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The original was posted on /r/unresolvedmysteries by /u/SummerJinkx on 2024-01-11 07:03:53+00:00.
Long time no see everyone! I hope everyone has a wonderful new year.
The case that I want to share today was extremely upsetting. Since a child’s death is involved in this case, I would like to add a trigger warning first: if you are very sensitive to topics like this, please leave the post now. Also, since there are no English sources for this case, please note that all the Cantonese names were translated by me, not their official spelling. I apologize in advance if I made any spelling mistakes.
Background:
The missing child, Ng Hoi Lam (吳凱琳, 8 years old) was the youngest child from a family of four: Her father Ng Kwok Kee （吳國基, a 36 years old hardwareman ）, mother Pang Sau Chun （彭秀珍, a 32 years old waitress. Some sources said she was 22, but it was believed that it was a mistake made by the journalists.）and an older brother Ng Wei Heng (吳偉恆, 11 years old) . According to neighbors and close family friends, the Ng couple were very doting parents, especially to their youngest daughter Hoi Lam, as she was always obedient and behaving, she also had very good grades at school. The mother, Pang, was trying to save up enough money to buy a piano for her since this is something Hoi Lam always wanted. The Ng couples are cautious about children's safety as well, so both Hoi Lam and Wei Heng were not allowed to go outside and play without adult’s supervision and they always picked them up from school themselves.
A family of four lived an ordinary but happy life, but they never expected that tragedy would suddenly happen one day, destroying this happiness forever.
The Missing
On July 2nd, Hoi Lam and her brother finished the exam and both the father and mother had a day off, so they decided to visit a family friend who was also the godfather of his children. Since it was a special day for outing, Hoi Lam wore her favorite one-piece dress. At 5pm that day, the older son Chan (18 years old at that time, first name is unknown) from the godfather took Hoi Lam and Wei Heng to a park, where they used to play there all the time. Chan took Wei Heng to play basketball and Hoi Lam went to play with the slide by herself. Later that day, the brothers were tired and wanted to go home, but since Hoi Lam was having such a good time, the two left her alone to play in the park and went home by themselves. 30 minutes later, the whole family found out that she had not gone back home yet, so they went out and searched for her immediately. The search was unsuccessful so they reported her missing to the police that night.
When the police were questioning, Chan mentioned that when they were playing in the park, an older man gave money to Hoi Lam and asked her to “buy ice cream for him”. Since Hoi Lam was shy and aware of stranger danger, she did not respond to the stranger and Chan yelled and asked the man to leave. Since runaways are not common among young kids like Hoi Lam and she does know the route to go back home, the police suspected this was a kidnapping case and started to investigate, but nothing came up.
Suspect
After a week of her missing, a man was arrested due to “indecent assault” on a young girl in a swimming pool nearby. After a witness identified him, it was confirmed that he was the man that asked Hoi Lam to buy ice cream for him. His last name is Wong (first name unknown). He admitted that he asked Hoi Lam to buy ice-cream, but he denied any involvement in the case. The police have no proof that he has anything to do with her missing, so they can only charge him with indecent assault on minors and Wong was sent to jail because of it. Ng Hoi Lam was still missing at this point. Her parents started to have dreams about her dead body being dug up from the ground and it traumatized poor Pang Sau Chun. She believed that her daughter was trying to tell her something about her missing/death in these dreams.
However, no one will believe that this was exactly how Hoi Lam’s body was found on January 6th, 1985.
A mysterious fire incident
On January 6th, 1985, an abandoned construction site right in front of the Wo Che estate Mei Ho House (禾輋村美禾樓, which is only 100 meter away from the Ng’s family home) was on fire mysteriously. The firefighter put down the fire and left. However, the site was on fire again the same night. The firefighter came again but this time, they found a human skull in the site. Police took over the investigation and found small skeletal remains two days after the fire incident. They also discovered some pieces of a one-piece dress and yellow flip flops, they are child size. Hoi Lam’s mother was able to identify the belongings since she had altered the dress to fit Hoi Lam better , therefore the remains were confirmed to be Hoi Lam.
Police can not identify the exact reason of death due to the body’s condition, and no arrest was made for this case.
This case remains unsolved today.
Sources
I uploaded the news article that I used for writing this post to imgur.
More HK unsolved murder/stories from me:
Buddiest nuns and baby girl murdered in cold-blood: a 70s Hong Kong unsolved murder case
80s Hong Kong diamond Hill murder case:
70s unsolved murder in Hong Kong: The Windsor mansion murder case:
70s unsolved apple juice murder in Hong Kong
Hong Kong unsolved murder: The case of Elizabeth House “window-box” tomb:
Missing young girl with an obsession with ghosts and Chinese Ouija board：The disappearance of Wong Ka Ting-unsoloved Hong Kong cases