High Court trial begins for Hong Kong trio charged in body-in-cement murder case
Money row believed to be at heart of gruesome killing which saw victim’s body cut up into pieces
Three men plotted to kill an acquaintance and then buried his body in blood-spattered cement, prosecutors told the High Court on Tuesday.
The allegations were made on the first day of the trial of Tsang Cheung-yan, 28, Keith Lau, 23, and Cheung Sin-hang, 25, who are charged with conspiring to murder Cheung Man-li in 2016. The trio have all pleaded guilty to one joint count of preventing the lawful burial of Cheung Man-li’s body.
Prosecutor Richard Turnbull told the court the trio covered Cheung Man-li’s mouth with ladies panties soaked with chloroform, before injecting him with alcohol.
His body was then buried in cement, a technique one of the defendants, Cheung Sin-hang, learned from Google.
However, the cement block was too heavy to be moved from the crime scene, forcing the defendants to break Cheung Man-li’s corpse into pieces, the prosecutor said.