Once a Jolly Hangman (30 page)

The trial, which had lasted a month, was adjourned for the judge to consider his verdict. On 10 November 1995, Martin, dressed in khaki with a prison-style crew-cut and standing in a glass cage, was said to be laughing and joking with his guards just minutes before the verdict. As he awaited the sentence, he said: 'Karma is karma. It's in God's hands now'. Judge Sinnathuray told a packed courtroom: 'I'm satisfied beyond
a reasonable doubt that Martin had intentionally killed Lowe. After that, he dismembered Lowe's body into separate parts, and it was he who subsequently disposed of the body parts by throwing them into the river behind the hotel'. Having announced the guilty verdict he
sentenced Martin to death by hanging. Martin, seemingly resigned to his fate, showed no emotion as the verdict was read. His mother, Jean Scripps, and sister, who attended the trials early days, were not in court to hear the verdict. Back at her home in Sandown, Isle of Wight, Mrs Scripps reportedly said: 'I brought John into this world. I am the only person who has the right to take him out of it. I cannot believe how my boy could have changed from a kind, human being into the monster described in court'.

The judge said he was convinced that Martin killed and dismembered the Damudes but added that he decided Martin's guilt independently of the Thai evidence. 'On the evidence, I had no difficulty to find that it was Martin who was concerned with the deaths of Sheila and Darin and for the disposal of their body parts found in different sites in Phuket. The disarticulation of the body parts of Lowe, Sheila and Darin have the hallmark signs of having been done by the same person'. The judge said the Thai evidence was 'materially relevant' because it rebutted Martin's defence that he killed Lowe unintentionally during a sudden fight.

On 4 January 1996 Martin withdrew his appeal which was scheduled to be heard on 8 January. Mr. Pereira declined to comment on why Martin had decided against appealing. 'He has written with his own hand to the prison authorities that he does not wish to pursue the appeal', he said. Pereira said Martin could still ask for clemency. 'It would appear to me that it's the last avenue open, but we have no instructions', he added. Pereira described Martin's mood as 'sad' during their last prison visit. 'We were talking about his concerns for his family. I can't say he's worried, because he would have known the consequences of not pursuing the appeal'. There was no outpouring of sympathy whatever from the British public or protests from anti-death penalty campaigners in Britain or Singapore when Martin was sentenced. Martin himself was said to be eager to die, according to a spokeswoman from the British High Commission in Singapore. 'He won't be putting in an appeal. He's eager to get it over and done with. He's just waiting for the day', she said. Martin was held in solitary confinement on death row at Changi and spent his last days watching television, a privilege given to condemned prisoners for the last few days of their lives. 'He's okay. He's generally well. He doesn't really want to see many people
at all', the British consular spokeswoman said. Martin declined seek a pardon from President Ong Teng Cheong, according to Singapore's Sunday Times. The newspaper quoted Pereira as saying he had received a letter from Martin during his last prison visit. 'His instruction to us was that he did not want to petition for clemency from the President', Pereira said. 'It was his wish to let the law take its course'. Martin was hanged at dawn on Friday 19 April 1996.

The British Foreign Office in London issued a statement to the press, adding that the British government had considered the case and had decided not to submit a plea for clemency. The Straits Times also revealed that while on death row, Martin had turned down a request from Scotland Yard to interview him. British police believe that he was linked to the disappearance of management consultant Timothy McDowell, 28, who
went missing while holidaying in Belize in Central America. They suspected that McDowell was possibly murdered and his body, which was never found, dumped into a crocodile-infested river by Martin. They found a substantial amount of money transferred from McDowell's bank account to Martin's account in Britain after his arrest in Singapore. This sum of money was later moved to another account, also under Martin's name, in the US. It was reported that Martin spent his last days writing garbled love poems to his former Mexican wife - described as the one true love of his life - from his 8ft-by-6ft windowless cell, lit 24 hours with a camera monitoring him permanently. His mother and sister, Janet, returned to Singapore to say goodbye to him 12 hours before his execution. Under Singaporean law they were not allowed to be present at the hanging. Janet said: 'How do you say goodbye to your own brother like that? We didn't actually say the word. I just couldn't'. He told hangman, Darshan Singh that for last meal, he would like a pizza and a cup of hot chocolate.

Martin declined a request conveyed by Darshan Singh to donate his organs which would mean his own body would be dissected. Perhaps he could not bear the thought of being carved up the same way he dissected his victims? He was awoken by guards at 3.30 a.m. and escorted to a waiting room where he and the other two prisoners - two Singaporean drug traffickers - were being prepared to be executed. He was allowed to speak to a priest and a prison chaplain before the execution. After being left to hang until he was deemed officially dead
he was taken down and later released to his family. At about 10.30 a.m., Martin's body, wrapped in a white sheet, was taken in an undertaker's van for cremation. His ashes were taken back to Britain by his mother and sister. Martin left a final, rambling note which read: 'One day poor, one day rich. Money fills the pain of hunger but what will fill the emptiness inside? I know that love is beyond me. So do I give myself to God, the God that has betrayed me. You may take my life for what it is worth but grant those I love peace and happiness. Can I be a person again? Only time will tell me'.

One of the stories he wrote on death row graphically described a fantasy suicide hanging, but the hanging of which he dreamt was very different from the cold meticulous execution he experienced. In his fantasies he contemplated suicide at the end of a rope but he survived. He wrote, 'I tied the rope around my little neck before I got up on the old creaky chair. I reached down and picked up a handful of earth and put in my mouth. Then I crawled up to the old creaky chair and pulled the rope tighter and tighter still. I was tiptoe, just one more pull, then my feet left the chair knocking it over and darkness embraced me as the heavens opened. I woke up in darkness and felt a heavy weight on my chest. I cried out 'Mummy, I am here".

His former wife, Mexican, Maria Arellanos, learnt for the first time that the death sentence had been carried out on the Friday he was executed. She had married Martin at 16 and separated in 1988 but they remained emotionally attached. She told an unnamed reporter: 'I knew this would happen to John but I didn't know it would hurt so much. The last memory I have of him is a message he sent promising we would meet in the next life and that he would never let me go again'. She said Martin was a deeply religious man who had become a devotee of the Virgin of Guadaloupe, Mexico's patron
saint. Although their relationship ended in recrimination over his criminal ways and his womanising he was never violent towards her and she remained in love with him.

A commentator said shortly after Martin was hanged:

One wonders whether Scripps [Martin] actually wanted to die for his crimes - few other countries nowadays would have obliged him in this relatively short timescale. It was clear from his own evidence that he knew the penalty for murder in Singapore. One wonders why he chose
to commit one of the murders there and then return a few days later. I am less surprised that he withdrew his appeal and decided not to ask for clemency - he knew that he would lose and that he would just be delaying the inevitable and living in miserable conditions on death row for many years to come. It is also interesting to note that the British government declined to get involved in Scripp's case - possibly they felt that Singapore had done the rest of the world a favour. They are normally resolutely anti-death penalty. But what made a non-violent criminal suddenly turn into a serial killer? A question we will never know the answer now but still a very interesting question none the less. Unusually for a serial killer there appears to be no sexual motive behind the murders but merely greed and perhaps an enjoyment of killing.

But despite his life of depravity abolitionists will always say that Martin should never have been hanged. Here is Tim Parritt of Amnesty International, for example, speaking in general terms: "Ihe death penalty is an inherently unjust and arbitrary punishment, however heinous the crime for which it is provided'.

23

Singapore's Golden Triangle

While Singapore regularly and mercilessly hangs pitiful drug mules and minor traffickers like Angel Mou Pui-Peng, Amara Tochi, Yen May Woen, Vignes Mourthi and Shanmugam Murugesu it has been one of the strongest backers of Burma - officially known as Myanmar - and the worlds second biggest producer and supplier of heroin. Most of the heroin trafficked into or through Singapore's shipping channels comes from its vast poppy fields. Despite the pariah status of the country as being continuously in breach of human rights and the engine room of the notorious opium 'Golden Triangle', Singapore has long been one of its key trading partners. In the 10 months to October 2005, Singapore - Myanmar's second biggest source of imports - shipped more than $650 million worth of goods to the country. By comparison, Australia's exports to Burma in 2004 were valued at $27 million or 0.01 per cent of total exports. And for more than a decade, the Singapore government has shrugged off evidence and international protests that some of its business backing has gone directly to drug kingpins, specifically the infamous heroin trafficker Lo Hsing Han. A substantial portion of Burma's heroin also finds its way directly to Australia. The Australian Institute of Criminology long ago cited the country as the chief source of Australia's supply of the drug.

As far back as 1997, a former US Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, Robert Gelbard, said: 'Since 1988 over half of the US$1 billion investments from Singapore have been tied to the family of narco- trafficker Lo Hsing Han'. Yet more than 20 years later, in September

2009, the US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, said Burma had 'failed demonstrably' to meet its counter narcotics obligations. Now in his eighties Lo reportedly started out as an opium-trafficking insurgent against the Burmese government in the 1950s. He spent time on death row in Rangoon, Burma's old capital, in the 1970s for treason before he bought his liberty and expanded his business into what was described as the most heavily armed and biggest heroin operation in Southeast Asia. In 1992, Lo founded one of Myanmar's largest conglomerates, the Asia World Company, which allegedly acts as an upmarket front and money launderer for the drug operation. It is believed he still rules as 'godfather' over a clan of traffickers in his country.

Lo's American-educated son, Tun Myint Naing, also known as Steven Law, who is married to a Singaporean woman, Cecilia Ng, is managing director of Asia World and runs three 'overseas branches' of the conglomerate from Singapore. But while Law may live the high life during his regular trips to his second home, he has been repeatedly declined a US visa due to his suspected links to the drug trade. In February 2008, the US government added more names to the targeted sanctions list of the Burmese junta's business cronies, including one of the country's richest businessmen long suspected of being involved in the drug trade. The then US President Gorge W. Bush called on the junta to begin a genuine dialogue with opposition and ethnic minority groups. 'As one
element of our policy to promote a genuine democratic transition, the US maintains targeted sanctions that focus on the assets of regime members and their cronies who grow rich while Myanmar's people suffer under their misrule', he said in the statement. Among the businessmen were Lo, his son Steven and Cecilia, who were included on the list along with their ten companies based in Singapore; four companies they control are based in Myanmar. "The Department of the Treasury has applied financial sanctions against Steven Law, a regime crony also suspected of drug trafficking activities, and his financial network', said a White House statement. 'Today's actions add to the 33 individuals and 11 entities previously designated for sanctions'. Stuart Levy, the under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement, 'Unless the ruling junta in Burma halts the violent oppression of its people, we will continue to target those like Steven Law who sustain it and who profit corruptly because of that support'.

Law's companies, Asia World Co Ltd, Asia World Port Management, Asia World Industries Ltd, and Asia World Light Ltd as well as Golden Aaron Pte Ltd, and another nine companies in Singapore managed by Cecilia Ng, were named in the sanctions. Golden Aaron Ltd is associated with a production sharing contract between Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise and a business group including the China National Offshore Oil Company Myanmar Ltd (CNOOC) to carry out oil and gas exploration in the Kyaunphyu Region of Arakan State. At the time of the Bush statement, an official of Asia World Co Ltd said Law and other executives were in Naypyidaw for a meeting.

Aung Din, the director of the US Campaign for Burma, said the junta continues human rights violations with the support of leading businessmen. "The cronies also monopolise the country's economy by using their connections with the ruling generals', he told The Irrawaddy, an online magazine based in Bangkok. 'One of the significant steps for political reform is sustained pressure from the international community. The language which the repressive regime understands is international pressure'. As for Australia, it appears that the Immigration Department has granted him the privilege of a visa whenever it is requested although, unlike the US, it says it cannot comment on whether Lo or Law has even applied for one on the grounds that this is a 'privacy' matter concerning these two individuals. After the 2007 crackdown, Australia was urged to blacklist Burma's State Oil and Gas Agency, one of the ruling junta's main business vehicle but has avoided being placed under Australian government sanctions, said Burma Campaign Australia. The appeal came from a human rights campaign group. 'Not only is Burma's oil and gas industry providing the regime with the financial resources to brutally oppress the population, it is also linked to human rights abuses', said the BMA in a statement released in December 2009. Australia has an embassy in Rangoon, where two Australian federal police officers are stationed to gather intelligence on drug trafficking activities.