Lam was born in 1955 in Hong Kong and drove a taxi on the night shift. He lived with his family and had a substantial collection of photographic equipment.
In 1982 he picked up four women aged seventeen to thirty-one who hailed his cab alone at night, strangled them with electrical wire, took the bodies to his flat, dismembered them, and preserved parts in his room and refrigerator. He photographed and filmed the process on cine film. The Hong Kong press called him the Jars Murderer, after what he kept.
He was arrested on August 17, 1982 after taking rolls of film to a commercial photo laboratory for development. A technician saw what was on them and called the police. The Hong Kong press called him the Rainy Night Butcher.
He was convicted and sentenced to death on April 8, 1983. Hong Kong, then a British colony, had carried out no execution since 1966, and the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1984. He remains in custody, and applications for review have been refused.
He was one of the first offenders in Hong Kong's modern history to be described in the press as a serial killer, and the case is the one against which subsequent Hong Kong cases have been measured.