1998 Tampines flat murder

On 26 August 1998, 50-year-old Tan Eng Yan (陈英燕 Chén Yīngyàn), a fruit stall assistant working at a market in Tampines, was found brutally murdered in the toilet of her Tampines flat. Tan, also known as Lily or Tan Ah Leng, was stabbed and slashed 58 times and four of the knife wounds were fatal. Her money, amounting to over S$2,200 in cash and S$6,000 in coins, was also stolen from her flat. It took five days before the police arrested a fishmonger named Lau Lee Peng (刘立平 Líu Lìpíng), who was a close friend of Tan, after he confessed during witness questioning that he killed Tan and led the police to where he hid the money.

Lau claimed that on the day of the murder, he went to Tan's flat to ask for information on the address of a woman who owed him money. However, he was gravely provoked into killing Tan after Tan failed to find the paper that had the address written on it. The prosecution's evidence rebutted this story, arguing Tan had coldly and ruthlessly murdered Tan with the motive of committing robbery in order to steal Tan's money to discharge his huge debts from gambling. On 12 November 1999, Lau was sentenced to death for murder and was hanged on 1 September 2000 after losing his appeal. The appeal case of Lau became one of the iconic legal cases where it touched on the context of the defence of "sudden and grave provocation" against murder in Singapore. Provided by Wikipedia