On the evening of 12 December 1993, Lee Kok Cheong was at his home in Greenleaf Place along Holland Road, when three youths entered his house to commit robbery. Two of the attackers stabbed Lee, then strangled him, which caused his death. Lee, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore, was 54 years old at the time of his death.
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.
Punch Coomaraswamy was a Singaporean judge, diplomat and politician who served as Speaker of the Parliament of Singapore between 1966 and 1970, and Singapore Ambassador to the United States between 1976 and 1984.
On 13 March 1997, at one of the HDB flats in King George's Avenue, Kallang, 53-year-old Sivapackiam Veerappan Rengasamy was discovered dead in her bedroom by her son. Sivapackiam was found to have been stabbed three times in the neck and she died from the wounds. During police investigations, Sivapackiam's tenant Gerardine Andrew, a 36-year-old prostitute, told police that on the day of the murder, she returned to the flat and saw three people attacking her landlady and robbing her, and they threatened her to leave after briefly holding her hostage.
Ng Soo Hin, a 19-year-old Singaporean carpenter, was charged in March 1990 with the murders of two women Ng Lee Kheng and Foo Chin Chin, and both victims were each other's best friends, while Foo was Ng's girlfriend. At two different locations, both women were found dead on that same night of 24 March 1990, with the first victim Ng being discovered dead due to a fall from one of the HDB flats at Circuit Road, while the second victim Foo was found dead with 14 stab wounds at East Coast Park. While the killings themselves stirred the whole nation, the killer Ng, who eventually stood trial for solely Foo's murder, tried to raise a defence of diminished responsibility to rebut the murder charge against him, but after he was found to be mentally sound at the time of the two murders, the trial court found Ng Soo Hin guilty and sentenced him to death.
On 23 April 1991, Kuah Bee Hong, a ten-year-old schoolgirl, was strangled to death at her Viking Road home by Goh Hong Choon, a 25-year-old family friend of Kuah's family. Goh was found to have entered the home to commit robbery and silenced the girl, who was the only one present at her flat. Goh was charged with murder and he admitted to the robbery and strangulation; the motive for the murder was due to Goh wanting to get rid of possible witnesses for his crime and basically needed money to mitigate his financial situation. Goh was found guilty of the killing after a trial that lasted roughly two days, and he was executed for the crime three years later in July 1994.
On 26 February 1993, inside their matrimonial flat at Hougang, Singapore, a married couple were discovered dead by both their son and youngest daughter. The victims of the alleged killings were 53-year-old Lau Gek Leng and 55-year-old Luke Yip Khuan. It was determined that the killings were perpetruated due to a robbery, because the Lau family's television set and VCR were missing from the flat. On the same day, a neighbour of the couple, 38-year-old Jamaludin Ibrahim, was arrested as a suspect due to a spanner belonging to him was found at the crime scene and one of Jamaludin's six daughters having witnessed him stealing the said missing items from the murdered couple's flat.
On 14 July 1993, 50-year-old sub-contractor Sim Ah Lek, who was also a moneylender, was killed by 37-year-old Phua Soy Boon, who was his creditor, after he refused Sim's request to lend him S$10,000. After killing Sim, Phua stole Sim's Rolex watch, diamond ring and S$9,000 in cash, and even stuffed the dead body inside a gunny sack before disposing of it at Jurong Swimming Complex, where it was found the next morning.
On 25 July 1980, 16-year-old student Ong Ai Siok, birth name Goh Luan Kheng, who stayed at home to study overnight while her adoptive parents went out for supper, was murdered by her unemployed relative Lau Ah Kiang, who entered her home to commit robbery as a result of his desperation to discharge his debts and settle his unpaid living expenses. Six years after his arrest, Lau, who denied committing the murder despite his confession, was sentenced to death in February 1986 after the trial court found him guilty of murder.
On 27 October 1990, a thirty-year-old Malaysian named Lim Yeow Chuan, who was a transvestite, was found dead at Johore Road within Bugis, where it was a hotspot for prostitution of transvestites prior to its demolition in the 1990s. According to his colleagues, Lim was last seen with two young Indian men before he was discovered dead. In January 1991, two suspects - consisting of one Malaysian and one Singaporean - were arrested and charged with his murder. Later, while the Singaporean suspect Kuppiah s/o Saravanan was sentenced to five years' jail and twelve strokes of the cane for robbery, the Malaysian suspect Soosay a/l Sinnappen remained facing a murder charge.
On 22 November 1990, 20-year-old National Serviceman Lee Teck Sang, who deserted from his army and hid himself at the campus of Singapore Polytechnic for 17 days, used a knife to murder a 45-year-old lecturer during a robbery. The victim, Tan Chin Liong, died as a result of being stabbed thrice. Although Lee claimed that he only meant to rob and the stabbing was meant to incapacitate Tan, the High Court rejected Lee's defence and found Lee guilty of murdering Tan, and sentenced him to death. Lee's appeal was dismissed and he was hanged on 29 July 1994.
On 23 May 1996, a 38-year-old Indonesian businessman named Benny Probocemdana Oen was mortally wounded by an assailant during a stabbing incident at Pacific Plaza before he died in hospital. The suspect, identified as 19-year-old Sim Eng Teck, was arrested more than a year later and charged with murder. Sim, who put up a defence of alcohol intoxication and also put forward claims that he only intend to stab the victim's arm during the knife attack, but Judicial Commissioner Amerjeet Singh found that Sim had intentionally inflicted the fatal injuries on Oen and described the killing as a "daringly cold-blooded" murder, and sentenced Sim to death in May 1998. Sim lost his appeal on 1 August 1998, and he had since been hanged.
On 4 May 1988, while he was driving to Old Toh Tuck Road, 48-year-old taxi driver Jaswant Singh was robbed by four people, and he died eight days later in a coma, as a result of the grievous injuries he suffered. The four suspects, who were all male, were arrested between 1989 and 1990 and charged with murder. Eventually, only one of the assailants, Murgan Ramasamy, was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death in March 1993. After losing his appeal and death row plea for clemency, Murgan was hanged on 16 September 1994. The remaining three attackers were instead found guilty of lesser charges of robbery with hurt, and sentenced to jail terms between five years and 78 months, in addition to caning.
On 30 May 2006, 46-year-old lorry driver Wan Cheon Kem, who was carrying out his task of delivering 2,700 mobile phones, was attacked by three armed robbers who not only robbed him of the phones, but also assaulted Wan by bludgeoning him on the head at least 15 times with a baseball bat, leading to Wan's death during his hospitalization six days later. The handphone heist, which occurred at Changi Coast Road, was masterminded by Arsan Krishnasamy Govindarajoo, who was informed of Wan's delivery task by Wan's colleague Ragu Ramajayam.
On 25 March 1988, at Bukit Timah, 49-year-old lorry driver Yeu Lam Ching was robbed and murdered by two men. The two men, Abdul Aziz Abdul Rahman and Mazlan Maidun, were swiftly arrested and charged with murder. Mazlan, who directly stabbed the victim to death with a knife, was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death, while Abdul Aziz, who only robbed the victim and never took part in the stabbing, was found guilty of armed robbery and thus jailed for ten years and given 12 strokes of the cane. Mazlan was hanged on 21 January 1994 after losing his appeal.
On 25 October 1993, 34-year-old airport operation assistant Thampusamy Murugian Gunasekaran was murdered by three men while he and his friend were having supper at a coffee shop at Little India's Chander Road; the friend was also attacked but survived with minor injuries. Six months later, one of the assailants was charged with murder after he gave himself up to the police. The suspect, Anbuarsu Joseph, was found guilty of murdering Thampusamy and sentenced to death in August 1994, and he was hanged on 7 July 1995. Anbuarsu's two accomplices, who were yet to be identified, remained at large as of today.
On 17 May 2000, at a vacant plot of land in Bukit Timah, 36-year-old odd-job worker and moneylender Leong Fook Weng was found dead, wearing only his underwear and sustaining several stab wounds on his chest and neck. Investigations showed that Leong had been attacked and assaulted by four secret society members, and died as a result of a knife wound to his heart. The four attackers escaped Singapore after the killing, but two of them - See Chee Keong and Robson Tay Teik Chai - were discovered to be imprisoned in Cambodia and France respectively for unrelated drug offences, and the remaining two suspects - Lim Hin Teck and Ong Chin Huat - remains at large for the murder.
On the night of 4 October 1996, at a carpark in Singapore's Yung Kwang Road, 23-year-old Phang Ai Looi, a Malaysian from Perak, was stabbed to death by her former boyfriend, who was caught on that same night after his suicide attempt failed. The suspect, 29-year-old Kwan Cin Cheng, who was a Perak-born Malaysian working in Singapore, was charged with murder. Kwan, who first knew Phang in 1988 and dated her, found out some time before the murder that Phang was two-timing on him for another man, and when Kwan met her on that night with a threat to kill himself should Phang not return to him, Phang reportedly made a cold-blooded remark that she was much happier with the other man, which deeply provoked Kwan to stabbing Phang to death.
On 2 June 2001, at a vacant area in Kian Teck Road in Singapore, 23-year-old Thai national Saenphan Thawan was attacked by a gang of six Thai workers, after he had allegedly offended one of the attackers' girlfriend, who told her boyfriend about the victim's actions. Saenphan, who was the head operator of a drug trafficking and prostitution ring at Kian Teck Road, died as a result of the brutal assault, and out of the six killers, four of them were arrested and charged with murder, while the remaining two assailants remains on the run as of today. Out of the four captured, three of them were sentenced to death for murder and a fourth was given a jail term of nine years with caning for manslaughter.
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.
