by Alex Josey
The End
When it was known that the Privy Council had rejected Ang’s appeal, friends and relatives at once began to organize a petition to President Yusof bin Ishak to spare his life. Late in October 1966, this petition, and a plea from Ang for clemency, were submitted to the President. The President must accept the advice of the Cabinet. On the last day of January 1967, Ang was told that President Yusof bin Ishak had rejected his appeal for clemency. He would be executed on Monday, 6 February.
Even then Ang did not abandon hope. He was planning a dramatic escape. During exercise time a helicopter would fly over the jail compound, with a rope dangling down, and Sunny would be whisked away to freedom. The coded letters failed to get to his accomplice.
On Friday he was told there was no hope. He accepted this unemotionally and requested the prison chaplain, the Rev. Khoo Siaw Hua, to baptize him. Then he wrote the chaplain the following letter:
Dear Rev. Khoo,
There is so much that I want to say to you but I am finding it very difficult to put my thoughts into words. So forgive me for this, my farewell letter, being so brief, and, 1 fear, incoherent.
Do you remember the day you first saw me here, how I kept repeating to you ‘I’m an atheist!’, almost with pride? But as I watched you come here so often, spending so much of your time and giving so much of yourself to the Pulau Senang boys and the rest of us, expecting and receiving nothing in turn, I asked myself, ‘What is it that motivates this man to such altruistic acts? Is there really a God as he so undoubtedly believes?’ This, plus my brother Victor’s example, led me to spend hours on end pondering over the question of Life. Death, the Existence of God, truth of the Bible and other related matters, my mind ranging far and wide into hitherto unexplored realms. The conclusion I came to were foregone, but I still refused to open my heart to God as I had some unfinished business to carry out, viz. a vendetta.
Months passed without any change: but one day, the 17th of December 1967—for no apparent reason I was overwhelmed by a desire to kneel down in prayer and pour out my heart to God, surrendering myself to Him and admitting to Him that revenge was in my heart He listened and understood and as I got to know Him better through the succeeding days and weeks, He told me that I should be above revenge and hate, that only love and understanding should occupy my thoughts and guide my actions.
How I wish I could have met you in less tragic circumstances and derived the benefit of your courses. But I nevertheless thank you for everything you have done for me and will be doing for me in the next few days. Through you I found Christ and through Him I shall find the Kingdom of Heaven. We’ll meet again in happier circumstances.
Till then, fare thee well.
Yours in Christ
Sunny Ang
Sunny Ang spent the last few hours of his life praying with the Rev. Khoo, and reading the Bible. The chaplain said, “We talked only about religion and nothing else. He was all the time calm and smiling.”
Ang was told that acccording to prison regulations he could have a last meal to the value of $5. He said, “I just want a nice cold glass of milk.” Milk is not a popular drink with Asians.
Shortly before dawn, Ang, apparently unrepentant and unafraid, walked steadily the 100 paces from his cell to the gallows. The noose was slipped around his neck, the trap-door opened, and at 5:55 AM, on the morning of Monday, 6 February 1967, Sunny Ang paid the penalty for his crime.
The hangman grimly closed the final chapter of a murder case that made legal history in Singapore. This had been the first murder trial without the body of the victim: it was the first time a man charged with murder had been found guilty entirely on circumstantial evidence. The case was also unusual in that it was a crime of coldly calculated murder for greed and gain, a crime in which the death of the victim, and not robbery, was the primary consideration.
At 9:00 AM, Juliet Ang, then recently admitted to the Bar, arrived at the prison in a car driven by a magistrate. She entered the prison and identified Ang’s body. Half an hour later she emerged and the car that brought her drove away. About the same time a van from the Singapore Casket Company arrived. Sunny Ang was buried at Bidadari Cemetery that afternoon.
***
Sunny Ang was a Chinese. The judge was born in Australia. The foreman of the jury (most of them Chinese) was a Dane. The prosecuting counsel was a Chinese, his assistant a Malay. Ang’s defence was conducted by two Indians. The witnesses were Chinese, Malays, Indians, Eurasians and Europeans. Evidence was given in Chinese dialects. Malay and English. Ang killed Jenny (a Chinese) when Singapore was a self-governing British colony. His trial began when Singapore was part of Malaysia, He was found guilty three months before Singapore was separated from Malaysia. Singapore had become an independent republic by the time his appeals were heard, and President Ishak rejected his plea for clemency. Justice Buttrose retired from Singapore in 1968 and went to live in England. He was the last of the British expatriate judges to serve in Singapore, where he had worked in the legal profession for 23 years. He became a High Court judge in 1957. The Chief Justice, Mr Wee Chong Jin, described Justice Buttrose’s retirement at the age of 65 as a ‘great loss, especially in that he was a judge with immense experience and knowledge, not only of the country’s laws, but also of the people’.
The Perfect Murder
SUNNY ANG THOUGHT HE HAD PLANNED the perfect murder. He considered his execution an injustice because he had been found guilty for the wrong reasons. “I did not kill her that way. I killed her another way,” he told a visitor just before the end. “But I suppose it’s poetic justice,” he added with a grim smile, “that I should die.”
What he boasted he did was to give Jenny instructions, which if carried out properly, would inevitably have resulted in her death. He had told her, just before she descended, to take a deep breath, to fill her lungs completely, as she was about to surface. She was to hold that breath all the way up. The air in Jenny’s lungs would have distended with increased pressure thereby forcing air bubbles directly into her blood stream and eventually leading to obstructions in the blood vessels in her brain. Death would have been instantaneous.
Ang was a great reader. He had a passion for detective stories, a deep interest in psychology and law. He had a collection of law books. He also had many books on flying, and several Teach Yourself books, including books on chicken rearing, tomato planting and scuba-diving. In one book on scuba-diving the corner of a page had been turned down. There was a warning on this page against divers holding their breath when surfacing. The author warned that death had occurred this way.
This manner of death was set out in detail in Harrison’s Principle of Internal Medicine, 1963, which Sunny Ang had also read: This stated that,
If a diver breathing compressed air holds his breath during ascent to the surface, the intrapulmonic (inside the lung) pressure becomes relatively higher than the hydrostatic (liquid or blood stream) pressure. A difference in pressure in excess of about 80 mm of mercury may overdistend the lungs so that gas is forced or aspirated (sucked) into the blood stream (traumatic air embolism). Gas emboli (bubbles) transported to the left ventricle (i.e. the heart) are disseminated to the central nervous system (i.e. the brain) to produce the most serious injury in diving. Fatal accidents have occurred during ascents from only 13 feet to the surface.
Ang intended that Jenny’s body should be recovered (so he said), for, he argued, a post-mortem could have shown only accidental death. No one could ever have accused him of being in any way responsible for this highly technical accident. He maintained that he had, in fact, made an earlier attempt, two days before, in the same boat, hoping, with many others around, to have the benefit of witnesses to testify to his innocence. Unfortunately that attempt failed (probably Jenny did not obey his instructions fully), though she complained of pains in her chest. On the fateful Tuesday he tried again hoping that her damaged lung condition would favour his plans. This time he succeeded. Jenny was never seen again.
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Ang was completely callous. That Jenny had to die was a misfortune on her part: her death was no more than a mere incident in his own life. All that he regretted, he said shortly before he was hanged, was that he did not give her a decent last meal. He also regretted that he had failed to insure her for a higher figure. Curiously enough, he had decided that, with part of the money he hoped to get from the insurance companies, he would provide for Jenny’s two children during their childhood.
His callousness was evident immediately after her death. When he informed the police and the insurance companies of the tragedy, he did so calmly, and with such lack of compassion that suspicions were aroused. Noted K. B. Ong, a police officer in his report, ‘The general conduct of Sunny Ang after the disappearance, and during interrogation—he does not appear in the least worried or depressed.’
Ang was confident he could never be incriminated for Jenny’s death. Why should he worry? Life, until his arrest 16 months later, went on as usual—chicken farming and girl-chasing. He sat for the Higher School Certificate in 1964. Throughout his trial his confidence actually increased and he made little effort to conceal his disdain for, and contempt of, the legal machinery. He insisted upon directing counsel for the defence, supremely confident his guilt could never be proved. Against the advice of Mr Coomaraswamy he insisted on entering the witness-box entirely for the immediate emotional satisfaction of crossing swords, matching wits, with Mr Francis Seow, the state prosecutor, whom he hated as the representative of society and law and order.
He continued to be confident after sentence, while in prison. He read books in German, French, Chinese and English. He continued to give advice to his brothers in Singapore and in England, on how to improve their studies. The only time he was known to have shown emotion was when his father went to the prison in November 1966 (for the first time since Ang’s arrest in December, 1964) to tell him that the Privy Council had rejected his appeal. Ang burst into tears. But he soon recovered and quickly regained his confidence that, somehow, his concept of justice would eventually emerge triumphant: after all ‘they’ had not found out how exactly he had caused Jenny’s death, so ‘they’ were not entitled to claim the supreme forfeit.
***
In his last speech from the Singapore Bench in 1968, Justice Buttrose stressed the importance of maintaining and administering justice. He was mindful that ‘justice, like lightning, should ever appear to few men’s ruin but all men’s fear’.
He considered himself privileged to have offered the greater part of his working life, some 23 years, to the cause of justice according to law, the rule of law, the cornerstone of human rights and human freedom.
Justice Buttrose said, “It is more than ever essential in this present day and age that the rule of law should be preserved inviolate: that those who respect and obey it shall live in freedom and security under it; that those who flout it and seek to set it at nought shall be brought to book and punished.”
He said that the interpretation of the law was a different matter and each court also had a different atmosphere—with each judge bringing to his court the aura of his own personality.
“I must admit I have in my time been the author and at times the beleaguered recipient of some animated controversial opinions regarding the interpretation of laws.” Justice Buttrose added, “It is perhaps inevitable that our human nature gives birth on such occasions to passing feelings of disagreement and criticism, or irritability and impatience.
Pulau Senang-The Experiment that Failed
Foreword
THIS IS A TRUE STORY,
ALTHOUGH PARTS MAY READ
LIKE FICTIONAL HORROR.
It happened in the 1960s in the newly self-governing state of Singapore, a small tropical island of some two million people. Having thrown off the shackles of British colonialism, the democratic nationalists confronted the communists and narrowly defeated them in a bloodless battle. Almost at once, the new government had to face a serious secret society menace. Hundreds of gangsters were arrested and thrown into jail without trial. Hopefully believing that most men could change their way of life if given a chance, the Government bravely experimented with a scheme to rehabilitate these gangsters, all of whom had sworn oaths of loyalty to their secret societies. The idea was to make an islet off the main island a prison without bars, to be supervised by Daniel Dutton, a God-fearing, fist-swinging, wild Irishman devoutly dedicated to the belief that man’s inherent evil could be exorcised by hard work. Under his active direction, the gangsters created an island paradise. But they soon turned on Dutton and murdered him and his assistants, and in less than an hour, savagely destroyed all they had sweated so long to build. Why? The question has never been satisfactorily answered.
In a massive trial before an Australian-born judge and a seven-men jury, more than 60 gangsters were charged with rioting and murder. Never before in Asia, or since, has there been such a trial. Eighteen criminals, most of them in their 20s, were found guilty and hanged.
Many decades later, remnants of secret societies still exist, but Singapore by now has become a state where law and order is firmly established. The government practises its own form of socialism which works well. Free enterprise is encouraged. The State subsidises health-care, education and housing. Drug addicts are patiently helped, so are selected secret society gangsters. But the bold experiment that failed was never repeated. Once was enough.
—May 1980
Introduction
This is the true story of an idealistic belief, translated into actuality for a short while in the early 1960s, that violent, lawless men could find their own way back to decent society were they given a proper chance to work and create. The argument was that these men had drifted into crime because they’d never had an opportunity to know disciplined creative work.
Hundreds of them in Singapore were given this chance in 1960. Inside a few months, hitherto work-shy gangsters (hardened criminals most of them, unproven murderers, extortioners, callous robbers, psychopaths, rapists), transformed a deserted tropical island into an attractive, busy settlement with roads and water supply, huts, workshops, canteen, dormitories, laundry, community hall. Practically all the criminals were members of secret societies. Having built a comfortable settlement with their own hands, within forty minutes one sunny afternoon, they deliberately destroyed it and murdered the man largely responsible for making the scheme possible. With him died three of his assistants.
The island was called Pulau Senang. In the Malay language this means ‘the island of ease’. As a rehabilitation settlement, it was a noble experiment that failed. Why? Why did the gangsters destroy it, having toiled and sweated in the tropical sun to build it? No completely satisfactory explanation has been forthcoming. One belief is that the leading secret society chief on the island ordered the destruction of the settlement to prove that he was more powerful than the government. During the trial of this man, Tan Kheng Ann, alias Robert, alias Robert Black alias Ang Chuar (and 58 others), witnesses said that the decision to kill the man in charge, 39-year-old Prison Officer Daniel Stanley Dutton, was because Dutton had tormented them beyond endurance. Breaking point had been reached when he ordered 13 carpenters to work overtime to complete the construction of a pier which could be worked on only during certain tides. When the carpenters refused, Dutton ordered them back to Changi jail, thus blighting their hopes for rehabilitation. Witnesses said this decision inflamed the rest of the men and triggered off the revolt. Another belief is that the secret society chief had tormented the opposition to Dutton and had been waiting for just such an opportunity before giving the order to attack and burn the settlement to the ground.
Pulau Senang Rehabilitation Settlement originated in the mind of a political prisoner of the British. Though he admitted that he was well-treated himself in detention as a pro-communist subscribing to the violent overthrow of colonialism, Devan Nair was horrified at the conditions in the prisons for convicted criminals, and for criminal suspec
ts detained indefinitely without trial. He was determined one day to do something about this.
Daniel Button’s Belief
IN SINGAPORE AT THE TIME WAS PRISON OFFICER Dutton, a strong man who believed that work was the salvation of all. Dutton’s stubborn faith was that even hardened criminals, secret-society gangsters, could be saved, brought back into the community again to become useful citizens. His almost fanatical belief was that men usually went astray through idleness. They needed a chance to work, to create. Given this opportunity, with persuasion, guidance, supervision, and helpful discipline, they could find their own way back to decency. Dutton believed this: few men were naturally evil: they wanted a chance to create. Dutton died a terrible death trying to prove he was right. “All our evils can be conquered by hard work: we can sweat the evil out of us,” he told me. I knew him well. He was an Irishman born in Walthamstow, London. On Pulau Senang they called him the ‘Laughing Tiger’. In the East, everyone, including gangsters, respects a tiger. Dutton refused to arm any of his staff. He was a powerful man and ruled with his fist. If a prisoner was insolent, he would knock him down with a blow. “If I report him for insubordination, he knows he will have to go back to Changi and that will be the end of him. He’ll rot there. So he takes my punishment and behaves himself.”
