Deaths Followed Fortune Teller Visits
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday July 24, 1992
A young father shot dead his three-year-old daughter then himself at the Airport Hilton Hotel last year after a fortune teller told him his wife would divorce him, a Sydney court was told yesterday.
Sam Yiu Chi Law , 31, was found dead on the floor in room 227, with a rifle next to him, on August 23 last year, police told Glebe Coroner's Court yesterday.
His little girl, Katrina , was dead on the double bed nearby, lying in the fetal position with her thumb in her mouth.
Their passports and a suicide note, written in Chinese, were found in the room. 1 A "Do Not Disturb" sign had been hung on the door and a safety chain had fastened the door from inside.
At the inquest yesterday into the deaths, Sergeant Graham North , of Sydney's Forensic Ballistics Unit, said he believed Mr Law watched his daughter fall asleep before shooting her at close range in the head on or about August 22.
Mr Law then shot himself twice through the head because the first shot, which blew away part of his brain, did not kill him, Sergeant North said.
Mr Law's 26-year-old wife, Karen, told police she and her husband in May last year had seen a fortune teller who said she would be more successful than her husband, would divorce him within five years, and would remarry and have more children.
The fortune teller said her husband would have better job prospects in a northern country, she said. So they sold their house in Plumpton, in Sydney's west, and decided to move to Taiwan where Mr Law wanted to set up business as a motor mechanic.
Mrs Law, who was overseas looking for work at the time of the shootings, said her husband was very depressed when she spoke to him several times by telephone.
During one of the calls, she had suggested they separate to decide what they wanted to do with their lives.
In July, her husband saw another fortune teller in Hong Kong who told him the same things as the one in Sydney and that "there would be blood in his life this year", she said.
He bought books on fortune telling while in Hong Kong and was convinced everything the fortune tellers said would come true.
Her husband was a dedicated family man who was always trying to be successful to please his father, she said. He felt Katrina was the only one who accepted him as he was.
The coroner, Mr Derrick Hand, said the effect of the fortune tellers'readings on Mr Law was exacerbated by the fact that he was depressed.
"That's the hazards of going to fortune tellers who purport to be able to tell your future," Mr Hand said.
"It's always a terrible tragedy (for someone to commit suicide), but for the life to be taken of his three-year-old daughter, that's a terrible thing. But, unfortunately, people do get in these fits of depression and these things happen."
© 1992 Sydney Morning Herald
