Hong Kong yoga ball killer’s wife blamed herself for demise of marriage, diary reveals
Wong Siew Fing expresses deep regret at the failure of her relationship with Khaw Kim Sun, two years before Chinese University professor murdered her with carbon monoxide
A diary kept by the woman who was murdered by a Hong Kong professor using a gas-filled yoga ball has shed light on the Malaysian couple’s troubled marriage and how she blamed herself when her soon-to-be killer cheated on her with a student.
Wong Siew Fing expressed deep regret at the demise of her relationship with Khaw Kim Sun in a journal, written in English, obtained by the South China Morning Post.
She said she could have provided Khaw, a former associate professor at Chinese University, and their four children, with more.
Two years on from that entry, her husband murdered Wong and one of their daughters by carbon monoxide poisoning in a case that gripped Hong Kong.
“I didn’t listen when my husband tried to tell me he needed me,” she wrote in a diary entry from 2013.
Concerning her children, she wrote that she had failed to care for them or act as a role model to give them “the best in life”.
Wong pledged to change but was deprived of the opportunity when she was murdered by Khaw in her Mini Cooper on May 22, 2015.
Khaw, 53, an anaesthesiologist, was jailed for life on Wednesday after a jury unanimously found him guilty of murdering both Wong, 47, and Lily Khaw Li Ling, 16, that day.
At the heart of yoga ball murder case was a deeply unhappy marriage, trial hears
The jury found that Khaw had placed in the car a yoga ball leaking carbon monoxide, which he had obtained through a bogus medical experiment.
The judge called the killing a “calculated” murder. It took place against the backdrop of an affair Khaw was having with his former student, Shara Lee, now an assistant professor at Polytechnic University.
Wong, a former nurse, married Khaw in 1992 in the UK. They had met four years earlier, while he was a medical student there.
She signed up for a self-help course in 2013 after discovering Lee’s relationship with her husband, the court heard.
The diary, which contains entries dating back to September that year, appears to refer to classes called the Transformation 70 Experience, which Wong attended at the InVision Group.
The five-day programme, which costs HK$158,000 (US$20,150), teaches stress release, tips on building a positive life, and the importance of teamwork and experience sharing, according to the group’s website.
Khaw, when he was interviewed by the police during the murder investigation, described it as a “cult”, saying it had changed his wife.
Revealed: how Hong Kong police solved yoga ball murder
Friends of Wong who testified during the trial said she had indeed changed, and became more willing to spend money on things she previously did not use, such as cigars.
In her diary, Wong lamented: “When I’m helping my kids with their homework, I’m impatient.”
She said she would also get angry easily when her children were clumsy.
“When my husband is talking to me, I am engrossed in watching television,” she wrote.
As a result, she said, Khaw had not been willing to take her to conferences for his work, and her children had refused to go to movies with her or even share their plans.
She also reflected on her childhood, revealing that arguments with her parents had made her reluctant to connect with others. Her mother used to teach her it was better to be loved than to love.
“I didn’t give anything back. I became selfish. I took and took,” she said.
But she was hopeful of change.
Professor sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of Hong Kong yoga ball murders
“I needed to … tell my children I loved them very much, that Mummy was going to be more responsible from now on, be a caring person rather than an impatient one,” she wrote.
“I want to tell my husband that I’m going to be more responsible for my actions.”
She mentioned a long list of people she should be thankful for, including her family.
Some 26 times in the diary she wrote: “I am a passionate, committed and loving woman.”
