Huang Na was an eight-year-old Chinese national residing in Pasir Panjang, Singapore, who disappeared on 10 October 2004. Her mother, the police and the community conducted a three-week-long nationwide search for her. After her body was found, many Singaporeans attended her wake and funeral, giving bai jin and gifts. In a high-profile 14-day trial, Malaysian-born Took Leng How, a vegetable packer at the wholesale centre, was found guilty of murdering her and hanged after an appeal and a request for presidential clemency failed.
The Kallang River body parts murder was a murder and dismemberment case that occurred in Singapore. The case earned its name due to the body parts of the victim, 22-year-old Liu Hong Mei, being found disposed in Kallang River. In this case, Liu's 50-year-old supervisor, Leong Siew Chor, used a towel to strangle her to death, and he also severed her body into seven pieces - mainly her head, upper torso, lower torso, legs and feet - before disposing them in Kallang River and other locations in Singapore.
On 28 January 1989, 26-year-old Lim Lee Tin, a Chinese Singaporean woman who was often dressed like a male, was found murdered at a Chinese cemetery in Choa Chu Kang, Singapore. She was initially mistaken as a man before the autopsy revealed her true gender. The perpetrators of her murder were Lim's gambling partner and married housewife Chin Seow Noi, Chin's brother Chin Yaw Kim, and the siblings' friend Ng Kim Heng. The three suspects, who were all Malaysians, were said to have plotted the murder to get rid of Lim, who often harassed Chin Seow Noi for money.
Liang Shan Shan was a 17-year-old Malaysian schoolgirl who was reported missing in Singapore on 2 October 1989. Liang was found dead nearly two weeks later at Yishun Industrial Park, where her highly decomposed body was discovered by a group of National Servicemen who were training nearby that area. Despite conducting a post-mortem examination, the cause of Liang's death was uncertain due to the high state of decomposition and disappearance of certain body parts. Police investigations revealed that prior to her disappearance and murder, Liang was last seen boarding her school bus and left the school at 1pm on 2 October 1989, the same day she went missing.
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.
On 26 August 1998, 50-year-old Tan Eng Yan, a fruit stall assistant working at a market in Tampines, was found brutally murdered at the toilet of her Tampines flat. Tan, also known as Lily or Tan Ah Leng, was stabbed and slashed 58 times and four of the knife wounds were fatal. Her money, amounting to over S$2,200 in cash and S$6,000 in coins, were also being stolen from her flat. It took five days before the police arrested a fishmonger named Lau Lee Peng, who was a close friend of Tan, after he confessed during witness questioning that he killed Tan and led the police to where he hid the money.
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 12 February 1991, a 78-year-old housewife Sukarti binti Amari was found murdered inside her Telok Blangah flat by her nephew and husband. Her eight rings, gold chains and other jewellery worth S$5,000 were missing from the flat. Two suspects were arrested at least three months later for Sukarti's murder. It was established that both the killers had planned to enter Sukarti's flat to commit robbery, and they devised using chilli powder to blind the deceased before restraining her and strangling her.
On 8 August 1995, a 26-year-old prostitute named Ching Bee Ing was stabbed seven times by her 35-year-old co-worker Teo Kim Hong at a brothel along Teck Lim Road. Ching, a Malaysian, died as a result of four fatal knife wounds to her liver and heart. Teo, a Singaporean, was charged with murder after she was arrested for the brutal stabbing. Teo was found guilty and sentenced to death in January 1996, and after the loss of her appeal, Teo was hanged on 30 August 1996.
On 31 December 2001, while volunteering at an end-of-year event, 56-year-old Quek Loo Ming, a retired laboratory officer, spiked a bottle of water with methomyl and offered it to the chairperson of a resident's committee in Bukit Timah, with hopes that the chairperson, who allegedly mistreated Quek, would suffer from diarrhoea after drinking the contaminated water. However, the chairperson did not drink it, and instead, three other volunteers of the event drank it and it led to them being hospitalized.
On 2 March 2004, 47-year-old Esther Ang Imm Suan was murdered by her two Indonesian maids, Siti Aminah and Juminem, who also stole her jewellery and money from her house. It was alleged that Ang had been harsh in her scolding of the maids and expectations of her maids' performance and it caused them both to resort to violence and therefore committed the killing. Both Juminem and Siti were charged with murder, a crime which warrants the death penalty under Singaporean law.
On 4 August 2003, 17-year-old Purwanti Parji, an Indonesian citizen and former maid, murdered her Singaporean employer's mother-in-law at Paya Lebar. Purwanti was said to have strangled 57-year-old Har Chit Heang (夏织香) to death due to the victim allegedly mistreating her, and Purwanti also forged the death as suicide in an attempt to cover up her criminal conduct before the police arrested her as a suspect. Initially charged with murder, Purwanti pleaded guilty to a lesser offence of manslaughter in September 2004. After considering the brutality of the crime, the High Court sentenced Purwanti to life imprisonment.
On 28 June 2008, 25-year-old Wu Yun Yun, a Chinese national and wife of opposition politician Tan Lead Shake, used a fruit knife to stab both her brother-in-law and sister-in-law. The brother-in-law, who was Tan's 33-year-old brother Tan Lead Sane, died after he sustained several knife wounds on his chest and abdomen, while the sister-in-law Huang Mei Zhe, who was Tan Lead Sane's wife, survived the stabbing. Wu, who was said to have committed the stabbing due to mistreatment from her in-laws and jealousy towards the supposed better life of Tan and Huang, was charged with murder and attempted murder. Eventually, in November 2008, the charges were reduced to manslaughter and attempted manslaughter due to Wu suffering from depression at the time of the murder. Six months after she pleaded guilty, Wu was sentenced to 16 years in prison on 17 November 2009.
On the Christmas Eve night of 24 December 2005, 41-year-old Myanmar national Thein Naing was brutally assaulted and murdered by a group of three Malaysians, who robbed him of S$40, on a footpath along Upper Boon Keng Road. The three killers, together with a fourth man who acted as a lookout, were all arrested and charged with murder. Although one of the robbers, Benedict Inyang Anak Igal, was sentenced to five years' jail and 12 strokes of the cane for robbery with hurt, the remaining three robbers - Hamir bin Hasim, Kamal bin Kupli and Abdul Malik bin Usman - who were identified as the ones responsible for fatally assaulting the victim, were all found guilty of murdering Thein and sentenced to death on 1 March 2007. The trio later lost their appeals in February 2008, and they were since hanged for the murder.
On 20 October 2007, inside a rental flat in Marsiling, Singapore, 45-year-old bus driver Ong Pang Siew strangled his 15-year-old China-born stepdaughter Pan Hui after an argument. Ong, who was formerly married to Pan's biological mother before their divorce a few months before, was charged with murder. It was revealed in court that after the divorce, Ong and Pan's mother had been arguing regarding Ong's need to visit their son, and on the date of the killing, Ong went there to see his son and his conversation with Pan eventually escalated into an argument that led to the strangulation.
On 16 October 2008, during a heated argument inside her car, 47-year-old Choo Xue Ying, alias Jennifer Choo, was assaulted to death by a business partner Rosli bin Yassin, and abandoned it at Bukit Batok Nature Park, where Choo's skeletal remains were discovered four days after her death. Rosli, who was later found to have committed cheating following the murder itself, was arrested and charged with killing Choo, and his girlfriend was also charged with abetting him to commit cheating. Rosli's murder charge was subsequently reduced to manslaughter, and after pleading guilty to the reduced charge and several other unrelated charges for cheating, Rosli was sentenced to 12 years of preventive detention on account of his long criminal record, and subsequently, through the prosecution's appeal, Rosli's sentence of preventive detention was raised to the maximum of 20 years for the same reason, as well as due to his high risk of re-offending and his original sentence was manifestly inadequate.
On 22 September 2005, 37-year-old film-maker Ho Kien Leong, alias Jayson Ho, was found dead inside his flat at Indus Road, Bukit Merah, and he was certified to be stabbed to death around nine days before his highly decomposed corpse was found. Ho's killer, Lim Ah Liang, was arrested in Johor, Malaysia, where he was hiding after he killed Ho by stabbing him 13 times during an argument, and Lim was extradited back to Singapore to be investigated for killing Ho. Originally charged with murder, Lim, who suffered from depression at the time of the murder, was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to life imprisonment on 17 January 2007. Lim later lost his appeal for a lower jail term and is currently in prison serving his life sentence since 2005.
On 19 October 2005, 75-year-old Wee Keng Wah was found dead at the foot of her HDB block in Chai Chee, Singapore. On that same day, her 26-year-old Indonesian maid Barokah was arrested and charged with murder. It was later found through investigations that Barokah murdered Wee after the latter caught her sneaking out to meet her lover and Wee threatened to sack her, and Barokah thus had a fight with Wee before pushing her out of the flat window and leading to Wee's fall to death.
On 24 May 1989, at a flat in Tanglin Halt, 32-year-old Ithinin Kamari had fatally stabbed two men - Mohamed Johar Selamat (33) and Mohd Said Abdul Majid (29) - due to the two men, one of whom was his girlfriend's ex-lover, allegedly insulting him. Ithinin was arrested and charged for the double murder, and he claimed that the fatal stabbing was committed due to grave and sudden provocation from the victims. However, in January 1992, Ithinin was found guilty of murdering both Mohd Said and Mohamed Johar, and sentenced to death, due to his actions being grossly out of proportion to the provocation given.
