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Hi, everyone. This is Deb from Dying to Be Found.
Before we get started, I just wanted to say that episodes contain disturbing discussions
on harmful acts and crimes against animals and or humankind.
Recordings are not intended for young or sensitive audiences due to the content nature of this podcast.
Listener discretion is strongly advised.
Hi, everyone. This is Deb.
And I'm Shelby.
And I'm Dan.
And I'm Shelby.
And we want to welcome you to episode number 45 of Dying to Be Found.
Woohoo!
I know, right? I know I was going to mention to you,
we have got a lot in store for second season coming up,
and I'm starting to put some things on social media.
If our listeners have a chance, you should be going to look at Instagram.
Yes.
And we're on TikTok now.
No way.
Yep. You know, we've got to keep up with the times here.
I know that's right.
We have two posts.
Isn't that exciting?
Woo! Yes, it is.
Yeah, definitely go check them out.
Otherwise, we are glad that you are here today and just keep watching our social media.
We are announcing changes coming up in February for our season two.
And I think that is all I'm going to say about that right now.
Are you not going to tell us what changes?
No, absolutely not.
I want to be just as surprised as our listeners,
because honestly, I'm just getting everything set up right now,
and I'll be just as surprised as you.
Well, I'm excited. I can't wait to see what's coming.
All right. Well, I think that our listeners are going to see a nice transition
with some positive changes and a little dash of this and a little dash of that.
We'll be expanding our reach with family members.
Beth, my sister is still going to be here,
but Shelby, I don't know if I told you this.
I'm pulling your brother in.
Oh, I'm so excited.
I can't wait to hear what he has to say.
Yeah, we have about seven more episodes to go before season two kicks off.
And I feel like I'm really counting down the seconds like New Year's Eve,
which obviously is right around the corner as well.
In the meantime, by the time this episode airs, it will be around Christmas.
So we definitely wish all of our listeners a very happy holiday season.
Yes, happy holidays.
So excited. Christmas is my absolute favorite.
And I know I told you earlier,
but our listeners don't know that my Christmas tree lights decided to go out
and not just one or two bulbs,
the entire three or four strands of lights that I have on my very large seven foot Christmas tree.
That'll be pretty tedious of you just taking each and every light out to see which one blew.
I feel like I do a few at a time every few hours or so.
I'm sorry for that. I hate that when that happens.
That is what it is.
Well, Shelby, I have a question for you.
I have an answer.
You do?
I don't know. We'll see.
Okay. I want you to think back.
Think back to your wonderful childhood growing up.
And I don't even know if I know this answer. I think I might.
But did you have a favorite stuffed animal or stuffed doll that you absolutely loved as a kid?
I don't think I was really into stuffed animals.
I mean, I played with Barbies, but I don't really remember playing with like baby dolls.
Do you remember your little white bear?
No.
You don't remember your bear? Holy cow.
Put the silk on it?
Yes. I still have it, by the way. It's in a box.
Oh, wow.
I need to send it to you.
I don't get rid of that stuff.
I don't either.
Yeah. If you don't remember the stuffed animal's name, I'll tell you what it was.
If you didn't have your pacifier in your mouth, you would call it B.
If you did have it in your mouth, you made a weird sound and it just went,
Oh, I remember you telling me about that before.
Oh, goodness.
Okay, so I'm going to go back a little bit and tell you about some of my favorite stuffed dolls.
One of them was Holly Hobby.
I don't even know if you've heard of any of these, Shelby Holly Hobby.
Have you heard of Mrs. Beasley?
I feel like I've heard of Holly Hobby. Did I say Hobby Lobby or Holly Hobby?
Did I say Holly Hobby or Hobby Lobby? I'm not sure. It was Holly Hobby.
Okay. I think I've heard of that one. I'm going to Google it.
How about Mrs. Beasley?
Nope. I feel like I've heard of Holly Hobby.
I searched. You're never going to guess what I just Googled Holly Hobby to see what it looked like.
And it brought up literally the closest Hobby Lobby stores to me.
Wow.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah. Okay. I've seen that kind of doll before.
All right. Regardless, Shelby, I loved my stuffed animals growing up, even as a teenager,
because I had a life-sized floppy ear dog that I named Jake that an old boyfriend gave me.
And I'm pretty sure that Jake hung around longer than he did.
That's funny.
Another one of my favorites was Hello Kitty. Do you know that one?
I sure do.
I had this really cool Hello Kitty doll that I bought in high school,
and it had a really punky looking hair. Anytime I shook its head, the hair flew all over the place.
Looked kind of punky. I think I could relate because that's probably what I identified
with while I was in my high school years. I don't even know if you knew that.
I did not. I did not. I didn't know Hello Kitty was around for that long.
Yeah. Believe it or not, Shelby, it was originally created in 1974.
And right now, even today, it's very popular amongst pretty much any age group.
It's especially popular in the Asian culture, which I think it originally targeted the tween
population. They had all those little toys and accessories that could go with the Hello Kitty.
But I would probably classify, and you can correct me here, but do you think that it would fit into
the anime category? I think that sounds about right.
Yeah. Anime is super popular today. So we are going to go all the way back to March 1999,
when a news story broke that a woman in Hong Kong had been murdered because of the high crime rate
in Hong Kong is close to non-existent. This story was sensationalized not just by the news media
shelves, but by the general public. Wow. And the reason this was is because police investigated
a tip given by a 14-year-old girl that they had found a woman's head stuffed inside an oversized
Hello Kitty mermaid doll. I would be so freaked out.
Yeah. And the story gets worse too. I'm going to kind of give you, and I'm going to do my best
to pronunciate these names the best I can. I'm trying to use some phonics here, but there were
a couple of people that were arrested on March 17, 1999, Chun Mon Lok, age 34, Lung Xing Chou,
age 27, and Lung Wai Lun, age 21. The three of these men kidnapped 23-year-old Phon Mon Yee
under the premise that she owed them thousands of dollars. I saw some variations on how much she
owed. There's a pretty big gap here. It was anywhere between, I'm going to just talk in
US dollars here, $2,500 to $10,000, which I will break down in just a bit, but basically she was
indebted to Mon Lok. And I'm going to kind of explain in just a minute what happened, but for
over a month, these men held Phon Mon Yee against her will and tortured her every day until she
eventually died. That is so sad. It is. My thoughts automatically go to that drugs are involved.
Actually, yeah, that's pretty much what's stemmed everything. And I'll start off by saying that
Mon Yee was a survivalist. She lived in the streets for a while. She was originally abandoned by her
parents when she was an infant and ended up in an orphanage where she aged out at the age of 16.
And from my understanding, Mon Yee didn't receive any life skills while she was in that orphanage
to even know what to do, Shelby, once she left there. So she quickly did end up on the streets.
And of course, like you said, she did turn to drugs and sex work to support herself.
16 just seems a little young to be aged out of an orphanage. Yeah, it's a different country too. So
I understand what you're saying because that is pretty young, but I don't know what laws are
involved. In 1997, Mon Yee also worked as a hostess at a nightclub where she met
Chon Mon Lok, the 34 year old man. Mon Lok was a member of the Chinese mafia, and he soon became
Mon Yee's pimp and drug dealer. Sounds about right. Yeah, you had this pegged. Well, apparently
Mon Yee made quite the impression because she became one of the favorites amongst Mon Lok's
brothel. I'll call it a brothel. I'm not really sure what terms you can use, but if he's a pimp,
he's got several women that he's probably managing. And Mon Yee was right up there as one of his
favorites. Well, one night Mon Yee made a huge and very grave mistake, Shelby. She went for Mon Lok's
wallet from the nightclub where she worked because once you get hooked on drugs, Shelby,
you pretty much do anything to find money. And she lifted Mon Lok's wallet while she was working
the nightclub one night. That's not good. Nope. Because the money that Mon Yee stole equaled to
be around 500 US dollars, but Mon Lok caught her in the act. And of course he made her return his
money, but there was a price to that. Along with this original $500, Mon Lok charged interest. And
I'm sure you've seen enough shows, Shelby, out there where there are loan sharks. What loan shark
interest really means. Yep. So all terms applied. So what happened was she was made to pay that $500
back immediately, but there was interest involved in the terms of interest was not just a little bit.
It was tacked on somewhere between that $2,500 and $10,000 that I had mentioned. Oh wow. Yeah. And
she wouldn't have stole it in the first place if she didn't need the money, but those terms of
interest made it impossible for Mon Yee to pay back. And of course what happens Shelby, when a
loan shark doesn't receive their money in a timely manner. They're going to get mad. They did. They
got mad. All that for $500. Yeah. I know. And I mean, he's the one that set the terms on the
interest too. So anything goes in the Chinese mafia, I guess. Well, Mon Lok and his two cronies,
Lung Xing Chou and Lun Wailun kidnapped Mon Yee. The original intentions was for the three men to
hold Mon Yee in an apartment and prostitute her out to help her earn that money back. However,
at some point in time, this kidnapping turned into a brutal month long torture session and Mon Lok
and his two accomplices each would participate in various forms of torture. They used hot wax
and hot melted plastic to drip onto Mon Yee's feet. They rubbed hot chili spices into her wounds
and forced her to say how much she loved to be tortured. And Shelby, if she did not cite the
fact that she was loving the torture that she was enduring, they would just make things worse.
Oh my goodness. How can you do that to somebody? I know. I know. They bound her in electrical wires.
They urinated in her mouth and even forced her to eat human excrement. So this poor girl is enduring
the worst of the worst to make matters worse, Shelbs. When the gang got bored, they would just
go into another room and play video games. What do you think of that? They just didn't care.
Mm-hmm. They had a toy to play with, didn't they? Mm-hmm. Well, after a month or so, Mon Yee
unfortunately died alone while everybody was out of the apartment. That's so sad. It is. In May 1999,
a 14 year old girl that we're going to call Ah Fung, I believe that was the name that the courts
gave her to protect her identity since she was underage. She came to the police unshaperoned
with a very terrible story to tell. Ah Fung told the police that she was having nightmares
of a woman being bound and tortured by her boyfriend and two other men who allegedly owed
the men money. Sound familiar? That whole storyline that I just told you. It does,
but she also sounds kind of young to have a boyfriend of their ages. Oh yeah, absolutely.
I mean, believe it or not, apparently the boyfriend was a 34 year old. So yeah, I mean,
he was the oldest of the group, the 34 year old with a 14 year old. What's wrong with that picture?
Like where did they meet? That's disgusting. Oh yeah, for sure. Well, according to Ah Fung,
the ghost of a murdered young woman was in her apartment and had been haunting Ah Fung
through her nightmares. And Shelby, I don't know if you've caught up on all our episodes,
but we had a similar case back on episode 40, Andre's Pandy. And if you haven't listened to that
yet, you need to, because how do you think the police reacted Ah Fung when she showed up to tell
her tale? It's the same situation. They were probably pretty skeptical. Yeah. Well, guess what?
Like you said, the police were skeptical and they did brush her off pretty much saying, Shelby,
that Ah Fung was just a child with an overactive imagination. Yeah. I mean, if she's just saying
that she has the nightmares, I guess that kind of makes sense versus her actually seeing something
happen. True. But if she's having nightmares and she was pretty accurate with what was going on,
doesn't that sound like she might have been there when a lot of that happened? That's true. Well,
Ah Fung went on to say that she knew the woman's name and that she had been imprisoned, raped,
tortured, and beaten repeatedly by three men. Ah Fung stated that she had joined in at some point
and even helped to beat Mon-Yi in the head over 50 times. Oh. Well, at this point, Ah Fung was
finally taken seriously by the police and she led them to the apartment where everything took place.
So of course, when the police arrive, they walk inside and probably the most noticeable and
unusual scene in the apartment was that Hello Kitty items were all over the apartment. I mean,
it was wall to wall Hello Kitty, like silverware, curtains, stuffed animals, all sorts of Hello
Kitty memorabilia. There was even a life-sized Hello Kitty mermaid doll found in one of the
bedrooms, which in just a moment, Shelby, this will come into play. What would you do if you walked
into an apartment like this? They seem to like Hello Kitty like I like Christmas. I just was never
into Hello Kitty like that. Yeah. Good comparison. I really do not think that you were into stuffed
animals and I do remember that. I always thought you don't even play with a lot of dolls. No,
I was in the woods. By the waterfalls, right? By the waterfalls. Yep. Upon closer examination
of the apartment, police made a horrifying discovery. Mon-Lok and his two accomplices
had dismembered Mon-Yi and stored some of her body parts in the refrigerator inside the apartment
and threw other parts out with the trash. Because they did not want the smell of human decomposition
to waft through the walls, they dismembered Mon-Yi and then they proceeded, Shelby, to
boil body parts on the stove right next to the noodles that they were preparing as well. So they
had a couple pots on the stove. That is so gross. Yes. Well, they didn't cannibalize Mon-Yi, but they
used the same stirring utensils like chopsticks. Whatever they were stirring their noodles with,
they also stirred the pot that Mon-Yi was in and they were cooking side by side. Now this is the
most bizarre part. The guys took Mon-Yi's head after it had been cooked and sewed it into that
oversized Hello Kitty mermaid doll and left it on the bed inside the bedroom. Oh my gosh. These are
some sick people. Sick and stupid. Yeah. I don't really have any words for that. I just don't,
I can't comprehend. I don't either. Yeah, I can't comprehend them going to the extent of
what they did and then taking one specific part and leaving it inside the apartment. I mean,
that makes no sense. Yeah. I'm kind of curious to know what their conversations were while they
were doing this. Yeah. Well, two, they're drug lords as well. So, you know, they had to have been
doing a lot of drugs at the same time. That's true. I'm going to fast forward to the arrests.
The three men who took part in Mon-Yi's kidnapping and torture soon went on trial for her murder.
However, all three defendants were only convicted of manslaughter and were sentenced to 20 years in
prison after a six-week trial. What? Yeah. Would you like to know why? Please. The jury who heard
this case could not convict the defendants on murder because of all things. They could not
pinpoint Mon-Yi's exact cause of death. That is probably the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
I know. I mean, they kept her there for a month. I mean, the sewing of her head on a stuffed animal
isn't enough to convict them as a first-degree murder. No. Believe it or not, when the
investigators looked into this case, they felt there was insufficient evidence to determine
if Mon-Yi had been murdered, like you said, obviously, or if she died by suicide through
a drug overdose. So my question here is they've got her held captive for a whole month, but how's
she consuming the drugs? Is she hanging out in the living room with these people? Are they forcing
the drugs on her? Is it recreational? I have no idea. So that's kind of where the investigators
came to the crossroads here. Did she die of a drug overdose or did she die from the injuries that
were inflicted upon her? Well, on December 6th, 2000, Ah-Fong, now remember she was 14 years old.
She's the one that reported this incident to the police. Well, she admitted that she participated
in some of Mon-Yi's beatings, but she received immunity for her testimony and never went to
prison at all. The three men were sentenced to life in prison without parole for false imprisonment
in manslaughter, like I had mentioned. The jury concluded that the men did not intend to kill
Mon-Yi, but she instead died from her injuries. What do you think of that? The jury concluded,
let me repeat this and let it sink in. The jury concluded that the men did not intend to kill Mon-Yi,
but instead she died from her injuries. That is just crazy. Well, Loong Wai Loong, the 21 year old,
appealed his conviction and his sentence was reduced to 18 years. And Shelby, he was released
just two years ago in 2020. Wow. But let's fast forward to August of 2022. That was just this
past summer. Wai Loong was sent back to prison for another 12 months due to indecent contact
with a 10 year old. Oh my goodness. There seems to be a pattern. Yeah. Leopards do not change
their spots, do they? No, absolutely not. And he's now in his forties. Public interest in this case
drew crowds of people to the apartment building where everything occurred. And some even attempted
to contact Mon-Yi's spirit. The apartments were eventually demolished in 2012 and then were
replaced by a hotel in 2016. Just because the building's gone, it doesn't mean the spirit's
still not there. Don't you agree? I totally agree because I was literally just thinking that now
she's probably really mad that they tore down the hotel or I'm sorry, they tore down the apartment
building and built a hotel over top. Yeah. I don't know if I'd want to stay in that hotel.
Yeah, I don't think so either. I mean, it's interesting though. So with that, several movies
have been produced based on these events. And I don't know if you ever watched that television
series Bones? I have not, but I've heard of it. Yeah, me too. I have never watched it. And I know
it was hugely popular. Well, during season four, they highlighted this story about the Hello Kitty
murder and it was named The Girl in the Mask. If you ever go see reruns and catch that episode,
then just know that's what I'm talking about today. Wow. Well, that's the story of the Hello Kitty
murder. And honestly, I'm not even sure how I came across this story because I really thought it was
a completely different story altogether when I started this research. But I do feel like there's
another Hello Kitty crime out there. I just don't know what it is. But then I'm like, wait a minute,
maybe I saw a reality show and there was a girl who was obsessed with Hello Kitty that had a blind
date or something and she was obsessed with Hello Kitty. I have no idea. I just thought this was a
completely different case when I started researching it. And I mean, I'm not lying. I told you,
you're going to be horrified by this one. Yeah, this was a pretty gruesome one.
Mm hmm. Well, I want to know what our listeners have to say. So DM us and give us some feedback
or shoot us an email because I'd really be interested on if you guys have heard this story
before or if there's anything else you want to add. But that's the Hello Kitty murder of 1999.
Well, thank you for sharing. No problem. So do you have a teachable moment for us today?
For us today? You know what? I really don't. I mean, I'm not even kidding this time. I really
don't have one because there's not one thing that I can even take away from this Shelby to turn that
into a teachable moment because to me, this is a very horrifying story and I don't have anything
that I could add to that. But how about you? Do you think you have one today? Say no to drugs.
Yeah. So there you go. What'd you think of that story today? That was crazy. So sad. Don't be
going to look for pictures. I did not plan on it. Oh, goodness. Well, anything else to add,
Shelbs? No, this has been fun. I think this is what my third episode in a row. Yeah. And it's
actually a short one today because I found a ton of articles on this, but they were pretty repetitive.
So I really didn't want to spend that much time on this. And then honestly, I was thinking about
doing this for our second season that's coming up, but I thought, nope, this is not the direction I
want to go with that. So there's that. Listeners, we'd love your thoughts. Otherwise, that is all
we've got and join us here next Thursday. Awesome. Well, thank you. No problem. Thanks for listening
to Dying to be Found. Before we go, we would love for you to leave a review on your favorite podcast
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