Amber Beacon Tower murder

Born sometime in late 1968, Kelly Tan Ah Hong was the second of seven children in an affluent family. Although Tan herself was a Singaporean by birth, her father Tan Lam Lee was a Chinese Indonesian immigrant who operated a vegetable wholesale business, while her mother Ong Lye was a housewife. Tan had one elder sister, three younger sisters and two younger brothers in her family, who resided at a bungalow house in Thomson Road.[1]

After completing her primary school education, Tan was enrolled into Yio Chu Kang Secondary School at Ang Mo Kio, where she became classmates with her future boyfriend James Soh Fook Leong, who was the only child and son of his family; his father was the owner of an electronics business. Soh was said to be a studious student and enthusiast in sports and games, and both he and Tan, who were of the same age, became prefects. Although Tan was the opposite of Soh in terms of their interests and personality, Soh nonetheless was attracted to Tan, who likewise had mutual feelings for him and they became friends since they first met.[2]

After both Soh and Tan graduated, Soh enrolled into an electronic engineering course at Ngee Ann Polytechnic while Tan herself did not continue studying and instead, she joined her father's business and worked under him. In 1990, before Soh began his third year in polytechnic, he decided to ask Tan out, and on 13 May 1990, about a decade after they first met, Soh and Tan officially became a couple. According to Soh's parents, they never met Tan until a few days before her death, when Soh invited her to their flat. Soh's parents remembered their son telling them that Tan was his former schoolmate, but they never knew the specific nature of the couple's relationship.[3]

James Soh Fook Leong, the sole survivor of the case and Kelly Tan's boyfriend.

On the night of 15 May 1990, merely two days after they first became a couple, James Soh and Kelly Tan went to have a date at East Coast Park, heading to the Amber Beacon Tower in the park itself, where it was a popular spot for young couples to hang out.[4]

When Soh and Tan were sitting on the tower's spiral staircase and chatting with each other, there were two men who walked past them and went to the upper level of the tower. Subsequently, after about fifteen minutes, the two men ambushed the couple with knives. While Tan ran away to escape one of the attackers, the other man stayed at the tower to attack Soh, who instinctively defended himself against the assailant. The violent attack led to Soh being stabbed on the back.[5][6] The wound itself was so deep that it narrowly missed Soh's spinal cord, and would have been fatal if it had struck the spinal cord.[7]

However, from a short distance away, Tan was in a more dire situation compared to Soh. She sustained a deep neck wound on the left side of her neck, after her attacker viciously used his knife to stab her below her left ear after managing to catch up with her. The knife wound caused Tan to suffer from massive bleeding. After the two men escaped the scene, Soh, who barely retained his consciousness, staggered to help his girlfriend and tried to bring her to the nearby Singa Inn Seafood Restaurant, where one of their attackers was last seen running towards it, while the other was last seen running to the bird sanctuary of the park.[8]

Soh, who was drenched in blood, managed to reach the restaurant, and asked the employees to help his girlfriend and himself, before he fainted.[9] The police and ambulance, as well as Soh's parents (who rushed to the scene), were contacted, and 22-year-old James Soh Fook Leong was rushed to Singapore General Hospital, where he survived with timely medical intervention.[10] However, 21-year-old Kelly Tan Ah Hong, who was mortally wounded by her killer, was pronounced dead at the scene. Reportedly, Soh, who regained his consciousness in hospital and was in stable condition, was unaware of his girlfriend's death and kept asking his mother if she was alright. Soh was said to be devastated upon receiving news of Tan's death two days after she was killed. Soh's parents had kept the news from their son for fear it may affect his recovery progress, in accordance to the doctor's opinion. According to Soh's 47-year-old mother, whose surname was Tan, she and her husband were baffled over the horrific and senseless attack, and she knew that her son did not have any enemies since he was often a well-behaved person.[11][12]

Tan's father, who was in Indonesia at the time of the killing, flown back to Singapore to attend his daughter's funeral.[13]

The case of Kelly Tan Ah Hong's death was classified as murder. Under the laws of Singapore, the death penalty was the mandated sentence for any offenders found guilty of murder.[14] In light of the violent killing of Tan, which shocked the nation at that time, members of the public, especially young people and couples, were advised by the authorities to be vigilant when going out at night.[15][16]

As part of their investigations, the police also interviewed the survivor James Soh in the hospital. Despite surviving the attack, Soh was unable to recall the faces of their attackers, and could not hear their voices, since the two men never spoke a word during the attack. However, the police were able to gain a description that the men were dark-looking and out of these two men, the person who attacked Soh had short hair and was about 173 cm tall. The second male assailant who went after Tan was about 167 cm and had curly black hair.[17] While the assailants were speculated to be drug addicts,[18] they were also speculated to be foreigners since Soh remembered hearing the two killers speaking a foreign language while they were escaping from the tower.[19] Although both Tan and Soh did not lost anything, robbery was theorized as a possible motive of the crime, and this theory was corroborated by the previous reports of people being robbed at the area itself and several other areas in East Coast Park during nights or late evenings.[20][21][22] The police also did not rule out the possibility of a revenge killing, but both Soh and Tan were known to be good-mannered people who never had any grudges or feuds with other people. Still, due to lack of clues in this case, the police were unable to make a breakthrough in their investigations. The murder weapons were also never recovered.[23]

In April 1992, two years after the incident, a coroner's court held an inquiry hearing of Kelly Tan's death and issued a verdict of murder by a person or persons unknown. Professor Chao Tzee Cheng, the senior forensic pathologist, certified that due to the assailant having stabbed Tan in the neck, the knife had cut through a blood artery on the neck, which resulted in Tan losing an excessively huge amount of blood and she died as a result. James Soh, who by then had begun to serve his National Service after completing his diploma, came to court to testify during the coroner's inquiry.[24] After the coroner's verdict was meted out, Tan's bereaved family put up a reward of S$30,000 for any information leading up to the arrest of Tan's murderer(s). According to Tan's 28-year-old cousin Anthony Tan, who was also the manager of her father's company, the reward would be entrusted to the police and be indefinitely in effect up until the arrest of Tan's killer(s).[25][26][27]

In June 1992, Singaporean crime show Crimewatch re-enacted the Amber Beacon Tower murder and inside the episode, both the police and Tan's family, including Tan's 42-year-old mother Ong Lye and 26-year-old older sister Tan Kwee Mui appealed for information from members of the public to assist in their investigations of the case. Tan's mother and sisters were reportedly still haunted by nightmares and sadness about the case, due to the uncertainty of when the case itself would be solved.[28][29] Flyers were also published on newspapers to seek the public's help to solve the murder.[30][31]

Despite the police's efforts to investigate Tan's murder, the Amber Beacon Tower murder case remains unsolved as of today, and the police were unable to uncover the identities of the killer(s). However, the police investigations remained open in this case because all criminal cases in Singapore, including murder, did not carry the statute of limitations and the police would regularly review these outstanding cases from time to time to yield any new clues to solve these cases.

Amber Beacon Tower, where Kelly Tan was attacked and killed back in 1990

The murder of Kelly Tan Ah Hong remains as one of Singapore's infamous cases of unsolved murders, which also included the 1979 Geylang Bahru family murders, the 1985 Winnifred Teo murder case, the 1984 curry murder and several others.[32]

After surviving the attack, Tan's former boyfriend James Soh Fook Leong would eventually work in sales after completing his education. He was later married with another woman and together, they had a son, who was reportedly 16 years old when his father was interviewed in 2015.[33]

In July 2015, 25 years after his former girlfriend's murder, James Soh, then 47 years old, was approached for an interview, and he agreed to talk about his ordeal. Soh, who remained haunted with trauma over the attack, stated that even after many years, he was unable to understand why he and Tan were attacked, and he still could not recall the faces of their assailants. He also developed a fear of footstep sounds coming from behind him and avoided secluded places at all times.[34] Soh stated that he regretted not knowing Tan better before she died, and he still tried to move on from the incident, something which he finally told his son in 2014. Soh added that due to the attack, he often remind his son to not go to secluded places and be vigilant at all times. Soh also held on to the hope that the killer(s) of Tan would be brought to justice, and asked that anyone with information about the killing can step forward to help crack the case.[35]

The Amber Beacon Tower, where Kelly Tan was murdered, was rumoured to be haunted ever since her death, and there were reported sightings of a ghostly figure, described as the restless soul of Tan, roaming around the area at night, due to her unjust death and her murderer(s) not being arrested or punished. Wailing sounds and some fresh bloodstains at the tower were also included among the witness accounts regarding the tower's haunted presence.[36][37] Lee Teng, a Taiwanese television host based in Singapore, revealed that when he and his friends camped nearby the tower at East Coast Park back in secondary school, his Buddha penchant mysteriously disappeared the next morning after the night camping trip, and Lee also claimed that inside one of the photographs taken by his friend at the tower that night itself, a shadowy figure was seen "hovering near another friend's head."[38]

• List of unsolved murders
• Death of Felicia Teo
• Death of Winnifred Teo
• Death of Lim Shiow Rong
• Death of Ayakannu Marithamuthu
• Capital punishment in Singapore
• List of major crimes in Singapore