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The Harsh Life of the Kidnapped Hostess

The place of the Hello Kitty Murder was in a third-floor flat in the downtown area on No. 31 Granville Road (加連威老道) in Tsim Sha Tsui area in the Kowloon district. The inside of the apartment was filled with Hello Kitty memorabilia, including the big Hello Kitty Mermaid Plush Doll.

**Fan Man-yee:** The victim of the Hello Kitty Murder Case.

The victim was the 23 year old nightclub hostess and young mother, Fan Man-yee (樊敏儀)who had been missing for a month.

Her life had never been easy, and it ended in the most gruesome way imaginable. She had been abandoned as a child and grew up in an all girls orphanage in Hong Kong. When she got kicked out at 15 because she was too old to be there, she supported herself through sex work.

Over the years she turned into a drug addict and barely got by. She ended up marrying one of her clients who also were a drug addict, and lived with him despite their abusive relationship.

Then she got pregnant and had a child and decided to turn her life around. She got clean, left her husband and quit being a prostitute. Instead she started working as a nightclub hostess at the Romance Villa and hoped for a better future together with her son.

The Murderous Pimp and Drug Dealer

Her hopes got crushed fairly quickly however as bills were piling up and her nightclub was frequented by criminals, drug dealers and addicts as well as the Chinese crime syndicate, The Triads.

One of these seedy types she met was the 34-year old Chan Man-lok. He was both a drug dealer and a pimp and had a sexual relationship with Fan-Man. She once stole his wallet that had around $HK4,000 (roughly $500 USD) inside of it, but even if she gave it back at once Chan Man-lok realized she was the thief, he demanded more money from her that she was unable to pay. And because of this, he decided to kidnap her, thinking he would make money out of her by pimping her out.

A Month of Sadistic Torture

Instead he ended up rounding up his other accomplices, and ended up just torturing her in what seemed to be for no other reason than perverse and sadistic enjoyment.

The teenage girl given the cover name Ah Fong because of her young age testified that three men Chan Man-lok, Leung Shing-cho and Leung Wai-lun, all in their 30s and 20s abducted Fan Man-yee and tortured her until she died over the course of a month. She was the quote on quote: “girlfriend” of Chan Man-lok who also worked as a sex worker for him and she admitted that she even joined in on the beating on occasion.

Over the course of that month the men got high on drugs while they beating her with iron bars, raped her, burning her by dripping melting plastic on her, pouring chili oil on her wounds, stringing her up hanging from the ceiling for hours and other sadistic acts they came up with. She was even forced to smile and say she enjoyed the torture. If she didn’t it would only get worse.

The Horror of the Hello Kitty Murder

**Hello Kitty:** The Hello Kitty Murder got its nickname after where they placed some parts of the body.//Source

After she died they dismembered her body, boiled them and disposed of it as household trash or feeding it to stray dogs. Some of her internal organs were found in the refrigerator. The head they sew in the head of the Hello Kitty doll, although their motive for this is still unclear.

The exact cause of death is not known because of how little of her remains they found, and therefore there was also too little evidence to sentence the men for murder with intent, although it was clear she had died because of their abuse.

“Never in Hong Kong in recent years has a court heard of such cruelty, depravity, callousness, brutality, violence and viciousness,” said Hong Kong Justice Peter Nguyen after the trial, who sentenced the defendants to life imprisonment Wednesday after they were convicted of manslaughter. “The public is entitled to protection from people such as you.”

The three men were convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to life in prison without chance of parole for 20 years. Hong Kong does not have the death penalty, but if it had happened on mainland China, they would have likely been executed.

The Ghost of Fan Man-yee at Court

Who really knew what would have happened to the case if the teenage girl known as Ah Fong hadn’t been convinced she was haunted by Fan Man-yee, and because of her torment and remorse, she ended up walking into the police station and at least helping to find the victim. Because of her young age and corporation she never received any punishment for her involvement in the Hello Kitty Murder case.

Many unusual events have occurred that are regarded as supernatural by the public. And rumors about something paranormal and strange going on started already during trial.

The forensic doctor in charge of the case revealed that when the evidence including the skull of the deceased, the Hello Kitty doll, and the clay pot used to cook the body were presented to the court, the entire court was filled with the smell of the corpse. No matter where the Hello Kitty doll was presented, nearby lights would flicker. The same light disturbance happened when the defense lawyer argued that the only illegal thing happened when they were disposing of the body. An observer of the trial refused this rumor though and said it only happened when the police played the defendant’s confession.

The Haunted Building

The building where the murder happened had strange things going on. A woman rented a unit on the fourth floor without knowing about the murder. Her friend often heard women crying at night, and at that time, there were no people living downstairs. It’s worth noting that this woman had suffered from sleep paralysis while sleeping.

**Granville Road:** The building were the horror of the Hello Kitty Murders took place in 2010. The murder occurred in Block B on the third floor, which was demolished in 2012 and rebuilt into the Soravit on Granville in 2016.

The hair salons on the first and second floors of the building had discovered Hello Kitty dolls of unknown origin when they came to work in the morning. When looking at the CCTV footage, they even saw that after the salon closed at night, there were figures walking around in the salon. The manager of the hair salon denied that unusual incidents had occurred in the store.

The wife of Hong Kong metaphysician Chen Dingbang said that in 2013, when she was relaxing in a bar on Granville Road, she saw a woman’s head staring at her from the opposite building. Later she learned that the unit was where the case took place.

The apartment building where Fan was tortured has since been demolished as no one wanted to buy or rent the infamous apartment that everyone in Hong Kong knew the backstory behind. It was empty for years and eventually, no one wanted to live in the other apartments in the building either.

Some claimed that after the Hello Kitty Murder the building itself was haunted by Fan and there were many who claimed to have seen her haunting the area.

In the end someone bought the empty building and demolished it in 2012. Instead they built a hotel there in 2016 named Soravit. As a memorial to what happened there, they placed three Buddha portraits in the hotel.

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References:

‘Hello Kitty’ Murder Case Horrifies Hong Kong – The Washington Post

Life for ‘Hello Kitty’ Killers – ABC News

Why the Gruesome Hello Kitty Murder Shocked Hong Kong – and Still Horrifies the World

https://www.ranker.com/list/hello-kitty-murder-facts/cat-mcauliffe

https://filmdaily.co/news/hello-kitty-murder/

https://allthatsinteresting.com/hello-kitty-murder

Hello Kitty murder case – Wikipedia

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The Red Barn Murder and the Ghost in the Dreams

22. July 2020 Mirror 2 Comments

The Skeleton of the Murderer William Corder

The skeleton sitting in the classroom actually belongs to William Corder, a man that would end up in the infamous case of The Red Barn Murder.

Read Also: Another infamous murder trial involving ghosts is The Infamous Haunted Lizzie Borden House

He was a boy like any other, born in 1804 to a prosperous tenant farmer in Suffolk, England. He was nicknamed Foxey at school and was a bright kid. He had his whole life in front of him and he had some dreams of becoming a journalist or a teacher as he had some talent for writing. But there was a darkness in Corder that eventually would devour him.

Corder’s father liked his brothers much better according to the rumours around town, and he was sent to London to find work, not wanting to fund his sons dreams. He was said to be a liar and a cheater, thereof the name Foxey most likely. He was also known for petty theft, like when he sold his father’s pig. Yes, his father’s pig.

In London, he fell into bad company and spent all of the money his father gave him. He was a well known ladies man and all around an untrusty fellow. But Corder’s biggest crime was the Red Barn Murder and being found out by the ghost of Maria Marten, the woman he murdered.

Maria Martens Life and Death

After a while, William was called back to the farm from his wild time in London. There he met Maria, daughter of a mole catcher in the same small village, two years older than him and the likes of William Corder didn’t immediately catch her interest.

**Maria Marten**: The young girl ended up being the victim in the Red Barn Murder/Wikimedia

Maria Marten was 17 years old with a taste for finer things with a curse on her head and would end up as the victim in The Red Barn Murder. There is the story about her that a fortune teller once said that she wouldn’t reach old age, but would have many lovers and riches.

Before getting involved with William Corder she was actually seeing Williams older brother, Thomas. He was the oldest and also the fathers favorite and the two got into a relationship that was doomed from the start.

Thomas Corder wanted to keep the relationship secret as she wasn’t regarded of the same status as himself, being poorer and of a family with a “low” status. The Corders were after all, prosperous farmers.

That didn’t stop him from getting involved with her though and Maria Marten fell pregnant with Thomas child. Thomas left her when she told him about her pregnancy, perhaps hoping it would convince him to go for her after all.

It did not, and she gave birth to his child alone, but the child died a couple of weeks later. Maria then got into a relationship with a Peter Mathews, a middle age man who also dropped her after giving him a son called, Thomas Henry in 1824.

Indeed she had some lovers, perhaps some riches. And indeed she wouldn’t be alive for long.

William Corder and Maria Marten’s Relationship

When William Corder came home from London, bad luck struck his family. His father died and his brothers got very ill, leaving him to manage the farm together with his mother. And this is were he got to know Maria and they got involved in a relationship. But it wasn’t a happy match from either of their families stands. She on her side was already left with a ruined reputation by a Corder. And from the Corder’s perspective, she was a fallen woman and not from a prosperous family like theirs.

**The Red Barn** **Murder**: The old barn close to their houses was the scene of the Red Barn Murder and later a tourist attraction. It is now burned down./Wikimedia

This didn’t stop them meeting, although they met in secret. Often at a red barn right by Marias house. It was called that because of the red tiles on the roof and would later be a tourist place as the location of where The Red Barn Murder happened. But the secret of their relationship was not to last for long, as Maria became pregnant again. Maria wanted William to marry her, and according to him, he said yes.

At the same time that winter, William’s brother and Maria’s ex-lover, Thomas was walking over a frozen lake. The ice cracked and Thomas went under, drowning. William was now the owner of the farm as the only son.

Between Maria being pregnant, the farm being in financial troubles and his brother dying, it seems that it put a toll on him. He put Maria in a lodging at Sudbury, a couple of miles away from home to have their baby. But this too should not live and died soon after. William buried the child in a field and there have been speculations that this was not a natural death and that he might have killed their love child as well. And these day, who could really tell?

The Red Barn Murder

Maria and William started to argue about some money that may have been stolen, they argued about the burial of the child and how it looked like William would not marrying Maria after all. At one point the pair made a plan, when William said they should elope to Ipswich. She would come dressed as a boy and they would meet in the Red Barn were they had met countless of times before.

Read Also: Maria Marten got killed by a partner, we have multiple stories telling the same. How about checking out The Ghost of La Faraona Haunting the Agua Caliente Hotel or The Prisoner of Château de Puymartin

Why would William Corder elope now? Now that he didn’t have a father or older brother to interfere? One of the problems the couple had was with Maria and her crimes. It wasn’t necessarily unlikely or weird that they would like to run away, as Maria had several charges on her for bearing illegitimate children. Criminal at that point in time.

The days before their plan was set into motion was the last time Maria Marten was seen alive. William began acting odd and a lot of questions were asked about her. Where was Maria? Wasn’t he going to Ipswich with her?

He told the people asking she had gone ahead to Ipswich, but then he changed the story, and told she had gone to Great Yarmouth and wouldn’t be able to return yet. Then he changed the story again, and he said he was meeting Maria and that they were going to marry. He said he felt unwell and traveled to Isle of Wight, writing back home that they were married and happy there. He said he was sorry that Maria couldn’t write herself as she had hurt her hand and wondered why some of her letters hadn’t made its way back home.

The Ghost of Maria Marten Haunting the Dreams

This vague and strange story didn’t sit well with her family though. The Marten family did not believe William and his excuses as to why they hadn’t seen or heard from her. But in a strange twist of fate, she would find other means to contact her family.

Maria had a young stepmother back in Polstead, Ann Marten. She was troubled by strange and scary dreams about her stepdaughter. Twice Ann Marten had woken from a terrible dream that she herself knew to be true. When she shared them with her husband they looked for Maria in their town and found her.

Read Also: Another ghost story about a ghost that allegedly help solve her own murder case, read about The Greenbrier ghost in The Ghost that Went to Court

The dreams to her stepmother told that Maria had been murdered in the Red Barn buried under the floor and not gone to Isle of Wight at all. Her husband, Maria’s father was sent to the barn and looked for his daughter, prodding the ground with a mole-spike. There he discovered the remains of his daughter, brutally murdered and discarded under the floor for a long time.

Maria was shot as well as stabbed multiple times to death. They brought her to The Cock Inn and, decomposed as she was, her sister Nancy identified her from the clothes, the hair and a gap in her teeth. Around Maria’s neck they found a green handkerchief. According to the witnesses it belonged to William Corder. Was she also strangled? Was she even dead before he buried her in the grain storage bin her father found her in?

The Trial of The Red Barn Murder

Back in Ealing were William had fled, he knew nothing of the mysterious dreams and the discovery of Maria under the barn. Time went by and William needed a wife. He put an ad in The Times and asked for a wife. He picked Mary Moore and they set up a young ladies school in Ealing, West London. He was moving forward in his life. But Maria wasn’t forgotten yet.

Boiling some eggs at home the police came knocking at his door and apprehended him. First he denied that he knew of this Maria Marten, but the evidence was there and he was brought back to Suffolk.

And the press was on this, coming from all across the country to behold the spectacle of his trial and the strange circumstances around it. The case of The Red Barn Murder even got a play on stage before Corder even came to trial, which they actually sold tickets to.

**The Red Barn Murder Frenzie:** The execution of William Corder, the Red Barn Murderer was a popular event and thousands of people attended/Wikimedia

Forensic pathology was not as advanced yet and it was impossible to determined what of the things that killed Maria. That is why he was charged with nine different murder charges, where shooting, strangling, stabbing and burying alive was a couple of them.

“By that powerful engine of the press,” he said, “I have been described…as the most depraved of human monsters,” he said of the media coverage.

Corder’s defense was articulate, but improbable, claiming Maria herself had taken her own life, but he was found guilty on the circumstantial and medical evidence, and sentenced to hang.

It was the Chief Baron Alexander that was the judged, and he added that his dead body was to be dissected and anatomized, almost like a second punishment.

The Execution of William Corder

The execution was a great play and melodrama itself, and several thousands of spectators had tickets to the show of William Corder’s last moments. During his last days the prison chaplain had tried to get a confession from William who had denied all of the charges against him. Finally, William Cordery admitted to killing MAria by accident during one of their many quarrels. What he denied was stabbing her. Perhaps it was the mole-spike her father looked for her with that made those wounds?

**Hanged**: The Execution of The Red Barn Murder/Wellcome Library no. 43542i

In any case, he took the punishment for all of her injuries. His last words were: “I am guilty; my sentence is just; I deserve my fate; and, may God have mercy on my soul.” He was left hanging for an hour, most likely in agony before he died.

After his death he was transported to Shire Hall were he was left for science as the sentence was. But many of the things done to his body after death was highly unscientific. For one,his skin was removed, tanned and used as a book cover that described his crimes and live. Like the most bizarre biography.

What happened that day? Was Maria’s mother psychic? She was only around a year older than Maria, and had not exhibited similar dreams before. Perhaps it’s a bit odd that her dreams started just after news of Williams marriage to Mary Moore. And there were also some rumors that linked her as a lover with William.

What happened skeleton hanging in the lecture hall? Truth be told, it isn’t even William. At least, not all of it. After his hanging, he was chopped up, his body dissected in front of anatomy students, perhaps even used as an experiment with galvanism.

The Red Barn Murder Frenzie

Perhaps the most gruesome thing was that none of the people involved were left in peace after their death, as the story about the Red Barn Murder was a sensational tale and people flocked to the location as well as tried to get a hold of some sort of suveniers from the case.

After the execution, William Corden’s ear was sold, his skull was taken by Dr John Kilner who collected The Red Barn Murder memorabilia. Even pieces of the rope he was hanged in was cut up and sold for a guinea. Perhaps the disturbance of the dead came back to haunt the living that looked at their death as some sort of amusing spectacle?

After many strange and tragic events that happened after The Red Barn Murder enthusiast Dr John Kilner took the skull for himself to his collection, he believed that the skull was cursed and gave it to ta friend. But bad fortune kept plaguing the two men and in the end they decided to pay for a Christian burial to lift the curse of the skull of the murderer William Corder.

Maria also kept being disturbed after The Red Barn Murder. A lock of her hair was sold at two guineas and Polstead with her cottage, the Red Barn and her grave became a tourist attraction and people started chipping away at it so it completely disappeared. The grave as well as the Barn, planks, roof tiles and all sold as macabre souvenirs.

After 2004, the skeleton of William Corder, or at leas what was left of him was removed from the classroom and finally put to rest six feet under.

But the rumors still lingers about the ghost of Maria haunting her stepmother’s dreams, about what really happened that night of The Red Barn Murder. But maybe it is time William got some peace, having served over 200 years for his crimes.