Abby Choi Murder Trial Opens in Hong Kong High Court: Three Kwong Men Deny Murder as Husband Chris Tam Testifies
HONG KONG — The murder of socialite Abby Choi Tin-fung, a case that shocked Hong Kong and Chinese communities around the world in 2023, finally went to trial at Hong Kong's High Court on September 21, 2026, more than three years after her death. In case HCCC 198/2025, heard by Deputy High Court Judge Brian Keith (祁彥輝) with a nine-member jury over an expected 45 days, Choi's former husband Alex Kwong Kong-chi, 32, her former father-in-law Kwong Kau, 69, and her former brother-in-law Anthony Kwong Kong-kit, 35, are charged with murdering Choi on February 21, 2023, at a village house in Lung Mei Village, Tai Po, and with preventing the lawful burial of her body. All three deny murder; the two brothers have admitted the burial charge, while Kwong Kau denies both charges. On October 15, the 17th day of the trial, Choi's husband Chris Tam Fong-chun continued giving evidence, testifying about the Kadoorie Hill flat, a Macao gambling debt and the day Choi vanished. On October 16, Tam remained under cross-examination by defence counsel as his evidence drew to a close.
Tam began testifying on October 14. He recalled that on February 21, 2023, Choi was still asleep when he left home for work in the morning. At 2:02 p.m. she sent him a voice message asking whether he was busy, and replied "OK" at 2:06 p.m.; after that, she sent nothing more. His later calls and messages went unanswered, although between 4:13 p.m. and 4:18 p.m. his messages briefly showed as delivered to her phone before the signal vanished again. Using a location-sharing app, he saw that Choi's phone had appeared in the Tai Po area. That evening he went to the Kadoorie Hill flat and found Alex Kwong and Alex's mother, Jenny Li Sui-heung, inside; he told the court the Kwong family seemed strangely calm about Choi's disappearance. Later that night, as Anthony Kwong drove him toward Tai Po — Anthony having said Choi had got out of the car there — Tam received a call from a police officer while sitting beside Anthony. The officer told him the police "extremely suspected" the whole Kwong family, including the man sitting next to him, and urged him to get away from Anthony and return to Tai Po to meet the police. Looking back now, Tam told the court, "everything is actually quite terrifying."
On October 15, the trial's 17th day, counsel for the three defendants took turns cross-examining Tam. Anthony Kwong's lawyer showed him photographs of Choi and Anthony together at birthday gatherings and parties, as well as selfies of the two, arguing that Anthony had no reason to harm Choi. Tam agreed that the two had had no major quarrel and that, at the time, he saw no reason for Anthony to hurt her — but added that his feelings are entirely different now that Anthony faces a grave murder charge. Tam also testified that he learned only on the night of a fierce row in 2022, from Choi herself, that the Kadoorie Hill flat had been paid for by Choi and registered in Kwong Kau's name. He said he was shocked and told her at once that it was "family property" and had to be reclaimed as soon as possible. The plan to sell the flat, he said, was not simply about the children's schooling; it was also because the Kwongs had grown "increasingly terrifying". He recalled a family confrontation in 2022 in which Kwong Kau lunged at Choi, "completely covered by rage" and "could not control himself" — the fiercest clash he described.
On October 16, Tam disclosed further details of a Macao gambling debt. He testified that he had borrowed HK$5 million to gamble at the Suncity casino in Macao, that Choi had guaranteed the loan, and that debt collectors later came calling. His father, Tam Chuk-kwan, ultimately paid about HK$6 million to settle the matter. According to Tam, roughly HK$1 million of that sum was not interest but a "gratuity" that Kwong Kau said had to be paid to smooth the way and identify the true creditors; his father wrote Kwong Kau a cheque for about HK$5.9 million, after which the harassment stopped.
Earlier, the prosecution called Choi's mother, Cheung Yin-fa, who testified from October 5 and completed her evidence on October 12. Cheung said Choi was her daughter by her first husband; she remarried Tsoi Cho-san when Choi was three, Choi took her stepfather's surname, and the family later made its fortune in businesses on the mainland. She said her daughter had poured some HK$70 million into supporting the Kwong family over the years, with nothing coming back. Under cross-examination, defence counsel suggested she had trimmed her testimony to suit the prosecution and that Alex Kwong had repaid gambling debts for her; Cheung denied both, insisting her family had always been the one paying, and that when she went to the mainland herself she found Alex doing nothing but spending her daughter's money. When CCTV footage from inside the Kadoorie Hill flat on the day Choi disappeared was played in court, Cheung broke down, and the prosecution paused the footage.
The prosecution case was set out on September 30 by Charlotte Draycott, the Senior Counsel engaged by the Department of Justice to lead the prosecution. She told the jury the root of the case was money: Choi came from a wealthy family, while the Kwongs were not well off. In 2019 Choi bought a flat at Kadooria on Kadoorie Hill in Ho Man Tin at a contract price of HK$72.8 million — an effective price of about HK$60.6 million after the developer's rebate — for her two children by Alex Kwong and the Kwong family to live in. To save stamp duty, the flat was registered in Kwong Kau's name. The prosecution says Choi was the true purchaser.
According to the prosecution, in June 2022 Choi, whose younger daughter was about to transfer to Harrow International School Hong Kong in Tuen Mun, planned to sell the Kadoorie Hill flat and buy another property in Tuen Mun for the Kwongs, and asked Kwong Kau to sign an authorisation for the sale. Kwong Kau strongly objected and refused to sign. At a meeting in July 2022, Kwong Kau moved to attack Choi and was stopped by Tam. In September 2022 Kwong Kau moved out of the flat to live with Anthony. After five months of wrangling, he finally signed the authorisation in November. The prosecution says Choi, fearing he might revoke it, pressed ahead with the sale, even lowering the asking price and raising the agent's commission, while Kwong Kau, afraid the sale would leave him with nothing, plotted with his two sons to kill her.
The prosecution alleges the three men prepared in division of labour from early February 2023. On February 2, Kwong Kau scouted a village house unit in Lung Mei Village, Tai Po, and rented it two days later at HK$10,000 a month on a two-year lease. Over the following weeks the men bought a meat grinder, an electric saw and blades, a large soup pot, a wooden chopping board, beef knives, storage boxes, sealing bags, non-slip gloves, ropes and a one-pound hammer. On February 17, Kwong Kau bought a second-hand refrigerator; on February 18, he rented a flat at The Arch above Kowloon Station, at HK$22,000 a month, to hide Alex Kwong after the killing. The prosecution produced the alleged hammer in court, saying Alex's DNA was found on its handle and that forensic examination showed the wounds to Choi's skull were caused by a blunt instrument whose shape matched the hammer; the blows, the prosecutor said, were "savage". At the judge's direction, jurors put on gloves and handled the hammer themselves.
The prosecution says that at noon on the day of the killing, Alex and Anthony Kwong met at a Starbucks in Grand Century Place in Mong Kok, where CCTV captured Anthony making a pressing-down motion with both hands and swinging his right arm up and down. The prosecution says Anthony was demonstrating to Alex how to pull Choi's head down. That afternoon, Anthony — Choi's personal driver — picked Choi up to take her to collect her younger daughter from school, and Alex got into the car along the way. The prosecution alleges Choi was struck with the hammer inside the car; her message exchanges with Jenny Li stopped at 2:44 p.m. Her body was then taken to the Lung Mei Village house to be disposed of. The prosecution says the remains were cooked to make them unidentifiable and to mask the smell, not for consumption.
For the defence, all three men deny murder. In cross-examination, counsel for Kwong Kau put it to witnesses that Kwong Kau had paid half the purchase price of the Kadoorie Hill flat, that Choi's use of a nominee to hold the title in order to avoid stamp duty might itself have been unlawful, and that Kwong Kau had never threatened Choi's family. Counsel for Anthony Kwong argued that Anthony had no reason to harm Choi. Cheung Yin-fa rejected the defence suggestions and demanded they produce proof.
The personal and financial history behind the case stretches back more than a decade. Abby Choi was born in Hainan in 1994 and moved to Hong Kong with her family at the age of five. After her mother remarried Tsoi Cho-san, the family built its wealth in construction-related businesses on the mainland. Choi became a model and socialite with about 140,000 followers on Instagram, a regular at Paris Fashion Week and other international fashion events; on February 13, 2023, eight days before her death, she appeared on the cover of the Monaco edition of L'Officiel magazine. Her personal fortune was reported to be about HK$300 million.
Choi, Alex Kwong and Chris Tam were all schoolmates at Concordia International School. She met Alex at 15 and married him at 18, while both were still at school; they had a son and a daughter. The marriage deteriorated over financial disputes and the couple separated in 2015. Alex later became involved in criminal cases and absconded to the mainland, so Choi was never able to complete divorce proceedings against him. She subsequently fell in love with Tam; the two held a wedding ceremony in December 2016 but never legally registered the marriage, which is treated as a de facto marriage, and they had two more children. Of Choi's four children, the elder son and younger daughter she had with Alex were afterwards cared for with the Kwongs' help, living at Harbour Place in Hung Hom with a domestic helper, and Choi visited them almost every day.
After the separation, Choi continued to bankroll the Kwong family. The prosecution says that between 2020 and 2022 she placed HK$25 million into a bank account for Alex Kwong's use, and that by the time of her death only about HK$1.4 million remained. She funded a business venture for Anthony Kwong — an egg-waffle shop co-owned by Anthony, Choi and Tam that closed in January 2023 — and afterwards employed Anthony as her personal driver. According to Cheung's testimony, a property Choi bought in Hainan, a Rolls-Royce and a black seven-seater car were also registered in Kwong Kau's name. Alex Kwong had no regular job for years and lived mainly on the Choi family's support. Kwong Kau is a former police detective sergeant; according to media reports, he resigned from the force in 2005 after being implicated in a rape allegation and was not criminally prosecuted at the time.
The Kadoorie Hill flat became the flashpoint of the case. By registering the property in Kwong Kau's name as a first-time buyer, the stamp duty rate fell from the standard 15 per cent to 4.25 per cent, saving about HK$7.8 million. Cheung testified that the flat was merely held in Kwong Kau's name and was never a gift, and that Choi was its beneficial owner. After Choi's death, Cheung applied to the High Court in March 2023 for a declaration that Choi was the beneficial owner of the flat and for an injunction restraining Kwong Kau from dealing with it; the related estate and ownership proceedings are still ongoing.
As to the killing and the arrests: on February 21, 2023, Choi was due to collect her younger daughter from a school in the Hong Kong Science Park area but never arrived. Her family reported her missing that night, and the Regional Crime Unit of Kowloon West took over the investigation. Using CCTV footage and the positioning records of the car involved, police traced the case to Lung Mei Village in Tai Po. On February 24, police found part of Choi's remains in a ground-floor village house unit at Lung Mei, Tai Po — her legs were inside a refrigerator, and the unit contained two soup pots holding human tissue. On February 26, police found Choi's skull in one of the large pots; there was a hole measuring about 6.5 cm by 5.5 cm at the back of the right side of the skull, believed to be the fatal wound. Choi's torso and hands have never been recovered. Police later deployed more than a hundred officers to large-scale searches around a catchment pool at the Chinese Permanent Cemetery in Tseung Kwan O and at the North East New Territories Landfill in Ta Kwu Ling, without result. Police described the village house unit as having been deliberately prepared, and the killing as "well-planned and premeditated".
Police arrested Anthony Kwong, Kwong Kau and Jenny Li on February 24. Alex Kwong was still at large, and police offered a HK$2 million reward for him. On February 25, Alex was arrested at the Tung Chung Development Pier as he was about to flee Hong Kong by speedboat, carrying more than HK$500,000 in cash and several luxury watches worth about HK$4 million in total.
The cases of the other defendants have since been concluded one by one. Jenny Li Sui-heung, 63, was charged with perverting the course of justice, accused of helping her son escape and interfering with the police investigation after the killing. Her case was heard in the District Court: she was convicted on September 30, 2025, and sentenced on October 28, 2025, to 18 months' imprisonment. Sentencing her, Judge Stanley Chan Kwong-chi said Li had doted on her son and helped him evade arrest. Because the time Li had already spent on remand exceeded the term she was actually required to serve after remission, she was released on the day of sentencing.
Lam Shun, 41, an employee of a yacht rental company, and Pun Hau-yin, 29, a friend of Alex Kwong, were each charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice over allegedly arranging for Alex to leave Hong Kong by boat. On June 16, 2025, Magistrate Philip Chan Chee-fai at Kowloon City Magistrates' Court convicted both of them, and on June 27, 2025, each was sentenced to six months' imprisonment. Lam began serving his sentence immediately and was released in early October 2025 after completing it. Pun appealed against both conviction and sentence in court and was granted bail pending appeal; her appeal was heard in the High Court in May 2026 and judgment is awaited.
Wu Zhi-rong, 47, Kwong Kau's mistress, was arrested in Tsim Sha Tsui on February 26, 2023. She was reported to have had a part in renting the Lung Mei Village unit and to have rented the flat at The Arch above Kowloon Station to shelter Alex Kwong. She was released on police bail and was ultimately not charged.
Alex Kwong also faced an older case of his own: between 2013 and 2015 he was involved in a series of thefts and frauds involving gold jewellery worth several million Hong Kong dollars, and absconded while on bail for years. On June 19, 2024, he pleaded guilty in the District Court to six counts of theft and one count of failing to surrender to custody as directed, and was sentenced to 42 months' imprisonment.
The main case took more than three years to reach trial. The three Kwong men and Jenny Li first appeared at Kowloon City Magistrates' Court on February 27, 2023. On December 20, 2023, the three men were additionally charged with preventing the lawful burial of a body. After numerous mentions, the case completed committal proceedings for trial in the High Court on June 9, 2025; the three men have been remanded in custody since their arrests. When the trial opened on September 21, 2026, the judge directed that, to protect Choi's four children, they must be referred to by code letters in the proceedings, and that the media must not report their names, addresses or any information that could identify them. On September 24, a first jury of seven men and two women was selected; one juror later applied to withdraw for health reasons, and the judge, noting that no evidence had yet been heard, discharged the entire jury. On September 30, a new jury of eight men and one woman was sworn in, and the prosecution delivered its opening address that afternoon.
Next, after Tam's evidence concludes, the prosecution will continue calling witnesses, including the investigating officers and forensic experts, before the defence presents its case; whether the three defendants will testify in their own defence is another closely watched question. On a 45-day estimate, the trial is expected to run until late November or December this year, and the jury's verdict will be the decisive moment of the case. In Hong Kong, murder carries a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment. Choi's funeral was held at Po Fook Memorial Hall in Tai Wai in June 2023, and her remains were cremated at Po Lin Monastery on Lantau Island.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 资料图：香港高等法院大楼，LN9267 摄，CC BY-SA 4.0（Wikimedia Commons）
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