In a conclusion to what seems to be the most gruesome murder in recent Singapore history, a man has been sentenced to 10 years in jail for killing his girlfriend, Channel NewsAsia reports.
It was how Gabriel Lee did it that shocked the country back in March 2012. Believing 24-year-old Elsie Lie was the actual devil, he tried to decapitate the woman before gouging out her eyeballs and throwing them out their bedroom window. This was a week after the man proposed.
Let’s start from the beginning.
Then 37 and working as a security guard, Lee met Lie online in 2011 and they soon moved in together, renting a room in Jurong West three months later.
Trouble started brewing when Lee believed their rented room was haunted, and that Lie was possessed. He took her to a Catholic church to be exorcised, and even made her wear a bible to work by strapping it in a huge waist pouch.
Lee continued to believe that Lie was the devil — but he proposed to her during a family holiday at Genting Highlands in March 2012.
March 30, 2012 — The night of
Hours before the murder took place in the flat they shared with Muhammad Shahin Talukder, the couple had been spending way too much time in the bathroom. According to Shahin, he heard Lee “groaning” in the bathroom while giving his girlfriend a bath, and both of them were in there for hours.
They emerged from the bathroom around 9pm, but Shahin noticed that Lie looked pale and weak — Lee had to support the woman to the bedroom.
Groaning went on for an hour and a half, and Shahin knocked on their bedroom door out of concern. When Lee refused to respond, Shahin called the police for help.
Sergeant Muhammad Suffian Suaini arrived at the flat, hearing the same groans as well. When Lee opened the door for the policeman, Sergeant Suffian saw that the room was in a total mess, while Lie laid on a mattress on the floor. Though she was visibly weak, she assured the police officer that it was due to a recent abortion. Sergeant Suffian left the house afterwards at 11.45pm — little did he know that would be the last time he saw her alive.
It was only around 6.30am on March 31 that the couple’s fellow flatmates knew something was really wrong. Another flatmate woke up to use the bathroom, but saw blood splattered on the couple’s bedroom door. Shahin called the police again.
A paramedic arrived at the scene first. Staff Sergeant Low Lye Leng entered the room and instantly noped the hell out of there — Lie, topless, was lying face-up on top of her naked fiancee. He had his arm around the woman’s neck.
The paramedic waited in the living room for the police to arrive, as he deemed the situation to be unsafe. It was then that Lee gouged out the woman’s eyeballs and threw them out of the bedroom window.
Other horrific features of the scene found when the police arrived:
- A few bent metal spoons were found entwined in Lie’s hair
- A can opener, two pairs of scissors, a hammer and pruning shears were scattered around the room
- Lee was found kneeling naked next to Lie’s body, groaning and chanting while holding a yellow object resembling a cross
- During Lee’s attempt to behead her, he severed Lie’s spinal cord and in the process removed part of her wind pipe. The wind pipe was found next to her body
- Lee tried and failed to amputate the woman’s right foot, leaving her ankle bone exposed
- Clumps of her hair and her eyeballs were recovered from a grass patch directly below the bedroom window
Sergeant Suffian, who returned to the scene, arrested the man.
In court, prosecutors sought a 12-year jail term for Lee, who they noted to have left Lie “no dignity in death”. An autopsy revealed that Lie died due to multiple neck injuries during the decapitation attempt.
He was diagnosed with a “brief psychotic disorder” at the time he killed his fiancee. A psychiatrist noted that the mental breakdown affected his ability to think clearly, substantially reducing his mental responsibility for the murder.
Lee, on the other hand, expressed his extreme remorse over the killing. “She was the only one who truly loved me,” he said.
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