Catching a Killer: A knock at the door

2 May 2018

6pm on 31st January 2017, three days after Chinese New Year. 64-year-old Hang Yin Leung hears a knock on the door.   She would normally be at work at the takeaway business she and her husband built together since retiring from the Hong Kong Police, but tonight she is at home alone.

She answers the door and within seconds, the lives of this hard-working family are changed forever.

A violent attack by six men leaves the house utterly ransacked. They are heard laughing as they run off down the road with bags of stolen goods and the family savings. But the worst is yet to come… as Hang Yin reveals to police the true nature of the attack, she falls ill and is rushed to hospital.

11 days later she dies. The post-mortem indicates it is as a result of her injuries.

Her death launches a huge cross-border manhunt but because two weeks have passed the usual “quick wins” from forensics are long gone, and the investigation becomes one of “the most difficult homicides” the detectives have ever undertaken.

Instead of fingerprints and DNA, the police have to rely on painstaking analysis of CCTV footage, searching for the tiniest clue, waiting to find that one mistake made by the perpetrators.

Shot over 12 months, this compelling film interweaves extraordinary access to Thames Valley Police with an intimate portrait of a British Chinese family coming to terms with the true impact of murder.

Alongside the real-time police investigation unfolds the rarely-told story of migrants from Hong Kong who came to the UK in search of a better life for their son. A universal tale of hopes and dreams, shattered by an unprovoked attack.

An unexpected twist brings the film to its powerful conclusion.

TX: Monday 14th May at 9pm

Commissioning Editor: Madonna Benjamin

Production Company: True Vision

Producer/Director: Jennifer Shaw

Executive Producers: Anna Hall, Brian Woods and Jezza Neumann