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 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.

[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.

[6][7] 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.

The six youths were identified as 20-year-old Stephen Francis, 19-year-old Alex Yau Hean Thye (姚贤泰 Yáo Xiántài)[b], 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).

[9][6] 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.

[1][6] 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.

[1][6] 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.

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.

[11][12] 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.

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.

[15][16] 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[24] 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.

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.

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.

[30][27][31] 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.

The convict, identified as Ismail bin UK Abdul Rahman, was hanged for the 1973 murder of a one-armed man Karuppan Velusamy.

[46][47] The State Coroner, several doctors and prison officers were present at the gallows when the eight men's death sentences were officially carried out.

[49] 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.

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.

[52] 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.

[52] 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.