift to her home in the Yau Oi estate. Lam Kwok-wai had
spent the evening in his usual "retarded" stupor. "On the day I felt
really bored, " he later told police. "I sat around at home, then I went
for a walk. Later I took a taxi to go home. On passing the Yau Oi estate
I saw the hawkers selling food. I stopped the cab and bought some food
from the hawker. I sat in the park outside Yau Oi estate, eating the
food and drinking the beer. I drank a couple of bottles. I don't know
how long it was but later I saw the unaccompanied woman walking towards
the building. I suddenly felt very excited and wanted to have her.
"I followed her into the lift. She was a bit fat and
had messy hair. Each of us pressed one button. We were standing face to
face. As the lift doors closed I grabbed her by the neck. When the lift
door opened I pushed her out and dragged her to the rear staircase. At
the staircase I pushed her on to the floor and seized her neck with my
hands till she stopped moving. Then I pulled up her clothes and took off
her pants. I rubbed her belly and lowered my trousers and raped her."
What Lam forgot to mention but forensic examination revealed is that he
had raped and sodomised Li Hing after he had killed her.
Public panic slipped into hysteria. Although in 1992
there had been seven murders and a total of 16 reported rapes in Tuen
Mun, Sik Moh or Sex Devil as the Chinese press dubbed Lam, became the
focus of the area's law and order concerns. Local politicians seized on
the chance to win instant support by knocking the police, complaining
about their low profile in the area and slow response to the serial
rapist.
Marches and demonstrations were co-ordinated as the "community"
organised and hit back. No one stopped to ask what kind of "community"
Tuen Mun was when cries for help from the six raped women had almost
certainly been heard and ignored by neighbours and that up to 20 people
may have stepped over Li Hing's body on the way to work before the
murder was eventually reported.
The police response was not obvious because it was
mostly covert. Extra units were drafted in undercover. Each night until
Lam was eventually caught, a collection of women police officers posed
as decoys, climbing in and out of lifts alone between midnight and 6 am
while male officers waited to assist on upper floors. "I have never been
so worried about my team," said Chief Inspector Wong. "Our pathologists
believe that Lam's throat grip could kill within five seconds. The lift
would take at least 10 seconds to get to the first floor which meant
these women officers stood a good chance of being murdered." Naturally
it was volunteers only.
As the police operation grew the force employed the
Miidass (Major Incident Investigation and Disaster Support System)
computer which had been used in the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper.
Everyone convicted of wife battering, assault and sexual offences was
scrutinised. An inordinate number were trailed and arrested. But Sik Moh
- fitting none of the usual rapist profiles, being just 21, living at
home and having no previous sexual offences - remained at large.
A few months after Li Hing's murder Lam telephoned
Wong Kwong-ching, an old schoolmate and perhaps his only friend. The
conversation was surreal. "I've killed someone - it's on the news now,"
said Lam.
Still holding the phone Wong checked the screen.
"Do you like women who are 50-years-old?" he asked.
"Don't ask," said Lam. "Look, do you think I am mentally unbalanced?"
"I don't know what to say," Wong replied and hung up.
Later he phoned the police hotline and, treading a
strange line between his loyalty to a friend and his responsibility to
the community, said only: "You should make your photo-fit thinner in the
face," and then hung up.
On April 14, 1993, Lam killed again. His victim was
Mak Siu-han, a 22-year-old disc jockey returning home from a stint at
the New World Hotel's Catwalk Disco at 5 am. She was found raped and
dead between the fifth and sixth floors of Hing Shing House where she
lived at 7.45 am. By counting the number of people who used the
stairwell between 6 am and 7.45 am police estimated that this time up to
40 people may have stepped over the body before the murder was reported.
Lam's nonchalant explanation is typically chilling:
"I did not want to kill her. I just squeezed her neck too hard," he told
investigators later. Once again the story of how he spent the evening
before the murder is one long catalogue of wandering around and getting
"so drunk I vomited" on the roadside. His description of the murder is
the most graphic he ever gave police: "I got into the lift together with
her. We stood face to face. I had a sudden impulse. I wanted to have her.
I grabbed the girl with my right hand and squeezed her neck. When the
lift door opened I pushed her out of the lift and carried her to the
rear staircase. I put her on the floor. The girl came round and started
to yell. I became more excited. I couldn't stop myself. I had this
strong desire to have her. I kicked her and beat her. She lost
consciousness and lay on the ground. I lowered her jeans and underpants
. . .
The following night more than 200 Tuen Mun residents
took to the streets in demonstration against inadequate policing.
Security escort services were set up. Fear now paralysed the locals. Lam,
meanwhile, deciding "the heat was too much" fled Tuen Mun to stay with
his elder sister in Hunghom. Here he murdered Lau Sui-man a 23-year-old
karaoke public relations hostess and he raped again on July 11, 1993. On
this occasion the victim regained consciousness and struggled home.
Lam's move to Hunghom did not fool police. His method
of attack was as clear as a signature and he officially became Hong
Kong's most prolific serial rapist. (Police also believe traditional
reluctance of Chinese women to admit they have been raped means Lam's
true number of victims is probably 15 or 16). Police fed the information
into Miidass but got no nearer to him.
Lam's tenth and last rape was the strangest. The
sequence of events that led to his arrest are too weird for fiction and
too weird for fact anywhere but in Hong Kong. Some psychologists say he
wanted to be caught.
On August 8, 1993, just after 1.30 am, he attacked
and raped a 21-year-old woman in Hunghom's Mei King Street. He beat her
face and kicked her and raped her on a wooden cart in a side street.
Then suddenly, in the middle of it all, he stopped and started chatting.
Petrified, the girl stood, wiped the blood from her face and chatted
back to him. They walked along the road together and shared a cigarette.
Then Lam turned to the girl he had just beaten and raped and said: "Will
you be my girlfriend?" The girl said yes - anything to keep his mood
from swinging violently. A date was arranged at the UA Whampoa cinema
the next evening. "Please be there," said Lam. "I'm a mess now in this
old T-shirt and jeans but I promise I will be smart tomorrow. You'll be
proud of me."
When she got home the woman told her mother-in-law
she had been raped. Her mother-in-law told her to forget about it. The
following afternoon she told her brother, a Correctional Services
officer, who took her to the police to make a report. That night the
Hunghom police were involved in several other operations and could only
spare two men to stake out the Whampoa Ship cinema. The victim's brother
was asked to help them out.
Everything was arranged: if Lam turned up the woman
would scratch her head and the police would grab him. At 8.30 pm Lam
sidled up the polished marble floor of the Whampoa Ship to the girl he
had raped and beaten less than a day before. He wore a creased white
shirt, ironed black dress trousers and black all-leather shoes. His hair
was heavily gelled and he smelt ever so slightly of cologne. The woman
welcomed him and scratched her head violently. Nothing happened. She
scratched more. Still nothing. The cops, wherever they were, had been
distracted. Finally the woman screamed out, the two police moved in and
Lam ran for it. The police never got close to Lam. In the end it was the
victim's brother who rugby tackled him. But Lam will tell anyone who
asks that he would easily have outrun them all if only he hadn't wanted
to make a special impression, if only he hadn't worn those leather shoes.
In police custody Lam, the ruthless killer and rapist,
cut a pathetic figure. "He wanted to be loved," said Chief Inspector
Wong. "He was very lonely. He cried a lot and kept asking for officers
to come and visit him in jail." Feigning friendship, police eased out
his confessions. Then the strangest thing happened. "Lam had just
confessed to the murder of the three women," said a police source, "when
he started screaming." He slid off his chair and started writhing on the
floor, banging his head on the tiles.
Kneeling down to restrain him, officers found his
face was covered in sweat and his eyeballs were vibrating in their
sockets. Lam was whispering: "I can see them. They are watching me. I
can see their ghosts going round the table." Climbing back on to his
chair Lam started crying for the first time. Then, inexplicably, he bent
his head forward and fell into a deep sleep.
Lam was obsessed with the murder weapon - his own
hands. He spoke often of the power he felt as he closed his fingers on a
woman's soft throat. He had even given his hand a name as if it wasn't a
human hand at all but a tool designed especially for murder. He called
it his "fork".
In court he spent a lot of time staring at his "fork"
and stroking the contours of his right thumb and forefinger as if they
weren't supposed to be attached to him. And in the Siu Lam psychiatric
centre he tried to turn the weapon on himself. Perhaps he had forgotten
the hand is connected to the same power system as the brain, forgotten
that when he became unconscious his grip would loosen. Whatever, he put
his "fork" to his throat and squeezed like his life depended on it.
