Three men who tortured a Hong Kong nightclub hostess, dismembered her corpse and cooked her body parts have been sentenced to life imprisonment, a court spokesperson said Wednesday.
Chan Man-lok, 34, Leung Shing-cho, 27, and Leung Wai-lun, 20, were convicted by the high court last month of manslaughter in the case of 23-year-old Fan Man-yee.
The trial was dubbed the "Hello Kitty" case because the victim's skull was found stuffed inside one of the popular dolls.
Handing down the sentences, the judge described the case as "gruesome and perverted", adding that imprisonment would prevent the trio from further endangering life.
The six-week trial heard how Fan, who was abducted in March 1999, was held prisoner for a month and tortured almost daily after she was brought to a flat in Kowloon to discuss an alleged debt of 20,000 Hong Kong dollars (2,567 US).
The killing was discovered after an accomplice of the three men, a 13-year-old girl, contacted the police.
The trio had pleaded guilty to preventing the lawful burial of Fan's corpse, which they spent 10 hours dismembering in a bathtub.
Although her internal organs were found by police in a plastic bag and her skull was discovered inside the Hello Kitty doll, and some of the body parts were stored in a refrigerator, there was insufficient evidence to determine how she died, the court was told.
Opening the case the prosecutor reportedly told the jurors the case would "revolt" them, that the evidence was "too sordid" to describe and that it would take them into a slice of life in Hong Kong that they would never wish to encounter.
But the judge directed that if the jury could not find that the three men intended to kill Fan, they had to acquit them of murder.
The seven male jurors took 11 hours to reach their verdict -- HONG KONG (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
