Hougang double murders

Jamaludin bin Ibrahim
Jamaludin Ibrahim, the Hougang double killer
Born	c. 1955 Singapore
Died	28 July 1995 (aged 40) Changi Prison, Singapore
Cause of death	Execution by hanging
Nationality	Singaporean
Criminal status	Executed
Conviction(s)	Murder (2 counts)
Criminal penalty	Death (x2)

On 17 October 1994, the trial of Jamaludin Ibrahim began at the High Court, with Justice T S Sinnathuray hearing the case. Abdul Rahman Salleh and B J Lean were the defence lawyers who represented Jamaludin, while the prosecution was led by Wong Keen Oon.

Jamaludin's daughter Haslina, who was ten years old, came to court as a prosecution witness. She testified that on the day of the murder, she heard screams coming from the flat of Lau Gek Leng and Luke Yip Khuan. She also witnessed her father, whose clothing had bloodstains, carrying a television set and VCR out of the same flat, after she heard the screams.[14][15] Similarly, Jamaludin's wife Saerah Mohammad Yusop, who heard from her daughter about what she witnessed, came to court as a witness, telling the court that she identified the spanner found at the crime scene as her husband's. She also noted that during the final few months before the killings, her husband incurred huge debts and could not pay the electricity and water bills, causing him to become bad tempered and he had to consume tranquilizers to keep calm.[16] Jamaludin also allegedly told his wife that he felt that one of the victims Luke despised him.[17] Subsequently, due to the case's public attention and harassment of Jamaludin's family by both reporters and members of the public, the prosecution applied to the court to impose a gag order, ordering the media to not publish the identities or other personal details of Jamaludin's family during the court proceedings of Jamaludin's case, and it was granted.[18]

A doctor also came to testify that he prescribed tranquilizers, including valium, to Jamaludin over the past ten months leading up to the murders, due to Jamaludin suffering from insomnia or difficulty to fall asleep. He agreed that while the effects of these drugs may lead to short-term memory loss and addiction, he observed that Jamaludin was perfectly normal despite consuming the tranquilizers.[19]

After the end of the prosecution's case, Jamaludin elected to take the stand to present his defence. His main defence was diminished responsibility.

Jamaludin testified that on that day itself, he went to the couple's flat to get a haircut, like he occasionally would whenever he need to cut his hair. He revealed that Luke asked him to help repair a leaking kitchen pipe, and thus he returned to his flat to retrieve an adjustable spanner. He said that after entering the flat, he had a sudden blackout and did not know what happened, but he remembered seeing illusions of being attacked by two or three people, and the next thing he saw was the two dead bodies of his neighbours Lau Gek Leng and Luke Yip Khuan. Jamaludin said that out of fright at the sight of the bodies, he stole the television set and VCR to tamper with the crime scene and make it look like a robbery.[20][21] He claimed that he consumed an overdose of valium pills (some of which were supplied by his sister),[22] which was why he suffered from hallucinations and did not know or recall exactly how he killed the couple. Jamaludin denied the prosecution's contention that he came to the flat under the pretense of getting a haircut with robbery in his mind. Jamaludin also denied that he intentionally used the spanner and a chopper to attack the couple by first assaulting Lau repeatedly with the spanner in the living room before closing in on Luke to rain multiple blows with the chopper and spanner to kill her off as well, and he also stated that he would not kill for money despite needing it.[23][24]

In his testimony, Jamaludin further revealed that the reason why he consumed tranquilizers was due to the reason that he witnessed his sister's suicide. He added that in 1988, his sister, who was his most favourite out of his siblings, suffered from schizophrenia and fell to her death, and it greatly traumatized him. Furthermore, in 1989, by coincidence, Jamaludin was a witness of a murder case, because he witnessed one of his neighbours throwing two of her three children off the 11th storey of the same flat he resided in. Jamaludin added he tried to save the third child but the little girl fell to her death as well. These two above incidents caused Jamaludin to be traumatized to the extent that he turned to tranquilizers to help him get over the shock.[25] In the aftermath of the 1989 incident, Jamaludin's neighbour Lim Lai Choo, who also jumped down but survived and became wheelchair-bound, was charged with murder for killing her three children, and was in the end sentenced to nine years' imprisonment for manslaughter due to depression,[26][27] but in 1995, the year when she was paroled and released after serving six years, Lim committed suicide.[28]

Edward Odgen, an Australian psychiatrist, testified that Jamaludin was suffering from paradoxical rage induced by the Valium pills, and it caused him to inflict an extremely appalling, frenzied and brutal attack on the victims, and was therefore suffering from diminished responsibility. However, the prosecution's expert psychiatrist Chan Khim Yew, head of the prison medical unit, testified that Jamaludin was perfectly normal at the time he killed both Lau and Luke, and also determined that he did not have a personality disorder or mental disease, and had no history of psychiatric illnesses despite his late sister's schizophrenic condition.[29][30]