DRAMATIC CONCLUSION TO COAST GIRL’S KIDNAPPING
The community was rocked when a schoolgirl was snatched from her Benowa home by three armed men and held for ransom
A LITTLE girl is kidnapped from her family home and held for ransom.
Her kidnappers are eventually cornered in the street by police with an officer drawing a gun and demanding their surrender.
It sounds like a Hollywood action blockbuster but it happened right here on the Gold Coast.
Next week marks 30 years since schoolgirl Marissa Wong was taken from her home in a crime which shocked the nation and was immortalised in one of Australia’s most famous news photographs
Marissa was just 10 years old when three armed men forced their way into her Benowa Waters home on Cabana Blvd on the night of May 7, 1989.
Her parents, Hong Kong businessman Chuek Yuen Wong and wife Marianna, were at home when the men, who spoke with Cantonese accents, entered the house at 9.15pm and tied the couple up before taking a large amount of money
A member of the gang was armed with a gun while the others had knives.
They seized Marissa, a Year 5 pupil at Benowa State School, told her parents not to contact police for at least an hour or they would hurt the little girl.
The men escaped the scene in a 1982 blue Volvo.
A ransom call came less than two hours later from a public phone in Benowa, demanding $2 million.
Then-Gold Coast CIB chief Detective Inspector Ken Martin called a late-night press conference to hastily spread news of the event.
A second phone call came in from a phone box on the Gold Coast Hwy at Surfers Paradise at 2.15am, lowering the ransom figure to $500,000.
Police rapidly descended on the phone box but missed the caller.
Neighbours of the Wongs were shocked by the incident.
“She is a lively, lovely lass who is trying to fit in with her new country,” Eva Demar told media.
“She doesn’t speak English very well but that didn’t stop her making many friends in the area.
“Her father has been to and from Hong Kong running his business since they arrived 12 months ago and he told me only last week that he would not have to return to Hong Kong and planned to spend more time with his daughter.”
By 9am the next morning a third ransom call was made, with the kidnappers demanding just $200,000.
It was later found that the kidnappers had been holding Marissa in a hotel room at Surfers Paradise’s Chevron Shangri-La Motel where she was kept bound by tape.
But her kidnappers became desperate and dumped her outside a Tedder Ave bakery with enough money to cover a taxi journey home.
She was found at 1.20pm on May 8, about 16 hours after the kidnapping.
Shortly thereafter one of the suspects, Gia Cuong Hua, was captured by police officer Gary Hamrey who was forced to draw his gun while apprehending the man.
That moment was caught on camera by famed Gold Coast photographer Richard “Tommy” Campion who went on to win awards for the image.
It was revealed in court that a friend of the Wongs, Peter Ho, was the man behind the crime.
Ho was tried in the Supreme Court in Brisbane and jailed for 10 years in February 1990.
Hua was deported while his co-accused Goh Kok Chong and Kwok Min Law all received lighter sentences.
According to a 2016 report Marissa, now 40, is believed to be living in Hong Kong and working as a lawyer.