The Andrew Road triple murder was a case of robbery turned murder in a bungalow at Andrew Road, Singapore, in 1983. The robbery was committed by two young men, Sek Kim Wah and Nyu Kok Meng, armed with a rifle and knife. During the robbery, Sek murdered three of the five hostages while the Nyu protected the remaining two hostages from his partner. Eventually both were arrested, with Sek charged with murder and hanged while Nyu, who did not take part in the killings, receiving a life sentence and caning for armed robbery. It was further revealed in police investigations that Sek was also responsible for an unrelated double murder of two more victims, whom he killed using the same modus operandi as for the Andrew Road victims. He is seen as the first and only serial killer in Singapore to date, albeit Adrian Lim killed three victims in three separate instances.
Crime Armed robbery On the morning of 23 July 1983, at around 8 am, 10-year-old Dawn Jacinta Tay Aishan (), the youngest daughter of 61-year-old retired businessman Robert Tay Bak Hong (), was roller-skating outside her house while waiting for her Mandarin tutor, Madam Tang So Ha () to arrive to give her lessons. At around the same time, two houses away, two young men were fixing their motorcycle. The tutor arrived at the house thirty minutes later.
Forty minutes after the arrival of Dawn's tutor, the two men seen repairing the motorcycle - 19-year-olds National Serviceman Sek Kim Wah and Malaysian Nyu Kok Meng - saw the front gate of Dawn's bungalow left open. They took out a loaded M16 rifle (which Sek had stolen from Nee Soon military camp where he served his National Service) and brandished a knife before barging into the bungalow, first taking the Tay family's Filipino domestic helper Jovita Sandrina Virador (nicknamed Duby, also spelled Jovita Merador, Jovita Verador, Jovita Verazor or Jovita Mirador), aged 27, hostage. They entered the house with Jovita and used the rifle to threaten Dawn, Tang, and Dawn's 40 or 45-year-old mother Annie Low Au Ie (), forcing them inside a room before tying them up. One of the men forced Dawn to call her father, who was in the back garden; Robert Tay was lured into the room and tied up as well.
After telling Sek where to find her jewelry, Low was told to write a cheque for $5000, which was immediately taken by Sek to the bank to cash while Nyu stayed behind to guard the hostages. Feeling sorry for the tutor, whose head was covered in a plastic bag, he removed it for her. Sek returned with the money but was not satisfied with the loot they had, so he took Tay to the bank with him to withdraw more cash. During the time Sek was out with Tay, Nyu told the women that he would not harm them, as it was his first robbery and he had no intention to harm anyone. At the request of Low, Nyu shook hands with Dawn as a promise to not hurt them.
Triple murder
Sek later returned with $7,000. After gagging the victims and taking Tay, Low, and Jovita into separate rooms, the robbers continued to ransack the house. Afraid of leaving behind witnesses, Sek secretly decided to murder all the hostages. He first used a raffia string to strangle Tay, before using a wooden stool to repeatedly bludgeon him until he was dead, fracturing his skull. He entered the master bedroom, where he strangled Jovita and Low, again using a wooden stool to repeatedly strike Low's covered head.
After being alerted by the thumping sounds in the house and witnessing Sek's actions, Nyu armed himself with the rifle and locked himself in the room with Dawn and her tutor, intending to protect the surviving hostages. Sek later returned to the room where Nyu, Dawn, and Tang were hiding and demanded that Nyu let him in to murder the remaining hostages, actually intending to also kill Nyu. Nyu adamantly refused and asked Sek why would he commit murder when he had already robbed the victims of their money, and told Sek to leave. After a heated row between the two men, Sek left the house in Tay's Mercedes car with the loot.
Nyu then released both Dawn and Tang and told them to run away, informing them of the murder of Dawn's parents and maid and furnishing them with Sek's address. He drew a map of the area where Sek lived in on an envelope and gave it to Tang, who was afraid that Nyu still might harm her and her student and secretly armed herself with a small knife. Nyu also gave her his Malaysian identity card, telling her to help him buy a coffin and inform his parents and grandmother that he was sorry, as he wanted to commit suicide. He also asked Tang to bury him next to his deceased best friend Lau Beng Hiong (), whose Chinese name he wrote inside Dawn's exercise book before giving it to her.
Nyu wanted her to repeat his requests, and despite her fear of Nyu, Tang tried to dissuade Nyu from committing suicide. It was only when Nyu pointed the rifle at her that Tang fled the house with Dawn (who saw her parents' bodies) to a neighbour's house to contact the police. Nyu tried to shoot himself twice, but failed, as he did not know how to use the rifle. Frustrated, Nyu fled the bungalow, but not before leaving behind the rifle and stolen ammunition, for fear that Sek would murder more people. He met up with Sek in another safe place that afternoon to divide the loot. Nyu later left Singapore on that night itself for Malaysia using a friend's passport, while Sek remained in Singapore.
Arrests Meanwhile, the police arrived at the bungalow and searched the house for the robbers, but they could only find the bodies. The case was assigned to Inspector P. Sathasivam of the Criminal Investigation Department. The police knew that Tay, a father of eight adult children (including one foster son) and a grandfather of five grandchildren, had a reputation of being a generous and virtuous businessman who had helped ex-convicts to reintegrate into society by providing them work at the factory, hence they ruled out the possibility of a revenge killing. With Nyu's Malaysian identity card and the map drawn by Nyu, the police managed to arrest Sek six days later at his elder sister Sek Yoke Mui's flat on 29 July 1983. Unable to cope with his guilt, Nyu surrendered himself to the police three days after Sek's arrest and was extradited back to Singapore on 3 August 1983. Both men were charged with murder.
Background of the robbers
Sek Kim Wah
Sek Kim Wah (Traditional Chinese: 薛金華; Simplified Chinese: 薛金华; Pinyin: Xuē Jīnhuá) was a Singaporean born sometime between 18 March and 23 July 1964. The details of his early childhood and life before the murders are based on the court testimonies given by family members and Sek himself. Sek came from a broken family, in which he grew up under neglectful parents with an elder brother Sek Kim Siong (born in 1962), an elder sister Sek Yoke Mui (born in 1963) and Sek Nyuk Ngok (born in 1966). His father Sek Yuon Chin was said to be a heavy and compulsive gambler who was rarely home and later left the family to live with a mistress in Ang Mo Kio when Sek was 9. Similarly, Sek's mother Hoh Mooi Chai also left the family to have an affair with a married man. Another aggravating factor was the children's separation from their grandparents after a heated quarrel between their mother and the grandparents, resulting in the couple's four young children, who were not close to each other, fending for themselves and stealing to survive.
Sek, who only attended four years of primary school before dropping out due to financial reasons, was said to have been an ill-behaved child. His sister Sek Yoke Mui said that he was obsessed with Wuxia novels and Kungfu movies in his childhood and had molested his younger sister Nyuk Ngok at age 12. Sek was also said to enjoy injuring himself at times, describing it as thrilling. He and his elder brother Kim Siong fought with other students in school, and both had bad, impulsive tempers. There was one occasion when both brothers were chained at home for stealing a bicycle and fighting. Eventually, Kim Siong was jailed in a boys' home for theft, and was jailed a second time for going AWOL during his National Service. It was at this point, Kim Siong claimed, he started to reconsider his life choices and decided to turn over a new leaf and be more mature; as a result, he restarted his education and later found a stable job as an electrician a few years later.
On the other hand, Sek Kim Wah, who became a secret society member at age 13 by joining a gang called "Gi It San", was sentenced to 4 years in a boys' home in 1979 for theft. He was paroled in 1981 for good behaviour and joined the army a year later to serve his National Service. It was on 30 June 1983 when he first committed murder: he robbed and killed 42-year-old illegal bookmaker Lim Khee Sin () and his 32-year-old bar waitress girlfriend Ong Ah Hong () somewhere in East Coast Park, strangling them in the same way he strangled the victims at Andrew Road. He dumped their bodies at the Seletar Reservoir dirt track after stealing Lim's driving license. This case remained unsolved until Sek himself confessed to it after his arrest.
Sometime in 1981, while he was still in the boys' home, Sek was assigned work planting orchids in the garden of the household of Robert Tay. He was also given temporary employment in Tay's factory. It was this that led Sek to want to rob the wealthy businessman.
Nyu Kok Meng
Nyu Kok Meng (Traditional Chinese: 饒國明; Simplified Chinese: 饶国明; Pinyin: Ráo Guómíng) is a Malaysian born sometime between 24 July 1963 and 23 July 1964. Nyu was the sixth of eight children. His 62-year-old father worked as a driver in Singapore. His hometown was in Pekan Nanas, Johor.
According to Nyu's 42-year-old mother, her son was originally a well-behaved and helpful child, always working part-time in a rubber plantation while studying in secondary school to provide money for the family. Nyu eventually dropped out of school due to financial difficulties and having no time to study. After this, Nyu went to work in a bakery nearby his hometown and became the caretaker of his boss's children, sending money to his family monthly before he left Malaysia to work as a welder in Singapore in 1981.
It was there when Nyu gradually began to go astray, as he began to befriend and interact with secret society members and ignored his family's advice to not do so. One of the society members would later become his best friend, Lau Beng Hiong, whom Nyu told Tang he wanted to be buried with. Lau, who was 18 when he died, was killed by four members of a rival gang during a gang fight on 22 May 1983, two months before the Andrew Road murders. Nyu, who had only met Sek a few days before, agreed to take part in the robbery after Sek asked him.
Nyu Kok Meng's trial Both Sek Kim Wah and Nyu Kok Meng were initially set to stand trial for murder together. But on 8 July 1985, the prosecution, having gone through the details of the case, decided to withdraw the triple murder charges against Nyu, and instead charged him with committing armed robbery with a firearm under the Arms Offences Act, which Nyu pleaded guilty to and was convicted of. The next day, Nyu Kok Meng, who was represented by prominent lawyer Leo Fernando, was sentenced to life imprisonment and 6 strokes of the cane by High Court judge Punch Coomaraswamy, who took note of Nyu's remorse, his full cooperation with the police and the fact that he had surrendered himself.