Murder of Lee Kok Cheong
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.
The killers subsequently stole valuables from Lee's house and left his body in the house before its discovery two days later. Between 1997 and 2006, the three robbers were all arrested and charged with murder. One of the robbers was subsequently imprisoned and caned for lesser charges of robbery, theft and cheating, while the remaining two assailants, who were both involved in the strangulation of Lee, were found guilty of murder and sentenced to death in 1998 and 2006 respectively.
Death of Lee Kok Cheong
Discovery of Lee's corpse
On 14 December 1993, a man was discovered dead inside his house in Greenleaf Place along Holland Road. According to the press and police sources, the police responded to a report that the dead man's house had the lights on for two days and two nights, and it led to the discovery of the body. The man's partially decomposed corpse was reportedly found lying on the floor of the master bedroom, with a pillow covering his face, and his legs tied with a belt, and his hands were raised above his head and bound with telephone wire. The case was subsequently classified as murder. The police report was lodged by a maid working for the victim's neighbour, after she was informed by a newspaper vendor that the victim had not collected his newspapers, which were all left outside for the past two days.The victim was identified as 54-year-old Lee Kok Cheong, who was an associate professor and Head of the English Proficiency Unit at National University of Singapore. According to his brother Lee Kok Fatt, he last saw his brother on 12 December 1993, two days before his death, when they went to collect red packet money for Lee's nephews in advance for the upcoming Chinese New Year of 1994. Lee's brother said that Lee informed him he would have two friends coming to his house to visit him later that evening. The police also found some uneaten servings of yong tau foo and chicken curry inside the kitchen of Lee's house and some drinks on the coffee table of Lee's living room, which further corroborated the fact that Lee was receiving guests at his house on the day he was murdered. Since the house's door was left wide open and no signs of forced entry were found, it also suggested that the killer were someone known to Lee, who was most likely killed two days before his body was found. Forensic pathologist Dr Paul Chui performed an autopsy, and confirmed that the victim died from strangulation.
Lee's murder was one of the two murder cases to be discovered on that day itself. The other case was the death of 32-year-old Tan Kee Fan, whose body was discovered inside a rubbish chute at another location in Singapore after she was killed. The case of Tan's death remains unsolved till today.
Background of Lee
Lee Kok Cheong was born in Singapore in 1939. He had two brothers Lee Kok Meng and Lee Kok Fatt in his family, and after completing his education, Lee became an associate professor at National University of Singapore, and became the university's Head of the English Proficiency Unit since it first opened in 1979. He was single and never married, and lived alone in his house at Holland Road after moving out of his Dover Crescent flat two years prior to the murder. Lee's students and colleagues remembered him as a kind, generous and easygoing man. A former student recalled that he once threw a big Christmas party in 1991 for his students and colleagues. Lee's neighbours told the press that he mostly kept to himself. He also had a hobby of collecting Chinese antiques. Lee, who took a year off from his teaching job at NUS, also had upcoming plans to go to England to do research; the week when Lee died happened to be the second week of his year-long vacation.During the trial of one of Lee's murderers in August 1998, it was revealed that Lee was homosexual. Lee's family however, never knew about his sexuality, and had attempted to matchmake him with a woman to no avail. In his private life, Lee had several intimate relationships with young men, including at least eight undergraduates and ten other men outside the campus, including random strangers he befriended, and had a large collection of pornographic magazines about homosexual activities; this promiscuous habit gave Lee the nickname "Oriental Aunty". Lee would also spend a lot on new designer clothes as gifts for his partners in spite of his usual habit of wearing plain clothes. Three of Lee's former students admitted that they voluntarily became Lee's lovers and had been intimate with him in the past, and one of Lee's boyfriends even went on an overseas holiday together with Lee. This habit of befriending random strangers to seek love was what ultimately cost Lee his life, since one of the men he befriended would become one of the three alleged murderers responsible for his brutal death.
Police investigations
Investigations and 1995 tip-off
The police began to investigate the murder of Lee Kok Cheong, and they found that after his death, his ATM card was still in use, and about S$3,400 in cash were withdrawn from his bank account. A brown wallet, a gold chain, some gold bangles, S$1,200 in cash, and also the ATM card in question were confirmed to be stolen from his house. Several shops in some shopping malls across the whole of Singapore were traced by the police, where the purchases using Lee's card were made. About S$3,900 worth of items, including clothes, shoes and jewellery, were procured using Lee's card, and the shop owners or employees were asked to identify the buyers on the captured CCTV images, whom the police classified as possible suspects of the crime. Based on the testimonies of the owners or employees, a group of three youths came by to make these purchases.In April 1994, the police made a public appeal for information to trace the whereabouts of the three suspects, and Singaporean crime show Crimewatch also re-enacted the case to put up a public notice to locate the suspects. Two years after the murder of Lee Kok Cheong, the police received a mysterious phone call, with an unknown caller provided a tip-off to the police, telling them that one of the suspects was known by his alias "Nelson", and he was a waiter of a karaoke lounge in Singapore, but he went missing after the murder. This allowed police to have a major progress in their investigations, and eventually, the police were able to arrest "Nelson" and one of his two accomplices between December 1997 and May 1998 respectively.
Arrest of Too Yin Sheong
On 23 December 1997, four years after the murder of Lee Kok Cheong, the police finally arrested "Nelson", a 25-year-old Malaysian who was entering Singapore with his girlfriend through the Woodlands Checkpoint. "Nelson", whose real name was Too Yin Sheong, became the first member of the trio to be arrested for killing Lee. Too, who celebrated his 26th birthday on 26 December 1997, was charged with murder on Christmas Eve.Background information showed that Too, a secondary school drop-out, had one younger brother and two older sisters, and he was working as the manager of a karaoke lounge in Johor Bahru prior to his arrest for the murder, and both his mother and stepfather were permanent residents living in Singapore. In fact, after he allegedly killed Lee, Too never entered Singapore for more than three years since 1993 before he once again entered Singapore in August 1997 to attend the funeral of his late younger brother Yin Seng. Before his arrest, Too was making his second entry into Singapore with plans to celebrate his birthday and visit his mother.
Arrest of Ng Chek Siong
On 20 May 1998, a second suspect, Ng Chek Siong, was arrested in Muar, Johor by the Royal Malaysia Police and extradited back to Singapore for trial. Two days later, Ng was charged with murder, as well as cheating and theft for having stole Lee's money and ATM card and made unauthorized transactions under the victim's name.Before his arrest, Ng, also a Malaysian, was married with a daughter and a son. His hometown was in Muar, Johor, where he also worked as a helper in his father's durian plantation. Ng and Too were both held in remand awaiting trial for murder, while the police continued to trace the whereabouts of the third and final suspect, only known by his nickname "Kim Beh".
Trial of Ng Chek Siong (1998)
About three months after he was arrested, Ng Chek Siong's murder charge was reduced to robbery. Ng pleaded guilty to the reduced charge, as well as five other counts of cheating and two counts of theft. Six other charges of cheating and three other charges of theft were taken into consideration during sentencing.In mitigation, Ng's defence counsel argued that Ng only acted as a driver of the trio's get-away car, and he was remorseful of the fact that Lee Kok Cheong died as a result of the robbery. It was revealed that after the crime, Ng continued to go in and out of Singapore until April 1994, when he discovered through a newspaper that he and Too and "Kim Beh" were on the police's wanted list and the publication of their photos, and this led to him realizing that Lee had been murdered, and he thus went into hiding in Muar, where he stayed until May 1998, when the Malaysian police managed to locate him and place him under arrest.
On 14 August 1998, 27-year-old Ng was sentenced to a total of eight years' imprisonment and ten strokes of the cane. Justice M P H Rubin, who presided Ng's trial, imposed six years and caning of ten strokes for the robbery charge, one year for each of the theft charges, and two years for each of the cheating charges, before he ordered that the two-year sentence for one of the cheating charges should be served consecutively with the six-year term for robbery. The sentence was backdated to Ng's date of arrest.
Ng was released on parole since October 2003, after he served two-thirds of his sentence with good behaviour, and had since repatriated to Malaysia.
Ng's trial for robbing Lee took place just three days before the first suspect, Too Yin Sheong, would go on trial for murder.