Toa Payoh ritual murders

Born on 6 January 1942, Adrian Lim (traditional Chinese: 林寶龍; simplified Chinese: 林宝龙; pinyin: Lín Bǎolóng) was the eldest son of a low-income family.[19] Described at the trial by his sister as a hot-tempered boy,[20] 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.[19] In April 1967, Lim married his childhood sweetheart with whom he had two children. He converted to Catholicism for his marriage.[21] 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.[21]

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.[22] Lim's customers also included superstitious men and elderly females, whom he cheated only of cash.[23] He had learned the trade from a bomoh called "Uncle Willie" and prayed to gods of various religions despite his Catholic baptism. The Hindu goddess Kali and "Phragann",[fn 1] which Lim described as a Siamese sex god,[24] were among the spiritual entities he called on in his rituals.[25] 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.[26]

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.[27] 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.[28] The shocks, he assured her, would cure headaches and drive away evil spirits.[29]

Tan Mui Choo assisted Lim in his medium practice, reaping the benefits.

Born in 1953 or 1954, Catherine Tan Mui Choo (traditional Chinese: 陳梅珠; simplified Chinese: 陈梅珠; pinyin: Chén Méizhū) was referred to Lim by a fellow bargirl, who claimed the spirit medium could cure ailments and depression.[30] 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.[31] Tan's visits to Lim became regular, and their relationship grew intimate.[32] In 1975, 21-year-old Tan 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.[33] Lim quit his Rediffusion job and became a full-time medium. He enjoyed brisk business,[34] at one point receiving S$6,000–7,000 (US$2,838–3,311)[fn 2] a month from a single client.[36] In June 1977, Lim and Tan registered their marriage.[37]

Lim dominated Tan through beatings, threats, and lies.[38] He persuaded her to prostitute herself to supplement their income.[39] 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.[40] 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.[37] 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.[41] Despite the abuses, Tan lived with Lim, enjoying the dresses, beauty products and slimming courses bought with their income.[42]

Hoe Kah Hong steadfastly believed in Lim, conscientiously executing his orders.

Born on 10 September 1955, Hoe Kah Hong (traditional Chinese: 何家鳳; simplified Chinese: 何家凤; 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.[43] 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.[44] After witnessing the same trick, Hoe became Lim's loyal follower.[45][fn 3] 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.[47]

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.[48] The coroner recorded an open verdict,[49] and the police made no further investigations.[50]

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.[51]

The murder case was heard in Courtroom No. 4 of the old Supreme Court Building.

The High Court was convened in the Supreme Court Building on 25 March 1983.[61] Presiding over the case were two judges: Justice Thirugnana Sampanthar Sinnathuray, who would deliver judgment on serial murderer John Martin Scripps 13 years later,[62] and Justice Frederick Arthur Chua, who was at the time the longest serving judge in Singapore.[63] 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."[64]

Tan, with Lim's and the police's permission, used $10,000 of the $159,340[65] (US$4,730 of US$75,370) seized from the trio's flat to engage J. B. Jeyaretnam for her defence.[66][67] 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,[68] 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,[69] although his job was complicated by his client's refusal to cooperate.[70] 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.[71] Had this defence been successful, the defendants would have escaped the death penalty but be sentenced to either life imprisonment, or up to 10 years in jail for a reduced charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder (or manslaughter) instead of murder.[72]

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.[73][fn 4] 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.[76] 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".[77] Lim's involvement in the crimes was further evidenced by Fung Joon Yong, 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.[78][13]

On 13 April, Lim took the stand. He maintained that he was the sole perpetrator of the crimes.[79] He denied that he raped Lucy Lau or Ng, claiming that he made the earlier statements only to satisfy his interrogators.[80][81] 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.[79] When challenged on the veracity of his latest confession, he claimed that he was bound by religious and moral duty to tell the truth.[82] 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.[83] 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.[84] 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.[85] Under Knight's questioning, however, Tan admitted that Lim had been defrauding his customers, and that she had knowingly helped him to do so.[86] Knight then got Hoe to agree that she was conscious of her actions at the time of the murders.[87]

Of the fact that Lim, Tan, and Hoe had killed the children there was no doubt. 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",[88] he said that Lim's voracious sexual appetite and deluded belief in Kali were characteristics of a mild manic depression. The doctor also proclaimed that only an unsound mind would dump the bodies close to his home when his plan was to distract the police.[89] Countering this, the prosecution's expert witness, Dr Chee Kuan Tsee, a psychiatrist at Woodbridge Hospital,[90] said that Lim was "purposeful in his pursuits, patient in his planning and persuasive in his performance for personal power and pleasure".[91] 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.[92]

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.[91] 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.[93] 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).[94][95] Were Hoe 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.[94] 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.[96]

In their closing speeches, the defence tried to reinforce the portrayal of their clients as mentally unsound individuals. Cashin declared 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.[97] Jeyaretnam relied on the fact that due to her depression and Lim's abuse, Tan was just "a robot", carrying out orders without thought.[97] 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."[98] The defence criticised Dr Chee for failing to recognise their clients' symptoms.[91][98]

The prosecution started its closing speech by drawing attention to the "cool and calculating" manner in which the children were killed.[99] Knight also argued that the accused could not have shared the same delusion, and only brought it up during the trial.[98] The "cunning and deliberation" displayed in the acts could not have been done by a deluded person.[99] Tan helped Lim because "she loved [him]", and Hoe was simply misled into helping the crimes.[100] 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."[100]

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 volatile during the crimes. They found Lim to be "abominable and depraved" in carrying out his schemes.[101] Viewing her interviews with the expert witnesses as admissions of guilt,[102] Sinnathuray and Chua found Tan to be an "artful and wicked person", and a "willing [party] to [Lim's] loathsome and nefarious acts".[103] The judges found Hoe to be "simple" and "easily influenced".[103] 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.[104] 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.[105]

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.[106] 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.[93] The Court of Criminal Appeal reached their decision in August 1986.[107] The appeal judges which consist of Chief Justice Wee Chong Jin, Justice Lai Kew Chai and Justice L P Thean 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.[108][fn 5] Tan and Hoe's further appeals to London's Privy Council and Singapore President Wee Kim Wee met with similar failures.[107]

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".[110] 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.[111] On 25 November 1988, the trio were given their last meal and led to the hangman's noose. Lim smiled throughout his last walk to the gallows. At 6 am in that same morning, the trio were executed by long drop hanging and later pronounced dead. After the sentences were carried out, the three murderers were given a short Catholic funeral mass by Father Doro,[112] and cremated on the same day.[113]