On
this date, 25 November 1988, Adrian Lim and his two Holy wives were executed by
hanging in Changi Prison, Singapore. They were convicted of murdering two
children in their Toa Payoh flat. I will post information about them from
Wikipedia.
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Adrian Lim conned many women into offering
him money and sex, and killed children in an attempt to stop police
investigations against him.
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The
Toa Payoh ritual murders took place in Singapore in 1981. On
25 January the body of a nine-year-old girl was found dumped next to the lift
of a block of flats in the Toa Payoh district and, two weeks later, a
ten-year-old boy was found dead nearby. The children had been killed,
purportedly as blood sacrifices to the Hindu goddess Kali. The murders were
masterminded by Adrian Lim, a self-styled medium, who had tricked scores of
women into believing he had supernatural powers. His victims offered money and
sexual services in exchange for cures, beauty, and good fortune. Two of the
women became his loyal assistants; Tan Mui Choo married him, and Hoe Kah Hong
became one of his "holy wives". When the police investigated a rape
charge filed by one of Lim's targets, he became furious and decided to kill
children to derail the investigations. On each occasion, Hoe lured a child to
Lim's flat where he or she was drugged and killed by the trio. Lim also
sexually assaulted the girl before her death. The trio were arrested after the
police found a trail of blood that led to their flat. Although the case name
suggested ritualistic murders, the defendants said they did not conduct
prayers, burning of joss sticks, ringing of bells, or any other rituals during
the killings.
The
41-day trial was the second longest to have been held in the courts of
Singapore at the time. None of the defendants denied their guilt. Their
appointed counsels tried to spare their clients the death sentence by pleading diminished
responsibility, arguing that the accused were mentally ill and could not be
held entirely responsible for the killings. To support their case they brought
in doctors and psychologists, who analysed the defendants and concluded that
they had exhibited schizophrenia, and depressions of the psychotic and manic
order. The prosecution's expert, however, refuted these testimonies and argued
that they were in full control of their mental faculties when they planned and
carried out the murders. The judges agreed with the prosecution's case and
sentenced the trio to death. While on death row, the women appealed to the Privy
Council in London and pleaded for clemency from the President of Singapore to
no avail. Lim did not seek any pardons; instead, he accepted his fate and went
smiling to the gallows. The three were hanged on 25 November 1988.
The
Toa Payoh ritual murders shocked the public in Singapore, who were surprised by
such an act taking place in their society. Reports of the trio's deeds and the
court proceedings were closely followed and remained prominent in the Singaporean
consciousness for several years. Twice, movie companies tried to capitalise on
the sensation generated by the murders by producing motion pictures based on
the killings; however, critics panned both films for indulging in gratuitous
sex and violence, and the movies performed poorly at the box office. The
actions and behaviour of the three killers were studied by academics in the
criminal psychology field, and the rulings set by the courts became local case
studies for diminished responsibility.
Whoever says Singapore is boring and antiseptic ignores our hard-to-surpass crime spine tinglers starring inimitable rogues such as ... the very incarnation of Evil — Adrian Lim ...- Sonny Yap, The Straits Times, 15 July 1995
Singaporean society in the 1980s
Early
in the nineteenth century, immigrants flooded into Peninsular Malaysia,
colonising the Straits Settlements including the island city of Singapore.
Migrants and natives held differing beliefs, but over time the boundaries
between those belief systems blurred. Most of the population believed in
spirits that inhabit the jungles, and in gods and devils that hover around,
capable of benevolence and mischief. Certain people claimed that they could
communicate with these supernatural beings. Through rituals in which they
danced and chanted, these spirit mediums—tang-kees and bomohs—invited
the beings to possess their bodies and dole out wisdoms, blessings, and curses
to their believers. As time passed and the cities grew, the jungles gave way to
concrete structures and the mediums' practices moved deeper into the heartland
of communities.
By
1980, 75% of the residents in Singapore were living in public housing.
Government-built high-rise blocks of flats clustered in the population centres,
of which the Toa Payoh district was typical. Although a high density of people
lived in each block, the residents mostly kept to themselves, valuing their
privacy and tending to ignore what was happening around their homes. During
this time, Singapore was a relatively peaceful society—a stark contrast to the
prevalence of secret societies, triads
and gang warfare during the pre-independence days. The low crime rate, brought
on by strict laws and tough enforcement, gave citizens a sense of security.
Nonetheless, the government warned against complacency and lectured in its
local campaigns, "Low crime doesn't mean no crime". In 1981, three
Singaporeans committed a crime that shocked the nation.
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A photo taken alongside Toa Payoh Lorong 7,
Singapore: Block 12, where the murders took place, is smaller block on the
right. The flat itself is highlighted in red. Blocks 10 and 11 had been
demolished and reconstructed as the taller flats and multi-storey carpark as
seen on the left and centre.
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Two murders, three arrests
For
several years, a medium in Block 12, Toa Payoh Lorong 7, had been performing
noisy rituals in the middle of the night. The residents complained several
times to the authorities, but the rituals would always resume after a short
time. On the afternoon of 24 January 1981, nine-year-old Agnes Ng Siew
Hock (simplified Chinese: 黄秀叶; traditional Chinese: 黃秀葉; pinyin: Huáng Xìuyè) disappeared after attending
religious classes at her church in Toa Payoh. Hours later, her body was found
stuffed in a bag outside a lift in Block 11, less than a kilometre
(five-eighths of a mile) from the church. The girl had been smothered to death;
the investigation revealed injuries to her genitals and semen in her rectum.
Although the police launched an intensive investigation, questioning more than
250 people around the crime scene, they failed to obtain any leads. On
7 February ten-year-old Ghazali bin Marzuki was found dead under a tree
between Blocks 10 and 11. He had been missing since the previous day, after
being seen boarding a taxi with an unknown woman. Forensic pathologists on the
scene deemed the cause of death as drowning, and found on the boy suffocation
marks similar to those on Ng. There were no signs of sexual assault, but burns
were on the boy's back and a puncture on his arm. Traces of a sedative were
later detected in his blood.
The
police found a scattered trail of blood that led to the seventh floor of Block
12. Stepping into the common corridor from the stairwell, Inspector Pereira
noticed an eclectic mix of religious symbols (a cross, a mirror, and a knife-blade)
on the entrance of the first flat (unit number 467F). The owner of the flat,
Adrian Lim, approached the inspector and introduced himself, informing Pereira
that he was living there with his wife, Tan Mui Choo, and a girlfriend, Hoe Kah
Hong. Permitted by Lim to search his flat, the police found traces of blood.
Lim initially tried to pass the stains off as candle wax, but when challenged
claimed they were chicken blood. After the police found slips of paper written
with the dead children's personal details, Lim tried to allay suspicions by
claiming that Ghazali had come to his flat seeking treatment for a bleeding
nose. He discreetly removed hair from under a carpet and tried to flush it down
the toilet, but the police stopped him; forensics later determined the hair to
be Ng's. Requesting a background check on Lim, Pereira received word from local
officers that the medium was currently involved in a rape investigation. Lim
overheard them and became agitated, raising his voice at the law enforcers. His
ire was mimicked by Hoe as she gestured violently and shouted at the officers.
Their actions further raised the investigators' suspicions that the trio were
deeply involved in the murders. The police collected the evidence, sealed the
flat as a crime scene, and took Lim and the two women in for questioning.
Perpetrators
Adrian Lim
Born
on 6 January 1942, Adrian Lim (simplified Chinese: 林宝龙;
traditional Chinese: 林寶龍; pinyin: Lín
Bǎolóng) was the eldest son of a middle-class family. Described at
the trial by his sister as a hot-tempered boy, he dropped out of secondary school
and worked a short stint as an informant for the Internal Security Department,
joining the cable radio company Rediffusion Singapore in 1962. For three years,
he installed and serviced Rediffusion sets as an electrician before being
promoted to bill collector. In April 1967, Lim married his childhood sweetheart
with whom he had two children. He converted to Catholicism for his marriage.
Lim and his family lived in rented rooms until his 1970 purchase of a
three-room flat—a seventh floor unit (unit number 467F) of Block 12, Toa Payoh.
Lim
started part-time practice as a spirit medium in 1973. He rented a room where
he attended to the women—most of whom were bargirls, dance hostesses, and
prostitutes—introduced to him by his landlord. Lim's customers also included
superstitious men and elderly females, whom he cheated only of cash. He had
learned the trade from a bomoh called "Uncle Willie" and prayed to
gods of various religions despite his Catholic baptism. The Indian goddess Kali
and "Phragann", which Lim described as a Siamese sex god, were among
the spiritual entities he called on in his rituals. Lim deceived his clients
with several confidence tricks; his most effective gimmick,
known as the "needles and egg" trick, duped many to believe that he
had supernatural abilities. After blackening needles with soot from a burning
candle, Lim carefully inserted them into a raw egg and sealed the hole with
powder. In his rituals, he passed the egg several times over his client while
chanting and asked her to crack open the egg. Unaware that the egg had been
tampered with, the client would be convinced by the sight of the black needles
that evil spirits were harassing her.
Lim
particularly preyed on gullible girls who had deep personal problems. He
promised them that he could solve their woes and increase their beauty through
a ritual massage. After Lim and his client had stripped, he would knead her
body—including her genitals—with Phragann's idol and have sex with her. Lim's
treatments also included an electro-shock therapy based on that used on mental
patients. After placing his client's feet in a tub of water and attaching wires
to her temples, Lim passed electricity through her. The shocks, he assured her,
would cure headaches and drive away evil spirits.
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Tan Mui Choo assisted Lim in his medium
practice, reaping the benefits.
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Tan Mui Choo
Catherine
Tan Mui Choo (simplified Chinese: 陈梅珠; traditional
Chinese: 陳梅珠; pinyin:
Chén Méizhū) was
referred to Lim by a fellow bargirl, who claimed the spirit medium could cure
ailments and depression. Tan, at that time, was grieving the death of her
grandmother to whom she had been devoted. Furthermore her estrangement from her
parents weighed on her mind; having been sent away at the age of 13 to a
vocational centre (a home mostly for juvenile delinquents), she felt unwanted
by them. Tan's visits to Lim became regular, and their relationship grew
intimate. In 1975 she moved into his flat on his insistence. To allay his
wife's suspicions that he was having an affair with Tan, Lim swore an oath of
denial before a picture of Jesus Christ. However, she discovered the truth and
moved out with their children a few days later, divorcing Lim in 1976. Lim quit
his Rediffusion job and became a full-time medium. He enjoyed brisk business,
at one point receiving S$6,000–7,000 (US$2,838–3,311) a month from a single
client. In June 1977, Lim and Tan registered their marriage.
Lim
dominated Tan through beatings, threats, and lies. He persuaded her to
prostitute herself to supplement their income. He also convinced her that he
needed to fornicate with young women to stay healthy; thus, Tan assisted him in
his business, preparing their clients for his pleasure. Lim's influence over
Tan was strong; on his encouragement and promise that sex with a younger man
would preserve her youth, Tan copulated with a Malay teenager and even with her
younger brother. The boy was not her only sibling to be influenced by Lim; the
medium had earlier seduced Tan's younger sister and tricked her into selling
her body and having sex with the two youths. Despite the abuses, Tan lived with
Lim, enjoying the dresses, beauty products and slimming courses bought with
their income.
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Hoe Kah Hong steadfastly believed in Lim,
conscientiously executing his orders.
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Hoe Kah Hong
Born
on 10 September 1955, Hoe Kah Hong (simplified Chinese: 何家凤;
traditional Chinese: 何家鳳; pinyin: Hé
Jiāfèng) was eight years old when her father died; she was sent to
live with her grandmother until she was fifteen. When she returned to her
mother and siblings she was constantly required to give way to her elder sister
Lai Ho. Under the perception that her mother favoured her sister, Hoe became
disgruntled, showing her temper easily. In 1979 her mother brought Lai to Lim
for treatment, and became convinced of Lim's powers by his "needles and
egg" trick. Believing that Hoe's volatile temper could also be cured by
Lim, the old woman brought her younger daughter to the medium. After witnessing
the same trick, Hoe became Lim's loyal follower. Lim desired to make Hoe one of
his "holy wives", even though she was already married to Benson Loh
Ngak Hua. To achieve his goal, Lim sought to isolate Hoe from her family by
feeding her lies. He claimed that her family were immoral people who practiced
infidelity, and that Loh was an unfaithful man who would force her into
prostitution. Hoe believed Lim's words, and after going through a rite with him
she was declared by the medium as his "holy wife". She no longer
trusted her husband and family, and became violent towards her mother. Three
months after she had first met Lim, Hoe moved from her house and went to live
with him.
Loh
sought his wife at Lim's flat and ended up staying to observe her treatment. He
was persuaded by her to participate in the electro-shock therapies. In the
early hours of 7 January 1980, Loh sat with Hoe, their arms locked
together and their feet in separate tubs of water. Lim applied a large voltage
to Loh, who was electrocuted, while Hoe was stunned into unconsciousness. When
she woke, Lim requested her to lie to the police about Loh's death. Hoe
repeated the story Lim had given her, saying that her husband had been
electrocuted in their bedroom when he tried to switch on a faulty electric fan
in the dark. The coroner recorded an open verdict, and the police made no
further investigations.
Despite
her antipathy towards Loh, Hoe was affected by his death. Her sanity broke; she
started hearing voices and hallucinating, seeing her dead husband. At the end
of May she was admitted to the Woodbridge Hospital. There, psychologists
diagnosed her condition as schizophrenia and started appropriate treatments.
Hoe made a remarkably quick recovery; by the first week of July, she was
discharged. She continued her treatment with the hospital; follow-up checks
showed that she was in a state of remission. Hoe's attitude towards her mother
and other family members began to improve after her stay in the hospital,
although she continued to live with Lim and Tan.
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Altar found in Adrian Lim's flat: gods of
various religions were arrayed on it. Idols and pictures of Kali, Buddha, and
Phragann are on it.
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Rape and revenge
With
Hoe and Tan as his assistants, Lim continued his trade, tricking more women
into giving him money and sex. By the time of his arrest, he had 40 "holy
wives". In late 1980 he was arrested and charged with rape. His accuser
was Lucy Lau, a door-to-door cosmetic salesgirl, who had met Lim when she was
promoting beauty products to Tan. On 19 October, Lim told Lau that a ghost
was haunting her, but he could exorcise it with his sex rituals. She was
unconvinced, but the medium persisted. He secretly mixed two capsules of Dalmadorm,
a sedative, into a glass of milk and offered it to her, claiming it had holy
properties. Lau became groggy after drinking it, which allowed Lim to take
advantage of her. For the next few weeks, he continued to abuse her by using
drugs or threats. In November, after Lim had given her parents a loan smaller
than the amount they had requested, Lau made a police report about his
treatment of her. Lim was arrested on charges of rape, and Tan for abetting
him. Out on bail, Lim persuaded Hoe to lie that she was present at the alleged
rape but saw no crime committed. This failed to stop the police enquiries; Lim
and Tan had to extend their bail, in person, at the police station every
fortnight.
Frustrated,
Lim plotted to distract the police with a series of child murders. Moreover, he
believed that sacrifices of children to Kali would persuade her supernaturally
to draw the attention of the police away from him. Lim pretended to be
possessed by Kali, and convinced Tan and Hoe that the goddess wanted them to
kill children to wreak vengeance on Lau. He also told them Phragann demanded
that he have sex with their female victims.
On
24 January 1981, Hoe spotted Agnes at a nearby church and lured her to the
flat. The trio plied her with food and drink that was laced with Dalmadorm.
After Agnes became groggy and fell asleep, Lim sexually abused her. Near
midnight, the trio smothered Agnes with a pillow and drew her blood, drinking
and smearing it on a portrait of Kali. Following that, they drowned the girl by
holding down her head in a pail of water. Finally, Lim used his electro-shock
therapy device to "make doubly sure that she was dead". They stuffed
her body in a bag and dumped it near the lift at Block 11.
Ghazali
suffered a similar fate when he was brought by Hoe to the flat on
6 February. He, however, proved resistant to the sedatives, taking a long
time to fall asleep. Lim decided to tie up the boy as a precaution; however,
the boy awoke and struggled. Panicking, the trio delivered karate chops to
Ghazali's neck and stunned him. After drawing his blood, they proceeded to
drown their victim. Ghazali struggled, vomiting and losing control of his
bowels as he died. Blood kept streaming from his nose after his death. While
Tan stayed behind to clean the flat, Lim and Hoe disposed the body. Lim noticed
that a trail of blood led to their flat, so he and his accomplices cleaned as
much as they could of these stains before sunrise. What they missed led the
police to their flat and resulted in their arrest.
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The murder case was heard in Courtroom No. 4
of the old Supreme Court Building.
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Trial
Two
days after their arrest, Lim, Tan and Hoe were charged in the Subordinate Court
for the murders of the two children. The trio were subjected to further
interrogations by the police, and to medical examinations by prison doctors. On
16–17 September, their case was brought to the court for a committal
procedure. To prove that there was a case against the accused, Deputy Public
Prosecutor Glenn Knight called on 58 witnesses and arrayed 184 pieces
of evidence before the magistrate. While Tan and Hoe denied the charges of
murder, Lim pleaded guilty and claimed sole responsibility for the acts. The
magistrate decided that the case against the accused was sufficiently strong to
be heard at the High Court. Lim, Tan, and Hoe remained in custody while
investigations continued.
Judiciary, prosecution, and defence
The
High Court was convened in the Supreme Court Building on 25 March 1983.
Presiding over the case were two judges: Justice Thirugnana Sampanthar
Sinnathuray, who would deliver judgment on serial murderer John Martin Scripps
13 years later, and Justice Frederick Arthur Chua, who was at the time the
longest serving judge in Singapore. Knight continued to build his case on the
evidence gathered by detective work. Photographs of the crime scenes, together
with witness testimonies, would help the court to visualise the events that led
to the crimes. Other evidence—the blood samples, religious objects, drugs, and
the notes with Ng and Ghazali's names—conclusively proved the defendants'
involvement. Knight had no eyewitnesses to the murders; his evidence was
circumstantial, but he told the court in his opening statement, "What
matters is that [the accused] did intentionally suffocate and drown these two
innocent children, causing their deaths in circumstances which amount to
murder. And this we will prove beyond all reasonable doubt."
Tan,
with Lim's and the police's permission, used $10,000 of the $159,340 (US$4,730
of US$75,370) seized from the trio's flat to engage J. B. Jeyaretnam for her
defence. Hoe had to accept the court's offer of counsel, receiving Nathan Isaac
as her defender. Since his arrest, Lim had refused legal representation. He defended
himself at the Subordinate Court hearings, but could not continue to do so when
the case was moved to the High Court; Singapore law requires that for capital
crimes the accused must be defended by a legal professional. Thus Howard Cashin
was appointed as Lim's lawyer, although his job was complicated by his client's
refusal to cooperate. The three lawyers decided not to dispute that their
clients had killed the children. Acting on a defence of diminished
responsibility, they attempted to show that their clients were not sound of
mind and could not be held responsible for the killings. If this defence had
been successful, the defendants would have escaped the death penalty to face
either life imprisonment, or up to 10 years in jail.
LimNo comment.Justice SinnathurayNo, no, no, Adrian Lim, you can't keep saying that to me. (To Cashin) He is your witness.CashinYou can see now, my Lord, how difficult it is with this witness.Court transcript illustrating the court's frustration with Lim's behaviour
Proceedings
After
Knight had presented the prosecution evidence the court heard testimonies on
the personalities and character flaws of the accused, from their relatives and
acquaintances. Details of their lives were revealed by one of Lim's "holy
wives". Private medical practitioners Dr. Yeo Peng Ngee and Dr. Ang Yiau
Hua admitted that they were Lim's sources for drugs, and had provided the trio
sleeping pills and sedatives without question on each consultation. The police
and forensics teams gave their accounts of their investigations; Inspector
Suppiah, the investigating officer-in-charge, read out the statements the
defendants had made during their remand. In these statements Lim stated that he
had killed for revenge, and that he had sodomised Ng. The accused had also
confirmed in their statements that each was an active participant in the
murders. There were many contradictions among these statements and the
confessions made in court by the accused, but Judge Sinnathuray declared that
despite the conflicting evidence, "the essential facts of this case are
not in dispute". Lim's involvement in the crimes was further evidenced by
a witness who vouched that just after midnight on 7 February 1981, at the
ground floor of Block 12, he saw Lim and a woman walk past him carrying a
dark-skinned boy.
On
13 April Lim took the stand. He maintained that he was the sole
perpetrator of the crimes. He denied that he raped Lucy Lau or Ng, claiming
that he made the earlier statements only to satisfy his interrogators. Lim was
selective in answering the questions the court threw at him; he verbosely
answered those that agreed with his stance, and refused to comment on the
others.
When challenged on the veracity of his latest confession, he claimed that he
was bound by religious and moral duty to tell the truth. Knight, however,
countered that Lim was inherently a dishonest man who had no respect for oaths.
Lim had lied to his wife, his clients, the police, and psychiatrists. Knight
claimed Lim's stance in court was an open admission that he willingly lied in
his earlier statements. Tan and Hoe were more cooperative, answering the
questions posed by the court. They denied Lim's story, and vouched for the
veracity of the statements they had given to the police. They told how they had
lived in constant fear and awe of Lim; believing he had supernatural powers,
they followed his every order and had no free will of their own. Under Knight's
questioning, however, Tan admitted that Lim had been defrauding his customers,
and that she had knowingly helped him to do so. Knight then got Hoe to agree
that she was conscious of her actions at the time of the murders.
Battle of the psychiatrists
No
one doubted that Lim, Tan, and Hoe had killed the children. Their defence was
based on convincing the judges that medically, the accused were not in total
control of themselves during the crimes. The bulk of the trial was therefore a
battle between expert witnesses called by both sides. Dr Wong Yip Chong, a
senior psychiatrist in private practice, believed that Lim was mentally ill at
the time of the crimes. Claiming to be "judging by the big picture, and
not fussing over contradictions", he said that Lim's voracious sexual
appetite and deluded belief in Kali were characteristics of a mild manic
depression. The doctor also said that only an unsound mind would dump the
bodies close to his home when his plan was to distract the police. In rebuttal,
the prosecution's expert witness, Dr Chee Kuan Tsee, a psychiatrist at
Woodbridge Hospital, said that Lim was "purposeful in his pursuits,
patient in his planning and persuasive in his performance for personal power
and pleasure". In Dr Chee's opinion, Lim had indulged in sex because
through his role as a medium he obtained a supply of women who were willing to
go to bed with him. Furthermore, his belief in Kali was religious in nature,
not delusional. Lim's use of religion for personal benefit indicated full
self-control. Lastly, Lim had consulted doctors and freely taken sedatives to
alleviate his insomnia, a condition which, according to Dr Chee, sufferers from
manic depression fail to recognise.
Dr
R. Nagulendran, a consultant psychiatrist, testified that Tan was mentally
impaired by reactive psychotic depression. According to him she was depressed
before she met Lim, due to her family background. Physical abuse and threats
from Lim deepened her depression; drug abuse led her to hallucinate and believe
the medium's lies. Dr Chee disagreed; he said that Tan had admitted to being
quite happy with the material lifestyle Lim gave to her, enjoying fine clothes
and beauty salon treatments. A sufferer from reactive psychotic depression
would not have paid such attention to her appearance. Also, Tan had earlier
confessed to knowing Lim was a fraud, but changed her stance in court to claim
she was acting completely under his influence. Although Dr Chee had neglected
Lim's physical abuse of Tan in his judgment, he was firm in his opinion that
Tan was mentally sound during the crimes. Both Dr Nagulendran and Dr Chee
agreed that Hoe suffered from schizophrenia long before she met Lim, and that
her stay in Woodbridge Hospital had helped her recovery. However, while Dr
Nagulendran was convinced that Hoe suffered a relapse during the time of the
child killings, Dr Chee pointed out that none of the Woodbridge doctors saw any
signs of relapse during the six months of her follow-up checks (16 July
1980 – 31 January 1981). If Hoe had been as severely impaired by her
condition as Dr Nagulendran described, she would have become an invalid.
Instead, she methodically abducted and helped kill a child on two occasions.
Ending his testimony, Dr Chee stated that it was incredible that three people
with different mental illnesses should share a common delusion of receiving a
request to kill from a god.
Closing statements
In
their closing speeches, the defence tried to reinforce the portrayal of their
clients as mentally disturbed individuals. Cashin said that Lim was a normal
man until his initiation into the occult, and that he was clearly divorced from
reality when he entered the "unreasonable world of atrociousness",
acting on his delusions to kill children in Kali's name. Jeyaretnam said that
due to her depression and Lim's abuse, Tan was just "a robot",
carrying out orders without thought. Isaac simply concluded, "[Hoe's]
schizophrenic mind accepted that if the children were killed, they would go to
heaven and not grow up evil like her mother and others." The defence
criticised Dr Chee for failing to recognise their clients' symptoms.
The
prosecution started its closing speech by drawing attention to the "cool
and calculating" manner in which the children were killed. Knight also
argued that the accused could not have shared the same delusion, and only
brought it up during the trial. The "cunning and deliberation"
displayed in the acts could not have been done by a deluded person. Tan helped
Lim because "she loved [him]", and Hoe was simply misled into helping
the crimes. Urging the judges to consider the ramifications of their verdict, Knight
said: "My Lords, to say that Lim was less than a coward who preyed on
little children because they could not fight back; killed them in the hope that
he would gain power or wealth and therefore did not commit murder, is to make
no sense of the law of murder. It would lend credence to the shroud of mystery
and magic he has conjured up his practices and by which he managed to frighten,
intimidate and persuade the superstitious, the weak and the gullible into
participating in the most lewd and obscene acts."
Judgment
On
25 May 1983, crowds massed outside the building, waiting for the outcome
of the trial. Due to limited seating, only a few were allowed inside to hear
Justice Sinnathuray's delivery of the verdict, which took 15 minutes. The
two judges were not convinced that the accused were mentally unsound during the
crimes. They found Lim to be "abominable and depraved" in carrying
out his schemes. Viewing her interviews with the expert witnesses as admissions
of guilt, Sinnathuray and Chua found Tan to be an "artful and wicked
person", and a "willing [party] to [Lim's] loathsome and nefarious
acts". The judges found Hoe to be "simple" and "easily
influenced". Although she suffered from schizophrenia, they noted that she
was in a state of remission during the murders; hence she should bear full
responsibility for her actions. All three defendants were found guilty of
murder and sentenced to be hanged. The two women did not react to their
sentences. On the other hand, Lim beamed and cried, "Thank you, my
Lords!", as he was led out.
Lim
accepted his fate; the women did not, and appealed against their sentences. Tan
hired Francis Seow to appeal for her, and the court again assigned Isaac to Hoe.
The lawyers asked the appeal court to reconsider the mental states of their
clients during the murders, charging that the trial judges in their
deliberations had failed to consider this point. The Court of Criminal Appeal
reached their decision in August 1986. The appeal judges reaffirmed the decision
of their trial counterparts, noting that as finders of facts, judges have the
right to discount medical evidence in the light of evidence from other sources.
Tan and Hoe's further appeals to London's Privy Council and Singapore President
Wee Kim Wee met with similar failures.
Having
exhausted all their avenues for pardon, Tan and Hoe calmly faced their fates.
While waiting on death row the trio were counselled by Catholic priests and
nuns. In spite of the reputation that surrounded Lim, Father Brian Doro
recalled the murderer as a "rather friendly person". When the day of
execution loomed, Lim asked Father Doro for absolution and Holy Communion.
Likewise, Tan and Hoe had Sister Gerard Fernandez as their spiritual
counsellor. The nun converted the two female convicts to Catholicism, and they received
forgiveness and Holy Communion during their final days. On 25 November
1988 the trio were given their last meal and led to the hangman's noose. Lim
smiled throughout his last walk. After the sentences were carried out, the
three murderers were given a short Catholic funeral mass by Father Doro, and
cremated on the same day.
 |
|
Singaporeans crowded the grounds of the
Subordinate Court (pictured) and other courts to catch a glimpse of the
killers.
|
Legacy
The
trial on the Toa Payoh ritual murders was closely followed by the populace of
Singapore. Throngs of people constantly packed the grounds of the courts,
hoping to catch a glimpse of Adrian Lim and to hear the revelations first-hand.
Reported by regional newspapers in detail, the gory and sexually explicit
recounting of Lim's acts offended the sensibilities of some; Canon Frank Lomax,
Vicar of St. Andrew's Anglican Church, complained to The Straits Times
that the reports could have a corrupting effect on the young. His words
received support from a few readers. Others, however, welcomed the open
reporting, considering it helpful in raising public awareness of the need for
vigilance even in a city with low crime rates. Books, which covered the murders
and the trial, were quickly bought by the public on their release.
The
revelations from the trial cast Lim as evil incarnate in the minds of
Singaporeans. Some citizens could not believe that anyone would willingly
defend such a man. They called Cashin to voice their anger; a few even issued
death threats against him. On the other hand, Knight's name spread among
Singaporeans as the man who brought Adrian Lim to justice, boosting his career.
He handled more high-profile cases, and became the director of the Commercial
Affairs Department in 1984. He would maintain his good reputation until his
conviction for corruption seven years later.
Even
in prison, Lim was hated; his fellow prisoners abused and treated him as an
outcast. In the years that followed the crime, memories remained fresh among
those who followed the case. Journalists deemed it the most sensational trial
of the 80s, being "the talk of a horrified city as gruesome accounts of
sexual perversion, the drinking of human blood, spirit possession, exorcism and
indiscriminate cruelty unfolded during the 41-day hearing". Fifteen years
from the trial's conclusion, a poll conducted by The New Paper reported
that 30 per cent of its respondents had picked the Toa Payoh ritual murders as
the most horrible crime, despite the paper's request to vote only for crimes
committed in 1998. Lim had become a benchmark for local criminals; in 2002 Subhas
Anandan described his client, wife-killer Anthony Ler, as a "cooler, more
handsome version of [the] notorious Toa Payoh medium-murderer".
During
the 1990s, the local film industry made two movies based on the murder case,
the first of which was Medium Rare. The 1991 production had substantial
foreign involvement; most of the cast and crew were American or British. The
script was locally written and intended to explore the "psyche of the
three main characters". The director, however, focused on sex and
violence, and the resulting film was jeered by the audience at its midnight
screening. Its 16-day run brought in $130,000 (US$75,145), and a reporter
called it "more bizarre than the tales of unnatural sex and occult
practices associated with the Adrian Lim story". The second film, 1997's God
or Dog, also had a dismal box-office performance despite a more positive
critical reception. Both shows had difficulty in finding local actors for the
lead role; Zhu Houren declined on the basis that Adrian Lim was too unique a
personality for an actor to portray accurately, and Xie Shaoguang rejected the
role for the lack of "redeeming factors" in the murderer. On the
television, the murder case would have been the opening episode for True
Files, a crime awareness programme in 2002. The public, however, complained
that the trailers were too gruesome with the re-enactments of the rituals and
murders, forcing the media company MediaCorp to reshuffle the schedule. The Toa
Payoh ritual murders episode was replaced by a less sensational episode as the
opener and pushed back into a later timeslot for more mature viewers, marking
the horrific nature of the crimes committed by Lim, Tan, and Hoe.
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