The Best I Could (25 page)

The case of Anthony Ler was particularly heinous and tagged the crime story of 2001 because it set loose a range of emotions amongst Singaporeans. There were three things that struck members of the public as they looked on in morbid fascination during the trial: How could a man kill the mother of his own daughter? How could he coach a teenage boy to commit murder? How could he put his young daughter in a position in which she ended up with no parents?

Ler did all these things. He was accused and convicted of abetting in the murder of his estranged wife Annie Leong Wai Muen, an insurance agent. In May 2001, Ler had enticed a 15-year-old boy to murder the mother of his own four-year-old child by offering him $100,000 and the promise of beautiful women. Because of his youth, the 15-year-old could not be named in the newspapers. While Ler was hanged for his part in the crime, the youth escaped hanging because he was too young and was detained at the President’s pleasure. It is believed that the boy, now in his early twenties, is still detained.

Some people have likened Ler’s case to the O J Simpson trial, albeit a watered down version. The local media recklessly added to the sensationalism by showing a smiling Ler chatting with policemen. During his trial, Ler tried to defend himself by claiming that the idea to murder Madam Leong had been a joke. However, the motivation behind the murder was greed as Ler’s web design business was apparently in dire financial straits and he was in need of cash. He wanted his wife out of the way so he could, as the sole owner, sell their flat. Ler offered the boy money to do the deed. Together, they plotted out the details.

Ler arranged for his wife to sign some documents with him. Meanwhile, the boy lay in wait for her to return to her flat on the fourth floor of Block 923 Hougang Avenue 9. Without suspecting that anything could be amiss, Madam Leong went down to the void deck of the block with her four-year-old daughter to meet Ler. Apparently, she went back to her flat without her daughter and was less than 50 metres away from the flat when she was attacked. She staggered towards the front door and collapsed in her mother’s arms. She was bleeding profusely and died later in Tan Tock Seng Hospital. Madam Leong’s mother later told police that Ler appeared only a few minutes later, saying he was at the void deck and had heard screams. He supposedly told his wife not to close her eyes and to try to stay awake. A neighbour noted that his daughter had come up with him.

Fingers were pointing at Ler as soon as the murder was reported in the media on May 17, 2001. Some members of the public even said he had hired someone to kill his wife though the motives were unclear until the case reached the courts. Ler was apprehended with evidence found in his computer by the CID’s Technology Crime Forensic Branch, Technology Crime Division. After the murder, to avoid being overheard, Ler and the boy had communicated by typing messages to each other using Ler’s computer. They did this sitting side by side in Ler’s flat. Even though Ler had not saved the files in his computer, the police were able to retrieve the correspondence using advanced software. The communication between them led to Ler’s downfall because it offered hard evidence of his involvement in the case.

I went to Queenstown Remand Prison to take instructions on the evidence given to me by the prosecution. I showed Anthony Ler the messages between him and the boy from the computer. He was shocked and asked me how they could recover the evidence when he had erased them. I told him it was possible and legal. He just looked at me and for once, he lost his silly smile.

There are similarities in the cases of Aniza Essa and Anthony Ler. Both had enticed young boys to commit a serious crime. Ler used a 15-year-old boy while Aniza goaded her 16-year-old lover. Both manipulated the egos of the teenagers. Initially, Ler had chosen and trained the boy’s friend to do the act but the friend had backed out. The 15-year-old boy had been very hurt and asked Ler, “Why did you choose him when you knew me first? I can do the job. I’m better than him.” And when, at the final moment, he had a change of mind, Ler sarcastically said, “It’s not as easy as you think, is it?” Similarly, Aniza used the threat of asking her ex-lover to do the deed if Nasir “can’t do it” knowing that the boy was very much in love with her and could not bear to lose her.

The tragedy in both these cases is that youths were employed by adults to commit murders. Ler was sentenced to death. He has been executed and I believe his last wish was to donate his organs, perhaps in atonement for what he did. In contrast, Aniza will be out in five to six years’ time. But the prosecution has appealed against the sentence on Aniza. It is for the Court of Appeal to decide whether she’ll get life or something else.

When Anthony Ler’s mother came to see me, she was like most mothers—desperate to save her son in any way possible. I was not keen to take on the case. I had been following the investigations in the newspapers and was a little perturbed with the smile that appeared on every photo published by the press. It almost always seemed a permanent fixture on his face. But when I heard his mother’s plea and saw the tears in her eyes, I just couldn’t say no to her. I thought of my own mother and how she would have felt if something similar happened to me or my siblings. And so I agreed to defend him.

When I first went to see him at Queenstown Remand Prison, I really didn’t know what to expect. He was already seated in an interview room waiting for me. As I entered the room, he politely stood up and shook my hand even though his other hand was handcuffed to a hook on the wall. The first thing I noticed was his smile. It was a smile that could be interpreted in so many ways. That smile could be a sneer, it could be a smile of confidence, or it could be one that belies some deep fear. For some reason, I have never related his smile to one of happiness. Throughout the trial, he wore that smile and he kept that smile even when giving evidence. Somehow, I felt it was his security blanket. Maybe I was right. I was not the only person who wondered about that enigmatic smile. Even the media mentioned it.

On the day of his execution and cremation, a crime reporter by the name of Vijayan called me to ask whether I would be attending Ler’s funeral. Of course, I said no. It is not my practice to attend my clients’ funerals. Later, Vijayan told me that only Ler’s brother was at the funeral. Nobody else came.

A few days later, I had to go to the Condemned Prison to visit another client. When I was there, I asked the officer whether Anthony Ler was smiling when he was walking to the gallows. The officer did not reply. He just smiled at me.

When you hear the words ‘Las Vegas’, your first thoughts would normally be of casinos, gambling, pretty girls and the United States. But Las Vegas in Singapore means something else; it refers to the well-known Las Vegas Nightclub KTV. I used to go there with my clients, and sometimes with my friends, to have a drink and some fun singing in our own private room so that no one will find out what fools we are all making of ourselves. Every time I’m there, the owner, Lim Hock Soon, who was fondly referred to as Lim Piggy because he was fat, would greet me with something like, “Hello lawyer, how are you?” I would return the greeting with, “Hello, how are you? How’s your business?” He would reply it was good and would then ask me about my business. I would say, “Not too bad,” and walk into the room to sing. Sometimes my friends and I would just sit in the hall to listen to a girl sing and we’d watch other people make fools of themselves.

One day I read in the papers that Lim Piggy had been shot dead by the notorious Tan Chor Jin aka One-eyed Dragon. I knew for a fact that Tan was one of the top hitmen for a very powerful gang in Singapore called Ang Soon Tong. Only able to see with one eye, he was known for his brutality and ruthlessness in his dealings with his enemies. The press reported that Lim was shot dead by One-eyed Dragon on the morning of February 15, 2006. Six shots had been fired into him and it was done at his home in front of his wife and maid. Singapore was rocked by this news because it is very rare to have cases of gun assassinations on the island. The punishment for possession of guns is very severe and the punishment for discharging a firearm is death.

One-eyed Dragon escaped to Malaysia but through the close cooperation of the Singapore and Malaysian police forces, he was apprehended in a five-star hotel in Kuala Lumpur. From what I gathered, the lead was given to the police in KL by Lim’s own gang members who were also looking for One-eyed Dragon and had tipped off the police. One-eyed Dragon was extradited to Singapore and promptly charged with Lim’s murder. His family engaged a lawyer to represent him in his defence. One-eyed Dragon was produced in Court 26 and charged with murder. He was held without bail because for a capital case like murder, no bail was allowed.

The prosecution subsequently found it easier to amend the murder charge to one of discharging a firearm. Under the Firearms Act, this also carries a sentence of death. It was easier to prove a case against One-eyed Dragon under the amended charge because in a murder charge, you have to prove an intention to kill among other things that you don’t have to prove under the Firearms Act. In the latter charge, the prosecution only needed to show that One-eyed Dragon had discharged his firearm and the discharge had caused the death of a person.

One-eyed Dragon craved cigarettes. Each time he was charged and brought to court, he would make a request to the magistrate or judge for cigarettes. But his request was always turned down because in Singapore, prisoners are not allowed to have cigarettes. One-eyed Dragon suffered severe withdrawal symptoms and dismissed his lawyer because he said the lawyer didn’t seem to be able to do anything for him—he couldn’t get the cigarettes he wanted and he also wasn’t able to prevent him from being held in the psychiatric ward at Changi Prison. One-eyed Dragon felt that he should be held in Queenstown Remand Prison.

His trial started in the High Court before Justice Tay Yong Kwang. When the judge asked him whether he wanted an assigned counsel, saying if he wanted one, he would be given one—in fact two, a senior lawyer and an assistant—he refused. He said that he would represent himself and that he was capable of defending himself. The trial went on for a few weeks and One-eyed Dragon, from what I read from the Notes of Evidence, did his best to cross-examine witnesses of the prosecution as well as the expert witnesses. He was allowed to call a psychiatrist to show that he was intoxicated and, as such, was not able to formulate any intention to kill or to shoot Lim. However, according to One-eyed Dragon, the psychiatrist played him out at the trial by giving evidence that he did not expect. One-eyed Dragon could have misunderstood him. The psychiatrist was well known and what he told One-eyed Dragon was that in a charge of murder, intoxication and other factors could help reduce it to one of culpable homicide, but these factors no longer counted when his charge was amended to one under the Firearms Act. One-eyed Dragon found it very difficult to accept that and called the psychiatrist all sorts of names. The poor psychiatrist may have regretted coming to court as his witness.

When the time came for the final submission, One-eyed Dragon told Justice Tay that he needed a lawyer. He said he was not capable of summing up as he didn’t know how to. This request was turned down by the trial judge, which I thought was wrong and unfair. Just because One-eyed Dragon had decided that he didn’t want a lawyer at the beginning of the trial did not mean that he should be denied one later. As expected, One-eyed Dragon was sentenced to death by the trial judge.

When One-eyed Dragon was taken to the condemned cell and asked to file his Notice of Appeal and Petition of Appeal, he realised again that he needed a lawyer. His wife and one of his gang members approached me and asked me to be his defence counsel. They told me that they did not have the money but would try to pay my fee somehow. I proposed that they request the government to assign me to the case so that they need not pay my fees. Since One-eyed Dragon had told his wife that he wanted only me to act for him in his appeal, I suggested he make this request to the registrar of the Supreme Court. He did and later that day I received a call from the registrar asking me if I would take on the case. I said I would and the case was assigned to me. I asked for my nephew, Sunil, to be the assisting counsel.

Usually, the assisting counsel should come from a different firm. This was a way of having senior counsels train a wider pool of young lawyers to handle criminal cases. However, in this case, the Registrar made an exception and allowed Sunil, who was from the same firm, to assist me. I asked for him to be appointed as it was a complicated case and I wanted to be able to choose who should assist me.

So I went with Sunil to see One-eyed Dragon in the condemned cell at Changi Prison. Before seeing him, we met with another client, Leong Siew Chor, the accused in the Kallang River body parts case, for a chat. He told me that he had spoken with One-eyed Dragon and found him an amusing person.