In 2015, residents of a KL condo found a corpse… by tasting it in their water

Any of y’all true crime fans out there would’ve heard of the Elisa Lam case. In case you’re not into that stuff and have no idea what we’re talking about, Elisa Lam, a 21-year-old Canadian woman was found dead in the water tank of the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles back in 2013.

The case grew to be infamous in the following years for a number of reasons. Numero uno, the hotel’s residents complained about how the water from the taps and showers smelled and looked funky. Yeah, that’s how they found her in the first place.

Then there’s the initial autopsy report which revealed that the medical examiner had no idea how she died. You’d think it was from drowning, but the case was never solved. And finally, there was security footage of her behaving erratically, like she kena santau, on the day she was last seen alive.

Hard to imagine something like that happening here, huh? Oh, no, wait, something like that did happen here. Just like the Elisa Lam case…

A corpse was found in an underground water tank of a KL condo

May 7, 2015. The residents of a Bukit Damansara condo started noticing foul odours coming from the water they were using. Several days later, consistent residential complaints led to workers stumbling upon a corpse floating in the condo’s underground water tank on May 12 at 9.25pm.

The body was fully clothed but had noticeably swelled and decomposed into a gelatinous texture. From the MyKad and driving license found on the body, police identified the corpse as Chuan Wan Chooi, a man who had been reported missing since 9 May 2015.

Chuan, who was 43 at the time, worked as an autoparts salesman and had no obvious prior criminal history. Almost immediately, the leading causes of death were assumed to be either foul play or suicide. But get this: no immediate evidence was found on the scene or on his body that pointed towards a violent end.

“No suspected weapon was found at the scene and initial examinations by the forensic team did not reveal any obvious injuries,” – Zainuddin Ahmad, Senior Assistant Commissioner, Head of the Kuala Lumpur Criminal Investigation Department

Chuan was also reportedly not a resident of the condo, nor was he contracted to work there. So what was he there for? How did he end up in the water tank? Theories seem simple enough to come up with, but that’s where this case mysteriously deepens.

The authorities couldn’t figure out how Chuan died

…or how he ended up in the water tank, for that fact.

Just like the Elisa Lam case, the circumstances that led to Chuan’s death are baffling to say the least. Like we mentioned, suicide and murder were among the top theories at the time, but they were contradicted by three major factors:

• The absence of fluids in his lungs
• The hatch to the water tank being locked from the outside; and
• Non-conclusive CCTV footage

No fluids in Chuan’s lungs means that he didn’t drown, which was puzzling enough. Moreover, when Chuan’s body was found, the hatch of the water tank was locked from the outside. This potentially indicated Chuan had been locked in the tank by someone else… but while CCTV outside did capture footage of Chuan walking into to the room where the water tank was, he was alone. Overall, no pieces of evidence support each other.

This meant that there were no definitive answers for these still-lingering questions. As strange as the case was, the mystery doesn’t end there…

An unknown man had Chuan’s phone on the day he disappeared

When Chuan’s body was found, his license and wallet were on him, but his phone strangely wasn’t. And according to one of Chuan’s colleagues, he had called Chuan’s phone numerous times on the day he allegedly disappeared but received no answer. However, at 5pm that same day, a man picked up the call.

Claiming to be a taxi driver, the man stated that Chuan and another person had boarded his taxi. Upon arriving at their destination however, they were unable to pay the fare. Due to this, the taxi driver claimed he held on to Chuan’s phone as collateral. Though if you recall, CCTV footage showed Chuan walking to the water tank room alone and not with another person. Chuan’s eldest sister also claimed he never took taxis.

Thus, authorities and the public alike came to a dead-end in the case…

…and unfortunately, it’s still not solved even today. Was it murder? Or were there hidden circumstances we don’t know about? It’s only been 8 or so years since Chuan passed away, and yet, unless new evidence or a fresh witness steps up to provide the authorities with more information, the true cause of his death may never be brought to light.

Whatever the truth might be, we wish his family condolences and that Chuan himself may rest in peace.