Unholy Trinity: The Adrian Lim ‘Ritual’ Child Killings

by Alan John

Singapore’s most bizarre murder case drew to a close on 25 November 1988 when Adrian Lim, his wife Tan Mui Choo and mistress Hoe Kah Hong were hanged at Changi Prison. After two children were found dead within a fortnight in 1981, the Toa Payoh ‘ritual killings’ proved shocking for the revelations about self-styled spirit medium Adrian Lim’s greed, depravity and cruelty.

The confidence trickster persuaded numerous women that he possessed supernatural powers and they paid him with money, valuables and sex. He tortured his victims with primitive electric shock treatments that left one man dead. He was a monster who beat, slapped and kicked his women to make them fear and obey him as he acted out his every lustful perversion. He turned his wife into a prostitute and stripper. He made his mistress lure the children to their deaths. Sentencing all three to hang, the trial judges said of Adrian Lim: “We are revulsed by his abominable and depraved conduct.”

The trial gripped the attention of Singaporeans with revelations of spirit worship, primitive electric shock treatments and unnatural sex. Who was Adrian Lim? How did he brainwash his wife and mistress to act out his wishes? What was his motive in killing the children?

Over 30,000 copies of the first edition, published in 1989, have been sold. This new edition further contains an exclusive interview with Sister Gerard, the nun who counselled the two women accomplices.

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Alan John was born in Kuala Lumpur in 1953 and attended St John’s Institution and the University of Malaya before starting as a reporter at The New Straits Times in 1976. He moved to Singapore in 1980 and spent the next 35 years at The Straits Times. He headed various parts of Singapore’s main English-language daily before becoming deputy editor, the position he held when he left in 2015. He is married with two children. This is his second book. Unholy Trinity, which appeared in 1989, retold the sensational case of the Adrian Lim child killings that gripped Singapore in the early 1980s.

Reviews

[DeanJean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adrian Lim shocked Singapore in 1981 by sexually abusing, torturing and eventually murdering two children, using them as 'sacrifices' for the Hindu goddess Kali. His accomplices were Tan Mui Choo and Hoe Kah Hong, his 'holy wives' who participated in the murder. He masqueraded as a spirit medium, which allowed him to trick and influence young women into prostitution. When arrested, he admitted killing the children out of revenge, and as a means to obscure his previous deeds of seduction and trickery. He had previously been accused of rape by one of his female victims. Singapore's courts were packed with curious onlookers grossed out and intrigued by the sheer display of perversity, depravity and gore in the details that the accused gave during the trials and cross-examinations. They were eventually sentenced to death, despite repeated appeals from Tan and Hoe.

The book documents the trio's gruesome deeds in detail, bringing up the cross-examinations and their personal backgrounds for context, and their eventual hanging. The book paints the trials as an uncomfortable battleground, with the public baying for the trio's blood, making the process of impartial judgment skewed from the beginning. The nature of the murder makes the prosecutors' work easy, which DPP Glenn Knight milks to his advantage, and makes the defence's work utter hell - especially when Lim has no interest in defending himself. Lim contradicts himself at times, thwarting Cashin's efforts, while throwing the judges into disarray over conflicting recounts. Tan comes across as befuddled and vague, with a 'victim' mentality creeping into her cross-examinations, while Hoe is blunt about having being tricked by Lim, expressing her regret towards her actions.

Apparently in the 90s as a kid in Singapore, your parents or grandmothers would use this grisly murder to warn you not to talk to strangers. I first heard of the case as an 8 year old, when a relief teacher talked about it but never thought much of it. It was a notorious case in the past, but has it really faded ever since? Then I came across a fellow booksta’s review of the same book and decided, eh, why not read it? Finishing this book later, I have so many questions - some out of curiosity about the judicial system, some from moral outrage and puzzlement.

What happened to the lives of those close to the murdered? What goes on in the minds of those who defend the guilty? Why don't we hear anything about executioners? Why is insanity a legal route to pleading out of the death sentence? And if anyone had recognised how troubled and vulnerable Tan and Hoe were, and intervened in their lives before they strayed, could they be prevented from taking the other path? How much of a role does external influence play in making good guys turn bad?
- And taking in all of these - what does the death sentence ultimately achieve in the system?