Ng’s Mother Tells Jurors of Anguish, Beatings

The mother of serial killer Charles Ng sobbed on the witness stand Wednesday as she blamed herself for failing to stop her husband from beating him as a child.

Oiping Ng told jurors that she has lived in anguish since her son was arrested and has had to endure news reports in Hong Kong describing her child as a “devil.”

“Of course I love him very much,” she testified through a Cantonese interpreter. “Ever since he was in jail I never had a good day. I think of him all the time, when I’m eating, when I’m with friends.”

Ng’s mother was the final witness before the defense rested in the penalty phase of his trial. Closing arguments are scheduled today. The jury can recommend the death penalty or life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Asked by a defense attorney how she would feel if Ng was put to death, Oiping Ng could barely speak. “I’ll be very sad, of course,” she sobbed.

She expressed her own guilt over beatings that Ng received as a boy, abuse his father admitted to during testimony Tuesday.

“When my husband was hitting Charles so fierce I didn’t know what to do,” she said. “Maybe we did not know how to teach Charles properly.”

As she spoke, Ng, 38, sat at the counsel table looking straight ahead. Ng was convicted in February of murdering six men, three women and two baby boys during a spree of bondage and sadism carried out in Northern California during 1984-85.