Sunny Ang

Sunny Ang Soo Suan was born in 1939, one of the children of a middle-class family in the British Colony of Singapore.

Ang was English-educated, and he started school very young.

With an IQ of 128, Ang was shown to be extremely intelligent and had always been among the top 10 in school.

He also had a hobby of reading books.

Jenny Cheok, birth name Cheok Cheng Kid, was born in 1941.

Her father died when she was little, and her mother later married Toh Kim Seng and had another daughter, Irene Toh, in 1947; reportedly, Cheok was close to her half-sister.

Cheok spoke little English as she had attended only three years of elementary school before dropping out.

Ang completed his secondary school education at Victoria School in 1955, and he obtained his Senior Cambridge (today's GCE O-levels) Grade One certificate in the following year.

He was trained to be a teacher in 1957, but he later gave up and underwent training as a pilot under a government scholarship.

However, he was sacked as he repeatedly ignored safety regulations.

In 1957, Cheok married a man named Yui Chin Chuan by Chinese practices, and had a son and daughter with him.

A few years later, Cheok became estranged from her husband.

By the time she met Ang, Cheok was already separated from Yui, who took custody of their two children.

From the time they first met, Cheok and Ang slowly developed a close, romantic relationship that surpassed that of friends.

Due to the charming nature of Ang, who was more educated and intelligent than her, Cheok became completely attracted to him; he often flattered her with close attention.

They were only in a relationship for a short time before Cheok was convinced that she wanted to be married to Ang, a wish that Ang shared.

He sometimes gave her swimming and scuba-diving lessons.

Ang began his career as a one-time Grand Prix driver by participating in the 1961 Singapore Grand Prix – a tourism event at the Old Thomson Road circuit.

However, Ang ran afoul with the law twice during this period.

He was first charged and convicted of negligent driving after he killed a pedestrian during an accident in 1961, and was issued a fine.

The second time was in 1962, when Ang was arrested and sentenced to probation for attempting to commit burglary.

After this second conviction, Ang decided to study law part-time and wanted to go to England to obtain a law degree, but he became bankrupt in 1962, due to his lavish spending on driving racing cars and girls.

Due to his hobby to drive racing cars, Ang had once resorted to stealing his father's money, which amounted to $7,000, and fabricated it so that someone else was responsible.

Later, when the truth was exposed, Ang's enraged father drove him out of the house.

It was only because of Ang's mother Madam Yeo Bee Na, who reportedly always pampered her son, that Ang was allowed back home.

David Saul Marshall, a lawyer who once defended Ang when he was accused of theft, had once expressed that during his years as a lawyer, he never met someone as arrogant and unrepentant as Ang, and felt regret for helping him to escape the theft charge.

In May 1963, at Odeon Bar and Restaurant at North Bridge Road, Sunny Ang, then 24, first met Jenny Cheok Cheng Kid (石清菊; shí qīngjǘ), a 22-year-old bar waitress who worked in the restaurant.

On 27 August 1963, Sunny Ang and Cheok hired a boatman, Yusuf bin Ahmad, to take them to Sisters' Islands, where they planned to go scuba diving and collect corals.

Ang brought along a guide rope, three air tanks, two pairs of fins, two knives, a small axe, Aqualung equipment, and a transistor radio for this diving trip.

The waters around Sisters' Islands were known to be dangerous and deep.

Thirty minutes later, when they reached Sisters' Islands, after putting on her dive belt and taking the axe, a knife, and a metal weight, Cheok went into the water alone for the first time, with Ang having tied a rope around her to guide her.

According to Yusuf, who had once taken the couple to another diving trip, he observed that Cheok was not skillful when he saw Ang diving and Cheok swimming.

Ten minutes later, Cheok resurfaced.

On 19 May 1965, Ang was found guilty of murder by a unanimous decision in one of Singapore's last jury trials before its abolition in January 1970.

The jury recommended the mandatory death sentence, which the High Court imposed on Ang.

His 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.

Sunny Ang Soo Suan (c. 1939 – 6 February 1967), 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.

Ang was charged and tried for murder in the High Court of Singapore solely based on circumstantial evidence and without a body, and his 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.

Ang lost his appeals against the sentence and he was eventually executed on 6 February 1967.

Cheok's body was never found.