What eight men did to this little girl is beyond evil… | The Ang May Hong Case
A brother told his 9-year-old sister to wait for him.
“Just wait here,” he said. “I’ll be back in 10 minutes.”
He had stomach pains and had to run home quickly. When he returned to the place where he had left his sister, she was gone. Three hours later, her mother would find her daughter’s body in an abandoned house and be forced to confront a level of evil that remains incomprehensible to this day.
This is the case of Ang May Hong. April 12, 1987. It was an ordinary Sunday morning in Jalan Oh, a bustling neighborhood in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Two siblings, 11-year-old Ang Yo Tien and his 9-year-old sister Ang May Hong, left their home together around 8:30 a.m. They were on their way to buy Kuih Lapis, a colorful, layered steamed cake that May Hong loved to bring home for breakfast.
It was actually the first time May Hong had accompanied her brother on this outing. They went to the stall where the family usually bought the cake, but when they arrived, they found it was closed that day. So the siblings continued on toward a nearby market to find another place to buy it. As they walked, Yo Tien suddenly felt a sharp pain in his stomach.
He urgently needed to use the restroom. He told May Hong to stop and wait for him in front of an apartment building on Jalan Tun Razak, not far from her home. He would run back, use the restroom, and be back in just a few minutes. May Hong agreed to wait. Ten minutes later, Yo Tien returned, but May Hong was nowhere to be found. Panic began to set in.
Yo Tien searched the area and called his sister’s name. Desperately, he hurried around, asking if anyone had seen her. No one had. He ran home and told his parents. Immediately, the entire family mobilized. Ang En Hu, 37, and his wife, Yong Yuk Chin, 38, joined the search. Neighbors came to help. Everyone in the area began looking for the missing girl.
For three hours they searched desperately, their fear growing with every passing minute. The search led them to a desolate area, only about 70 meters from their home. There stood an empty, three-story house, abandoned and known locally as a hangout for drug addicts. It was not a place where parents would want their children anywhere near.
Yuk Chin entered the empty house, and what she found inside would destroy her family forever. Her daughter’s body lay on the floor in one of the rooms. May Hong was naked and lying in a pool of blood. Her eyes were still open. A wire was tightly wrapped around her neck. Bruises covered her small body—injuries presumed to have been caused by blows with a hard object. Bite marks.
Numerous bite marks were visible on her neck, chest, body, and genitals. And then there was a wooden stick. A piece of wood about 36 inches long, studded with three nails, and an additional piece of metal had been driven into her body. Her mother’s screams drew others.
The father rushed his daughter to Kuala Lumpur General Hospital, but it was too late. Doctors confirmed she was already dead. Police were immediately called to the scene, but by the time investigators arrived, a large crowd of onlookers had gathered at the abandoned house. According to the deputy director of the Royal Malaysian Police’s forensic department, this proved disastrous for the investigation.
It was likely that crucial evidence at the scene had been contaminated or destroyed by the crowd before officers could properly document and secure it. The following day, the medical examination revealed the full extent of what had happened to May Hong. She had been strangled, but prior to that, she had been raped and sodomized.
Regarding the wooden stick with nails found at the crime scene, it was determined that it had penetrated her at least 18 inches deep, tearing through her internal organs and penetrating to her heart. Forensic experts made another disturbing discovery: at least eight different sets of dental impressions were found on May Hong’s body.
Eight people bit this child during the attack. The implication was chilling. May Hong had been attacked by a group, not a single assailant. The autopsy also revealed that May Hong may have bitten one of her attackers before she died. A small act of resistance from a terrified child fighting for her life. The police classified the case as a murder, which carries the death penalty in Malaysia.
They began gathering the few pieces of evidence that remained at the damaged crime scene and interviewed potential witnesses. The crime had occurred in broad daylight in a populated area. Investigators believed there might have been witnesses. Police suspected the perpetrators were likely drug addicts who frequented the abandoned house.
A description emerged of a Chinese man who spoke Tamil, a South Indian language, although this was based on unconfirmed reports. The Royal Malaysian Police made a public appeal for witnesses to come forward with any crucial information. Investigators also did not rule out another possibility: that the perpetrators might have known May Hong personally.
May Hong’s father ran “Sang Heong,” a neighborhood restaurant that served Bak Kut Teh, the traditional herb-infused pork rib soup popular throughout Malaysia and Singapore. Within days, three suspects were arrested. Two were reportedly drug addicts. One matched the description that had been circulating.
Another was a longtime customer of Sang Hu’s Bak Kut Teh restaurant, someone the family knew. Police took dental impressions from all three suspects. These impressions were made into plaster casts and compared to the bite marks on May Hong’s body. This was a crucial forensic technique. If the impressions matched, it would prove they had bitten the child.
However, none of the three suspects’ dental profiles matched the bite marks on their bodies. Without this physical evidence linking them to the crime, and without witnesses or other evidence, the police were forced to release all three men. The investigation had encountered its first major obstacle. The real killers were still out there.
In the following months and years, the investigation continued. In total, more than 40 men were arrested or summoned for questioning in connection with the murder of May Hong. Every single one was eventually released. No one was ever charged. The police were also hampered by the lack of advanced DNA testing and forensic technology in 1987.
Evidence that could have been definitively established with modern technology could not be properly analyzed, and contamination of the crime scene by onlookers had already ruined valuable physical evidence that could never be recovered. Ang May Hong was born around 1978. At the time of her death, she was a third-grade student at Kon Nam Primary School in Setapak, a suburb of Kuala Lumpur.
She was the second oldest of seven children, with three brothers and three sisters. By all accounts, May Hong was a quiet, well-behaved girl. She did well in school and reportedly had quite good grades. Teachers and family described her as obedient and responsible. She wasn’t the type to run away or disobey instructions.
Her family wasn’t rich, but they worked hard and lived in a close-knit community where everyone knew each other. On that Sunday morning, May Hong had done something simple and ordinary: she had gone with her brother to buy her favorite cake for breakfast. It was the kind of ordinary activity that children all over Malaysia did every day.
There was no reason to believe anything could go wrong. But in the 10 minutes that her brother was gone, someone, or several people, took her. They brought her to that abandoned house, and there they did unspeakable things to her. News of May Hong’s rape and murder spread quickly in Kuala Lumpur and throughout Malaysia.
The brutality of the crime shocked the nation. Parents across the country were terrified. Many families no longer allowed their children to go outside alone. In the area where May Hong lived, parents began personally escorting their children to and from school, unwilling to take any risks. The public reaction was immediate and emotional.
Charity events were organized throughout the country to raise reward money for information leading to the arrest of the killers. The initial reward of 10,000 ringgit—about $4,000 at the time—was eventually doubled to 20,000 ringgit, or about $8,000. This was a considerable sum in Malaysia in 1987. More than 100 people gathered outside Ang’s restaurant to show their support and protest the sexual abuse of minors, holding up signs.
One banner read: “Justice for Ang May Hong.” They demanded better protection for children and women. During the gathering, a play was performed to illustrate the dangers posed by sex offenders—an early form of a public awareness campaign. An elderly fisherman, moved by compassion, even hired a religious master to perform rituals in an attempt to find May Hong’s killer.
The community was determined to achieve justice by any means necessary. After the autopsy, May Hong’s body was released to her family for burial. Her parents faced the heartbreaking decision of how to dress their daughter. According to Chinese folk tradition, dressing a murder victim in red can cause their spirit to return as a vengeful ghost to haunt their killers.
The belief is that red clothing binds the victim’s soul to the mortal world, allowing them to seek justice from the afterlife. Sang Hu and Yuk Chin initially considered this. They wanted their daughter’s murderers to suffer. But ultimately, they decided against it. They worried that May Hong would never rest in peace if she became a vengeful spirit.
Their daughter had suffered enough in life. They didn’t want her spirit to be restless in death. Instead, they dressed her in her favorite blue pajamas, clothes she had loved, and laid her to rest. Her mother knelt beside the body and applied makeup to her daughter one last time, tears streaming down her cheeks.
Her relatives could barely contain themselves. Then something unexpected happened. In the weeks following May Hong’s murder, a local Chinese-language newspaper called “Shin Min Daily” received a series of strange letters. The sender remained anonymous, but his words were shocking. He claimed to be one of the men responsible for May Hong’s death.
The handwriting was clumsy, as if the writer had used his left hand to conceal his true handwriting. Each letter was simply signed: “Murderer.” In the first letter, the writer confessed to being part of a group of drug addicts who had attacked several young girls before May Hong. They would rape these children, he wrote, and then kill them.
May Hong was only their latest victim. The letter contained details that seemed credible—details that only someone involved could know. The writer also made another chilling claim. When the police arrived to investigate, he was present at the scene, watching from the crowd. He said he considered turning himself in at that moment, but was afraid.
When questioned about the letters, the police stated that appropriate measures would be taken should the murderer turn himself in. The second and third letters revealed more about the writer’s character. He explained that he felt remorse and was willing to surrender, but only if certain conditions were met. He sought forgiveness from the public.
“I know the world will curse me,” he wrote. “I know no one will forgive me, but if the world is ready to forgive me, I will face up. I am in pain. I don’t want to kill any more children.” He suggested that the public organize a collection where each person donates one ringgit to raise 30,000 ringgit as compensation for his family.
This demand for money sparked an immediate public outcry. A murderer demanding payment for turning himself in – the audacity was appalling. In a subsequent letter, the writer issued a threat. If his conditions were not met and if his drug addiction resurfaced, he could not guarantee that he wouldn’t do the same to another child.
Then a fourth letter arrived. This time, the writer claimed he had lied about everything. He had not been involved in May Hong’s murder. He claimed he had written the letters purely out of frustration with a newspaper’s repeated coverage of the case. He felt they had sensationalized the tragedy. After this last letter, no more arrived.
Even with the help of the police, the author could not be tracked down. Whether he was truly one of the murderers who lost his temper, or simply a disturbed individual exploiting the tragedy for attention, remains unknown to this day. Despite the setbacks, the police continued their investigation. The reward money, which was available indefinitely until the murderers were caught, yielded no useful leads.
Whenever cases of sexual violence occurred in Malaysia in the following months and years, the police investigated whether suspects might be connected to May Hong’s murder. They compared dental profiles with bite marks. They questioned suspects about their whereabouts on April 12, 1987. In September 1987, just five months after May Hong’s death, 21-year-old Phan Kwee Kee was raped and murdered.
The manner of her death bore similarities to the May Hong case. The way the victim was sexually assaulted and killed showed disturbing parallels. Police suspected the same perpetrator or group might be responsible, but without concrete evidence, they could not prove a connection. The investigation began to stall.
Months passed without any new leads. Then years for Sang Hu and Yuk Chin. Life after May Hong’s death was unbearably difficult. They had lost their daughter in the most horrific way imaginable. Sang Hu continued to run his Bak Kut Teh restaurant, working every day within sight of the spot where his daughter’s body had been found.
Then, on August 16, 1988, 16 months after May Hong’s death, the family suffered another tragedy. Yo Tien, the brother who had last seen May Hong alive, died of liver disease. He was only 12 years old. The loss of their eldest son so soon after the loss of their daughter devastated the parents. In less than two years, their family of nine had shrunk to seven.
By the early 1990s, the May Hong case had officially become a cold case. Active investigations were discontinued, although the case remained open. The police stated they hadn’t given up, but without new evidence or witnesses, there was little they could do. The unclaimed reward money remained untouched. Since the money hadn’t led to finding his daughter’s killers, Sang Hu decided to donate it to local schools.
“Keeping it serves no purpose anymore,” he said. Twenty years after May Hong’s death, in 2007, eight-year-old Nurin Jazlin disappeared in Malaysia and was later found murdered under eerily similar circumstances. The case immediately drew comparisons to May Hong’s murder. Journalists sought out May Hong’s parents for interviews. Sang Hu and Yuk Chin said they still hoped for justice, but they had learned to leave it to fate.
Time had helped them cope with their grief, although the pain of losing May Hong had never completely disappeared. The family had moved their restaurant to a new location a few years after the murder, but they were still in the same business, still selling Bak Kut Teh, and still working hard.
Yuk Chin admitted that over the years, the police contacted them less and less frequently with updates. Eventually, the updates stopped altogether. The family stopped asking, and they had no choice but to carry on. In 2007, the police confirmed that May Hong’s case remained open and that they were continuing to investigate it along with other cold cases, hoping that new evidence or advances in forensic technology might one day lead to a breakthrough.
Criminal psychologist Loin Hang analyzed the case based on the method of killing. He concluded that the perpetrators could either have a deviant mental state or a motive of revenge. He observed that deviant criminals inflict pain on their victims without hesitation and derive satisfaction from the suffering they cause.
Somewhere out there, May Hong’s murderers lived their lives for decades without ever showing remorse. Perhaps they felt none at all. More than 38 years have passed since April 12, 1987. Yet the fundamental question remains unanswered: Who killed Ang May Hong? Based on the bite marks on her body, the evidence pointed to the presence of at least eight assailants.
Were they drug addicts, as the anonymous letter writer claimed? Did they know May Hong personally, as the police considered possible? Was the letter writer one of the actual killers? His initial letters contained details that seemed credible. His later retraction may have been an attempt to withdraw after realizing he had said too much.
Or he might have been exactly what he claimed in the end: a disturbed individual exploiting a tragedy. What if curious onlookers hadn’t contaminated the crime scene? What if today’s DNA technology had been available at the time of the investigation? Would their case have been solved? We’ll never know.
What is most disturbing is that her killers are potentially still out there. If they were young men in 1987, they would now be in their 50s, 60s, or perhaps even older. One can only hope that one day they will be held accountable for this horrific crime. May Hong deserved so much better. She deserved to grow up. She deserved to walk safely in her own neighborhood, and she deserved justice after her death.
And she received none of it. The case remains open.
