Prosecutors Say Abby Choi's In-Laws Bought Dismemberment Tools Weeks Before Her Killing
The murder trial of three members of Abby Choi's ex-husband's family opened at Hong Kong's High Court this week, two and a half years after the socialite was killed and dismembered. Prosecutors say the killing was planned for weeks: a rented village house, matched storage bins, a meat grinder — and an inquiry about a bone grinder that ended in a decision not to buy.
The trial of three members of the family of Abby Choi — the Hong Kong model and socialite killed and dismembered in February 2023 — opened at the city's High Court this week, and the prosecution's opening statement has fixed public attention on a series of purchases made weeks before she died.
Three men are in the dock: Choi's former husband Kwong Kong-chi, 32; his father Kwong Kau, 69, a retired police sergeant; and his older brother Kwong Kong-kit, 35, who worked as Choi's driver. All three are charged with murder and with preventing the lawful burial of her body. According to the prosecution's opening, read out in court and reported by both Hong Kong and mainland outlets, the plan began with a lease: weeks before the killing, Kwong Kau inspected and rented a ground-floor flat in a quiet village in Tai Po, in the New Territories, measuring the unit as he viewed it. Then came the shopping — two identical wheeled plastic storage bins, gloves, rubber boots, an electric saw, zip ties, a hammer, luggage, a large blender and a commercial meat grinder. According to evidence read in court on Friday and reported by HK01, someone also asked a shop for the price of a bone-crushing machine, considered it, and decided against buying.
The prosecution says Choi, 28 at the time, was lured into a car by her ex-husband and attacked there with a hammer, before her body was taken to the rented flat. When police found the unit days later, they described a freezer holding body parts and two pots of soup mixed with human tissue — details from the original 2023 police briefing that returned to Chinese social feeds this week as the trial's grisliest shorthand.
The alleged motive is money. Court filings and reporting describe a family that had lived off Choi for years: she had continued to support her ex-husband after their divorce, funded his brother's failed business and then hired him as her driver, and in 2019 bought a luxury flat in Kadoorie Hill for about HK$60 million, registering it in her former father-in-law's name to save stamp duty. The whole family lived there free. Prosecutors and agreed court facts say Choi had grown determined to sell: in late 2022 she obtained a power of attorney over the property, cut the asking price, raised the agent's commission, and was still personally showing the flat to prospective buyers in the days before she disappeared. She had promised to buy the family another home; the sale would still have ended their claim to the Kadoorie Hill flat itself.
The case has transfixed both of the Chinese-speaking world's media systems. In Hong Kong, HK01's courtroom reports lead its most-read list; on the mainland, the summary of the prosecution's opening was liked more than 13,000 times within hours, and two separate hashtags carried the details up the hot-search list. Part of the resonance is the premeditation: a family that took free housing from a woman while, prosecutors allege, pricing bone grinders. When arrested, Kwong Kau told officers there was "nothing to explain", according to agreed court facts reported by HK01; his older son acknowledged only that he had driven Choi to Tai Po that day and heard her on the phone.
The trial, listed as HCCC 198/2025, continues next week. Choi, the prosecution says, was still negotiating down the price of the flat she meant to sell — and showing strangers around it — right up until the day she was killed.