Murder of Chi Tue Tiong
Zailani, who argued that he suffered diminished responsibility and had killed Chi under the influence of sleeping pills, was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death in March 2004.
[2] Tan managed to seek help from other people to open the gate, and upon entry, they discovered the corpse of Chi Tue Tiong lying in a pool of blood inside his room.
[6][7] Chi, a Singaporean of Hakka Chinese descent,[8] was survived by at least three children, including a daughter who rushed back to Singapore from Johor upon hearing the news of her father's death.
[10] Dr Teo Eng Swee, a forensic pathologist who performed an autopsy on the victim, discovered extensive skull fractures and brain injuries, which were caused by multiple blunt force trauma.
Dr Teo determined that at least nine blows were inflicted to Chi's head with a blunt instrument, and the murder weapon was possibly either the bloodstained wooden pestle or the handle of an axe found at the scene.
The Indonesian woman, whose name was Rachel (alias Fatimah or Leni), was approached by the officers of the Singapore Police Force, who were dispatched to Indonesia to interview her.
[12][13][14] On 30 June 2003, after 40 hours of police investigation,[15] Zailani (who spent the past two days hiding in three different places)[16] was arrested as a suspect for murdering Chi Tue Tiong.
[19] Background information revealed that prior to the murder, Zailani, who was a Singaporean citizen and was 35 years old at the time of his arrest, was working as an air-conditioner technician, and he also engaged in selling illegal VCDs to supplement his income.
Dr Teo, who testified in court and presented his medical report, responded to the prosecution's inquiries that the assault that took Chi's life was unlikely to be a frenzied attack caused by someone who was not himself at the time, since the nature of the injuries were not haphazard and most of the injuries were concentrated at the head, which was a vital part of the body, suggesting that the blows that struck the deceased were deliberately directed towards his head by either the defendant or Rachel or both.
This was brought up due to Zailani putting up a defence that he suffered from diminished responsibility and killed Chi under the influence of a sleeping pill overdose.
Zailani's depression from these events led to him consuming twelve tablets of sleeping pills, six times the recommended daily intake which Dr Heng told him.
[32][33] However, the prosecution's psychiatric expert, Dr Tommy Tan, who was a consultant psychiatrist from Woodbridge Hospital (later renamed the Institute of Mental Health), stated it was not possible for Zailani to be able to lose consciousness at one point before rapidly regaining it for a brief moment, then going back to a loss of consciousness, and he opined that Zailani was mentally normal, and fully aware of what he was doing at the time he murdered Chi Tue Tiong.
In his verdict, Justice Kan found that Zailani and Rachel shared a common intention to commit burglary, and they also armed themselves with the wooden pestle, which was used as the murder weapon to kill 68-year-old Chi Tue Tiong.
He stated that based on their decision to arm themselves with a wooden pestle, the couple must have had the intention to cause grievous hurt if necessary, since they had the knowledge that the old man could recognize them if he either confronted them or they ran away before he discovered the burglary.
