The Adrian Lim ‘Ritual’ Child Killings

Singapore’s most bizarre murder case drew to a close on 25 November 1988 when Adrian Lim, his wife Catherine 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.”

Alan John was born in 1953 and educated at St John’s Institution and the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur before starting as a reporter at The New Straits Times in 1976. He moved to Singapore in 1980 to join The Straits Times and was a copyeditor when the Toa Payoh child murders happened. He spent 35 years at The Straits Times, heading various sections before becoming deputy editor, the position he held when he left in 2015.