Kallang River body parts murder

The case earned its name due to the body parts of the victim, 22-year-old Liu Hong Mei (Chinese: 刘红梅; pinyin: Líu Hóngmeí), being found disposed off in Kallang River.

[1][2] On the morning of 16 June 2005, 27-year-old cleaner Murugan Kaniapan chanced upon a waterlogged, brown cardboard box sealed with masking tape lying on the banks of the Kallang River.

A short while later, at about 200 m away from where they found the body part, a red-and-white printer box was discovered and inside it, it contained a woman's severed upper torso with arms and hands attached.

The pathologist who conducted an autopsy on Liu, Dr Teo Eng Swee, was unable to determine the cause of death, as there were no defensive injuries found on the victim.

The short period of time she spent between her first employment and promotion earned some dissatisfaction from the people in her workplace, and it was aggravated by many instances where Liu was physically intimate with her supervisor Leong Siew Chor, a 50-year-old married man and father of three.

[8] On 18 June 2005, after he was charged for murder, Leong was brought back to his flat in Lorong 3, Geylang, where many reporters filmed scenes of police officers entering and leaving the ninth-floor unit with collected evidence for purposes of their investigations.

Among the items collected were a partially damaged meat cleaver, a rubber mallet, some Chinese language newspapers with their pages missing, plastic bags, some of Leong's clothes previously worn before his arrest, and a towel he allegedly used to strangle Liu to death.

Forensic pathologist Dr Teo Eng Swee, who conducted an autopsy on the victim, found tiny shards of metal fragments stuck to the muscles of Liu's severed left leg (later recovered after Leong was arrested).

According to Inspector Roy Lim, he stated that the unusual cleanliness of the crime scene reminded him of a superior's case report which he read about ten years ago.

[3] It was also revealed that during the course of investigations, Leong's family were being repeatedly harassed by many members of the public, who came to their flat to disturb and condemn them out of anger over the murder of Liu.

The Police Coast Guard sent out patrol boats to sail the river up to its opening with the sea to look for the missing head, feet and legs.

They received information that the Singapore River would be cleared of its trash every few days, in which it coincided with the time after Leong disposed of her body parts and before he was arrested, and the rubbish would be sent to the Tuas incineration plant.

The investigators found out that two days before her death, Liu had made a police report about her ATM card being stolen and unauthorized withdrawals of her savings from her bank accounts in different locations within Singapore.

In all the footage, they saw a slim man wearing a cap and hoodie making these withdrawals, and the investigators suspected that this person was Leong Siew Chor.

[12] Police officers also found that Liu had taken up night-classes in mastering the English language, as she intended to study in a local polytechnic and get a diploma in tourism.

He said that he was fearful that Liu might recognise him from the CCTV footage, and should he be arrested and convicted of theft, it meant that the truth about Leong's affair would become public knowledge to his family and all those who knew him.

[14] At the start of the trial, the prosecution, led by Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Lau Wing Yum of the AGC, based its case on the statements and confession made by Leong during his remand.

Regarding the fact of Liu's supposed despondency over the affair, the police's evidence of her true optimistic feelings towards the future raised doubts over this part of Leong's suicide pact story.

[18] On 19 May 2006, after a trial lasting 16 days, in a courtroom full of reporters and members of the public, Justice Tay Yong Kwang delivered his verdict.

The judge admonished Leong for the cold-blooded nature of the crime and his lack of remorse, in which he had not only stolen the heart of the deceased, he also robbed her of her hard-earned savings and ATM cards, and then finally, and remorselessly, he deprived her of her right to live.

As such, both Choo and Rajah, together with a third judge, Woo Bih Li, unanimously dismissed the appeal on 28 September 2006, as they found Leong's story too incredulous for them to accept.

Anandan argued to a new three-judge panel that during the first appeal, the original three judges took into consideration three police statements that were not admitted as evidence in the trial while making their decision.

However, the three Supreme Court judges Kan Ting Chiu, Tan Lee Meng and Belinda Ang dismissed the criminal motion minutes after its first hearing session.

[24] During the final days before his client's execution, Subhas Anandan and his assistant Sunil Sudheesan went to visit Leong for one last time in Changi Prison.

In an interview conducted by the producers of the documentary Anatomy of a Crime, Dr Teo Eng Swee expressed his sympathy for the terrible plight and end which Liu Hong Mei met, given that she was just a young lady who came to Singapore from another country with hopes of earning a better life for herself and her family.

[2] Anandan said that as a result of the case, some members of the public, and his own kin - including his then teenage son and elder sister - had reprimanded him for representing a cold-blooded killer like Leong.

Fu also revealed that during the time he was considered as a murder suspect, many people treated him with contempt and thought he was the killer since he was the youngest of Liu's three supervisors back then.

The manner of his arrest and him butchering Liu's body also differed greatly from the real-life details, and even his adult children were portrayed as young school-going kids in this re-enactment.

One of them was the case of John Martin Scripps, a British serial killer who murdered and dismembered a South African tourist Gerard George Lowe in a hotel in Singapore.

Jasvinder, a 33-year-old beautician, was allegedly murdered by her Indian-born husband and senior logistics coordinator Harvinder Singh (aged 33 in 2013), who dismembered her corpse and disposed of her body parts in a canal at McNair Road.