Sundarti Supriyanto

The prosecution did not appeal against the High Court’s verdict, and Sundarti herself also did not appeal against her sentence. Currently, Sundarti is in prison serving her life sentence. If she served with good behaviour in prison, she would become eligible for release on parole after serving at least 20 years, and the parole hearing would be taking place on or after 10 June 2022. She may also be entitled to appeal to the President of Singapore to commute the remaining part of her sentence after serving an appropriate length of her sentence.

Eventually, the unhealthy lifestyle and anguish Poh suffered from the deaths of his wife and daughter took a toll on Poh’s health, and he experienced a stroke in early 2008, which affected his speech ability. Poh’s transplanted kidney also began to fail, causing him to undergo dialysis again. Poh’s condition worsened to the point of hospitalisation on 3 October 2008, and he died a week later on 10 October, at the age of 50. Leon was reportedly entrusted to the care of Poh’s 72-year-old elderly mother and Poh’s siblings.

On 24 September 2004, Justice Rubin was ready with his verdict in Sundarti’s case. In a packed courtroom, many people, including the victim’s family, prosecutors and Sundarti, were shocked and surprised as Justice Rubin read out that he decided to convict Sundarti of culpable homicide not amounting to murder after finding her not guilty of murder.

On 18 August 2003, Sundarti Supriyanto first stood trial in the High Court of Singapore for the double murder charges relating to the deaths of Ng and Crystal. Sundarti was represented by Singaporean lawyer Mohamed Muzammil bin Mohamed, who was assisted by Johan Ismail. The prosecution was led by Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Jaswant Singh, who was assisted by his three colleagues Eugene Lee, Aaron Lee and Adrian Yeo from the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) of Singapore. Initially, the trial should start in April 2003 but due to the 2003 SARS outbreak in Singapore, it was postponed to August 2003.

On 28 May 2002, 22-year-old Sundarti Supriyanto murdered her employer Angie Ng and Ng’s daughter Crystal Poh. By then, she did so due to her getting harshly abused and starved by her employer to the point of losing control and thus committed the double murders.

On the fateful day of 28 May 2002, at around morning in Ng’s flat, Sundarti was given two packets of instant noodles by Ng, who grudgingly did so after the maid incessantly told her about her hunger. However, Ng asked her to eat the noodles raw, and told her to eat in the kitchen toilet. Sundarti, who put the noodles and sauce in a plastic container filled with hot water, only got to eat a few bites before Ng took her to her Bukit Merah office. Over there, later in the afternoon, Ng again physically abused the maid over not properly caring for the children. This caused Sundarti to finally snap and angrily asked why did Ng have to cause hurt and humiliation to her daily. Ng, in response, scolded her and scratched the maid’s face in the face of her defiance. This sparked a fight between the women.

Initially, in the hospital, to several witnesses and the police, Sundarti gave a false account that it was a group of black-clothed, masked men who went into the office and set fire in it, causing the fire to kill Ng and Crystal. It was only on 10 June 2002, when the police decided to arrest Sundarti as a suspect and charged her with murder after the autopsy results contained the discovery of the stab wounds on Ng and her daughter.

As such, Justice Rubin reduced the murder charges and convict Sundarti of culpable homicide not amounting to murder. After hearing the submissions from both the prosecution and defence, Justice Rubin decided to sentence Sundarti to the maximum term of life imprisonment, and backdate her sentence to the date of her arrest on 10 June 2002, based on the extreme violence and grave nature of the lethal attack Sundarti initiated against Ng and Crystal.

In September 2001, after she came back from Singapore, Sundarti’s father died due to unknown reasons. As a result, Sundarti decided to undergo further training to get a better-paying job in order to better assist her family financially during these difficult times. After completing further training, Sundarti returned to Singapore in April 2002 to accept a second work offer.

After she completed her training in Jakarta, Sundarti was first offered a job as a domestic maid in Singapore, and her first employers were a Chinese couple with three children. Sundarti first set foot in Singapore in April 1999 and began working for the Chinese family. She had once stolen from the family but the agency did not do anything. It took her two years working on this job in Singapore before she returned to Indonesia.

The second job offer came from 34-year-old Angie Ng Wee Peng, the wife of 44-year-old businessman Drake Poh Teong Kang, who made headlines in 1998 for his plans to open a casino and resort in Myanmar. The couple have two children - an elder daughter named Crystal Poh Shi Qi and a younger son named Leon Poh Ye Sheng - who were born in 1999 and 2000 respectively. After an interview, Ng decided to hire Sundarti on a trial basis, and she was to work in both Ng’s office in Bukit Merah and the Poh family’s flat.

By the landmark ruling of the appeal by life convict Abdul Nasir Amer Hamsah on 20 August 1997, life imprisonment, which originally meant a fixed term of 20 years in jail, should be considered as a jail term lasting the remainder of a life convict's natural life, and it applied to those who committed offences after the date of the appeal ruling. Since Sundarti's crime took place nearly five years after the date of the appeal verdict, her life sentence meant "natural life" and she would serve it for the rest of her natural lifespan, though she still can be released on parole for good behaviour after at least 20 years of her sentence.

After the conclusion of the events and trial, Poh did not truly get over the death of his wife, whom he met in 1996 and later married in 1998. Poh, who would be observing a strict healthy diet after a kidney transplant in India in 1992, had gradually turned to drinking and began to not control his diet by consuming unhealthy foods, which persisted despite the advice of his family members to not do so. Often, this advice fell to deaf ears.

Sundarti Supriyanto (born 1979) is a former Indonesian maid who murdered her employer and her employer’s daughter in Bukit Merah, Singapore. She was originally in line for the death penalty when she faced two charges of third-degree murder for the two deaths, which became known as the “Bukit Merah double murders” in Singapore.

Sundarti Supriyanto, the eldest of three children in her family, was born in Indonesia sometime in 1979. She grew up in the village of Mengge, Regency Mategan, East Java.