Murder of Frankie Tan

On the night of 24 October 1984, a 39-year-old American Express banker, Tan Tik Siah, otherwise known as Frankie Tan, was ambushed and attacked by four men as he arrived home from work in Singapore. He was strangled to death by his assailants and his body was found by his wife, who reported the murder to the police. Three of the assailants and the victim's wife (who was in fact aware of the murder plot all along) were arrested and charged in the death.

The murder was a classic case of a crime of passion that started with the extramarital affairs Frankie Tan had engaged in and the abuse of his wife, which led the wife, Lee Chee Poh, and Tan's adoptive brother Vasavan Sathiadew to plot the killing as revenge for the victim's infidelity and abuse. Poh and Sathiadew paid three Thai construction workers to murder Tan.

Throughout the 45-day murder trial, the three murderers, who challenged the validity of their confessions, tried to deny their guilt in the trial by pleading diminished responsibility and placing the blame on the fourth man and fugitive who was still missing as of today, blaming him as the one who killed Frankie Tan while their intention was merely to wallop the murdered victim. The lower division of the Supreme Court of Singapore rejected these defences and sentenced the three killers to death. The death sentences were affirmed by the Supreme Court's higher division and this affirmation resulted in the trio's executions on 23 October 1992. Lee Chee Poh was the only one of these four accused who escaped execution and instead received a 7-year prison sentence in a separate trial for manslaughter due to the sympathetic circumstances surrounding her life under the abuse of Tan, which drove her to the plot to kill her husband. Provided by Wikipedia