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The following is a list of major crimes in Singapore that happened before 1990. They are arranged in chronological order.
Capital punishment in Singapore is a legal penalty. Executions in Singapore are carried out by long drop hanging, and usually take place at dawn. Thirty-three offences—including murder, drug trafficking, terrorism, use of firearms and kidnapping—warrant the death penalty under Singaporean law.
Tay Yong Kwang is a Singaporean judge of the Supreme Court. He was first appointed Judicial Commissioner in 1997, appointed Judge in 2003, and appointed Judge of Appeal in 2016. He was noted for being the presiding judge in several notable cases that shocked the nation and made headlines in Singapore. He was most recently re-appointed for a further two year term on the Court of Appeal from 3 September 2024.
Lai Kew Chai was a Singaporean judge and the longest-serving member of the Supreme Court Bench, having served for almost 25 years as a Judge.
Ang Soon Tong is a secret society based in Singapore and Malaysia. According to a former police officer, the society was active as early as the 1950s, mainly in the Sembawang area. In 1998, a 19-year-old youth was arrested for setting up a website dedicated to the society.
Choo Han Teck is a Singaporean judge of the Supreme Court. He was formerly a lawyer before his appointment to the court as a judge. It was revealed in 2021 that Choo was one of the defence lawyers representing Adrian Lim, the infamous Toa Payoh child killer who was executed in 1988 for charges of murdering a girl and boy as ritual sacrifices. In 1994, Choo also defended Phua Soy Boon, a jobless Singaporean who was hanged in 1995 for killing a moneylender.
Chao Tzee Cheng was a renowned forensic pathologist in Singapore. Chao was respected for solving several notorious crimes in Singapore, and raised Singapore's level of professionalism in the area of forensics.
The Arms Offences Act 1973 is a statute of the Parliament of Singapore that criminalizes the illegal possession of arms and ammunition and the carrying, trafficking, and usage of arms. The law is designed specifically to make acts of ownership, knowingly receiving payment in connection with the trade of a trafficked armaments and ammunition, as well as the unlawful usage of arms and ammunition a criminal offence.
The President's Pleasure (TPP) in Singapore was a practice of indefinite imprisonment formerly applied to offenders who were convicted of capital offences but were below the age of 18 at the time of their crimes. Such offenders were not sentenced to death in accordance with the death penalty laws in Singapore; they were instead indefinitely detained by order of the President of Singapore. This is similarly practised contemporarily for offenders who were of unsound mind when they committed their crimes, who are thus indefinitely detained at prisons or medical facilities in Singapore.
The Orchard Towers double murders was the case of two deaths occurring at Balmoral Park, Singapore, before the victims' bodies were discovered at a carpark in Orchard Towers, thus the title of the case. The victims were 46-year-old Kho Nai Guan and Kho's 29-year-old Chinese girlfriend Lan Ya Ming, and they were both murdered by Kho's British employer Michael McCrea. McCrea was assisted by his girlfriend Audrey Ong Pei Ling in disposing of the bodies before they both fled Singapore to Australia, where they were caught.
Dexmon Chua Yizhi was a material analyst and Singaporean who was brutally murdered in Singapore by his former girlfriend's husband, Chia Kee Chen, who craved revenge on Chua for having an affair with his wife and had convinced two people to help him abduct and kill Chua. Chua's death was due to a grievous assault that caused severe fatal injuries. Dexmon Chua was 37 years old when he died at Lim Chu Kang on 28 December 2013.
Life imprisonment is a legal penalty in Singapore. This sentence is applicable for more than forty offences under Singapore law, such as culpable homicide not amounting to murder, attempted murder, kidnapping by ransom, criminal breach of trust by a public servant, voluntarily causing grievous hurt with dangerous weapons, and trafficking of firearms, in addition to caning or a fine for certain offences that warrant life imprisonment.
On 24 May 1968, 19-year-old Ong Beang Leck, the son of a millionaire, was last seen leaving his house. His family received a call two days later, being told by the caller that Ong was kidnapped and a ransom of S$100,000 was demanded. After a second phone call in the second week of Ong's disappearance, the ransom was reduced to S$20,000 after negotiations, and it was paid for Ong's safe return. However, after the arrest of one suspect, it was established that Ong was murdered and in the midst of investigations and subsequent capture of four more suspects, Ong's decomposed body was discovered in a manhole at Jurong. Five of the suspects were charged in relation to their roles in the kidnapping and murder of the youth, with three hanged for murder while the remaining two were jailed for abetting the abduction and possession of the ransom money as well.
Lim Chwee Soon, alias Ah Soon, was a Singaporean armed robber who committed a total of three armed robberies between June and October 1995. In his latest robbery, Lim used his gun, a Colt .45, to fire seven shots and three of them caused severe injury to How Sau Che, the sales manager of the goldsmith shop robbed by Lim at the People's Park Complex on 30 October 1995.
Sha Bakar bin Dawood, alias Bakar Negro, was a Singaporean seaman and armed robber who was wanted for committing an armed robbery and discharging a revolver at Thiam Siew Avenue in January 1975. In this particular case, Sha Bakar entered a brothel and threatened three people in an armed hold-up, and also wounded the three hostages by shooting his gun at them. Sha Bakar was afterwards confronted by the police, with whom he exchanged gunfire before he fled the scene. Sha Bakar subsequently ran off to Malaysia, where he was arrested by the Royal Malaysia Police at the border between Malaysia and Thailand within the same month of the shoot-out. The Thiam Siew Avenue robbery case was the sixth out of his three-month robbery spree from November 1974 to January 1975.
On 15 June 2000, 65-year-old part-time taxi driver Ong Huay Dee was murdered by a passenger while he was driving along Pasir Ris in Singapore. Ong's passenger and killer, 25-year-old Thai national Khwan-On Natthaphon, was arrested and charged for the murder. Even though Khwan-On raised a defence of diminished responsibility and also stated he never intended to kill Ong, the trial court nonetheless rejected his defences and regarded him as a "cold-blooded murderer" for having intentionally caused the fatal head injuries on Ong. Hence, Khwan-On was found guilty of murdering Ong and sentenced to death in August 2001, and after losing his appeal, Khwan-On was hanged on 27 September 2002.
Between November 1992 and September 1993, at two locations within Singapore, a group of Thai migrant workers committed armed robberies at two construction sites located in Lim Chu Kang and Tampines respectively, which resulted in the deaths of three foreign construction workers, one Myanmar citizen in November 1992 and two Indian citizens in September 1993. Five of these assailants were eventually identified and arrested, and brought to trial for the robbery-murders. In two separate trials, all the five accused were found guilty of gang robbery with murder, and sentenced to death in early 1995. These five men were eventually hanged on 15 March 1996.
On 13 November 1985, 33-year-old Indonesian fish merchant Nurdin Nguan Song was murdered at a hotel along Waterloo Street, Singapore. Nurdin died after he was slashed and stabbed repeatedly by two men, who were revealed to have been paid by Nurdin's business rival to attack him. Between 1988 and 1992, the two murderers were arrested after spending several years on the run from the police, and charged with murder. One of them, a Malaysian named Loh Yoon Seong, was found guilty of murdering Nurdin and sentenced to death, while the other, a Singaporean named Tan Swee Hoon, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and for having killed Nurdin and committed an armed robbery while on the run, Tan was jailed for 23 years and given 24 strokes of the cane.