The Judiciary Police (PJ) arrested a mainland man suspected of killing and robbing a Hong Kong man in a hotel guestroom in Cotai on Wednesday, and a Hong Kong woman suspected of laundering the loot, a Judiciary Police (PJ) spokesperson said at a special press conference yesterday.
According to the spokesperson, the victim was a middle-age man from Hong Kong, who worked as an illegal currency exchange dealer in Macau for at least six months.
The mainland suspect is a 40-year-old man surnamed Yang, and the female suspect is a 48-year-old Hong Kong woman surnamed Tang. Both of them told the police that they are jobless, the spokesperson said, adding that Yang worked for the victim as an illegal currency exchange dealer for at least three months.
The police received a report at nearly 5 p.m. on Wednesday that a dead body had been found in the bathroom of a hotel guestroom in Cotai, with a fatal neck wound of about 20 centimetres in length, an injury to his forehead and various degrees of other injuries, the spokesperson said.
According to the spokesperson, the victim won money in the casino and exchanged his chips for about HK$2.5 million into cash, after which, he went to his guestroom at around 10 a.m. on Wednesday.
According to the spokesperson, Yang then entered the guestroom and stayed there for about one-and-a-half hours, after which he went to a corner of the hotel lobby and handed over a bag suspected of being full of cash to Tang. Yang then returned to the room and stayed there for about three hours before taking a taxi with two bags of things and leaving.
The police found two pieces of a razor blade about six centimetres long and stained with blood in the guestroom, but no complete murder weapon was found, and the crime scene was found to have been cleaned up, according to the spokesperson.
PJ officers arrested the duo in the hotel casino and a nearby street respectively on the same day, and seized HK$1.7 million from Yang and his rented apartment in Taipa, according to the spokesperson, adding that Yang had changed his clothes twice after the crime to avoid being found by the police.
PJ officers also discovered bloodstained clothes and two mobile phones belonging to the deceased outside a supermarket in Taipa, the spokesperson said.
Tang, according to the spokesperson, was suspected of having exchanged some of the stolen money into chips and transferring some of the money to mainland bank accounts with the help of other illegal money exchangers.
Under questioning, the duo refused to cooperate.
The duo were transferred to the Public Prosecutions Office (MP) yesterday afternoon, with Yang facing charges of homicide and aggravated robbery, with Tang facing a charge of money laundering, according to the spokesperson.
Macau’s maximum prison term for homicide is 25 years.
The Judiciary Police (PJ) display evidence they seized from the male murder suspect including HK$1.7 million in cash, bloodstained clothes and mobile phones during yesterday’s special press conference at the PJ headquarters in Zape. – Photo: William Chan
Judiciary Police (PJ) officers escort the two hooded fraud suspects to a PJ vehicle outside the PJ headquarters in Zape yesterday. – Photo: Ginnie Liang
