26th October 2026 – (Hong Kong) A government senior chemist told the High Court that cutting marks on a pelvis and spine believed to be those of socialite Abby Choi matched a circular electric saw rather than a handsaw, as the murder trial of three Kwong family men continued.
The defendants are her former brother-in-law Anthony Kwong Kong-kit, 35, a driver; her former father-in-law Kwong Kau, 69, a retiree; and her former husband Alex Kwong Kong-chi, 32, who is unemployed. They are accused of murdering her in Hong Kong on 21st February 2023 and of preventing the lawful burial of her body between the 21st and 23rd of that month. All three deny murder. Anthony Kwong and Alex Kwong have admitted the burial offence; Kwong Kau denies it.
Dr Tam Cheok-ning, a senior chemist at the Government Laboratory, resumed his evidence today, analysing the condition of bones believed to be Choi’s and inferring what tools might have cut them. On the pelvis, he said, the cutting marks showed slightly curved lines. Those, he thought, resembled marks left by a round electric saw. He also found that part of the spine had been completely severed, with a cutting face showing no obvious tool marks — again, in his view, possibly the work of an electric saw.
Last week, he described comparison tests using the same models of electric saw and handsaw as those provided by police, cutting oxtail bone. The electric-saw traces on the oxtail, he said, matched the tool marks on Choi’s pelvis. Expanding today, he noted two of the slightly curved lines on the pelvis were clearer. A handsaw, he explained, would leave straighter, denser, parallel lines; a circular power saw would leave gently curved lines spaced farther apart and not parallel.
Asked about a second cutting face on the spine, Tam said there was little tool marking. He still thought a saw had caused the separation, but not a handsaw — and that if an electric saw were held steadily, it might leave no curved lines. On the separation of the right hip area from the other hip and spine, he said the gap showed a joint and that possible causes included sawing or a blow with a hard object such as a hammer. Asked whether a cleaver could have done it, he said many tools might; without distinctive tool marks he could not name one.
Oliver Davies, counsel for Kwong Kau, challenged the use of a transparent plastic box of the type linked to the case, noting that people could still be seen through it. Tam agreed. Counsel suggested anyone hiding a body would not choose such a box. Tam replied that he had no experience of packing a corpse and had not considered the point. Knives, hammers and other tools seized from the Lung Mei Village house in Tai Po remain among the exhibits the jury has been told about, while today’s expert focus stayed on how curved pelvic lines and a clean spinal cut point, in Tam’s opinion, towards a circular electric saw rather than the slower rhythm of a hand blade.