On 14 January 2006, at Sungai Petani in Kedah, Malaysia, 24-year-old Chee Gaik Yap (), a Chinese Malaysian who was last seen jogging with her sister, went missing, and was found dead nine hours later with multiple stab wounds all over her body. Evidence showed that Chee had been abducted, raped, sodomized and in the end, murdered by her attacker, who was not caught until six years later, when the suspect was arrested at Kuala Lumpur International Airport after arriving from Perth.
The perpetrator, Shahril Jaafar, who was the son of a Datuk businessman, was initially set free in June 2013 after being found not guilty of the crime, but following the prosecution's appeal and a re-trial, Shahril was found guilty of murdering Chee and sentenced to the mandatory death penalty by the Alor Setar High Court in August 2015.
Shahril's appeals to the Court of Appeal and Federal Court were rejected in 2016 and 2018 respectively, and in 2024, after Malaysia's abolition of mandatory death sentences, Shahril filed a re-sentencing motion to commute his death sentence but his appeal ultimately failed, after the Federal Court found it appropriate to sentence Shahril to hang for the rape-murder of Chee, which the prosecution described as the "rarest of rare" case of murder in Malaysia. Shahril is currently on death row as of 2024.
Chee's murder On the evening of 14 January 2006, 24-year-old marketing executive Chee Gaik Yap was last seen jogging together with her younger sister Chee Gaik Choon () at a park nearby their house in Sungai Petani, located in the Malaysian state of Kedah.
On that fateful evening, Chee offered to accompany her younger sister Gaik Choon, who wanted to go for an evening jog, as she was concerned for her sister's safety. At around 6pm, the two sisters began to jog along the track at the Cinta Sayang Club at Taman Ria Jaya. Chee Gaik Yap, who was more athletic and trained in martial arts, ran faster than her younger sister and was way ahead until Gaik Choon lost sight of her sister. By the time the sisters were supposed to go home, Gaik Choon could not find Chee and thus, she went back home under the assumption that her sister had already gone back home. However, Chee's sister discovered that Chee had not returned when she reached home. Chee's sister returned to the jogging track to find her again, and after a search, she found an abandoned shoe that belonged to Chee and there were bloodstains on the area itself. Horrified at this, Chee's sister contacted her family to inform them of Chee's disappearance, and a police report was lodged thereafter. A huge team of policemen, together with Chee's family and friends, searched for Chee by combing the nearby areas for traces of her.
At 2.30am on 15 January 2006, nine hours after Chee went missing, a passer-by discovered the body of a woman near a golf course not far from where Chee had jogged. The woman's semi-naked corpse was abandoned in some thick undergrowth, and had multiple injuries on her body. The police were alerted to the finding and through identification procedures, the deceased was identified as 24-year-old Chee Gaik Yap.
An autopsy report by Dr Mohammad Zaini from the Hospital Sultanah Bahiyah of Alor Setar found that Chee sustained a total of 50 injuries (including stab wounds) all over her body, and that she had been raped and sodomized prior to her death, based on the sexual injuries discovered at her private parts. Out of these injuries, a stab wound on Chee's neck, measured 15 cm long, was sufficient in the ordinary course of nature to cause death, as the severity of the wound resulted in Chee dying from massive blood loss.
Background information revealed that Chee Gaik Yap was the third of six children and came from a financially poor family, and she was the only one out of the six to enter and complete university. Chee graduated from Universiti Utara Malaysia and was working as a marketing executive for only four months before she was killed, and she had plans for job training in Germany before she met her untimely end. Chee left behind her parents, her five siblings and a niece at the time she died; her father Chee Ah Sau () was working as a carpenter at the time of her murder.
Investigations and Shahril's arrest The case was classified as murder, and investigating officers of the Royal Malaysia Police were dispatched to investigate the murder of Chee Gaik Yap. Originally, there were 12 suspects arrested in connection to the crime, but they were all released by February 2006 after the police found insufficient evidence against them. As the investigation process dragged on, the police were unable to find crucial clues to solve the case, and the case itself gradually became cold.
Despite the lack of progress, Chee's family and their supporters (including prominent political figures from Malaysia) continually called for the authorities to not give up investigating the murder. A police spokesperson in 2008 made a public statement to confirm that the police would regularly make updates in investigating cold cases, and he also personally provided his contact information for those who could provide assistance in cracking the case of Chee's rape-murder. Aside from the Chee Gaik Yap case, the police also appealed for new information to crack an unsolved double murder at Alor Setar, where two women - Teoh Mooi Peng (钟美萍 Zhōng Měipíng) and Leong Mooi Leng (梁美玲 Liáng Měilíng) - were kidnapped and brutally murdered by unknown assailants in 2001. The killer(s) were never found despite extensive efforts to solve the double killings.
In 2009, a major breakthrough was made in the investigation process, and the police once again scoured through a list of suspects, all of whom they brought in for questioning and to undergo DNA tests. After the DNA test results came out, it was found that the DNA of the semen samples matched to one of those suspects examined in the DNA testing. The suspect was identified as 28-year-old Shahril Jaafar, who was a Malaysian citizen and car dealer living in Sungei Petani, which was near the murder scene. Shahril's father was Datuk Jaafar Jamaludin, an affluent jewellery businessman based in Malaysia, and Shahril had several siblings and a wife, with whom he had a child. However, by the time the DNA test results were released, Shahril, who was released on police bail soon after participating in the DNA test, had already left Malaysia for Australia on the same day he was released. The police therefore placed Shahril on the wanted list and made efforts to trace his whereabouts.
Three years after he fled Malaysia, on 17 January 2012, three days after Chee's sixth death anniversary, 31-year-old Shahril Jaafar returned from Perth, Australia to the Kuala Lumpur International Airport for unknown reasons. Upon his arrival, Shahril was arrested for his suspected involvement in the murder. On 2 February 2012, Shahril appeared at the Sungai Petani Magistrate's Court, where he was officially charged with murdering 24-year-old Chee Gaik Yap six years prior. State Criminal Investigation Department chief assistant commissioner Zakaria Ahmad told the Malaysian press that the police had been working tirelessly to trace Shahril's whereabouts and also cooperated with their international counterparts to bring him to justice. If Shahril was found guilty of murder under Malaysian law, he would be sentenced to death.
Original trial and acquittal A year after he was arrested, Shahril Jaafar stood trial at the Alor Setar High Court on 25 February 2013. The prosecution's case was that Shahril had abducted Chee while she was jogging, and had raped and sodomized her inside the forest outskirts of Sungei Petani before he knifed her to death. A forensic pathologist testified that the stab wounds inflicted to Chee's neck were likely to be delivered while she was in a semi-conscious state in view of her head injuries and she was also likely stabbed while she was standing. The pathologist Mohammad Zaini, however, could not ascertain if the murder of Chee was done by a lone killer or multiple assailants, but he was certain that the sexual injuries, which also showed signs of torture, were caused at least 12 hours before Chee died and that the probable murder weapon was a double-edged knife based on the wounds inflicted. Other witnesses, including Chee's sister Gaik Choon, were called to testify during the trial. Gaik Choon told the court that while searching for her missing sister, she witnessed a black car driving around the area where she found her sister's bloodstained shoe, and based on its description, the car was confirmed to belong to Shahril.
On 25 June 2013, the Alor Setar High Court ruled that the prosecution failed to prove a prima facie case against the accused and therefore acquitted 31-year-old Shahril Jaafar of killing Chee without calling for his defence. The trial judge, Judicial Commissioner Datuk Mohd Zaki Abdul Wahab, stated that the forensic evidence showed that Chee died as a result of stab wounds to the neck and not due to injuries on the private parts so the prosecution had failed to prove that Shahril had caused the injuries that caused her death, and he also found that the prosecution only relied on the fact that Shahril was living at Kelab Cinta Sayang, which was near the murder scene, and stated that the DNA on the semen found could not be conclusively linked to Shahril, and therefore discharged him and granted him an acquittal.
Upon hearing that Shahril was acquitted of his daughter's murder, Chee Ah Sau was so devastated and distraught that he tried to commit suicide by falling off the parapet of the court building, much to the shock of many reporters, some of whom managed to restrain him before he could fall off. Subsequently, the Chee family wished to have the case reviewed and her father wanted to engage prominent lawyer and politician Karpal Singh to seek justice for his daughter. Penang Chief Minister and DAP secretary-general Lim Guan Eng later confirmed to the press that Karpal agreed to conduct a watching brief for the Chee family. Ong Kok Fooi, a Malaysian politician who constantly keep in touch with the Chee family to inquire their welfare, was similarly disappointed with the verdict.
Re-trial and death penalty
The prosecution filed a notice of appeal against the acquittal of Shahril in July 2013. Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Awang Amardajaya Awang Mahmud, who argued before the Court of Appeal, stated that it was not disputed that the first four swabs of seminal fluid and blood taken from Chee's private part had 100 per cent matched Shahril's DNA, while the fifth swab also collected a foreign substance which could be caused by contamination due to the body being found in the forest, and DPP Awang also pointed out that Shahril's decision to jump bail and flee Malaysia soon after undergoing DNA tests also strongly suggested that Shahril was trying to abscond from something and that he had a guilty mind.
In October 2014, the Court of Appeal, led by Judge Linton Albert, overturned the acquittal after finding that the strength of the prosecution's case against Shahril was sufficient to call for his defence, and ordered a re-trial to take place before the original trial judge in the Alor Setar High Court. Shahril was scheduled to enter his defence on 28 December 2014. Shahril's counsel tried asking for their client to return to court in January 2015 as his wife was in confinement after giving birth, but the request was rejected.