Andrew Road triple murders


The Andrew Road triple murders was a case of robbery-turned triple murder that occurred in a bungalow house in Andrew Road, Singapore. The robbery was committed by two young men armed with a rifle and knife. During the robbery, one of the robbers murdered three of the five hostages while the other protected the remaining two hostages from his partner. Eventually, both were arrested and charged with murder, though it would end in the killer hanged while the other gets life and caning for armed robbery.

The crime

On the fateful morning of 23 July 1983, at around 8 am, 10-year-old Dawn Jacinta Tay Aishan ', the youngest daughter of 61-year-old retired businessman Robert Tay Bak Hong ', was roller-skating outside her house while waiting for her Mandarin tuition teacher, Mdm Tang So Ha ' to come to her house to give her lessons. At around the same time, two houses away from the little girl's home, there were two young men fixing their motorcycle. It was around 30 minutes later then the tutor arrived at the house. Unknown to Dawn, it would be the day she would lost her parents forever. And more, little did she knew that one of these two young men would later on be directly responsible for the death of her parents.
40 minutes after the arrival of Dawn's tutor, the two men seen repairing the motorcycle - 19-year-old National Serviceman Sek Kim Wah and 19-year-old Malaysian Nyu Kok Meng - saw the front gate of Dawn's bungalow left wide open. It was at this moment the duo made their move. They took out a loaded M16 rifle and brandished a knife before barging into the bungalow. They first took hostage of the Tay family's Filipino domestic helper Jovita S. Virador, aged 27. They also entered the house with Jovita and used the rifle to threaten Dawn, Mdm Tang and Dawn's 40-year-old mother Annie Low Au Ie ', forcing them inside a room before tying them up. One of the men forced Dawn to call her father up into the room; Robert Tay was lured into the room and was tied up as well.
After she was forced into telling Sek where to find her jewellery, Low was told to write a cheque of $5000, which was taken by Sek, who immediately went to the bank to cash it. After Sek left, the other robber Nyu stayed behind to guard the hostages. Feeling sorry for the tutor whose head was covered in a plastic bag, he removed it for her. Sek returned with the money, but he was still not satisfied with the loot they had from the robbery. So, Sek picked up Tay and told him to go to the bank with him to withdraw more cash. During the time Sek was outside with Tay, Nyu told the women that he will not harm them, as it was his first robbery and he had no intention to harm anyone. At the request of Low, Nyu shook hands with Dawn as a promise to not hurt them.
Sek later returned with $7,000. After gagging the victims and taking Tay, Low and Jovita into separate rooms, the robbers continued to ransack the house. Fearing of leaving behind witnesses, Sek secretly formed an intention to murder all the hostages. Firstly, he used a raffia string to strangle Tay before he used a wooden stool to repeatedly bludgeon Tay until he was dead, fracturing his skull. He also entered the master bedroom where he held Jovita and Low hostage. He also strangled the women to death, and even used a wooden stool to repeatedly strike at Low's covered head.
It was then Nyu witnessed his partner's monstrous acts, having been attracted by the thumping sounds in the house. Horrified at Sek's grievous actions and in the face of conscience, Nyu decided to arm himself with the rifle and locked himself into the room with Dawn and her tutor, intending to protect the surviving hostages. Sek later returned to the room where Nyu, Dawn and Mdm Tang were hiding, demanding that Nyu to let him in to murder the remaining hostages before making their escape. Nyu adamantly refused to, and confrontly asking Sek why would he commit murder when he had already robbed the victims of their money and told Sek to leave. After a heated row between the two men, Sek left the house in Mr Tay's Mercedes car, together with the loot he reaped from the robbery.
When the coast is clear, the guilt-ridden Nyu ungagged both Dawn and Mdm Tang and told them to run away, and told them that Sek had murdered Dawn's parents and maid, and Sek's address. He drew a map of the area where Sek lived in on an envelope and gave it to the fear-stricken Mdm Tang, who was afraid that Nyu might cause harm to her and her student. Nyu also gave her his Malaysian identity card, telling her to help him buy a coffin and inform his parents and grandmother that he was sorry as he wanted to commit suicide. He also asked Mdm Tang to bury him next to his deceased best friend Lau Beng Hiong, whose Chinese name he wrote inside Dawn's exercise book before giving it to her. Nyu wanted her to repeat his requests, and despite her fear of Nyu, Mdm Tang tried to dissuade Nyu from committing suicide, as he was still young. It was only when Nyu pointed the rifle at her that Mdm Tang fearfully fled the house with Dawn into a neighbour's house to contact the police. Nyu tried to shoot himself twice but he failed as he did not know how to use the rifle. Frustrated, Nyu fled the bungalow, but not before leaving behind the rifle and stolen ammunition, for fear that Sek would murder more people. He met up with Sek in another safe place that afternoon to divide the loot. Nyu later left Singapore on that night itself for Malaysia using a friend's passport, while Sek remained in Singapore.
Meanwhile, the police had arrived at the bungalow and searched the house for the robbers, but they could only find the bodies. The police knew that Tay, a father of eight other adult children and a grandfather of five grandchildren, was a generous businessman with a heart of gold, and knew that he would help ex-convicts to reintegrate into society by providing them work at the factory, hence they ruled out the possibility of a revenge-killing. With Nyu's Malaysian IC and the map drawn by Nyu, which Mdm Tang gave to the police, the police managed to arrest Sek six days later in his elder sister Sek Yoke Mui's flat on 29 July 1983. Unable to cope with his guilt, Nyu surrendered himself to the police three days after Sek 's arrest and extradited back to Singapore on 3 August 1983. Both men were charged with murder.

Background of the robbers

The killer: Sek Kim Wah

Sek Kim Wah is a Singaporean born sometime between 24 July 1963 to 23 July 1964. The details of his early childhood and life before the murders are based on the court testimonies given by his family members and Sek himself. Sek was said to be coming from a broken family, in which he grew up under neglectful parents with an elder brother Sek Kim Siong, an elder sister and younger sister. His father Sek Yuon Chin was said to be a heavy and compulsive gambler who rarely comes back home, and later left the family to live with a mistress in Ang Mo Kio when Sek was merely 9. Similarly, Sek's mother Hoh Mooi Chai also left the family to have an affair with a married man, with the more aggravating factor being them being moved away from their grandparents after a heated quarrel between their mother and grandparents, leaving the couple's four young children, who were not close to each other, to fend for themselves and resort to stealing to survive. The children had also gone astray in lieu of the lack of proper guidance by their parents and their grandparents.
Sek, who only attended four years of primary school before dropping out due to financial reasons, was said to be a naughty child when young. His elder sister Sek Yoke Mui said that he was obsessed with Wuxia novels and Kungfu movies in his childhood. He also had the tendency to molest his unnamed younger sister's private parts at age 12. Sek was also said to have a liking to injure himself at times. He and his elder brother Kim Siong always get into fights with students while in school, and shared a bad, impulsive temper. There was one occasion when both brothers were chained at home for stealing a bicycle and fighting, and often, there is no communication between parents and children. Eventually, Kim Siong was jailed in a boys' home for theft, and later on a second time for being AWOL during his National Service. It was at this point, Kim Siong claimed, he started to reconsider his life choices and decided to turn over a new leaf and be more mature; as a result, he found a stable job as an electrician a few years later.
As for the future Andrew Road triple murderer Sek Kim Wah, who became a secret society member at age 13, he was sentenced to 4 years' imprisonment in a boys' home in 1979 for theft. He was paroled in 1981 for good behaviour and joined the army a year later to serve his National Service. It was on 30 June 1983 when he first committed murder; he had robbed and killed 42-year-old illegal bookmaker Lim Khee Sin and 32-year-old bar waitress Ong Ah Hong at somewhere nearby East Coast Park, strangling them in the same way he strangled the three victims at Andrew Road. After killing the couple, he dumped the bodies at Seletar Reservoir dirt track, and even took away Lim's driving license. This case remains unsolved until Sek himself confessed to it after his arrest by the police.
During his time in the boys' home, sometime in 1981, like other inmates, Sek was assigned work, and told to go plant orchids in the garden of one household. That household happened to be that of Robert Tay. He was also assigned to work in Tay's factory temporarily. It was this that made Sek wanting to rob the wealthy businessman, culminating into the brutal triple killings at Andrew Road.

The accomplice: Nyu Kok Meng

Nyu Kok Meng is a Malaysian born sometime between 24 July 1963 to 23 July 1964. Nyu was the sixth child out of eight children; younger to three sisters and two brothers and elder to a brother and sister. All his elder sisters were married in Singapore and his 62-year-old father worked as a driver in Singapore. His hometown was in Pekan Nanas, Johor.
According to Nyu's 42-year-old mother, her son was originally a well-behaved and helpful child, always work part-time while studying in secondary school to provide family expenses. After he dropped out, Nyu went to work in a bakery nearby his hometown and became the caretaker of his boss's children, sending money to his family monthly before he left Malaysia to work in Singapore in 1981. It was there when Nyu gradually began to go astray, as he began to befriend and interact with secret society members and ignored his family's advices to not do so. One of them would later on become his best friend Lau Beng Hiong, whom Nyu told Mdm Tang he wanted to be buried with on that fateful day of 23 July 1983. Lau, who was 18 when he died, was killed by four members of a rival gang during a gangfight on 22 May 1983, two months before the Andrew Road incident. Nyu, who only met Sek a few days before the Andrew Road case, agreed to take part in the robbery after Sek asked him to do so.

Court proceedings

Reduction of Nyu Kok Meng's murder charge

Both Sek Kim Wah and Nyu Kok Meng were initially set to stand trial for murder together. But on 8 July 1985, the prosecution, having gone through the details of the case, decided to withdraw the triple murder charges against Nyu, and only charged him with committing armed robbery with a firearm under the Arms Offences Act, which Nyu pleaded guilty to and convicted of. The next day, Nyu Kok Meng, who was represented by prominent lawyer Leo Fernando, was sentenced to life imprisonment and 6 strokes of the cane by Justice Punch Coomaraswamy, who took note of Nyu's remorse, his full cooperation with the police and that he surrendered himself.
Since a life sentence under Singapore law at that time was considered as a jail term of 20 years, before the landmark judgement of Abdul Nasir bin Amer Hamsah's appeal on 20 August 1997, by maintaining good conduct while in prison, Nyu would be released in November 1996 after serving at least two-thirds of his life term, should his sentence was backdated to the time of his arrest or remand.

Trial of Sek Kim Wah: The prosecution's case

On 22 July 1985, nearly two years after the Andrew Road triple homicide incident, 21-year-old Sek Kim Wah, who was represented by state-assigned defence lawyer Loh Lin Kok, stood trial in the High Court before two High Court judges Lai Kew Chai and Abdul Wahab Ghows for the murders of Robert Tay, Annie Low and Jovita Virador. The prosecution, led by Deputy Public Prosecutors Roy Neighbour and Tan Siong Thye, called on Sek's former accomplice Nyu Kok Meng, who agreed to take the stand and testify for the prosecution. Similarly, the two survivors of the Andrew Road case - Dawn Tay and her tutor Mdm Tang So Ha - also took the stand to recount what happened on the day itself.
16 other witnesses, including the bank employees of the bank where Sek went to withdraw money with the cheque, also took the stand. Professor Chao Tzee Cheng, the pathologist who examined the bodies of the three victims, was also one of them. Professor Chao testified that both the women died from strangulation, and that they were strangled with great force. He also testified that the reason behind Tay's death was due to a fractured skull he sustained from Sek's repeated strikes on his head. Lily Tay Noi Hiang, a 21-year-old lounge hostress and Sek's girlfriend, was also a witness for the prosecution. She testified to the court that Sek, whom she first met on 14 July 1983, had been boasting to her about not just the murders he committed at Andrew Road, but also the unsolved East Coast Park double murder of both Lim Khee Sin and Ong Ah Hong. He also said to her he wanted to be better than Singapore's most notorious gunman Lim Ban Lim, who was wanted in the 1960s and 1970s for killing a police officer in 1968 and many other crimes but was eventually discovered and gunned down by police in late November 1972. When Lily Tay asked Sek if he is afraid of killing, he said no as he had killed five people before laughing. She also said that Nyu tried to impress her with shopping and wanting to make her his girlfriend but she refused because she herself already having a boyfriend and to her, Sek was merely a customer.

Sek's defence of diminished responsibility

Sek Kim Wah took the stand on 26 July 1985. Initially blaming Nyu Kok Meng for killing the victims, Sek admitted that he did murder all three victims on the stand, but claiming diminished responsibility. When he was asked how he felt when strangling Annie Low, Sek brought up an incident in 1980 or 1981 when he was nearly strangled by someone at the Singapore Boys’ Home until he blacked out. Sek said: “At first I felt discomfort. Then it was very thrilling... as if the lights were being switched on and off.” He also described the feeling as thrilling when he strangled his victims, and stated he enjoyed it. He also said he wanted to electrocute the victims but ended up forgotting to turn on the electricity, and thus he electrocute the goldfishes reared in Tay's bungalow. When asked by Justice Lai why he did that, Sek said he did not know, but said the more he tried everything, the more thrilling. Additionally, he told the court why he killed the victims, because he said Robert Tay recognised his voice and face, which made Sek initially elated at Tay recognising him but eventually it occurred to him that he had to silence the victims. Not only did he recount how he strangled the couple at East Coast Park the month before he killed the three victims at Andrew Road, Sek also said in court that he wanted to be like Rambo, the hero in the film First Blood, who was a good person but was accused as a bad man by the police, with whom he had a showdown with. He even said he wanted to kill at least 15 policemen, due to his hatred towards them.
Sek also brought up his painful, unhappy childhood while putting up his defence, placing the blame on his parents for being not caring and irresponsible, and wholeheartedly blamed them for him becoming the person he is today. He also showed no love or care for his father, and no love for his mother. His family members - especially his parents and brother - took the stand and their testimonies had partially corroborated Sek's own account of his childhood. Sek's parents, Sek Yuon Chin and Hoh Mooi Chai said that what Sek said was indeed mostly true, though they added that they still did tell him and their other children to not be bad children, and while testifying in court, they expressed their remorse for not paying more attention to their children's well-being and educating them properly. Sek's siblings and Sek's elder brother in-law Lau Puay Cheow also told the court that they were shocked when they first found out Sek's involvement in the murders he claimed to have committed. In addition, Sek's brother stated that Sek deserved the consequences for what he did and should shoulder all the responsibility for his crimes, but he also blamed his parents for their negligence and society for ostracising them. Still, despite all he said, Kim Siong affirmed his love for his brother and parents.
Sek's lawyer, Loh Lin Kok, called upon two psychiatric experts, Australian psychiatrist Dr. John Ellard and notable Singaporean psychiatrist Dr. Wong Yip Chong to testify for Sek in support of his defence of diminished responsibility. Dr Ellard, who first examined Sek, stated that he was of the opinion that from Sek's lack of remorse towards his crimes and his painful childhood and many other factors, Sek was suffering from anti-social personality disorder. Dr. Wong, who examined Sek later, stated that he agreed with Dr. Ellard's report of Sek's illness, though he added that he felt that Sek was suffering from psychopathic personality disorder, with his unhappy childhood as the main contributing factor, which was aggravated by Sek's high-intelligence IQ of 113.
In rebuttal, the prosecution called upon psychiatrist Dr. Chew Seck Kee, who testified that Sek was not suffering from any mental disorders, as Sek was rational and relevant, able to give a clear account of himself and his crimes, and as he himself said, he had to kill his victims to prevent them from recognising him and reporting him, which showed that Sek, whom he described as "cold-blooded and cruel", was clearly and fully aware of himself and in full control of his actions. Additionally, Dr. Chew also said that Sek, in fact, did expressed some degree of remorse over his actions but feeling that it was too late for regrets. In addition, the prosecution also proven that Sek's account of his incident of being strangled at the boys' homes was not true - Sek had in fact fabricated that story to support his defence of diminished responsibility.

Verdict

On 14 August 1985, after hearing the closing submissions from the defence and the prosecution, the two judges - Justice Lai Kew Chai and Justice Abdul Wahab Ghows - decided on their final verdict, with Justice Lai delivering the judgement. In their written verdict, Justice Lai stated that they both found Sek Kim Wah not of unsound mind at the time of the murders, based on their review of the evidence presented to them. They found that Sek had killed Robert Tay, Annie Low and Jovita Virador with the intention to cause death. Hence, they rejected Sek's defence of diminished responsibility and found him guilty of all the three murders at Andrew Road, convict him and sentenced him to death. Under Singapore law at that time, the crime of murder carries a mandatory sentence of death. Upon hearing that he would be hanged, Sek thanked the judges in Cantonese, stating that he wanted to die in the gallows, saying that it would be thrilling. It is not known if Sek appealed against his sentence, but if he did, it is most probable that his appeal against the death sentence was dismissed.

Execution of Sek Kim Wah and aftermath

Eventually, on 9 December 1988, more than five years after the Andrew Road murders, as well as the unrelated East Coast Park double murder case, 24-year-old Sek Kim Wah was hanged in the state gallows of Changi Prison for the murders of his five victims. Sek's execution came only two weeks after the hanging of the three convicted child murderers of the notorious 1981 Toa Payoh ritual murders case on 25 November of that same year he was hanged. His body was later cremated at Mount Vernon Crematorium. Despite Sek's final wish to have his ashes scattered into the sea, they were stored in an urn in Siong Lim Temple at Toa Payoh, in which a simple funeral was held for Sek in accordance to Taoist practices. The funeral was attended by Sek's parents and siblings.
Approximately 20 years after the occurrence of the Andrew Road case, this case was re-enacted in Singaporean crime show True Files. The re-enactment was first broadcast as the second episode of the show's second season on 2 September 2003. It is currently available on meWATCH.
It is unknown over the current fate and life of Sek's former accomplice Nyu Kok Meng after his release from prison. It can be assumed that he returned to Malaysia after serving full his life sentence for armed robbery. Also, there were no further reports on what happened to Sek's family or their subsequent lives after his execution.