Charles Kembo had dual motives for killing stepdaughter

Vancouver – An accused killer had dual motives to murder his stepdaughter, a jury was told Tuesday during the Crown’s closing address at a murder trial involving four alleged victims.

Charles Kembo wanted to kill Rita Yeung, 20, so he could take over her financial identity because he was desperate for money, and he also wanted to stop her from going to Hong Kong to search for her mother, which might trigger an investigation into her mother’s mysterious disappearance, prosecutor Hank Reiner said.

The Crown’s theory is that Kembo killed Yeung in July 2005 after previously killing the young woman’s mother, Margaret Kembo, whose body has never been found.

Kembo, 40, is also on trial for the first-degree murder of his friend, Arden Samuels, whose body was found in a Vancouver park on Nov. 5, 2003, and the first-degree murder of Kembo’s mistress, Sui Yin Ma, 55, who body was found on Nov. 4, 2004, wrapped in plastic inside a hockey bag and placed in a Richmond slough.

The prosecutor reminded the jury that Kembo had told his stepdaughter that her mother had an affair with another man and then, ashamed at what she’d done, joined a Buddhist monastery in Hong Kong.

Rita Yeung had told her friends that she was upset her mother hadn’t had any contact with her and she wanted to visit an aunt in Hong Kong to try to find out what happened to her mother.

The prosecutor said this created a problem for the accused, so Kembo decided to take care of the problem by killing Rita.

The Crown played hours of conversation between Rita and Kembo while driving around in Kembo’s Land Rover on July 23, 2005.

Police had planted a secret listening device in Kembo’s vehicle and the electronic surveillance caught a final muffled at 1:43 a.m. on July 24, 2005.

"Rita’s voice is never heard again," the prosecutor told the jury.

"It is my submission that Charles Kembo murdered Rita Yeung and it was a carefully planned scheme to do so," Reiner said.

He told the jury that they do not need to accept both motives offered by the Crown.

"The Crown does not need to prove any motive," Reiner said. "But you have to be unanimous on [finding there was] planning and deliberation."

The prosecutor outlined evidence that showed Kembo wanted to take over his stepdaughter’s financial identity, including the accused getting Rita to open a new bank account and activate a new credit card hours before she was killed.

And once she had done these tasks, the Crown said, Kembo stopped at a Home Hardware and purchase a shovel, plastic bags and rope, which the Crown described as "body disposal items."

The Crown contends that Kembo had been driving around with his stepdaughter for 10 hours when he convinced her to go for a walk along the bank of the Fraser River, just north of a runway of Vancouver International Airport.

Police used a GPS tracking device to try to locate Yeung’s body, which wasn’t initially found at high tide. Her body was located July 27, 2005, at low tide.

Reiner told the jury that once Kembo was arrested, he lied about the last time he saw Rita and lied about going to Home Hardware.

Then, when Kembo took the witness stand, he told a new set of lies, concocting a story about his stepdaughter had been kidnapped by a gang of extortionists.

The murder trial, which began last October, is expected to adjourn until June 7, when B.C. Supreme Court Justice Sunni Stromberg-Stein will give her charge to the jury on how to apply the law to the evidence heard over the last seven months.