Tan Chor Jin

In January 2021, The Straits Times published an article that recalled the three most notorious gangsters from Singapore, which included Tan Chor Jin among these three people given his notoreity as the killer of Lim Hock Soon in 2006. The other two were "Singapore Siao" Aw Teck Boon and Ah Kong's founder Roland Tan. Roland Tan was wanted by Singaporean police for the unsolved murder of Lam Cheng Siew at Bras Basah in 1969, and he escaped to the Netherlands, where he founded Ah Kong and dabbled in illegal drug trafficking before he re-settled in Copenhagen, Denmark, where he passed away due to a heart attack in May 2020. Aw Teck Boon, a triad leader of the 60-member Sio Kun Tong gang, was known for causing the death of a man during a fatal assault involving more than 100 gang members, and had also served detention under the Criminal Law (Temporary Provisions) Act for being an underworld leader. Aw was later killed by an unknown assailant in May 1999, and his funeral was attended by many members of the public and some police officers who paid their respects despite his gangland connections, as some residents remembered his kindness and him helping them getting out of financial trouble. Aw was survived by his then 28-year-old Thai wife and a then four-year-old daughter. The killer(s) of Aw were never found.

In February 2020, when the Singapore Police Force (SPF) commemorated its 200th anniversary by setting an exhibition at the National Museum of Singapore, The Straits Times interviewed the past and present police officers, who spoke about several high-profile crimes they managed during their years of career in the police force. One of them, 55-year-old Superintendent Abdul Halim Osman, who was still serving in the force, mentions that the case of Lim Hock Soon's murder as his most memorable of all cases he encountered before. Abdul Halim said to the newspaper that back then, when he was the investigative officer of the case and saw the bullet-riddled corpse of Lim lying in his study room, there was a need for him anad his team of CID officers to manage the chaotic situation and crime scene properly to ensure no stone was left unturned, given the distress of the family members and the fact that a serious offence of murder was committed in such a situation where a killer took away a life in front of the witnesses.

In July 2015, Singapore's national daily newspaper The Straits Times published a e-book titled Guilty As Charged: 25 Crimes That Have Shaken Singapore Since 1965, which included the case of Tan Chor Jin as one of the top 25 crimes that shocked the nation since its independence in 1965. The book was borne out of collaboration between the Singapore Police Force and the newspaper itself. The e-book was edited by ST News Associate editor Abdul Hafiz bin Abdul Samad. The paperback edition of the book was published and first hit bookshelves in June 2017. The paperback edition first entered the ST bestseller list on 8 August 2017, a month after publication.

On 8 August 2016, after standing trial in a district court, 43-year-old Ho Yueh Keong, who fathered a child (aged 3 in 2016) while on the run, pleaded guilty to abetting Tan's escape while the other charge of withholding evidence was taken into consideration during sentencing. Two days after his conviction, Ho was sentenced to 20 months’ imprisonment on 10 August 2016.

Ho Yueh Keong, the Malaysian who assisted Tan in escaping Singapore, spent a total of nine years and five months on the run by hiding in Malaysia. In July 2015, Ho was finally caught by Malaysian police when he tried to go to Batam, Indonesia from Malaysia, and he was brought back to Singapore to face charges of helping Tan to escape from Singapore and concealing information about the murder of Lim Hock Soon.

At around midnight, Tan, who was together with his wife and four others in one of the three rooms they booked, craved for some Hainanese chicken rice, which he ordered through room service. An undercover Malaysian policeman posed as a waiter and delivered the food to Tan's room on the 13th floor. The cop used the chance to scan the room's layout and how many were with Tan. A listening device was stuck on one of the dishes. Tan and the others went to bed at around 2 am, and two hours later, a 12-member police team arrived at the three rooms, where they arrested Tan and the others.

Ngoi Yew Fatt, the other Singaporean murder suspect who was arrested together with Tan Chor Jin in Malaysia, was eventually extradited to Singapore for trial in 2009 after undergoing criminal investigations for unrelated offences in Malaysia. He was convicted of causing grievous hurt resulting in death, and sentenced to two years and nine months' imprisonment. Ngoi was released in 2011, and he later died in a traffic accident on 24 February 2013, at the age of 54.

Subsequently, Tan was charged with the execution-style murder of Lim, though the charge was later amended to one of an unlawful discharge of a firearm with intent to cause hurt or death in Singapore. Both charges were known to warrant the mandatory death sentence if found guilty, yet Tan chose to represent himself in his defence during the court proceedings, which failed and led to Tan being sentenced to death as a result of a lack of evidence in his favour. After losing his appeals, Tan was hanged on 9 January 2009. His two accomplices, who played a part in assisting Tan to commit the crime and to escape Singapore, were each sentenced to six and twenty months' imprisonment in 2006 and 2016 respectively.

After submitting the clemency plea, it was decided by the President of Singapore that Tan's appeal should be dismissed on 5 January 2009. The execution was scheduled to commence four days later on 9 January 2009 at dawn.

On 9 January 2009, 42-year-old Tan Chor Jin was hanged at dawn. According to a monk, who accompanied Tan for the last three hours before his execution, he said that Tan had passed on peacefully. His body was cremated and the ashes were scattered into the sea after his funeral.

This case was re-enacted in a Singaporean crime show named Crimewatch. It first aired as the fourth episode of the show's annual season in June 2009. In this episode, Tan was portrayed by Christopher Chew, who was physically taller and thinner than Tan's real-life counterpart and more fluent in speaking English, but the details about Tan and his crime in this episode were largely faithful of those of Tan in real-life.

When pending his submission of the petition, during one prison visit by his lawyers, Tan asked Anandan if the submission deadline can be postponed and the process be delayed. Anandan wrote that when he asked why, Tan replied that he just had a son, who was two years old in 2008, and the young boy had started to call him "Papa" (translated as father in Chinese). He said he was ready to die, but he just wanted to spend more time with the little boy and hear him calling his father a few months more. While the lawyer suggested that he should change lawyers so that he could get more time to prepare his clemency petition, Tan refused to do so as he was grateful to Anandan for agreeing to take his case and helping him, and he said that it would only mislead people into thinking that the lawyer was dismissed based on whichever errors he did to his client.

In the trial, which began on 22 January 2007, Tan cross-examined the witnesses and called his own witnesses. He even warned the witnesses to not lie about what he did when their answers were not in his favour. From what Anandan researched about Tan before he began to defend him in his appeal, he stated that Tan had done his best to do so, but the problems were that Tan was always missing the important and relevant points, being too emotional and dramatic in some aspects while defending himself, and being untrained in law, Tan naturally did not do much of a successful defence against the charge he was facing.

At the end of the trial on 22 May 2007, the High Court found Tan guilty and sentenced him to death.

During the process of appeals, Tan Chor Jin was confined on death row in Changi Prison. He was said to have converted to Buddhism while in jail, and adopted a Buddhist name for himself. He also befriended some of the death row inmates, including Leong Siew Chor, a notorious murderer who killed his 22-year-old lover Liu Hong Mei before dismembering her body into seven pieces and abandoning them at Kallang River. Leong was hanged at the age of 52 on 30 November 2007 for this gruesome crime. Coincidentally, Leong was one of the clients of Tan's lawyer Subhas Anandan.

Early on the morning of 15 February 2006, at a HDB block in Serangoon, a family living in one of the block's second-floor units was robbed of their valuables, with the patriarch of the family being shot dead.

In his statements, Ah Chwee, who was Tan's childhood friend and fellow gang member from Ang Soon Tong, said that when he received word from a friend that Tan was in Singapore and Tan was looking for him. Ah Chwee then met up with Tan in the friend's flat and on Tan's request, he drove him to Lim's place of residence in Serangoon in the early hours of 15 February 2006, hours before Lim met his end in Tan's hands. Ah Chwee said he noticed that Tan brought along a black bag but he did not know that it contained a gun, knife and some spare ammunition.

After they reached Serangoon, Ah Chwee remained in the car as Tan went into the block to look for Lim, this time armed and ready to rob the nightclub owner. This time, the wait lasted for 30 minutes, and Tan returned, with a white plastic bag full of the money and valuables he stole from Lim and seemingly flustered (as he killed Lim earlier on). Ah Chwee recounted that Tan asked him to drive to the canal nearby the house of Ah Chwee's friend. Tan was said to have gone there to do something. Afterwards, they went back to the friend's house, and contacted a Malaysian named Ho Yueh Keong (何岳强; hé yuèqiáng), alias Moh Tang, who subsequently went out of Malaysia together with Tan. Ho had earlier on helped drive Tan into Singapore on the day before Lim Hock Soon's murder and reportedly knew in January 2006 that Tan had planned to murder Lim.

Tan, who planned to go to Chiang Mai, Thailand, spent the next few days staying in cheap places. On 25 February 2006, he decided to check into a five-star hotel called Grand Plaza Park Royal Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, where he went to procure a fake passport under his alias Tony Kia. The Malaysian police went to the hotel to monitor his movements, with a plan to capture him.

On 1 March 2006, despite his supposed fear of flying, Tan was extradited back to Singapore by flight, with the Singaporean police officers escorting him on the trip. After he arrived in Singapore and taken to the local courts, Tan was officially charged with first-degree murder (or intentional murder) under the Penal Code. If found guilty, it would be the death penalty Tan was waiting for. After which, Tan was taken back to the crime scene by CID police officers to re-enact his case. Reportedly, both Lim's widow and Lim's elderly mother, the latter who lived next to her son's home, shouted and hurled expletives at Tan upon seeing him, telling him to go to hell and to pay for what he did. Later, a lawyer named John Abraham was assigned to defend Tan in his upcoming trial for murder. Tan was also remanded in Changi Prison for psychiatric assessment.

According to Tan's wife, when she visited her husband in police custody, Tan confessed to having an affair and had children with the mistress. He also asked her to meet up with his mistress, who received news of his arrest from the Malaysian media. The two women, who were initially hostile to each other when they first met, later calmed down as they found themselves in the same boat and it was pointless to be angry. They reportedly got along like sisters, and were always together during their visits to Tan while he was in prison. Tan's wife also said that her husband wanted her to remarry in light of the imminent fate he was facing. In August 2006, Tan's mistress gave birth to their second child, a son, but Tan could not visit his child even though his wife was present in the hospital.

In August 2006, while Tan was still awaiting trial, the prosecution decided to dismiss the murder charge and instead proceed with a fresh charge of an unlawful discharge of a firearm with the intention to cause death or hurt under the Arms Offences Act of Singapore (enacted since 1973). If convicted of this new charge, Tan Chor Jin would still face the gallows.

Regardless, in his trial, Tan gave his account of what happened. He claimed that he only wanted to scare Lim as he feared that Lim might send someone to kill him. A few years ago, Tan and Lim ran an illegal horse racing and football betting ring, in which he accepted the monetary bets placed by Lim's runners. By April 2004, he said, the runners had suffered from losses of $220,000 but Lim refused to settle the debt. In 2005, Tan discovered that Mr Lim had ordered people to go after him and kill him. Hence, he went to Thailand to buy a semi-automatic Beretta .22-calibre pistol in Johor for self-defence, and to settle scores with him while trying to not having an undue disadvantage given his blind right eye. He said that on that morning of 15 February 2006 at 3 am, three hours before Lim's death, he went there with a plan to settle their issues peacefully but Lim rudely rejected him and closed the door on his face. To rebut the fact that he owed the victim money, Tan even tried to portray himself as an affluent and generous businessman without any money problems by cross-examining his friends, who appeared in the court, to make them tell the court that Tan had made donations of RM100,000 to a Taoist temple in late 2005, as well as making a purchase of a Buddhist pendant with a monetary amount between S$20,000 (RM46,000) and S$30,000 (RM69,000) in cash in January 2006.

In his memoir, it was revealed that prior to Tan's trial, Anandan actually received a request from someone to defend Tan in his trial. Anandan admitted in his book that he did not accept the request, because Anandan himself was actually a close friend of Lim Hock Soon, the same person whom Tan had killed on that fateful day of 15 February 2006. Anandan wrote that before Lim's untimely death, he was a long-time customer of Lim's nightclub, and had patronised the place with his clients and colleagues, hence he became acquainted with Lim and Lim's family members. From his personal relationship with Lim, Anandan affectionately called his friend "Lim Piggy" due to Lim's large weight.

According to the man's description, and having asked questions to Lim's acquaintances about the mysterious one-eyed man, the police identified the suspected one-eyed killer as Tan Chor Jin, who was an old acquaintance of Lim. According to one of Lim's close acquaintances, he told police that Tan, also known as Tony Kia to secret society members, had borrowed some $30,000 from Lim, who was known as "Guni Ter" or Milk Pig in the underworld due to his obesity. Tan had never returned the money to Lim, resulting in Lim taking the friend to come with him to Malaysia in 2003 to confront Tan and asked him to return the money. Tan was said to have asked for more time to raise the sum, and he was never heard from again until the day before Lim's death, where he approached Lim at around 3 am, as he wanted to borrow more money. Lim's friend informed the police that Lim was said to be fearful as Tan knew where he lived despite the fact that he never gave Tan his address.

Tan was married in 2001 to Siau Fang Fang (萧芳芳; xiāo fāngfāng), a Malaysian who was born in 1981. Even though he moved to Hougang after his marriage, he lived with his wife and in-laws in Malaysia, where he operated his business. He had no children with Siau. Tan would later on have a mistress named Lian Yee Hwa (连依华; lián yīhuá), who was the same age as his wife. Together, he and Lian have two children, a daughter (born 2002) and son (born 2006).

In 1999, Tan had a traffic accident. Although he survived it, Tan suffered an eye injury due to the broken glass pieces having flown into his right eye during the crash, which pierced through and thus blinded him in the right eye.

Tan, who had two sisters and four brothers, grew up living in a three-room flat at Kim Keat. He was very close to his siblings and filial to his parents. His father and mother died of old age in 1997 and 1998 respectively.

Sometime in the 1980s, Tan was jailed for five years in Changi Prison for gang-related activities, including rioting and fighting. A former inmate from the prison reported that during his time of imprisonment, Tan was well-behaved and spent most of his time studying. He also liked to play Chinese chess during his free time, even when he was not in prison.

Tan Chor Jin (Chinese: 陈楚仁; pinyin: Chén Chǔrén; 29 March 1966 – 9 January 2009), also known by his alias Tony Kia, was a Singaporean gang leader known for fatally shooting 41-year-old Lim Hock Soon, his former friend and nightclub owner, using a semi-automatic Beretta 0.22 calibre pistol on 15 February 2006. Tan, who had underworld affiliations and was a member of Ang Soon Tong since his early years, had also robbed the Lim family of their valuables before he escaped Singapore to Malaysia, where he was arrested ten days later. The media gave him the name "One-eyed Dragon" given that he was blind in the right eye.

Tan Chor Jin, the youngest of seven children, was born on 29 March 1966. Tan's parents were originally from Guangdong, China before they immigrated to Singapore in the 1950s, and they worked as food stall owners to make ends meet.

As he grew into adulthood, Tan Chor Jin joined the Ang Soon Tong gang, which existed since the 1950s and had a vast criminal network in trafficking drugs and arms, and both illegal money lending and gambling. Tan had also engaged in such activities, and during his time in the gang, Tan rose through the ranks and became a feared triad leader of the underworld. He also engaged into a career as an illegal bookie who collect horse-racing and football bets at a coffee shop in Balestier Road.