Explainer | How the Braemar Hill murders shook Hong Kong in 1985
The city awoke on April 22, 1985, to news of the ‘savage killing’ of teenage sweethearts and Island School students Nicola Myers and Kenneth McBride. Anxious months followed before the killers were arrested
The murder of teenage sweethearts Kenneth McBride, 17, and Nicola Myers, 18, on a Hong Kong hillside in April 1985, in what became known as the Braemar Hill murders, left the city in shock.
“A top-level investigation has started into the savage killing of two English teenagers, whose badly beaten bodies were found on the slope of Braemar Hill yesterday morning,” the South China Morning Post reported on April 22, 1985. “A [jogger] thought the two were sunbathing as the girl was almost naked. When the bodies did not move, he became suspicious and made the gruesome find.”
With police remaining tight-lipped over the investigation, media speculation filled the void in the months that followed.On May 19, the Post reported: “The most agonising aspect of the Braemar Hillside murders for the families, friends and relatives of the two teenagers has been the speculation,” with Chinese-language newspapers suggesting theories that “seem to have come from the imagination of reporters rather than hard fact”.
A breakthrough came almost seven months after the murders. “A massive investigation into the much-publicised Braemar Hill double murder has culminated in the arrest of five young people,” ran a report in the Post on November 29.
