A 2002 Hong Kong murder so horrific 2 sets of jurors couldn’t cope with the gory evidence
- A woman who suspected her husband of an affair stabbed him 16 times, poured boiling oil over him and wrapped his head in plastic at their Tseung Kwan O home
- She pleaded not guilty to murder, and the prosecutor told a court the issue was her state of mind at the time of the killing. A third jury ruled it was murder
“A woman poured boiling oil over her husband and stabbed him 16 times before stashing his body under their bed, a jury heard yesterday,” reported the South China Morning Post on April 9, 2002.
“A postmortem examination showed father-of-two Siu On, 50, had died from a combination of the knife attack and the effect of having the flesh around his face, neck and chest partially cooked by the oil, the Court of First Instance was told.
“His death could have also been hastened by the subsequent action of Li Suet-ping, 50, in wrapping 17 layers of plastic around his head, prosecutor Edward Laskey said.
“Li has pleaded not guilty to the murder of her husband, which investigators believe occurred at the couple’s Tseung Kwan O home on January 5 last year.
“‘The real issue in this case is not that she was responsible for killing her husband but, when she was killing her husband, what was her state of mind?’ Mr Laskey said.
He told the court the pair had been squabbling because Siu’s work at a Yuen Long mahjong school took him away for long periods. Li suspected Siu was having an affair, he said.
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“‘He was in great pain and he asked her to help him and she stabbed him […] and injected him with insulin she bought to commit suicide,’ Mr Laskey said of Li’s statement to police.
Li then wrapped her husband’s head in 17 layers of plastic and hid the body under their bed, where it lay undetected until January 8.”
On October 18, 2002, the Post reported that Li “was jailed for life yesterday after being found guilty of murder. It was the third attempt to prosecute […] after two earlier juries were discharged when they failed to cope with the horrific nature of the evidence”.
