Sunny Ang Soo Suan, alias Anthony Ang, was a Singaporean racing driver and part-time law student who gained notoriety for the murder of his girlfriend Jenny Cheok Cheng Kid near Sisters' Islands.
44 Facts About Sunny Ang
1.
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Sunny Ang's case attracted substantial attention in Singapore and Malaysia given that he was the first to be tried for murder without a body in these two countries.
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On 19 May 1965, Sunny Ang was found guilty of murder by a unanimous decision in one of Singapore's last jury trials before its abolition in January 1970.
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Sunny Ang's case became a landmark in both Singapore and Malaysia as he was the first to be found guilty of murder and undergo capital punishment solely based on circumstantial evidence and the first to be convicted and sentenced to death for murder without a body.
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Sunny Ang lost his appeals against the sentence and he was eventually executed on 6 February 1967.
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Sunny Ang Soo Suan was born in 1939, one of the children in a middle-class family in the British Colony of Singapore.
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Sunny Ang completed his secondary school education at Victoria School in 1955, and he obtained his Senior Cambridge Grade One certificate in the following year.
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Sunny Ang was trained to be a teacher in 1957, but he later gave up and underwent training as a pilot under a government scholarship.
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Sunny Ang was first charged and convicted of negligent driving after he killed a pedestrian during an accident in 1961, and was issued a fine.
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In 1962, Sunny Ang was arrested and sentenced to probation for attempting to commit burglary.
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Later, when the truth was exposed, Sunny Ang's father drove him out of the house.
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Sunny Ang's father died when she was young, and her mother later married Toh Kim Seng and had another daughter, Irene Toh, in 1947; reportedly, Cheok was close to her half-sister.
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Sunny Ang brought along a guide rope, three air tanks, two pairs of fins, two knives, a small axe, aqualung equipment, and a transistor radio.
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Later, after testing his air tank, Sunny Ang asked for help from Yusuf, saying that his air tank was leaking, and the washer had a problem.
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Lending a helping hand, the boatman helped Sunny Ang to improvise one, but it still failed to work.
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Sunny Ang asked Yusuf where his girlfriend was but Yusuf said he did not see her.
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Sunny Ang repeatedly tugged the rope again, but to no avail.
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Sunny Ang approached Jaffar bin Hussein, a guard from the island along with five or six other fishermen, who went into the waters around Sisters' Islands to search for Cheok, but this proved futile.
19.
Sunny Ang did not go into the water to search for Cheok even though they had sought help from the fishermen, and Yusuf claimed that Sunny Ang seemed calm and not anxious, which was strange when he, as Cheok's boyfriend, was supposed to be extremely worried about his girlfriend's safety.
20.
The police found that less than 24 hours after Cheok went missing, Sunny Ang had notified several insurance companies that Cheok was dead and demanded compensation.
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Sunny Ang even tried to look for lawyers to rush the coroner's report about whether Cheok was dead or not.
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On 21 December 1964, police arrested Sunny Ang, and brought him to court to face a murder charge the next day.
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Sunny Ang was initially discharged of the murder charge on 29 December 1964, as the judge did not accept the prosecution's request for more time to prepare their case.
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On 26 April 1965, Sunny Ang stood trial for murder in the High Court before a seven-men jury; High Court judge Murray Buttrose presided over the trial.
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Since the crime of murder was a capital offence in Singapore, Sunny Ang faced mandatory capital punishment should the jury find him guilty, either by a majority or unanimous decision under the law of Singapore.
26.
Sunny Ang helped Cheok to find a lawyer to set a will that when she died, her estate would be given to Ang's mother.
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One of the insurance policies had expired the day before Cheok went missing, but Sunny Ang had extended it for five days just three hours before the diving trip.
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The prosecution alleged that due to his undischarged bankruptcy, Sunny Ang needed money and thus had a motive to help Cheok buy the insurance, and later solicited her alleged murder.
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Sunny Ang had once driven a car in Malaysia, returning from a holiday trip with Cheok in Kuala Lumpur, but they had an accident, in which the passenger side was severely damaged.
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Sunny Ang later elected to go on the stand to give his defence.
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Sunny Ang argued that he was innocent, stating that Cheok was the woman he loved and intended to marry.
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When he was asked why he did not go into the water to look for Cheok, Sunny Ang only said that Cheok might have been attacked by sharks, and said that the fishermen who dived in were more experienced.
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Sunny Ang claimed that he let Cheok go into the water first out of the basic courtesy of "ladies first".
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Sunny Ang claimed that Cheok had made good progress in learning how to swim and scuba dive, which was in contrast to the many witnesses' testimonies about Cheok's lack of experience and skills.
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Sunny Ang said he put his mother's name on the beneficiaries' list for the insurance policies to avoid arousing suspicion should anything happen to Cheok.
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Sunny Ang stated a total of 16 crucial points of circumstantial evidence that would prove Sunny Ang guilty of murder.
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Sunny Ang's trial was one of the last jury trials in Singapore, as the nation fully abolished the jury system in January 1970, allowing only bench trials in all criminal and civil cases.
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Sunny Ang, who was then detained on death row in Changi Prison, made one final attempt to escape the gallows by appealing to President of Singapore Yusof Ishak for clemency.
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Three days before his execution, Sunny Ang, who was an atheist, converted to Christianity and began to seek forgiveness from God for his crime.
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Sunny Ang expressed his regret to his family in his will, made before his hanging.
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Sunny Ang's case was one of the famous cases prosecuted by Francis Seow, who died in 2016.
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For decades, Sunny Ang's case remained as a landmark in both Singapore and Malaysia as he was the first murderer to be convicted and sentenced to death solely based on circumstantial evidence and the first to be convicted of murder without a body.
43.
Sunny Ang's case was recalled in another alleged murder case from Singapore in 1989.
44.
Sunny Ang's case was recalled in news reports covering the millionaire's murder.