Cold cases, warm leads? In Singapore, the unsolved murders of Lim Shiow Rong and Felicia Teo have gripped the nation

Lim Jia Hui was a year old when her elder sister Lim Shiow Rong went missing in 1995. Then aged seven, Shiow Rong was last seen at a coffee shop on June 24 in the central Singaporean district of Toa Payoh. She had gone off to find her father’s friend while her mother was busy tending to patrons of her drinks stall – and she never returned.

Shiow Rong’s body was found the next morning, in a drain in the island nation’s northeastern region, roughly 7km from where she was last seen.

She is believed to have been raped and suffocated to death by her assailant, according to a report in local broadsheet The Straits Times. The police circulated a description of a possible suspect and launched an investigation, but the case was never solved.

Earlier this month, Jia Hui – now 27, and working in customer service – gave a media interview to appeal to the public for leads in the case. She said she wanted to seek closure for her 65-year-old mother.

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Jia Hui had first consulted Crime Library Singapore, where a small team of volunteers use social media to help reunite family members who have lost contact with each other, and seek witnesses in murder or missing-persons cases.

The group helped her set up media interviews in Singapore, and also passed questions from This Week in Asia to her. In Jia Hui’s replies, sent through Crime Library founder Joseph Tan, she said her family had grappled with guilt for the past two decades.

“My parents feel guilty for not taking good care of my sister,” she said. “My father passed away in 2016, and as for my mother, she cries every time she thinks of my sister. She tries not to think by working in her own coffee shop from dusk to dawn, tiring herself out before sleeping. It’s been like that for 20 years.”

Jia Hui’s parents twice went to the police for updates on their daughter’s case, once in the late 1990s and again in 2014, but were told they would be contacted if there were new developments in the case.

Things changed when Ahmad Danial Mohamed Rafa’ee, 35, was charged in December for the murder of Felicia Teo Wei Ling, who was 19 years old when she disappeared in 2007.

“I read Felicia Teo’s case and discussed it with my mother before reaching out to Crime Library Singapore. I told her that the technology today is better than before. If Felicia’s case can be solved, why not my sister’s?” Jia Hui said.

On Monday, the police told The Straits Times that Shiow Rong’s case had been reviewed several times since 1995, and that they would work to verify the new tip-offs that had come in this month. In the previous reviews, they said, they had looked into all “information provided by members of the public or the deceased’s family, and leveraged advancements in forensic technology”.

Tan from Crime Library told This Week in Asia two informants had come forward after Jia Hui’s media interviews and their details had been given to the police. One claimed to be a regular patron at her mother’s drinks stall and said they had information on a suspect that matched the police’s photofit released in 1995.

COLD CASE BREAKTHROUGH

Singapore is one of the safest cities in the world, coming in second behind Tokyo in The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Safe Cities Index 2019. Nine homicides were recorded in 2018, amounting to 0.2 cases for every 100,000 people, compared with five cases per 100,000 people in the United States and 1.1 in Britain that year, according to the latest available data from the United Nations.

From 2015 to 2019, the city state saw an average of 1,851 missing persons reported a year, according to data from the Singapore police, which declined to provide statistics for murders.

When Jia Hui’s appeal once again drew attention to Shiow Rong’s case, public interest was also rekindled in other unsolved murders. These included 18-year-old Winnifred Teo’s death in 1985 after she went out for an evening run, and that of Dini Haryati, 19, who was raped and strangled in 1997 and found dressed only in a white T-shirt with her body covered in bruises.

Felicia Teo’s remains were never found, but when news that she had been murdered came to light, social media was abuzz with sympathetic netizens and armchair sleuths offering theories about what happened and their hopes that the responsible party would be brought to justice.

She disappeared on June 29, 2007, after a visit to a friend’s flat at night, and was reported missing on July 3. Teo was at the flat with two men, who claimed she had left in the wee hours of the night. Despite a search and reviews of closed-circuit television footage, police did not find incriminating evidence.

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In a December statement, the police explained that Teo’s case was reviewed in July last year and then referred to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), as part of a process involving selected cases unsolved “for a protracted period of time”.

The CID uncovered new leads while tracing items believed to be in Teo’s possession when she went missing, one of which was later linked to the man they subsequently arrested and charged.

“Preliminary investigations revealed that Felicia had died before the report was lodged on July 3, 2007, and that the suspect had allegedly disposed of Felicia’s body subsequently with the male friend,” the statement said, adding that the search for her remains is ongoing.

The police are also currently trying to locate the male friend, who is believed to not currently be in Singapore.

SEEKING ANSWERS

Gregory Vijayendran, a Singapore-based senior counsel who has been practising law for 27 years, said unsolved murders were rare in the country, with only one or two cases per decade.

In such cases, he said, family members could – through their own sleuthing and the help of organisations such as Crime Library Singapore as well as members of the public – search for clues or leads that could be passed on to the police investigating officer (IO).

“Beyond that, there is little else they could do. The state has powers of investigation and compelling document production. A private person has no such recourse. At best, they can follow up diligently and regularly with the IO until … a decision is made by the Attorney General’s Chamber to bring charges against individuals or close the file.”

While each case varies, Vijayendran said the closure of a file could be influenced by the coroner’s verdict, such as a ruling of death by misadventure. A coroner’s inquiry was often conducted in cases where a death occurred under suspicious circumstances, he added.

But unlike civil cases, there was no statute of limitation or time bar for criminal cases in Singapore, Vijayendran said, adding: “Once a crime, always a crime.”

Tan of Crime Library Singapore said he had helped more than 100 families pursue cold missing-persons and murder cases since 2000.

One challenge he often faced was overcoming the family members’ fear of speaking up about the matter, he said. Sometimes families would come to him and then later change their minds about pursuing the matter.

In Shiow Rong’s case, her sister Jia Hui, having grown up, “had the courage to pursue this”, though he said the family still had concerns about their own safety.

“Sometimes, the victim’s next of kin does not want to face any repercussion [over the incident being publicised], as the killer is still at large,” Tan said. “Many Singaporeans are still afraid of so-called retribution, afraid that the killer will come for them.”