AMK double deaths: Older woman missing eyeballs, parts of tongue, lung

SINGAPORE — The 75-year-old woman found with multiple stab wounds in her Ang Mo Kio home in June this year was found to be missing her eyeballs, as well as parts of her tongue and right lung when an autopsy was performed. Her eyeballs and tongue were recovered the next day on a grass patch near her block of flats, but the portion of her lung has not been found.

Most of her stab wounds are also believed to have been inflicted after she had died. These were among details that emerged at the coroner’s inquiries today (Dec 1) into the deaths on June 4 of Rosaline Lim and her 51-year-old daughter Andrea Tay Su Lin, whom police officers had seen climb through the window and plunge to her death that day.

Today, the court heard the testimonies of two police officers that attended to the case in the wee hours that day. They said Lim’s body was lying in a pool of blood in the living room when they entered her sixth-storey flat in Blk 105, Ang Mo Kio Avenue 4, while Tay was standing in the unlit kitchen. When she saw the cops, she climbed through the window and stood on the ledge before plunging to her death, severing her legs at the knees when she hit a laundry rack.

Tay’s daughter, Ms Germaine Ng, 17, was in the flat at the time. She had been awakened by her mother and grandmother quarrelling, but went back to sleep as this was not unusual, the court heard.

Later, she heard a loud thud and opened the door when she no longer heard her grandmother’s voice. When she saw her grandmother’s body, she locked herself in the room and called her father and the Singapore Civil Defence Force.

Much of the hearing today centred on Tay, whom investigations showed had attacked her mother with a knife and chopper before she took her life, said Inspector Toh De Yong.

The court also heard that Tay had no psychiatric treatment record with the Institute of Mental Health or public hospitals here, but four people close to her suspected she had a mental illness as she displayed paranoid behaviour and had felt others — including her mother — were trying to harm her.

Mr Peh Hock Leong, who dated Tay about 18 years ago and fathered Ms Ng, said he noticed her peculiarities from the beginning — she wanted to know his whereabouts all the time, for instance — but they were milder then.

She became very paranoid from around May 31 this year, said Mr Peh and his partner, Ms Soh Lay Lay, who was also close friends with Tay.

She told Mr Peh that her mother had cast black magic on her. When the couple visited Tay at her workplace, she did not seem her usual self, claiming that people in the mall she worked at were draining her energy.

A few days before her death, she asked her employer, as well as Mr Peh, to take her to temples for exorcism.

Based on Mr Peh’s account to the police, Tay had mentioned wanting to kill her mother since her grandmother died about 10 years ago, but he had not taken her seriously. Tay had apparently blamed Lim for the death of her grandmother, who had allegedly choked on a bone in the fish porridge that Lim had bought.

Mr Peh told the police that he had asked Tay to seek psychiatric help, but she had refused. Ms Ng, however, said her mother had sought help at a private clinic years ago for depression.

Neither Ms Ng nor Mr Peh was in court today. State Coroner Marvin Bay will deliver his findings on the women’s deaths on Wednesday.