Woodlands double-murder trial: Accused’s pornography habit 'among signs that he has no depressive disorder'

SINGAPORE — In the weeks before Teo Ghim Heng killed his pregnant wife and toddler, he viewed pornography almost every day, and did so again four days after the alleged murders, a court has heard.

Teo’s pornography habit was proof, among other things, that he could not have been suffering from a major depressive disorder, said psychiatrist Dr Derrick Yeo, in further testimony as a prosecution witness on Friday (July 5), the fourth day of Teo’s murder trial in the High Court.

The consultant psychiatrist, from the Institute of Mental Health, interviewed Teo in person six times following the killings.

If Teo had indeed watched pornography and pleasured himself, Dr Yeo said this would not satisfy a requirement of a criterion of a major depressive disorder, which states that a person would abstain from sex, or not derive pleasure from sexual activities almost every day.

The 43-year-old former property agent is standing trial for the alleged murder of his wife Choong Pei Shan, who was six months pregnant, and their four-year-old daughter on Jan 20, 2017. He spent about a week with their bodies in their Woodlands flat before the authorities arrested him on the first day of Chinese New Year.

Teo has admitted to the killings, but the defence’s psychiatrist Dr Rajesh Jacob concluded — in findings referred to during questioning by the prosecution — that he had a major depressive disorder.

MULTIPLE VISITS TO SAMMYBOY

On Thursday and Friday morning, when Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Han Ming Kuang questioned Dr Yeo on Dr Rajesh’s findings, Dr Yeo challenged the validity of most of it.

Dr Yeo had earlier told the court that Teo’s determination to kill Choong and the girl showed that he was in control of his actions, and was not suffering from any mental disorder at the time.

Dr Rajesh had found in his first report that while Teo was not of unsound mind at the time of the killings, his mental responsibility for his actions was substantially impaired owing to a depressive disorder, which led to him losing control in response to provocation from his wife.

Dr Yeo said that Dr Rajesh did not “show proper analysis”, and many of Teo’s behaviours leading up to the killings “clearly showed no abnormality in behaviour” and “no loss of control”.

The prosecutor then took Dr Yeo through some of Teo’s work-related WhatsApp chats and text messages from December 2016 to January 2017.

The fact that he was engaged in 94 “live chats” during that period showed that he did not suffer from occupational impairment, Dr Yeo testified.

“He could work with clients, fellow colleagues, by communicating with them possibly about work processes — he had enough clarity of mind, cognition, emotional regulation in order to successfully come to an effective working relationship with colleagues,” Dr Yeo added.

Teo’s work supervisor gave him a positive review as well, saying he could be trusted with many projects even though he had just begun working there a few months earlier. Dr Yeo said this suggested he was performing well.

The court then turned to search results retrieved from both Teo’s and Choong’s mobile phones.

On his own phone, he visited sex-themed online forum Sammyboy multiple times almost every day.

On the day before the killings alone, he had made 132 visits there before he stopped using the device altogether, DPP Han told the court.

Four days after the killings, Teo then used his wife’s mobile phone to visit Sammyboy 15 more times.

Dr Yeo noted that this meant Teo seemed to have consistently enjoyed watching pornography on the site, and there was “the suggestion of masturbatory acts”.

‘NO ENERGY TO DO ANYTHING’

During cross-examination by Teo’s lawyer Eugene Thuraisingam, Dr Yeo also revealed that Teo told him about his mood before the killings.

Dr Yeo had asked him how frequently he was sexually intimate with his wife. Teo told him he would have sex regularly with her in 2013, before it “dropped to about one to two times a month” the next year.

Teo also reported being irritable and impatient with his wife, which led to him losing interest in having sex with her.

Teo also said he wouldn’t give up hope till the end, which Dr Yeo said showed that he was “consistently optimistic, up till the commission of the offences, to clear his debts”.

Teo, an avid gambler, was heavily in debt and had killed his daughter and wife after an argument over his inability to pay the girl’s kindergarten school fees, the court previously heard.

It was also earlier revealed that while strangling his wife to death, he said he told her not to struggle as “I owe a lot of money”.

Dr Yeo noted that Teo said he had “no energy to do anything” and did not want to work in 2015, when the property market slowed down due to cooling measures. He also did not renew his property agent’s licence at the end of 2016, as this required money and sitting for examinations.

After setting the bodies on fire in his flat, Dr Yeo said he had ordered a food delivery from McDonald’s, and “aimlessly drove around for a few hours”.

“I left the house because a lot of smoke, don’t know what to do, drove around aimlessly,” Dr Yeo read out from his own handwritten interview notes.

The trial will continue on a date yet to be determined.