Chao Tzee Cheng (Chinese: 赵自成; pinyin: Zhào Zìchéng; 22 September 1934 in Hong Kong – 21 February 2000 in New York City) was a renowned forensic pathologist in Singapore.
Although offered a scholarship to read engineering in the United States, he decided to take up medicine at University of Hong Kong.
However, a car accident in West Malaysia left him with a weakened right arm and dashed his hopes of a career in surgery.
His forensic expertise and duties extended beyond Singapore to countries like Malaysia, Hong Kong and even certain states of West Africa.
In his career, Chao performed over 25,000 autopsies and was the authoritative expert witness in many unsolved murder cases worldwide.
For example, in 1975, he testified as an expert witness for the defence at the Kuala Lumpur High Court trial of Hugh Ashley Johnston for the murder of his wife.
In memory of him, the National University of Singapore has set up the Chao Tzee Cheng Professorship in Pathology and Forensic Science.
While he was conducting an autopsy on her, Professor Chao found two knife wounds on Ayako Watanabe's neck, and one to her abdomen, along with a few others.
At the trial on 11 May 1977, Yasin denied raping the elderly woman despite the forensic evidence presented by the prosecution and Harun's testimony against him.
[4] On 25 April 1978, 18-year-old police national serviceman Lee Kim Lai[5] was abducted by three men from his sentry post at Mount Vernon and forced into a taxi.
Just on the same night when the policeman was murdered, a police officer named Siew Man Seng had seen two of these abductors behaving suspiciously around the area where the trio abandoned the taxi; deciding not to return home, he went out of his car and gave chase to the two men, managing to arrest 20-year-old Ong Hwee Kuan (the other man was 20-year-old Yeo Ching Boon) and bring him back for questioning.
[6][7][8] On 20 September 1981, 22-year-old lorry driver Ramu Annadavascan and his 16-year-old friend and news vendor Rathakrishnan Ramasamy assaulted 45-year-old boilerman Kalingam s/o Mariappan with a rake.
He said the two female victims died from strangulation; especially for Tay's wife, Chao said that she was already dead when Sek used the chair to bludgeon her head.
[10][11] Known as the Ang Mo Kio triple murder, in a flat where he rented a room, 30-year-old Michael Tan Teow, together with his 26-year-old friend Lim Beng Hai, robbed and murdered Tan's 28-year-old landlady Soh Lee Lee and her two children – 3-year-old Jeremy Yeong and 2-year-old Joyce Yeong.
[12][13] On 31 October 1983, 23-year-old temple medium Teo Boon Ann had brutally murdered 66-year-old Chong Kin Meng in her home while planning to commit robbery.
However, the abundance of incriminating evidence, especially the autopsy results of Professor Chao Tzee Cheng and the diary entry of Teo's girlfriend, detailing him fruitlessly trying to convince his girlfriend to help him in the robbery and to murder the elderly woman if their plot was discovered, had led to Teo's defence of a sudden fight failing to raise a reasonable doubt over the prosecution's case.
Furthermore, the older woman was hit several times with great force on her head and there were injuries on her fingers resulting from her trying to ward off the blows, and there were signs of strangulation on the victim, which suggested the cruel manner of Teo's attack on Chong.
12 days later, her highly decomposed body was discovered by NS servicemen undergoing their training exercises at Yishun Industrial Park.
Professor Chao Tzee Cheng, who conducted the autopsy on the girl's corpse, could not ascertain the cause of death: he could not tell whether it was a suicide, murder or accident due to the state of decomposition, some body parts were missing and the injuries he found on the skull and ribs were not sufficient to cause death.
He was initially acquitted of her murder at the end of his trial in 1992; however, the prosecution appealed against his acquittal, pointing out how Oh, despite his insistence that he did not kill Liang or know her whereabouts, was able to lead police to the place where Liang's bag and books were, which was some distance away from where her body was found; Oh claimed he went to fix his brakes at 1 pm when the girl was last seen alive, but it was found that he went there at 9 am; and lastly, the school bus driver even contacted and tried to convince the witnesses to testify on his behalf that they did not see his school bus that day.
Lim suffocated when a towel was tied tightly round his mouth, which pushed his tongue back, blocking the air passage.
Professor Chao testified in court that this was the cause of Lim's death, and additionally stated that from his experience, it was unlikely that the gagging would be due to intentional homicide but more likely to shut the victim up.
[25] Between 4 December 1993 and 19 January 1995, 26-year-old security guard Maniam Rathinswamy and his accomplice S. S. Asokan, were both sentenced to death for the murder of illegal moneylender Tan Heng Hong.
He said that there were little amount of soot particles found in the lungs, which meant that he was already dead by the time the two men set fire on him Maniam, who was eventually arrested and charged in January 1993, claimed at the trial that on the night of Tan's murder, while the three of them were arguing violently over a failed deal to purchase gold, Asokan became so agitated that he picked up an axe which Maniam bought the day before to kill Tan, and it was Asokan's idea to burn the corpse, proclaiming his innocence and he himself was forced to help dispose the corpse out of fear.
[26][27] A Bulgarian student, 26-year-old Iordanka Apostolova, was involved in an argument with 22-year-old Shaiful Edham Adam at a housing unit in Depot Road.
Shaiful's wife, Hezlinda A Rahman together with the two of them help to dispose her body at a canal near Tanah Merah Ferry Road.
Professor Chao Tzee Cheng, in his autopsy, found that there were four wounds on the victim's neck, and a few more at her abdomen and thigh and a few more.
Hezlinda, with whom Shaiful had a child, was sentenced to 6 years' imprisonment for helping to dispose Ms Apostolova's body, as well as failing to report the murder to the police.
Professor Chao discovered a broken skull on Poh's head and there were fractures on her - the longest was measured 13 cm long.
However, the evidence of his co-workers, in which they said Jonaris acted normally and cheerful in work on the day of the murder and prior to the murder, and the fact that he could clearly describe how he kill Poh and his actions of slitting the woman's wrists, showed clearly that Jonaris was in full control of himself and not mentally ill and thus had the intention to kill Sally Poh.