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SINGAPORE: A man was sentenced to death on Thursday (November 12) for murdering his pregnant wife and four-year-old daughter in their Woodlands apartment three years ago.
The judge called it a “tragic case” of lost lives and “a shattered family.”
Teo Ghim Heng, 45, was convicted of two counts of murder for killing his wife, Choong Pei Shan, who was six months pregnant, before doing the same to their daughter.
He strangled his 39-year-old wife with a towel after arguing with her about finances. She allegedly insulted him in front of her daughter, calling him a useless father and husband, and he strangled her with a towel before using his hands to finish the job.
The girl was in the room playing and watching television while this was happening. After killing his wife, Teo decided to kill his daughter and himself to “reunite the family” in death.
The girl cried as they strangled her, and Teo placed the two bodies on a bed and slept next to them for seven days.
LEE: Woodlands double murder: ‘Go find your mom first, dad will come soon,’ said the defendant to his daughter
He repeatedly tried to commit suicide but failed, eventually setting the bodies on fire and trying to lie down next to them but “flinched” due to the heat.
They were found on the first day of Chinese New Year in 2017, when Teo’s brother-in-law knocked on the door and detected a pungent smell coming from the window slats.
He had gone to find his sister after she failed to show up for the usual Chinese New Year festivities and did not respond to phone calls or messages.
When Teo finally opened the door to a group of Singapore Civil Defense Force police and officers, he seemed “surprised”, before approaching his brother-in-law’s face to tell him that his sister was dead.
LEE: Woodlands double deaths: ‘Your sister is dead’, defendant told his brother-in-law
The motive for Teo’s murders was not discussed by either side: He was previously a top real estate agent making around S $ 20,000 a month, before the industry changed and he faced financial difficulties, struggling to pay bills as an employee in a business. renovation company.
He also racked up gambling debts, credit card bills and school fees for his daughter’s school, which he was unable to pay and kept putting off.
Money problems led to frequent fights with his wife, and Teo began to suspect that his daughter was not his after finding his wife with another man in the master bedroom in October 2014.
The couple also fought over transferring their daughter to a less expensive school and because Teo asked his wife to find a job.
The prosecution argued that Teo lied to the police and the defense psychiatrist to support a defense of diminished liability, in which a defendant suffers from a specific mental abnormality that substantially affected his mental responsibility for causing the deaths.
Prosecutors also said that Teo retained his mental capacity at the time, as he could describe in great detail how his wife had allegedly scolded him, as well as how he killed his wife and daughter.
Defense attorneys headed by Mr. Eugene Thuraisingam asked the court to convict Teo of wrongful death that did not amount to murder, saying that Teo had been suffering from Major Depressive Disorder and it had been seriously and suddenly provoked.
The maximum penalty for murder is death. A third charge against Teo of causing the death of the unborn fetus was dismissed for trial purposes.
