List of major crimes in Singapore

The following is a list of major crimes in Singapore. They are arranged in chronological order.

1960s

1963

• 12 July 1963: A large number of detainees at the prison on Pulau Senang started a riot and killed prison officer Daniel Stanley Dutton and three of his assistants. After a five-month-long trial, 18 men were convicted of murder and hanged in Changi Prison on 29 October 1965. Another 29 men were also found guilty of rioting.^[1]
• 27 August 1963: Sunny Ang Soo Kuan allegedly murdered his girlfriend, Jenny Cheok Cheng Kid, during a scuba-diving trip in the straits between Sisters' Islands. He was found guilty in a jury trial, sentenced to death, and hanged on 6 February 1967. Cheok's body was never found.^[2]

1970s

1971

• 29 December 1971: Businessman Ngo Cheng Poh and two of his employees were killed by a group of 10 men, who also robbed them of 120 gold bars. Seven of the ten men were convicted of murder and hanged on 28 February 1975 while the remaining three were put under indefinite detention.^[3]

1972

• 18 September 1972: A 22-year-old seamstress Cheng Li Zhen was walking along Queenstown with her sister when she suddenly screamed and collapsed to the ground with blood oozing out from her chest. It was only after she was in the hospital that they found that it was a gunshot wound. She never regained consciousness and died in the hospital soon after. The case remains unsolved.^[4]

1978

• 25 April 1978: Police officer Lee Kim Lai was abducted by three men from his sentry post at Mount Vernon and forced into a taxi. They killed him for his service revolver and also killed the taxi driver. The three men were convicted of murder and hanged on 24 February 1984.^[5]

1979

• 6 January 1979: Four children between the ages of five and ten were found brutally slashed to death in their HDB flat in Geylang Bahru. The case remains unsolved.^[6][7]

1980s

1981

• 25 January and 7 February 1981: Adrian Lim, a self-professed medium, and his two accomplices murdered two children, purportedly as blood sacrifices in some ritual. The trial, which took 41 days, was the second longest murder trial in Singapore. The three of them were eventually found guilty, sentenced to death, and hanged on 25 November 1988. See Toa Payoh ritual murders for more information.^[8]

1983

• 30 June and 23 July 1983: Sek Kim Wah, a 19-year-old conscript, broke into the home of businessman Robert Tay Bak Hong at Andrew Road on 23 July with the aid of an accomplice, 19-year-old Malaysian Nyu Kok Meng. Sek killed Tay, his wife and their Filipino maid. Nyu released the Tays' daughter and her tutor. Sek also killed two persons at Seletar Reservoir earlier on 30 June. Sek was found guilty of murder and hanged on 9 December 1988 while Nyu was sentenced to life imprisonment and caning.^[9][10][11]

1984

• 12 December 1984: Ayakanno Marithamuthu, a caretaker at the Public Utilities Board holiday chalets in Changi, was allegedly bludgeoned to death in the Orchard Road Presbyterian Church. His body was dismembered, cooked in curry, packed in plastic bags and disposed in rubbish bins along the roads. However, his remains and evidence of the murder were never found. His wife and her three brothers were charged in court in 1987 but released in the same year due to lack of evidence. The brothers were arrested again and released in June 1991 after spending four years in prison.^[12]

1985

• 22 May 1985: Winnifred Teo Suan Lie, an 18-year-old Catholic Junior College student, was the victim of a rape and murder case. On 22 May, she left her house for a jog, but never returned home. Her mother made a police report. Teo's naked body was later found lying in undergrowth off Old Holland Road. She suffered multiple stab wounds on her neck. Her body showed signs of a fierce but futile protest, probably made when she was trying to fight off her killer(s). An autopsy showed that she had been sexually assaulted, and died of massive bleeding from the stab wounds. The murderer(s) were never discovered. The case remains unsolved.

1990s

1990

• 15 May 1990: Tan Ah Hong and James Soh Fook Leong were stabbed by two men after chatting on the spiral steps of the Amber Beacon Tower at East Coast Park. They managed to make their way to a nearby restaurant for help. Soh, who was stabbed in the back, survived the ordeal. Tan died before the police arrived. She was stabbed in the neck, just below the ear. The murderers were never found and the case remains unsolved.

1991

• 4 May 1991: Filipino domestic worker Flor Contemplacion murdered another Filipino domestic worker, Della Maga, and Nicholas Huang, the four-year-old son of Maga's employer. She was sentenced to death in January 1993 and hanged on 17 March 1995. The incident caused diplomatic relations between Singapore and the Philippines to be strained for some years.^[13]
• September 1991: Dutchman Johannes van Damme was arrested at Changi Airport after the police found 9.5 pounds of heroin in his suitcase. He was found guilty of drug trafficking, sentenced to death, and hanged on 23 September 1994.^[14]

1993

• September 1993: Chong Poh Choon, a Navy regular, murdered his three children at their HDB flat in Bukit Batok. Chong was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment.^[15]

1995

• 8 March 1995: Briton John Martin murdered South African Gerard George Lowe in River View Hotel, dismembered his body, and disposed the body parts in the Singapore River. He was found guilty of murder and hanged on 19 April 1996.^[12]

2000s

2001

• 14 May 2001: Anthony Ler Wee Teang approached four youths and offered them a reward of S$100,000 to kill Annie Leong, his wife who was in the midst of divorcing him. A 15-year-old whom Ler had known for five years accepted the offer. Ler manipulated the youth to carry out the deed, and the youth fatally stabbed Leong with a knife given to him by Ler. Ler was found guilty of conspiring and abetting the murder of Leong and was hanged in December 2002. The youth was spared the death sentence because he was underage and placed under indefinite detention.^[16]

2002

• 2 January 2002: British financial adviser Michael McCrea murdered his friend Kho Nai Guan and Kho's girlfriend, Lan Ya Ming, in Kho's apartment in Pinewood Garden. With the help of his girlfriend, Audrey Ong, and two others, McCrea disposed Kho and Lan's bodies in a car and abandoned it at the car park in Orchard Towers. McCrea and Ong fled from Singapore on 5 January and were arrested in Melbourne in June after being on the run for about six months. Ong was deported to Singapore and sentenced in February 2003 to 12 years imprisonment, while McCrea was extradited to Singapore in 2005 and sentenced to 24 years imprisonment in June 2006.^[17]
• December 2002: Australian Van Tuong Nguyen was convicted of carrying about 400 grams of heroin at Changi Airport while travelling from Cambodia to Australia and sentenced to death in March 2004 by the High Court. After a failed appeal to the Court of Appeal and despite pleas for clemency from the Australian government, Nguyen was hanged on 2 December 2005.^[18]

2004

• 10 October 2004: Eight-year-old Huang Na was found dead and stuffed inside a box at Telok Blangah Hill Park. Malaysian Took Leng How, an acquaintance of Huang's mother, was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death on 27 August 2005. Took was hanged on 3 November 2006 after failing to overturn his conviction at the Court of Appeal and after President S. R. Nathan rejected his plea for clemency. See Murder of Huang Na for more information.^[19]
• November 2004: Nigerian Iwuchukwu Amara Tochi was arrested at Changi Airport for carrying 100 capsules containing heroin. He was hanged on 26 January 2007 after failing to overturn his conviction at the Court of Appeal and after President S. R. Nathan rejected his plea for clemency.^[20]

2005

• 15–16 June 2005: Factory supervisor Leong Siew Chor murdered his lover, Chinese national Liu Hong Mei, and dismembered her body into seven parts. He dumped her body parts in the Kallang River and other places in Singapore. He was arrested on 17 June 2005 and sentenced to death on 19 May 2006. Leong was hanged on 30 November 2007 after President S. R. Nathan rejected his plea for clemency.^[12][21]
• 7 September 2005: Filipino domestic worker Guen Garlejo Aguilar killed another Filipino domestic worker, Jane Parangan La Puebla, over a sum of S$2,000 that La Puebla owed her. She hid La Puebla's body in her room for two days before dismembering it and dumping the body parts near Orchard MRT Station and MacRitchie Reservoir. The court found her guilty of manslaughter and sentenced her to 10 years imprisonment in May 2006.^[12]

2006

• 15 February 2006: Tan Chor Jin shot and killed nightclub owner Lim Hock Soon at his apartment. He was nicknamed "One Eyed Dragon" by the Singaporean media because he was blind in his right eye. The Court of Appeal dismissed Tan's appeal against his death sentence on 18 July 2008^[22] and he was hanged in January 2009.^[23][24]

2008

• 18 September 2008: Chinese national Wang Zhijian murdered his lover Zhang Meng, 41, Zhang's daughter Feng Jianyu, 17, and Zhang's flatmate Yang Jie, 36, in Zhang's house. He also attempted to murder Yang's daughter, Li Meilin, 15. At the end of the trial in November 2012, he was sentenced to death for only Yang's murder while successfully raising the defence of diminished responsibility for the murder of the other two. In November 2014, during the cross-appeal between Wang and the prosecution, Wang's appeal against the death sentence was rejected while the prosecution's appeal was allowed, which made Wang guilty of all three murders.^[25]

2009

• April 2009: Chinese national Wang Wenfeng was sentenced to death for murdering taxi driver Yuen Swee Hong. Although he failed in his appeal against his sentence in the Court of Appeal in July 2012, he was re-sentenced to life imprisonment and caning in 2013 after changes to the law took effect that year.^[26]

2010s

2010

• 3 July 2010: Calvin Tan Jian Wei, Edwin Tan Jian An and Ho Boon Sheng intoxicated an 18-year-old pub waitress and raped her in a hotel in Jiak Chuan Road on the night of 3–4 July 2010. They were arrested in the morning of 4 July and sentenced in 2015 to imprisonment and caning.^[27]

2011

• 16 May 2011: The dead body of Ruliyawati, an Indonesian domestic worker, was discovered in the rooftop water tank of a HDB flat in Woodlands.^[28] A coroner's inquest found that she had drowned herself but the two wounds on her back were caused by her boyfriend, Bangladeshi national Mohammed Repon Mostafa. Repon, who was initially accused of her death, was granted a discharge not amounting to an acquital in 2013.^[29]

2012

• 28 May 2012: The police found the body of Mallika Jesudasan, 56, with neck injuries in a flat in Bukit Batok. Jesudasan was said to have been killed in a bedroom by her 31-year-old son, Sujay Solomon Sutherson, believed to be mentally ill.^[30] Sujay was convicted of culpable homicide not amounting to murder on 15 September 2015 and sentenced to life imprisonment.^[31]

2013

• 10 July 2013: Staff Sergeant Iskandar bin Rahmat murdered 67-year-old Tan Boon Sin and his 42-year-old son Tan Chee Heong. The body of the elder Tan was found in his home at Hillside Drive in Kovan while the body of his son was dragged under a car for one kilometre from the home before being dislodged outside Kovan MRT Station.^[32] Justice Tay Yong Kwang of the High Court found Iskandar guilty of murder on 4 December 2015 and sentenced him to death.^[33]
• 16 November 2013: Tuti Aeliyah, a 28-year-old Indonesian domestic helper, stabbed and strangled her employer's daughter, 16-year-old Shameera Basha Noor Basha, to death.^[34] She was initially charged with murder, but the charge was reduced to culpable homicide after she was diagnosed to be suffering from severe depression with psychotic symptoms. The High Court found her guilty and sentenced her to 12 years imprisonment in May 2015.^[35]
• 25 November 2013: 44-year-old Lim Ann Nee allegedly drowned her 17-month-old son, Emilien Lacroix, in the sea off East Coast Park and was charged with murder. She was found to be suffering from acute transient psychotic disorder and had her charge reduced to culpable homicide in 2014. On 24 March 2015, she was given a discharge not amounting to an acquital.^[36]
• 8 December 2013: About 400 men rioted in Little India after a fatal bus accident. 28 men were arrested at the scene, of which four were released. 52 Indian nationals and one Bangladeshi national were repatriated. See 2013 Little India riot for more information.
• 12 December 2013: 33-year-old Jasvinder Kaur's decapitated body was found in the Whampoa River. The body was topless and missing two arms, only dressed in a pair of black pants. 25-year-old Gursharan Singh, a forklift driver, was charged with murder, while the other murder suspect, 33-year-old Harvinder Singh, Kaur's husband, is on Interpol's wanted list.^[37] On 28 July 2015, a coroner's court found that Kaur had been murdered by Harvinder Singh, who is still on the run. Gursharan Singh was sentenced to 30 months imprisonment in April 2015 for helping Harvinder Singh to get rid of Kaur's body.^[38]

2014

• 8 January 2014: 41-year-old Lee Sze Yong and 50-year-old Heng Chen Boon kidnapped Ng Lye Poh, the 79-year-old mother of Lim Hock Chee, the chief executive officer of the Sheng Siong supermarket chain. The case was solved within 12 hours after a police report was made.^[39] Heng, who was originally charged with kidnapping, had his charge reduced on 9 April 2015. In May 2015, he pleaded guilty to abetting Lee to abduct Ng, and was sentenced to three years imprisonment. Lee is charged with kidnapping and his trial is still ongoing.^[40]
• 4 June 2014: 51-year-old Andrea Tay Su Lin killed her 75-year-old mother, Rosaline Lim, at their flat in Ang Mo Kio. She then committed suicide by throwing herself out from the window. Tay had a poor relationship with her mother, whom she blamed for her grandmother's death.^[41]
• 11 June 2014: A body without legs was found in a luggage at Syed Alwi Road, Little India. Two Pakistani men were arrested as suspects in the case.^[42]
• 21 August 2014: 80-year-old Char Chin Fah was accused of murdering his daughter-in-law, 54-year-old Ong Guat Leng, in their home in Tampines. Chin was remanded at Complex Medical Centre in Changi for psychiatric assessment in August 2014.^[43]
• 20 November 2014: 40-year-old Jackson Lim Hou Peng was accused of murdering a Vietnamese woman, 32-year-old Tran Cam Ny, in a flat in Ang Mo Kio. On 19 December 2014, Lim was found to be "not of unsound mind" after an extended period of psychiatric evaluation and was due to be tried in court.^[44]
• 17 December 2014: Zheng Xianghua, a Chinese national, stabbed himself after allegedly killing Wang Xueyan, also a Chinese national, in a flat in Tampines. He was charged with murder on 20 December 2014.^[45]

2015

• 5 October 2015: Belgian national Philippe Graffart allegedly murdered his five-year-old son, Keryan Graffart, at their D'Leedon condominium along Farrer Road.^[46]
• November 2015: 26-year-old Neo Chun Zheng murdered former Scoot air stewardess, 23-year-old Soh Yuan Lin, by stabbing her in the neck with a knife outside his HDB flat in Boon Lay.^[47] A friend of the victim described the couple as having dated briefly before breaking up when Soh began seeing other men and Neo began harassing Soh.^[48]

2016

• 14 February 2016: 47-year-old Singaporean Loh Suan Lit murdered 57-year old Teck Whye Chin Long Kong Temple helper Tan Poh Huat.^[49][50]
• 25 February 2016: 50-year-old coffee-shop assistant Khor Tzoong Meng murdered 38-year-old Ang Kim Keat at Blk 23 Hougang Avenue 3.^[51]
• 13 March 2016: 68-year-old Kong Peng Yee murdered his wife 63-year-old Wong Chik Yeok at Compassvale Crescent.^[52]

References

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