2006 murder of a massage parlour owner in Singapore
On 18 June 2006, 52-year-old Eu Lim Hoklai (), the owner of a seafood hawker stall, had fatally stabbed 29-year-old Yu Hongjin (), a massage parlour owner and peidu mama from China, while they were arguing with each other and Yu having knifed him on the stomach nine times. It was revealed that Eu, a married father of three, had an affair with Yu after his first few massage sessions at Yu's shop, and after discovering that Yu had been seeing someone else, Eu decided to see her on the day of the murder to break up with her, but it sparked into a fight that ended Yu's life.
Eu was charged with murder while he was hospitalized for the injuries he sustained. The prosecution argued that Eu had murdered Yu in cold blood and his injuries were self-inflicted, while the defence argued that the killing was a result of a fight and the stab wounds of Eu were inflicted by Yu. Although Eu's defence was rejected and he was sentenced to death for murder by the trial court, he was successful in his appeal and Eu was therefore re-sentenced to ten years' imprisonment for a reduced charge of manslaughter.
Murder.
Stabbing incident.
On the Sunday morning of 18 June 2006, which coincided with Father's Day, while she was at home in her family's flat, 25-year-old Eu Sui Lin received a phone call from her 52-year-old father, who asked her to come help him, stating that he was hurt. After receiving the phone call, Eu Sui Lin, her youngest sister and their mother Ng Mooi Huang rushed to a massage parlour in Ang Mo Kio, where they found her father Eu Lim Hoklai lying unconscious on his back, with several stab wounds on his abdomen. Inside a cubicle of the parlour, a woman was found dead with a knife clutched onto her hand. The police also arrived at the scene around the same time as Eu's children and wife, and later, the woman was pronounced dead by paramedics who arrived at the scene, and Eu himself was rushed to hospital, where he survived with medical treatment.
The victim was identified as 29-year-old Yu Hongjin, a Chinese citizen who was a divorcee with one son. A native of Fuqing, Fujian, Yu and her son first came to Singapore in 2002 to ensure her son be educated in Singapore, and Yu, who became a peidu mama, stayed to take care of her son while she operated a massage parlour to make ends meet, even though as a peidu mama, she was not allowed to work per the immigration regulations of Singapore. It was certified first-hand that her death was likely due to strangulation and stabbing.
Yu's funeral was carried out weeks after her murder, with her ten-year-old son, ex-husband, brother and sister-in-law being the only ones present at her wake. Also, due to Yu's case, a police crackdown on massage parlours was conducted, leading to the arrest of some foreigners who illegally operated these parlours or employed foreigners for work. Some peidu mamas were also arrested during the crackdown itself.
Arrest and charges.
While he was hospitalized at the intensive care unit of Tan Tock Seng Hospital for his injuries, Eu Lim Hoklai, who celebrated his 53rd birthday three days after the stabbing incident, was officially placed under arrest and charged with murder. When the charge sheet was presented to Eu in his ward, he was reportedly accompanied by a Hokkien-English translator and his lawyer Subhas Anandan, a leading criminal lawyer who agreed to represent Eu after the suspect's family sought his services.
During his questioning by the police while in hospital, Eu's 42-year-old youngest brother Eu Hock Chye and other family members were not allowed to accompany him, and Eu's brother was reportedly heartbroken and both he and Eu cried together due to the imminent possibility that Eu would be sentenced to hang for murder (which was punishable by death in Singapore). Eu's youngest brother also said his brother was a kind and generous man and would not cause trouble. Eu later recovered from his injuries, and he was placed under psychiatric remand while pending police investigations and trial. In May 2007, Eu was ordered to stand trial on a later date for the murder of Yu Hongjin.
Background information also revealed that Eu and his wife operated a popular seafood tze char hawker stall at a food centre in Tampines since 1984 and they were married for 28 years as of the time Eu was arrested for killing Yu. Eu and his wife were married with three daughters, and the eldest was married and living separately from her parents. His daughters described him as a gentle and kind man and also a loving and caring father who never raised his voice or laid a hand on them, even when he reprimanded them for whichever wrongdoing. Eu, who only spoke Hokkien but not English, only studied up to Primary Three before he dropped out, and he had at least three siblings in his family.
Trial of Eu Lim Hoklai.
Eu's account.
On 21 January 2008, the trial of Eu Lim Hoklai began at the High Court, with Singapore's top criminal lawyer Subhas Anandan and his nephew Sunil Sudheesan representing Eu, while the prosecution was led by Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Winston Cheng. The trial was presided by Justice Kan Ting Chiu.
The trial court was told that starting from March 2005, Eu had an affair with the victim Yu Hongjin, who first met him at a massage parlour in Ang Mo Kio, and after going there for massage a few times, Eu and Yu began their relationship, unbeknownst to Eu's wife and three daughters, and eventually, when Yu opened her own massage parlour, Eu forked out some of his money to help her open the shop. He sometimes would also use a part of his seafood stall's revenue to pay for Yu's living expenses. However, on 14 June 2006, the relationship between Yu and Eu had gone sour, after Eu found out that Yu was seeing other men, and therefore, he formed an intention to break up with Yu and completely cut off his ties with her. Throughout the next three days before Yu was killed, Eu and Yu quarrelled each time they met.
On 18 June 2006, also Father's Day, Eu was at home and planned to go out to meet Yu when his daughters told him they want to bring him out later for a dim sum lunch to celebrate Father's Day. Eu later told his daughters that he would be going to the seafood stall to sort out the fish, as an excuse to go out and settle his matters with Yu, and also declined his daughters' request to go out with him. After reaching Yu's massage parlour in Ang Mo Kio, Eu told her that he wanted to end their relationship, but the discussion did not go well as Yu tried to extort S$30,000 from Eu as a "separation fee" to completely cut off contact with Eu, and Yu even threatened to tell Eu's family that she would expose their secret if he refused to pay up on time. This discussion escalated into an argument between Yu and Eu as Eu refused to comply with Yu's demand, and insisted on making his urgent leave due to his family's plan to celebrate Father's Day.
According to Eu, Yu grabbed a kitchen knife from her shop and stabbed Eu on the abdomen several times, and in self-defense, Eu strangled Yu during the stabbing and also purportedly stabbed Yu as well, and Eu, who continued to clutch his hand onto Yu's neck, called his second daughter for help before he fainted and lost consciousness, but was still alive by the time two of his daughters, his wife and the police arrived at the parlour to help him. A neighbouring shop owner, Wong Choon Mee, testified that she likely heard the sounds of a struggle coming out from Yu's massage parlour.
Prosecution's forensic evidence.
The prosecution's case was that Eu had committed the murder in cold blood, arguing that Eu had lied about being stabbed by Yu, and stated that it was Eu who first stabbed Yu before he stabbed himself on the abdomen to stage it as a killing due to a sudden fight.
Dr Paul Chui, a senior forensic pathologist, stated that he had examined the injuries of Eu while Eu was in custody for killing Yu, and he told the court that Eu was extremely lucky, because the nine stab wounds found on him were so deep that at least three of them would have penetrated Eu's organs and cause his potential death had it not missed the organs. Dr Chui's colleague Dr Wee Keng Poh, the forensic pathologist who performed an autopsy on Yu, also took the stand to present his autopsy findings; Dr Wee identified that there were two fatal knife wounds which penetrated her liver and kidney, and this resulted in her death, and the strangulation also partially contributed to Yu's death. However, both Dr Chui and Dr Wee were unable to conclude whether the wounds on Eu were self-inflicted or caused by Yu before her death.
Dr Lim Chin Chin, a forensic scientist, also gave her analysis of the crime scene. She stated that it was more probable to conclude that the wounds on Eu's abdomen were self-inflicted, and pointed out that Eu's shirt was not damaged and stated Eu must have lifted the shirt and stabbed himself with the knife after murdering Yu Hongjin. It was noted by the experts that the crime scene itself was relatively clean and little to no bloodstains were found at the parlour, and bore few signs of a struggle.
Defence's forensic evidence.
The defence however, persevered in their case, urging the trial court to accept that Eu had been stabbed by Yu and Eu had therefore stabbed Yu and strangled her in the moment of self-defense, and it was not a premeditated murder as what the prosecution sought to prove. Anandan reportedly expressed his concern with the accuracy of news reports during the trial, when it was erroneously reported at one point that Justice Kan found Eu's self-defence claims "hard to believe".
To counter the prosecution, Anandan engaged an Australian forensic scientist, Dr Johan Duflou, to impeach Dr Lim's testimony. Dr Duflou, who flew over from Australia to Singapore to testify in Eu's trial, explained that Dr Lim was wrong to conclude that Eu's wounds were self-inflicted, and it was more likely that Yu had stabbed Eu. Dr Duflou testified that scientifically, self-inflicted wounds are noted to be tightly concentrated within a region of the body, and yet Eu's wounds were inflicted all over his abdomen, and secondly, self-inflicted wounds are superficial and would not be at the risk of harming one's vital part of the body, and yet Eu's wounds were extremely deep and some of which even narrowly missed his organs, and third of all, a person who had self-inflicted wounds would prefer to cut himself on the hands or neck and they were normally incisions rather than stab wounds, but Eu's wounds were caused by stabbing and inflicted on the abdomen, and basically, there was no hesitation marks on the wounds themselves. These above traits debunked the prosecution's theory that Eu's wounds were self-inflicted. Dr Duflou also explained why Eu's shirt was not damaged, because it was possible that Yu had lifted Eu's shirt to stab her former lover as what Eu claimed, and Dr Duflou told the court that the lack of bloodstains at the crime scene was possibly because of the struggle taking place within the extremely small space of the cubicle within Yu's massage parlour and it was likely that Yu sustained internal bleeding and it could not be concluded that she was lying on her back when Eu stabbed her, pointing out that no blood were observed to have flown out of Yu's stab wounds at the time she was found dead.
Aside from this, Eu, who took the stand to testify, was also asked to re-enact in court how he killed Yu on that fateful morning.
Verdict.
On 30 June 2009, Justice Kan Ting Chiu delivered his verdict.
In the judgement, Justice Kan did not touch on the question of whether the wounds on Eu were