Once a Jolly Hangman (29 page)

'Yen May's life was tragic in so many ways but I don't believe enough was done for her to give her another chance in life', said a friend of the condemned woman. 'She may have been a difficult case when attempts were made to rehabilitate her, and there were some when she was younger, but the authorities gave up on her too soon. She was disposed of like a piece of garbage. The break-up of her family devastated her and she turned to drugs to escape from reality. She was not a major trafficker, either, and the profit from what she sold was only to fund her own cravings, not out of greed to enable a super luxury life like the drug barons are able to lead unmolested by the law'. But there was at least one happy moment she experienced shortly before she was hanged. She made her only sister promise to make a white wedding gown which she always dreamed of having as a young girl and dress her in it before placing her body in her coffin. She got her wish. 'She looked beautiful', said the friend who promised to attend her funeral - and, with tears streaming down her face, helped push her coffin into the furnace.

22

The Tourist From Hell

Exactly two days after Filipina maid Flor Contemplacion was hanged for murder in Singapore amid massive local and international protests, one of most Britain's most notorious serial killers, John Martin Scripps (aka John Martin) was arrested at Changi airport. Dubbed the 'tourist from hell' and wanted by homicide police in several countries, Martin was being interrogated by detectives about the murder of South African Gerard Lowe whose chopped-up remains were found floating in black plastic bags just off Clifford Pier. Detectives soon identified the man and connected his death to Martin who had shared a hotel room with him on Sentosa several weeks earlier. Then Martin moved on to Phuket where he befriended two Canadian tourists and then killed them in similar fashion before dumping their remains down a mineshaft. Why he returned to Singapore from where a warrant for his arrest had been sent to Interpol baffled everyone. While he was being questioned about Lowe's death, he suddenly grabbed a glass and tried to slash his wrists screaming, 'You are not going to hang me like Flor Contemplacion. Martin was to become the first Briton and only the second European to be hanged in Singapore since independence when he was found guilty of Lowe's murder. And he was one of several who ended up on the gallows in Changi Prison that his executioner, Darshan Singh, told me he thought thoroughly deserved to die. The trial began on 2 October 1995 almost a year after Dutch-born Johannes van Damme was executed for drug trafficking. Only Martin's mother spoke out against the execution of her only son. Even the British government and anti- capital punishment activists in Britain remained silent. To everyone
else, it seemed, Martin deserved to be put to death.

Martin fled from Britain while on parole and went on a murderous world tour killing Canadian tourists Sheila Damude and her son, Darin, on the Thai paradise island of Phuket, and others in San Francisco, Mexico and Belize. When arrested at Changi airport on 19 March 1995, Martin was carrying more than US$40,000 in cash and travellers' cheques and the passports, credit cards and other belongings of Lowe and the Damudes. He also had a stun-device, handcuffs and a spray can of mace, a hammer and several knives in his suitcase. Swabs from the hammer matched bloodstains across the carpet of the Damudes's hotel room. According to newspaper reports and court records as many as 77 witnesses for the prosecution gave evidence against him. He also faced 11 other charges ranging from forgery, vandalism, cheating, possession of weapons and small quantities of controlled drugs. His defence lawyer was Joseph Theseira who was to help defend the doomed Australian drug trafficker, Van Tuong Nguyen, almost ten years later. As in Nguyen's case there was little he could do to save Martin. He was able only to object to the introduction of evidence in the Lowe case linking Martin to the other killings including those in Phuket.

Martin first arrived in Singapore on 8 March 1995 from San Francisco and left for the holiday island three days later. The investigation into Lowe's murder began almost
immediately. A black plastic bin bag containing a pair of legs was fished out of the water at Clifford Pier. A few days later, another bag containing thighs and a naked, headless torso turned up. The court was told that the skulls, torsos and several limbs belonging to the bodies of the Damudes were found in a deserted tin mine on Phuket between 19 and 25 March. It was discovered that the Damudes had travelled on the same plane to Phuket as Martin and checked into a room close to his in the same hotel.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police helped coordinate the Singapore and Thai murder investigations also filed murder charges against Martin when forensics were completed. The trial began in October 1995 with Martin entering no plea but claiming trial' which, under Singapore law, means he was contesting the charges. Evidence of how Lowes body was skilfully cut up and wrapped in black plastic bin bags before being thrown into the Singapore river was presented to the court. James Quigley, a prison officer at Albany Prison on the
Isle of Wight, England, told the court that while in prison he had taught Martin how to dismember and bone slaughtered animals.
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He was instructed in butchery over a six-week period in March and April 1993', Quigley told the court. 'He was trained to bone out forequarters and hindquarters of beef, sides of bacon, carcasses of pork, and how to portion chicken', Quigley said, and added that Martin, then serving a 13-year jail term for drug-related offences, had been a quick learner. Chao Tzee Cheng, a government pathologist, testified that the manner in which Lowe's body was cut up indicated that only a doctor, a veterinarian or a butcher could have dismembered it. Throughout the trial, Martin sat between two uniformed armed police officers in a glass and metal cage, his legs in irons. He was allowed to speak briefly to his mother and sister before and after the proceedings.

The prosecution produced records showing that Martin, using a false name, had checked into the same Singapore hotel room as Lowe on 8 March and checked out exactly one week later. Martin flew to the Thai island resort of Phuket the same day on 15 March, spent four days in Phuket before returning to Changi airport four days later where he was arrested. He was wearing a money belt containing four different passports, each with different names but all with his photograph, and that only one of the passports actually belonged to him. The others belonged to Lowe and the Damudes. Thai police had issued a warrant for Martin's arrest in connection with those murders and he was arrested as soon as he arrived back in Singapore - much to the amazement of airport police. In a confession made public when it was admitted as evidence, Martin told the court he met Lowe at Changi airport on 8 March and they agreed to share a hotel room. He admitted killing him after he was awakened by a smiling, half-naked Lowe, who was fondling his buttocks. 'I am not a homosexual and at that time it appeared to me Mr Lowe was a homosexual. I freaked out, I kicked out and started swearing. I had experience of such things in the past and I was very frightened'. Martin said he used a three-pound camping hammer 'to hit Lowe several times on the head until he collapsed on the carpeted floor. My right hand was covered with blood. Everything happened so quickly', his statement continued.

After realising Lowe was dead, Martin said he sought the help of a British friend, whom he refused to name. The friend disposed of the
body without telling him how. Martin denied that it was he who cut up Lowe's body however. The defence tried to
show Martin killed Lowe accidentally and the murder charge be reduced to culpable homicide - or manslaughter - which carried a maximum penalty of life in prison. The prosecution maintained that Martin committed premeditated murder with the intent to rob Lowe. On the fourth day of the trial, prosecutor Jennifer Marie said Martin had practised forging Lowe's signature, suggesting he had planned the killing. She showed the court items seized from Martin's luggage, including a notebook and tracing paper filled with practice signatures of Lowe's name. Marie also produced credit cards, passports and other documents she alleged had been tampered with. Defence lawyer Pereira questioned two police officers, trying to show they conducted an inadequate search for blood traces next to the hotel room bed where Martin claimed that Lowe had fallen and bled to death. Police witnesses said there were no traces of blood in the carpet, only in the bathroom. That, the prosecution argued, was further evidence that the killing was premeditated. The prosecution also showed that Martin used Lowe's credit card for a shopping spree and to attend a classical music concert soon after the killing. This undermined his defence that he was 'dazed and confused' at the time of the killing. 'You were not dazed enough, to think of all this', Jennifer Marie told Martin during her cross examination. She then cited documents showing that he used Lowe's credit card to withdraw S$8,400 in cash from a local bank soon after the killing. He used the same card to buy a videocassette recorder, hi-fi stereo speakers, and running shoes on 9 March. The next day he used it to buy a S$30 ticket to attend the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, where he heard a programme of Brahms and Tchaikovsky.

The used concert ticket and symphony programme were among the items seized after his arrest. 'You're not telling us the truth when you say you were walking in a dream world after killing Lowe', said Marie. 'On the contrary, you were clear in your mind what you were doing'. Martin said that he did not remember buying the concert ticket and that he did not attend the performance. He told the court he went drinking with a British friend that night. Pressed by the prosecution about his movements between 8 and 11 March, Martin said his memory was hopeless. 'You've got a good memory I haven't', he said. 'I'm dyslexic. I get things mixed up'.

Martin later told the court he had tried to commit suicide by slitting his wrists to escape being hanged. 'I believed I was going to be hung', he said on his fifth day in the witness box. 'I kept thinking about Lowe and the Filipino lady that got hanged'. Marie told the court Martin tried to cut his wrist with a small, sharp piece of glass in police custody shortly after he was arrested. The prosecution depicted Martin as a cool, methodical criminal who murdered tourists to steal from them. Martin even agreed with a suggestion by Judge T.S. Sinnathuray that it would take about five minutes for a skilled butcher to dismember an animal. Asked by the prosecution whether the same skills could be used to dismember a human, he said: "Ihe bones look similar'. But asked whether he dismembered Lowe, he replied: 'No, I don't have all the skills you mentioned'. Martin disputed the prosecution's assertion that he had ample time and opportunity to chop up Lowe's body, pack the parts in a suitcase covered with plastic bags, and throw them in the river. He said he did not report killing Lowe because he feared he would be automatically hanged under Singapore's tough laws.

On his sixth day on the witness stand Martin was asked by Marie why he did not immediately call a doctor or hotel staff after Lowe collapsed in their room. 'Because this man died at my hands, and under Singapore law that is an automatic death sentence', he replied. 'That's what I understood at the time'. Martin had earlier alleged that a British friend staying at a hotel on the nearby resort island of Sentosa, connected to Singapore by a causeway, disposed of Lowe's body. He said he fled to the friend's hotel while the body was being disposed of. He said he had known this man for eight to 10 years and remembered that he once worked at an abattoir. He refused to name the friend, whom he described as a dangerous man, or describe the hotel in further detail because he said he feared retaliation against his family. Martin was cautioned by the judge that his reluctance to give basic information on the friend could harm his defence. 'Here you are facing a murder charge, which carries a death penalty in this country'. 'I have to ask myself, at the end of the day, this question: Did the accused, John Martin, go to a hotel on Sentosa?' Martin still declined to describe the hotel. Prosecutors alleged that Martin's story of the friend was a complete fabrication. They also tried to point out discrepancies between his earlier statements to police and his testimony on the witness stand. Marie said Martin's statement to the police on 29 April
made no mention of attempted homosexual assaults he later told the court he suffered while in prison in 1978 and 1994. 'I'm suggesting that this (1994) incident never occurred', said Marie. 'It's yet another fabrication of yours'. Martin countered that the assault really happened but he did not report it to the British prison authorities.

In her closing arguments, Marie said: 'The conduct of the accused after the killings suggested that he was cold, callous and calculating a far cry from the confused, dazed man walking in a dream world, the picture he gave of himself'. Martin was 'a man very much in control of his faculties' when he embarked on a shopping spree using Lowe's credit card, buying a pair of fancy running shoes, a video cassette recorder and a ticket to a symphony orchestra concert. 'He is a man who has no qualms about lying continuously, consistently and even in this court, in any and every matter', she said. Concluding her case, Marie said the excuse that Martin killed Lowe because of a homosexual advance was just one of a 'string of lies' to mask a premeditated murder by a greedy serial killer 'who preyed on tourists'. Lowe's widow testified that her husband, who had gone to Singapore on a shopping holiday, was not a homosexual. In his closing statement for the defence Pereira said 'we urge this court to come to a finding that the accused is not guilty of murder, but is guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder. The killing occurred in a sudden fight in the heat of passion upon a sudden quarrel', he said. 'He is not a man prone to violence'. Pereira also urged the judge to ignore information from Thailand. 'There is no evidence to suggest that the accused is responsible for the deaths of the two Canadians', he said, calling the Thai information 'nothing more than circumstantial' and 'prejudicial'.