[4] On 19 September 2008, at around 12.50 am, police received a report that a woman had fallen from one of the flats and her body was found lying motionless on the ground floor nearby the void deck of a HDB block in Yishun.
On entering the unit, the police found the male occupant and also three women, one adult and two teenagers, who were slashed and stabbed in a kitchen toilet and one of the bedrooms.
They also sent representatives to Tan Tock Seng Hospital to meet up with the surviving teenager and her loved ones to help them cope with their loss while getting updates on the situation.
The netizens from China expressed their sadness over the triple deaths and called for all Chinese nationals in Singapore to help the sole survivor of the murders.
Madam Hu stated that she, as well as all other study mamas, only wanted their children to have a good education in Singapore and they merely craved for a simple life in the country.
Zhang Meng (Chinese: 张孟; Pinyin: zhāng mèng), a university graduate and shipping company employee, was born on 13 November 1966.
[22] Yang Jie (Chinese: 杨婕; Pinyin: yáng jié), born on 3 April 1972, grew up in Shenyang, Liaoning, Northeast China, and had married twice prior to her death in Singapore.
Yang was first married to a taxi driver named Li Wenge (Chinese: 李文革; Pinyin: lǐ wéngé) in 1992, and gave birth to a daughter on 10 February 1993.
When the daughter was eight months old, Yang divorced her husband and took custody of the child, whom she entrusted to her mother's care before she married another man, Chen Jun (Chinese: 陈军; Pinyin: chén jūn).
To afford the education fees, Yang resigned from her property agent job and even sold her house to allow her elder child to move to Singapore.
Wang told the interrogating officer Jason Lim in his statements that he used up his cash on expensive food for his girlfriend and Feng, and even helped them to do the laundry and cooking.
Wang, who then did not have enough money left on him, told Lim that he reminded Zhang that they just ate it merely a week ago and informed her that it cost more than $100 for every crab meal, and he wanted to save up the remaining cash.
He claimed that when he ended the stabbing and went to look for Yang, he could not find her after searching everywhere in the flat, leading to him returning to finish off the girl, who was no longer inside the bedroom.
[4] At the start of the trial on 22 November 2011, the prosecution, led by Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Hay Hung Chun, began to present its case to the courts.
Regarding the way of how Yang Jie died, the reconstruction report also made a finding that disputed Wang's account and supported the prosecution's case.
When cross-examined by DPP Hay's colleague Mohamed Faizal Md Abdul Kadir, Wang also claimed that he did not remember wearing his shoes and socks after the murder.
Yang's daughter kicked him once and it caused Wang to lose his balance and fall, giving her the chance to escape the bedroom and hide into the kitchen toilet.
After Grace finished her testimony in court on 22 November 2011, Wang, who by then denied the murder charges, told his lawyers Kelvin Lim and Jason Dendroff to help him tell the girl that he was sorry for what he did.
According to Dr Koh, he said, "The severity of his mood symptoms, however, were insufficient to warrant a diagnosis of a major depressive disorder at the time of the alleged offences."
[43] He said that Wang was able to calmly surrender to the police and hide the murder weapons, as well as smoothly conversing with the psychiatrist during the psychiatric assessment sessions with him, which showed he was still mentally stable despite the condition he suffered from.
The injured inmate was Ong Seng Chuen, a 48-year-old Singaporean who was formerly on the run for 21 years for a 1989 robbery and murder of coffee shop owner Ling Ha Hiang before he surrendered in 2010.
[47][48] On 30 November 2012, four months after the prosecution and defence made their respective closing submissions, Justice Chan Seng Onn delivered his judgement at the final day of the Yishun triple murder trial.
Instead, the three judges said that Wang had killed Zhang out of massive, uncontrollable anger so that she will never appear again in his life, as a result of the multiple humiliation and mistreatment he suffered in her hands.
Two weeks after the murders, on 2 October 2008, Grace, while still recuperating from her injuries, was discharged from the hospital to attend her mother's funeral, which was generously held for free by undertaker Roland Tay due to the family's unstable financial situation.
[59] Yang's daughter, who was interviewed by reporters in March 2011, told the paper that she had to set aside $350 every month for her rental costs and some other portions of the cash for her school fees.
According to Grace, her birth father had been feeling guilty for not being able to take care of her, and voiced his regret to her whenever he drank, while her stepfather could not get over her mother's death.
[24] From an official website of a local church in Singapore, it was revealed that Grace had graduated with a diploma from Nanyang Polytechnic and turned to Christianity for solace over the death of her mother, which allowed her to move on with her life after the traumatic incidents at Yishun.
[61][62][63] Subsequently, meWATCH's creator and operator Mediacorp (Singapore's national television broadcasting corporation) uploaded the Crimewatch episode of the Yishun murders on its official YouTube channel on 18 May 2021 with English subtitles, making it available for more viewers since the date.
[64] A local author named Yeo Suan Futt wrote a book titled Murder Most Foul: Strangled, Poisoned and Dismembered in Singapore.
The book was first published by Marshall Cavendish International Asia on 10 April 2013, four months after Wang Zhijian was sentenced to death for the murder of Yang Jie by the High Court.