In February 2023, Abby Choi Tin-fung had finally made her dreams come true: She appeared on the digital cover of L’Officiel Monaco, one of France’s most premier fashion magazines.
The 28-year-old Hong Kong model had, against all odds, built an international following through fashion shoots and appearances at Paris Fashion Week.
However, away from the cameras, the glamour and the flashing lights, she was raising four children and trying to settle a bitter property dispute with the family of her former husband, Alex Kwong.
Highlights
- Rising fashion star Abby Choi disappeared in February 2023 while traveling to collect her daughter from school.
- The mother-of-four was in the middle of a bitter dispute over a $7.7 million apartment with her ex-husband and his family, the Kwongs.
- Despite taking care of them financially, the Kwongs were arrested in connection with Choi’s homicide.
Her flame would be prematurely snuffed out on a February 2026 afternoon. While traveling to collect one of her daughters from school, Choi disappeared.
Police found parts of her remains in a rented house in Hong Kong’s Tai Po district. Kwong was arrested at a pier while preparing to escape by speedboat.
His father and brother had already been detained.
The rising star and young mother of four had been betrayed by men that were supposed to love and protect her.
The life of China’s most successful rising fashion stars was cut short in a heartbreaking betrayal
Choi was born on July 15, 1994. Prosecutors have described her as born in Hainan, in southern China, and moving to Hong Kong at about five years old. Earlier profiles called her Hong Kong-born, leaving that detail inconsistent across published accounts.
Regardless, she grew up in Kowloon, far from the fashion events where she would later become a familiar face.
As a teenager, she met Kwong at school. They began dating when she was about 17. Back then, as many young lovers do, they believed they would be together, forever.
They had been together for about a year when Choi learned she was pregnant with their first child. Kwong moved into her family home, and Choi’s mother, Cheung Yin-fa, promised to help the young couple raise the baby.
Cheung said her daughter was frightened by the prospect of attending school while expecting a child. Choi and Kwong married in 2014 while still young and eventually had two children together.
It wasn’t long before the marriage came under strain. According to Cheung, Kwong would not work and showed little interest in taking an active role in caring for the children. Choi’s family supported the couple financially, while Choi continued her education and developed an interest in investment.
By 2015, the relationship had broken down.
Chris Tam Fong-chun had known Kwong from school and met Choi through him. After the marriage collapsed, Tam grew close to Choi as he accompanied her while she cared for her children.
The bitterness between Choi and Kwong was still fresh when Tam came into the picture. They began dating on December 8, 2015.
Their relationship moved fast as well, and Choi and Tam held a wedding banquet in 2016, though they never legally registered a marriage. Their daughter was born that September, and they later had a son.
Choi was now raising four children across two households.
Choi ended up paying not only for her two children with Kwong, but also for the lifestyle he enjoyed
Choi’s family had the means to support her long before she became known in fashion.
Her stepfather ran a successful construction business in mainland China and paid much of the young couple’s living expenses during her marriage to Alex. He also gave Choi HK$10 million, approximately US$1.3 million, to invest.
Choi studied finance and began building income of her own through investments and luxury auctions.
Separating from Kwong did not end Choi’s financial responsibility for him. She continued paying for their two children while Alex, who had no steady job, relied on her family for support. His parents and brother benefited from her money too.
Choi paid allowances and covered the household’s driver, domestic staff and utilities.
Her mother, Cheung Yin-fa, put those expenses at roughly US$33,000 a month. She said Choi had even paid more than US$25,000 in medical bills when Kwong’s father became seriously ill.
Meanwhile, Cheung said, the family had never bought so much as a can of baby formula for Choi’s children.
Her fashion career grew while she continued supporting her former in-laws
Public reporting does not establish a date when Choi was scouted or first hired as a model. What is known is that by the early 2020s, she was already attending the Paris Fashion Week and building a large online following.
“I am a person who keeps absorbing inspiration and always tries new styles,” she said in a February 2023 interview with L’Officiel Monaco.
The clean and composed image she projected in her modeling photographs clashed with her increasingly messy private life, particularly the complicated financial arrangement she had with the Kwongs.
Choi wanted her children with Kwong to live near their school. She went as far as to buy a luxury apartment at Kadoorie Hill and allowed the Kwong family to use it.
The property, worth roughly US$7.7 million, was registered under the name of Kwong Kau, Alex’s father.
Choi also paid to renovate the apartment and continued supporting the household. Court evidence described substantial sums passing to Alex for business and even luxury-watch purchases.
Her former father-in-law called her a “birthing machine” during a confrontation
In 2022, Choi decided she wanted to sell the Kadoorie Hill apartment and move the family closer to her children’s school. However, she needed Kwong Kau to sign the necessary documents.
He refused.
Tam later told the court that a confrontation at the apartment marked a turning point. He said Kwong Kau called Choi a “birthing machine” and tried to attack her. Cheung testified that the elder Kwong threatened Choi and her family during arguments over the property.
Cheung said the deadlock lasted about four months.
She eventually warned Kwong Kau that the family would take legal action, and he signed an authorization letter by late October 2022.
Other property and vehicles were also registered in his name, she testified, and Choi faced resistance when she sought to sell them.
At trial, Cheung broke down while watching footage of her daughter. “They returned kindness with hatred,” she said.
Prosecutors allege that losing control of the Kadoorie Hill home gave Kwong Kau a motive to plan Choi’s homicide with his sons. As they would later tell the jury, money was the “root cause.”
Choi was supposed to collect her daughter on February 21, 2023
On February 21, 2023, Choi told her mother she needed to collect her younger daughter from school.
She also had plans for that evening.
At 2:02 pm, she sent Chris Tam a voice message asking whether he was busy. He suggested dinner with friends, and four minutes later she replied, “ok.”
That was the last message Tam would receive from his wife.
Choi was traveling with the Kwongs. Alex’s older brother, Anthony Kwong, worked as her driver. Footage later shown to the jury captured her getting into one of the Kwongs’ vans that afternoon.
Her last recorded online activity came at 2:44 pm.
At about 3:20 pm, cameras placed two vans used by the family near a rented house in Tai Po. Choi was supposed to be on her way to her daughter. Instead, her trail had led to the property where police would later find her remains.
Choi had walked into a gruesome trap. In the days leading up to her disappearance, members of the Kwong family had bought equipment meant to take someone’s life and, more importantly, make them unrecognizable.
The equipment included a mincing machine, an electric saw and a hammer. A forensic assessment presented in court linked its shape to an injury on Choi’s skull.
To this day, Alex, Anthony and their father deny taking her life.
Choi was dismembered and stuck into a refrigerator alongside her identity documents
On the afternoon of February 24, officers forced their way into a house in Lung Mei Village, Tai Po.
The ground-floor unit was sparsely furnished. Inside, police found Choi’s identity card and credit cards, along with an electric saw, a meat grinder and protective clothing.
Then they opened the refrigerator.
Inside were two human legs.
Choi had been missing for three days, and her belongings were in the same house. Police also seized two large cooking pots that contained human tissue, but they were still searching for the rest of her remains.
The search yielded another discovery two days later. On February 26, forensic specialists examined the pots more closely and found a skull, several ribs and hair believed to belong to Choi.
Police wasted no time moving against the Kwongs.
They arrested Kau, Anthony and Kau’s wife, Jenny Li Sui-heung. Alex, Choi’s former husband, was still missing.
While his father and brother were in custody, Alex had a route out of Hong Kong in motion. Investigators later alleged that others had arranged for a boat to collect him at Tung Chung New Development Pier.
The plan was to carry him out to another vessel; court proceedings also described an intended escape to Macau. The proposed fee for the pickup was about US$38,500.
Police learned where he was headed. By the time Alex reached the pier at about 1 p.m. on February 25, officers were waiting. They arrested him before he could board.
The legal proceedings stretched on.
In June 2024, Alex received a 42-month sentence in a separate case involving thefts committed years earlier and his failure to surrender to court. In October 2025, Li was sentenced to 18 months in prison for obstructing police as they tried to locate him after Choi disappeared.
Despite that, neither ruling resolved who was responsible for Choi’s homicide.
The trial began in September 2026. Prosecutor Charlotte Draycott presented the alleged apartment dispute to a nine-person jury when she opened the prosecution’s case on September 30.
Alex, Anthony and Kwong Kau all pleaded not guilty to homicide. Alex and Anthony, however, admitted a separate charge of preventing Choi’s lawful burial; their father, on the other hand, denied that charge as well.
Testimony in October returned repeatedly to the money and the relationships Choi had maintained after leaving Alex.
Cheung described her daughter’s financial support for the Kwongs. The defense questioned Cheung about alleged gambling debts, which she rejected.
A police investigator also told the court about a separate alleged US$204,000 extortion threat reported by Cheung; he said he could not verify claims raised during questioning about her past gambling losses.
As of October 14, 2026, the jury has reached no verdict.
Hong Kong dollar amounts have been converted to approximate US dollar values using exchange rates from the year relevant to each amount.
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