The Crown and police hyperbole portrayed to the jury an image of a calculating, murderous mastermind who possessed the superhuman ability to erase blood and DNA to bamboozle even the most sophisticated tests. That ominous caricature had then to be moulded into a dichotomous character who was wont to engage in absurdly inculpatory and silly behaviour.
In attempting to cast everything I said or did in a negative light, they painted an absurd vision. Among other things that were attributed by the Crown and police to my criminally genius attempts to evade justice were the following:
I planned to kill two people. I planned a cover story.
The story was that I was sleeping in the same house as it happened.
I had bought the bat with my bank card from a major sports retailer in the city two days before the incident; the receipt was still in my pants pocket in my room on the day.
Then I told the police it was my bat, and when and where I had purchased it.
Friends of Tony said he told them of a bat he had for his protection. Another friend who had been to our house said he had once seen a bat there.
It could have been the perfect explanation of unknown assailants making off with the weapons used on Chow Lyang, but I had never seen it myself and said as much.
The weapons had copious amounts of Tony’s blood and DNA, but not a shred of Chow Lyang’s.
Apparently, I washed them microscopically clean after the first attack, then not at all after the second before calling the police.
All three of us housemates were familiar with each other’s routines, so I knew Chow Lyang and Tony would return around 2pm on Monday. So, that morning, I made plans to murder Tony and meet my girlfriend at 2pm.
I called 000 less than 15 minutes after Tony would have walked in the door, alive and well.
I went on a murderous rampage that would have covered me in blood spatter, and then called 000 within minutes, urging them to respond immediately.
The call to 000 was made in the period the Crown and the police alleged I was also washing Tony’s blood off myself in the bathroom, and then cleaning the bathroom of all traces of blood.
As I did this, I asked the 000 operator to stay on the line so all my shenanigans would be recorded for posterity (ambient sounds like the TV were on the 000 recording, but there was no sound of any water or cleaning).
The Crown and police story was that I had washed the bat, knife and myself 100 per cent clean of Chow Lyang’s blood in the house. Then, I had washed the washing areas 100 per cent clean of Chow Lyang’s blood. Then I had washed myself of almost all of Tony’s blood. Then cleaned up the washing areas 100 per cent clean of Tony’s blood.
But left some of it on myself. And called the police. And showed them where the blood was on me.
Right outside the house, when the police arrived, after showing them the blood on my hands, I asked them to take pictures of the blood so I could then wash it off me.
Any crime involving Asians in Australia seems to automatically make the police prick their ears for ‘triad’.
John Kiely, the Crown prosecutor at the second trial, told the jury I had suggested that the attack was on the ‘wrong house by triads’. That was never offered by me, it was what I told the police others had suggested, even as I made perfectly clear that neither Chow Lyang nor Tony could have anything to do with them.
I was trying to avoid scrutiny… so I said no one could have a reason to harm them.
To fabricate a story and affect a cover-up about what happened in the apartment, there would be a variety of devious options such as inflicting wounds on myself, describing fictitious assailants or even combining the two and running out of the house pretending to escape.
Instead, I did not see any assailants, and always said so.
A post-it note of how much rent I had paid Chow Lyang, an amount totalling $5,054, was found in my room.
The police allege that it was instead my motive to murder him… and I had kept a record for police to find in my room.
THERE HAVE BEEN so many times when I had the feeling that Chow Lyang was extending a helping hand across the vastness.
The fortuitous taking of the picture of his bed and doona months before to shoot down the Crown’s story that I had placed it like that. His writing of the word ‘owe’ on that note when I did owe him at the time I was demonstrably and undeniably in Singapore – he could have just omitted that word and written the amount, but he wrote it anyway. The ICQ message regarding my helping him with his rent and that he had ‘extra’ money to expose the Crown’s lie that I instead owed him.
Any one of those might be simply serendipitous, but so many together, over and over?