AN impassioned plea for the return of a three-year-old missing girl by her mother sent thousands of Penangites on a fervent search for Shearway Ooi Ying Ying on July 5, 2007.
Saleswoman Jess Teh, then aged 28, had lodged a report claiming her daughter had gone missing in the morning after she left her alone briefly next to her car to pay a parking ticket near the Bayan Baru market in Penang.
The little girl, clad in pyjamas with teddy bear prints, was suspected to have been abducted.
It was only three months earlier that Ying Ying had been handed over to her mother by her paternal grandparents who had raised her as an infant.
While a massive search for Ying Ying was underway in every nook and corner of the island, Teh kept her silence of a dark secret only she and her boyfriend knew.
But little did they know that not many can escape the skilled grilling of the police.
As investigators searched for the child, their suspicions were aroused by Teh’s inconsistent statements.
After a second round of interrogations for several hours, investigators cracked the case two days later, when Teh broke down and confessed the truth.
The woman, who was in the midst of a divorce from the child’s father, told police that Ying Ying would never be found as she was dead.
The child’s body was burnt and her charred remains were disposed at different locations in Penang, namely a Chinese cemetery and two separate rivers.
Soon after, Teh’s boyfriend Ong Chee Leong, 29, who lived with her and Ying Ying at an apartment in Bandar Baru Air Itam, was arrested.
Ong, a former manager of an entertainment outlet who was the last person with Ying Ying before her death, led police to what was left of the child’s charred remains.
About two weeks later, Ong was charged with the girl’s murder.
However, seven months later while awaiting trial, Ong was found hanged in his cell at the Penang prison.
No foul play was suspected.
He had apparently made a noose with several towels and a bedsheet that were in his cell.
