SLIGHTLY more than 41 years ago, the country was shocked by the gruesome yet perplexing murder of a former beauty queen-turned-teacher, which is unsolved to this day.
Both local and foreign media covered the case as not only did it involve a former beauty queen and was shrouded in mystery, but it was also revealed that there was a possible love triangle that reeked of lies, deception, jealousy and betrayal.
British author Alex Josey even wrote a book about it entitled The Murder of a Beauty Queen.
On that fateful night of April 6, 1979, two Malaysia Airlines employees found 31-year-old Jean Perera Sinnappa brutally murdered with multiple stab wounds to her chest and still strapped in the seat of a white Fiat 125 driven by her brother-in-law and alleged lover, S. Karthigesu, then aged 37, who was found lying face down unconscious on the ground next to the car.
The scene of the crime was at a secluded underpass on the road from the then Subang International Airport (now known as the Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport – Skypark Terminal) leading to the Federal Highway.
Karthigesu had claimed in his testimony to the police that he had pulled the car to the side of the road to relieve himself, and that he was hit on the head from behind and could not recall nor remember what had happened.
At the crime scene, police found Karthigesu without any injuries and there were no traces of urine in the area.
Police arrested him a few weeks after the incident and he was charged with Jean's murder at the Kuala Lumpur High Court, the first case in the country to be charged based on circumstantial evidence and extrajudicial confession.
(An extrajudicial confession is confession made out of court, and not as a part of a judicial examination or investigation).
Police took close to four months to complete the investigation and the murder trial ran for 38 days with 58 witnesses being called. Karthigesu was arrested on April 26 and charged with Jean's murder on May 9 that year.
The outcome of the trial found Karthigesu guilty and he was charged with murder and spent two years in prison until a key witness and family friend of the accused, Bandhulanda Jayathilake, came forward and renounced his earlier testimony that Karthigesu had committed the crime by confiding in him that she deserved to die.
This left the judge and court with insufficient evidence and no choice but to set Karthigesu free.
On May 20, 1981, Kartigesu walked away a free man after spending two years, one month and four days behind bars.
After being acquitted, Karthigesu is said to have settled down and continued to live somewhere in Klang. As for Bandhulanda Jayathilake, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for perjury but he died two years later while doing time.
Tragedy had adversely affected the life of this beautiful young woman just mere months before her death as she was left widowed when her husband, S. Sinnappa, a chemist, died in a road accident in Petaling Jaya on New Year's Eve.
After her husband's death, Jean, a schoolteacher from Negri Sembilan, and her three young children — Damendra, Rohini and Malini — moved in with her mother-in-law and Karthigesu, a psychology lecturer, in Klang.
At the time, Berita Harian had reported that Karthigesu had actually been in love with his sister-in-law, but was unable to do anything about it as she was happily married to his brother.
After Sinnappa's sudden death, however, it was said that Karthigesu wasted no time in taking the opportunity to pursue her. There were also reports that the two were indeed a couple.
The happiness was said to have been short-lived as Karthigesu discovered that Jean was cheating on him. At the time, the New Straits Times had reported that Jean was said to be romantically involved with Dr Narada Warnasurya, a medical practitioner from Sri Lanka who had been tracked down by the authorities but declined to appear in court to give his testimony. Jean had met Dr Narada during a function at the YMCA in Brickfields, Kuala Lumpur, sometime in 1978.
The case still remains cold, with no new leads or headway due to lack of evidence. And it remains one of the most puzzling and sensational murder cases to have ever happened in the country.
