GEORGE TOWN – The family of Annapuranee Jenkins, whose skeletal remains were found three years after she went missing mysteriously in Penang, are hoping that the latest pathologist findings in Australia which indicate murder can be admissible in the Malaysian courts.
Her son Steven Greg Jenkins is hoping that the courts will accept the new evidence from a forensic analysis report produced by Forensic Science South Australia (FSSA).
The report indicates that the Malaysian-born grandmother suffered blunt force trauma to her head, leg and finger.
The family is pursuing two grounds of civil action. The first is to overturn a previous open verdict rendered by the coroner’s court which sat in Penang.
In the second, they are also alleging criminal negligence against Malaysian police, a developer, and several other individuals with regard to the dubious circumstances over her death.
They are seeking unspecified damages from various parties in the civil case filed last month.
In the highly publicised case which began in 2017, Greg hopes that the family’s pursuit of justice can be realised eventually despite the various setbacks they have endured.
His mother Annapuranee, better known as Anna, went missing in 2017 after she alighted midway from a ride-sharing service along the busy Scotland Road in Penang in broad daylight.
She had earlier visited the dentist for a routine treatment and had booked an Uber to visit her mother, who was residing at the Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Infirm in Batu Lanchang.
The driver testified in the inquest that Anna asked him to stop midway through the ride and he decided to drive into the Ramakrishnan Orphanage to drop her off.
She was never seen alive since then.
The family frantically launched a search throughout the peninsula, including engaging a private security firm, who attempted using drones in vain to find her.
Eventually, workers uncovered her partial remains inside a construction site during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
It was located some 2-km away from Scotland Road, adjacent to the Penang Turf Club grounds and within metres from the Batu Gantong crematorium.
Greg told journalists that the Malaysian forensic counterparts should have identified the trauma marks on the bone, which the South Australian pathologists uncovered.
“These details were not in any Malaysian forensic report. We feel this is murder, and despite us saying so before, no one cares,” said Greg.
“It has taken until today to finally prove mom was murdered. I’m horrified with what my mother had to go through.”
Greg said it was also upsetting that his father, who died a month ago due to ailments relating to old age, did not live long enough to receive an update over his missing wife.
According to Australian media outlet ABC News, a forensic analysis report produced by FSSA found that all three “defects” appeared to have been caused by blunt trauma with a “penetrating component.”
The report confirms Greg’s long-standing belief that his late mother, aged 65, was a victim of a crime when she went missing.
The case has riveted residents in Adelaide where Anna had lived after moving to Australia. It has also ignited substantial attention and sympathy in Penang, as nobody could fathom how an elderly woman could go missing in the age of GPS and personal handphone trackers. – The Vibes, August 17, 2023
