| Gold Bars triple murders | |
| Image Upright: | 1.15 |
| Place: | Serangoon, Singapore |
| Verdict: | Guilty |
| Sentence: | Death penalty – Chou brothers, Yau, Lim, James, Francis, Konesekaram Indefinite detention at the President's Pleasure – Ringo Lee and Stephen Lee |
| Convictions: | Murder (three counts) |
| Convicted: | Andrew Chou Hock Guan (31) David Chou Hock Heng (34) Peter Lim Swee Guan (24) Alex Yau Hean Thye (19) Richard James (18) Stephen Francis (20) Ringo Lee Chiew Chwee (16) Stephen Lee Hock Khoon (16) Konesekaram Nagalingam (18) |
| Outcome: |
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| Deaths: | Ngo Cheng Poh (55) Ang Boon Chai (57) Leong Chin Woo (51) |
Known as the Gold Bars triple murders, on 29 December 1971, 55-year-old businessman and gold bar smuggler Ngo Cheng Poh (吴崇波 Wú Chóngbō), together with his two employees 57-year-old Ang Boon Chai (洪文彩 Hóng Wéncǎi), and 51-year-old Leong Chin Woo (梁振伍 Liáng Zhènwǔ), were murdered by a group of ten men. The group had also robbed the three men of 120 gold bars worth $500,000. The robbery-murder was masterminded by 31-year-old Andrew Chou Hock Guan (邹福源 Zōu Fúyuán), an air cargo supervisor who acted as a middleman for Ngo to smuggle gold onto the flights from Singapore into Vietnam, before he decided to commit the robbery due to an event that led to the deterioration of Chou's ties to the gold syndicates.[1]
After a trial lasting 40 days, Andrew Chou, together with his 34-year-old brother David Chou Hock Heng (邹福兴 Zōu Fúxīng) and five out of the remaining eight perpetrators were given the death penalty for murdering the three gold smugglers, while the remaining three were placed under indefinite detention (two of them were minors during the offence while a third became the prosecution's chief witness against the nine others). After losing their appeals, the seven condemned were hanged on 28 February 1975.[2] [3]
On 30 December 1971, while they were conducting their training inside a jungle in Bedok, several National Servicemen discovered three dead bodies, all of whom were male. The bodies were found to have cloth wrapped around them, and green nylon rope were also tied around the necks and limbs of the three men. After the police were contacted and investigations began, the police were able to ascertain the identities of the men after tracing back to a missing persons report made by the wife of one of the three men. One of them was identified as Ngo Cheng Poh, a 55-year-old import-export company owner. Ngo, who was originally from Hong Kong before immigrating to Singapore, was survived by his wife and five children. The remaining two victims were Ngo's employees: 57-year-old Ang Boon Chai and 51-year-old Leong Chin Woo. Leong was survived by his wife, four sons and one daughter, while Ang himself left behind a wife and four children. The police later discovered two abandoned cars which belonged to the victims.[4] Forensic pathologist Chao Tzee Cheng found that the cause of death was strangulation, and he also determined that the three victims were assaulted prior to their deaths. He also deduced that the three men had died between 30 and 36 hours before their bodies were discovered.[5]
Goh Cheng Hong, Ngo's widow, told the police that her husband traded in gold and was supposed to drop by a business partner's house to deliver 120 gold bars to the partner, whose identity was 31-year-old air cargo supervisor Andrew Chou Hock Guan, on the night of 29 December 1971. Goh also told the police that she received a call from Chou on the night itself that her late husband did not arrive at his house as they agreed upon, and subsequently, Goh and Leong's wife went to file a police report to report their husbands missing, and the report was made two hours prior to the discovery of the bodies.[1]
Subsequently, the police approached Andrew Chou and his 34-year-old brother David Chou Hock Heng, who was a university graduate working at a pharmaceutical company, and brought them back for questioning. The investigators noticed that Andrew Chou’s right hand was bandaged while David Chou had several scratch marks on his chest; Andrew Chou stated that the injuries resulted from a karate practice that had gone too rough. And the next day, the police inspected the house of the Chou brothers, where they lived with their mother, sister and David Chou’s two daughters (David Chou was divorced at that time), the police found several bloodstains at the front yard of the house, and the green rope used to hang clothes outside the house were found to match the ones tied around the necks of the three victims.[6]
Eventually, the Chou brothers confessed that they were responsible for a gold bar robbery that ended the lives of Ngo and his associates, and they also stated that another eight people were also involved. Following this revelation, the police rounded up the remaining eight accomplices. Two of them were Andrew Chou’s friends: 24-year-old clerk Peter Lim Swee Guan (林瑞源 Lín Ruìyuán) and 25-year-old Augustine Ang Cheng Siong (洪振祥 Hóng Zhènxiáng), who were both involved in planning the robbery-murder alongside the Chou brothers. The remaining six accomplices arrested were the teenagers hired by the four to commit the robbery-murders, which became known as the Gold Bars triple murders. The six youths were identified as 20-year-old Stephen Francis, 19-year-old Alex Yau Hean Thye (姚贤泰 Yáo Xiántài), 18-year-old Konesekaram Nagalingam, 18-year-old Richard James, 16-year-old Stephen Lee Hock Khoon (李福坤 Lǐ Fúkūn) and 16-year-old Ringo Lee Chiew Chwee (李秋水 Lǐ Qiūshuǐ). Subsequently, all the ten suspects were charged with three counts of murdering Ngo, Ang and Leong.[7]
The police also managed to recover all the 120 gold bars several days after the murders. Five of the gold bars were found inside David Chou's office in his workplace, while the remaining 115 gold bars, packed in bundles of five, were found in the home of Lim's aunt, Catherine Ang, who was supposed to help sell them. These gold bars, which were confiscated by the police, reportedly had a net worth of S$500,000.[1]
On 10 October 1972, the Gold Bars triple murder trial took place at the High Court, with two veteran judges - Justice Choor Singh and Justice F A Chua (Frederick Arthur Chua) - presiding over the trial. However, during the trial itself, only nine out of the ten perpetrators behind the murders stood trial, because the tenth man, Augustine Ang Cheng Siong, was granted a discharge not amounting to an acquittal and indefinitely detained without trial under the Criminal Law (Temporary Provisions) Act. Reason being, during the investigations, Ang was the only one out of the ten killers to confess to his role in the murder and told the truth, and was consistent throughout all rounds of questioning in his account of how he and his nine accomplices committed the murders, which therefore led to him being discharged, and he also became the prosecution's chief witness against the remaining nine accused of the trial, who all pleaded not guilty to the three counts of murder.[8]
The trial court was told that in early 1971, one of the accused, Andrew Chou Hock Guan, who worked as an air cargo supervisor of Air Vietnam, began to act as a middleman for several gold bar syndicates and transport gold bars from Singapore into Vietnam through the Vietnamese flights departing from Singapore, and Ngo came from one of the syndicates who shared this business partnership with Chou. Often, the syndicate members would drop the gold bars at Chou's home in Upper Serangoon, and Chou would help them get past security and smuggle the gold onto the planes bound for Vietnam. In return, Chou would receive a total of US$15 per 1kg gold bar each from the aircrew and the local side, and two to three times weekly, Chou would carry out this lucrative assignment and this continued on for several months.[1]
However, in October 1971, the relationship between Chou and the syndicates began to worsen, when a bag containing about US$235,000 in cash, which arrived on an Air Vietnam flight, was lost at the airport. Chou was in charge of helping the syndicates to collect the bag of money for them, and faced by the pressure and threats from the syndicates, Chou took an extensive amount of effort to recover the bag of money, and eventually, he was able to recover about US$180,000 from airport staff. However, the rest of the money was never recovered, and Chou lost the trust of the syndicates, and it took a blow on Chou, whose lucrative source of income through gold smuggling was considerably reduced.[1]
It was the case of the prosecution, led by Solicitor-General Abdul Wahab Ghows and Senior State Counsel S. Rajendran, that Andrew Chou was the mastermind who planned and arranged for the robbery-murder plot, after he became enraged at the loss of trust from the syndicates, and his brother David Chou and two friends Augustine Ang and Peter Lim were primary members who assisted him in planning the crime and recruit several youths to kill Ngo and his associates, the next time when they arranged for another delivery of smuggled gold.[9]
In fact, Francis, James, Konesekaram and Ringo Lee did not join the gold bars robbery plot from the start. Before that, the four masterminds had in fact first gathered a batch of five youths to help do the killing. They include both Alex Yau and Stephen Lee and three other youths—Ringo Lee's elder brother Fernando Lee Beng Hong, Soh Ah Seng and a third boy only known as "Anchor". But subsequently, the latter three backed out of the plan, and therefore, Francis, James, Konesekaram and Ringo Lee were roped in as the second and final candidates to commit the triple killings.[10] [11]
From this point on, the prosecution's case relied on the evidence provided by Augustine Ang, who took the stand on the tenth day of the Gold Bars triple murder trial.
Ang testified that he, together with the Chou brothers and Peter Lim, first started to plan the robbery in November 1971. Lim was in charge of recruiting youths to assist them in robbing and murdering Ngo and his associates, and Ang himself was to instruct the six boys - Konesekaram Nagalingam, Stephen Lee, Ringo Lee, Stephen Francis, Richard James and Alex Yau - about their plan to rob and murder the three victims, and also promised that each of them would be paid S$20,000 as a reward. Ang’s testimony, which was the only source of evidence that implicated the nine defendants, also recounted that on the night of 29 December 1971, after ensuring that the mother and sister of the Chou brothers, as well as David Chou’s two daughters, were fully asleep, the ten perpetrators gathered at the Chou family home to wait for Ngo's arrival. After the arrival of Ngo and his two associates Ang Boon Chai and Leong Chin Woo, Ngo and Leong alighted their respective vehicles and passed Andrew Chou a bag containing 120 gold bars. After receiving the bag, the ten men began to attack the three victims. Ang stated that when Ngo was strangled by Andrew Chou, he helped pin down Ngo’s legs during the strangulation, and also witnessed David Chou using the green rope to strangle Leong. As for Ang Boon Chai, he was the last to be assaulted and according to Augustine Ang, he witnessed Andrew Chou attacking Ang Boon Chai and inflicted several punches and karate chops onto Ang Boon Chai’s neck and head, and Augustine Ang admitted he picked up a wooden block to hit Ang Boon Chai repeatedly until he fell unconscious.[12]
After killing the three men (who all died from strangulation), the ten men covered the bodies and it happened so that two of the Chou family’s neighbours, a married couple, just arrived home from watching a movie. To escape suspicion, David Chou went to greet the couple and make sure they had not seen anything, and Andrew Chou pretended to be drunk and talking to the other eight men, who were standing around the bodies to avoid the couple from seeing the bodies. Later, while the Chou brothers and Ang stayed behind to clean up the scene of crime, the other accomplices helped to transport the bodies to a disused well in Changi, but subsequently, the boys left the bodies in thick bushes beside an old mining pond in Lembah Bedok. The two cars belonging to Ngo and Leong were also disposed of by the killers as well.[13]
After completing his testimony on the stand (which took eight hours), Ang was severely cross-examined on the stand by the nine accused’s six defence counsels: Giam Chin Toon (David Chou's lawyer), Wong Peng Khoon (Andrew Chou’s lawyer), N C Goho (who represented Francis, James, Konesekaram), Leo Fernando (Yau’s lawyer), John Tan Chor-Yong (who defended Ringo Lee and Stephen Lee) and G Gopalan (Lim’s lawyer). During the 33-hour long cross-examination of Ang, the six lawyers sought to question his credibility as the prosecution’s key witness, and tried to present Ang as an unreliable witness who would save his own skin by pushing the blame on his accomplices.[14] [15] Ang, who admitted that he joined the robbery in order to get rich, conceded on the stand that he did accept the prosecution's offer to turn state evidence against his accomplices out of a desperation to avoid the death penalty, but he denied that he would tell a lie to save solely himself, and he also stated that he was fully aware that he would be detained without trial for an indefinite period and that his discharge did not amount to an acquittal or pardon for the charges of murder he originally faced. When the lawyers representing the Chou brothers tried to assert that Ang was the true mastermind (which would be the key basis of their defence) and was the first to suggest the robbery and murder, Ang denied their contention as well.[16] [17] [18] Ang spent ten days taking the stand, which included his testimony and cross-examination.[19]
When they were called to give their defence, the Chou brothers asserted that Ang was the real mastermind of the robbery and murder. According to Andrew Chou, who first took the stand on 21 November 1972, he and Ang first met through his brother, and they became close friends, and Ang would often accompany him during his deliveries of gold and take a cut from each of the returns. After the incident with the missing money, in which Ang had helped Chou to recover the money, Ang first suggested to Chou to rob Ngo of his gold the next time Chou was assigned to deliver the gold. Chou said he never agreed to the plan as it may potentially involve violence, and he felt there was no reason for him to commit the robbery as he was making good money from the gold transactions. After some persuasion, Chou agreed to Ang's plan, and their original plan was to kidnap Ngo and sell the gold for money, and a part of them would be returned to Ngo once they released him. Chou also accused Ang for being the person who made the whole arrangement of recruiting people to commit the robbery, and in turn, it led to the murders. Similarly, Chou's older brother David Chou testified that Ang was the mastermind and he only joined in at the last moment after agreeing to another offer of his brother to join the robbery, and helped to catch one of the victims. He also stated the victims were still alive at the time they brought the bodies out.[20] [21] [22]
Peter Lim was the third to give his defense. He stated he was tasked by Ang to transport the stolen gold and he never partake in the planning of the murders, and wholly blamed Ang for being the prime mover of the robbery-murder. As for the remaining six defendants, some of them chose to give unsworn statements on the dock, while the remaining others took the stand to give evidence. One of them, Alex Yau, stated he helped to transport the dead bodies of Ngo, Ang and Leong but never killed a single person during the robbery. Stephen Lee testified that he never knew it was a murder plot and he only helped dispose of the bodies and he initially wanted to back out, but Ang paid him money to keep him silent and threatened him to not try backing out. The rest of the accused - Konesekaram Nagalingam, Stephen Francis, Richard James, and Ringo Lee - denied that they murdered Ngo and his two partners, and they claimed they helped dispose of the bodies and knew nothing about the robbery.[23] Overall, the defence counsels not only rounded up their submissions to show that their clients never killed the victims, they also urged the court to reject the testimony of Augustine Ang and stated that his evidence was not to be trusted.[24]
On 4 December 1972, after a 40-day trial, Justice Choor Singh and Justice F A Chua delivered their verdict.
In their judgement, which was delivered by Justice Chua, the two judges found that notwithstanding his reprehensible conduct and the risks of solely relying on his evidence, they agreed that Augustine Ang was by all means a truthful witness, and they rejected the defence's attempt to impeach his credibility as the prosecution's key witness, because Ang was consistent throughout his whole account of what happened, and his account ran true when presented in light of the rest of the evidence and testimonies of the case. They also rejected the nine accused's respective accounts, and were convinced that Andrew Chou was the “prime mover” of the conspiracy behind the gold heist since his role as a middleman of the gold deliveries were instrumental to enable the men to rob Ngo and his associates of the gold before killing them, and Ang himself was merely playing a sort of errand boy and carrying out Chou's orders. They also found that David Chou and Peter Lim were the principal collaborators of Andrew Chou's plan by helping to take charge of the operation and recruiting the boys, and the remaining six youths were also to be held equally responsible for murdering the three victims.[25]
Therefore, the nine accused were all found guilty of murder on three counts. However, out of the nine accused, both Stephen Lee and Ringo Lee escaped the gallows as they were under the age of 18 when they participated in the gold bar murders, and hence they were sentenced to be imprisoned indefinitely at the President's Pleasure. On the other hand, the remaining seven accused – Andrew Chou, David Chou, Peter Lim, Alex Yau, Stephen Francis, Richard James and Konesekaram Nagalingam – were sentenced to death.[26] [27]
John Tan, the lawyer representing both Stephen Lee and Ringo Lee, was allowed to submit a mitigation plea on behalf of the two boys prior to their sentencing to detention under the President's Pleasure. Tan submitted that Ringo Lee, a son of a provision shop owner, lost his mother five years before, and he was the ninth of ten children, with two sisters and seven brothers, and being a Christian, he had fallen into bad company and became involved in the murders, and Ringo Lee wanted to have a second chance in life and had learnt his lesson. Tan also submitted that Stephen Lee dropped out of school at age 13 to help his father at his electrical shop and had four older brothers and one younger sister, and he unfortunately fell into bad company and was made used by the adult perpetrators of the case to kill the three men, and he also hoped to have a chance to reform.[28] [29] [30]
It was also reported that after the death penalty was pronounced on the seven adult defendants, both Konesekaram's older sister and mother, as well as the female relatives of Francis and James all wept at the verdict, and one of them even fainted. Yau himself bursted into tears and cried while the remaining six condemned were silent and emotionless at the time of sentencing.[1] [31] Augustine Ang was also present in court, and he was visibly moved at the death sentence given to his former accomplices. The trial itself, which overseen the imposition of capital punishment on seven people, was considered as the second-biggest trial in Singapore's legal history since 1826, after the Pulau Senang murder trial hearing, which saw 18 out of 59 men sentenced to hang for killing four prison officers during a prison riot in Pulau Senang.[32]
In November 1973, the seven death row perpetrators of the Gold Bars murder case filed their appeals to the Court of Appeal. In the appeal, the seven men sought to overturn their convictions, and they similarly stated that Augustine Ang’s testimony should not be trusted.[33] [34] Subsequently, the appeals were dismissed. By February 1974, the seven condemned were among the 17 people held on Singapore's death row,[35] before the death row population dropped to 15 in October 1974.[36]
The following year, the seven men also filed a motion to apply for special leave to appeal to the Privy Council in London to overturn their convictions, and subsequently, the appeals were also rejected in December 1974.[37] [38]
As a final recourse to escape the gallows, the seven men petitioned to the President of Singapore for clemency by January 1975.[39] [40] However, within a month, then President Benjamin Sheares rejected their pleas for clemency.[41] [42]
On 28 February 1975, the seven condemned – Andrew Chou Hock Guan, David Chou Hock Heng, Peter Lim Swee Guan, Alex Yau Hean Thye, Stephen Francis, Richard James and Konesekaram Nagalingam – were hanged in Changi Prison at dawn.[43] [44] Over 200 relatives of the seven gathered outside the jail and reclaimed the bodies. On the same date itself, an eighth execution was carried out at the same prison itself. The convict, identified as Ismail bin UK Abdul Rahman, was hanged for the 1973 murder of a one-armed man Karuppan Velusamy.[45] [46] The State Coroner, several doctors and prison officers were present at the gallows when the eight men's death sentences were officially carried out.[47]
Prior to their executions, the Chou brothers reportedly expressed their wish to donate their organs (mainly their kidneys and eyes) to those in need should it be decided that they were to be executed.[48] However, it was revealed that due to inadequately-equipped medical facilities in the prison itself, the kidneys of the Chou brothers could not be donated, and hence only the corneas could be removed, and these were received by a man and woman who were reportedly recovering well after the transplant.[49]
Soon after the trial ended, there was a court inquiry conducted to determine who was the owner of the gold bars, and several claimants, including foreign businessmen, stepped forward and sought to claim ownership of the gold bars. However, it was updated that in 1981, the gold bars remained in the treasury of the state and went unclaimed, and their worth had risen from the original cost of S$500,000 to S$3 million,[50] and subsequently, by 2002, the gold bars became the property of the state.
In the aftermath of Ngo Cheng Poh's murder, it made an impact on the life of one of Ngo’s daughters, who was born in 1948 in Selangor, Malaysia, before her parents, who were both immigrants from Hong Kong, moved to Singapore. Described to be a bright student who also gained fame as a top teen model, Ngo's daughter was dealt with a huge emotional blow after her father's murder and it eventually led to her embarking on a life of crime. Allegedly, out of a desire to avenge her father's death, Ngo's daughter joined a drug syndicate and was subsequently jailed for 12 years in London for drug trafficking. Ngo's daughter later studied in prison and completed her university studies, and she returned to Singapore to teach in university after she was released on parole, but she went to prison once again for impersonating her younger sister to make a passport for her own use.[51]
The case was re-enacted on Crimewatch in 1993, in English and Chinese.[52] [53] It was also re-enacted on True Files, a Singaporean crime show. It first aired as the first episode of the show's first season on 23 April 2002. It is currently viewable via meWATCH.[54]
Private investigator and former CID police officer Lionel De Souza, who was in charge of the case at that time, appeared on screen to be interviewed. De Souza also spoke about his experiences and feelings from investigating the case, and stated that the teenage accomplices were lured to commit the gold bar killings due to greed and it caused most of them to pay with their lives as a result, and he also stated he was sympathetic with one of the teenagers, Alex Yau, who told De Souza during his interrogation that he only wanted to buy a new branded car, which De Souza remembered was a Mini Cooper, and it led to him joining the plot to murder Ngo Cheng Poh and the two other victims in exchange for money to buy the car, which ultimately led to him being hanged.[54]
In both Crimewatch and True Files, the fates of Augustine Ang, Stephen Lee and Ringo Lee were told of. It was revealed that Ang was released after spending 16 years in prison, and he was also placed under police supervision for the next three years after his release. Ringo Lee was also released after he served 17 years behind bars under the President’s Pleasure, while Stephen Lee was still in prison serving his sentence as of 1993. However, the English version of Crimewatch had wrongly stated that Stephen Lee was released while Ringo Lee was still in prison.[52] This error was corrected in the Chinese version of Crimewatch.[53]
In True Files, there was more light shed to the fates of the three men. De Souza revealed that he met both Ang and Ringo Lee after their release. He stated that when he met Ang once at church, he found out that Ang was married and working as a store keeper, and had reformed into a soft-spoken and well-mannered person, and Ang himself told De Souza that he had since left the murder case behind him and moved on with his life. De Souza also revealed that during the first seven to eight years of Ang’s detention (which De Souza wrongly claimed to be 14 years), he was confined in a solitary cell and except for short periods of exercise during yard time, Ang was basically locked behind four walls and was not allowed to mix around with other inmates, for fear that he would be harmed.[54]
De Souza added that he coincidentally ran into Ringo Lee around two years before the time of his interview, and initially, he could not recognise him until Ringo Lee, who first called out to him, introduced himself and stated he was out from visiting a friend; though there is nothing known about Ringo Lee's life—his job, whether he was married or had children etc.—after his release.[54] As for Stephen Lee, De Souza also said that according to his fellow police officers from the prison, Stephen Lee was "quite a mischievous guy", which was why he was not given an early release like Ringo Lee, which implied that Stephen Lee was possibly released from prison at this point of time. Similarly, like Ringo Lee, there was also no details of Stephen Lee's life after his presumed release from prison.[54]
Singapore-based British journalist Alex Josey wrote a book about the case, titled The tenth man: Gold bar murders, and it was first published in 1981.[55]
In July 2015, Singapore's national daily newspaper The Straits Times published an e-book titled Guilty as Charged: 25 Crimes That Have Shaken Singapore Since 1965, which included the Gold Bars triple murders as one of the top 25 crimes that shocked the nation since its independence in 1965. The book was borne out of collaboration between the Singapore Police Force and the newspaper itself. The e-book was edited by ST News Associate editor Abdul Hafiz bin Abdul Samad. The paperback edition of the book was published and first hit the bookshelves in end-June 2017. The paperback edition first entered the ST bestseller list on 8 August 2017, a month after its publication.[56] [57] [1]