Background

Cui Yajie, the 31-year-old victim.

Leslie Khoo continued to have affairs with other women outside his marriage, and continued to cheat them of money. Of all the lovers, one of them was 31-year-old Chinese national Cui Yajie.

Cui Yajie, an only child in her family, was an engineer born in Tianjin, China. Cui, who graduated from University of Southampton, first came to work in Singapore since 2012, and had gained permanent residence status during her next three years in Singapore.^[7] Khoo and Cui first met in 2015 outside the home of her former boyfriend (with whom she just broke up with, where he comforted her. Later, they began a relationship after he lied that he was single and was the owner of a laundry business. Later, when Cui became suspicious, Khoo told her that he was divorced. Khoo's wife later got wind of her husband's relationship with Cui after Cui sent her a message on Facebook to demand that Khoo's wife leave Khoo alone.^[8][9]

The relationship would later on be riddled with quarrels over Khoo spending less time with Cui and a debt of $20,000 which he owed her for making an investment in gold. Half of that amount was eventually paid back by Khoo, who asked a former lover to, on his behalf, remit the money in Cui's father's bank account.^[10]

Murder

On 12 July 2016, Cui Yajie wanted to go to Khoo's workplace, supposedly to expose Khoo's lies, but Khoo intercepted her, and he offered to drive her to his workplace. He subsequently took her to a secluded place near Gardens by the Bay, where he intended to calm her down and dissuade her from meeting his supervisor.^[11] However, the couple's argument grew fiercer, and in the heat of the quarrel, Khoo lost control of his temper and strangled Cui Yajie to death, and after he drove aimlessly around Singapore, he went back home at night with Cui's corpse, which was covered in laundry bags, still hidden in the car. The next day, Khoo took the body to a forest in Lim Chu Kang after buying some charcoal and kerosene, where he burned it for three consecutive days.^{[12][13][14][15]}

On 17 July 2016, after the police investigated into the disappearance of Cui, Khoo, who was the last person to see her before her death, was arrested as a suspect. Khoo later confessed to the killing and he led the police to the place where he burned the body. By the time the police got there, there were only a few clumps of hair, a bra hook and partially burnt pieces of Cui's dress left at the site where Khoo burnt Cui's body. Khoo was charged with murder and remanded in the case of Cui's death. This murder case became known as the "Gardens by the Bay murder" in media reports.^{[16][17][18][19]} Leslie Khoo also faced charges of cheating and embezzling a total of S$88,600 from his company and his four other lovers prior to his killing of Cui.^[20]

Court hearing and conviction

When his trial started in the High Court of Singapore in March 2019, Khoo, then 50 years old, denied having an affair with Cui or having intended to kill Cui. His lawyers waged the defence of diminished responsibility against the murder charge by citing his intermittent explosive disorder (IED), which was argued made him unable to control himself, leading to an impulsive strangling of Cui. The defence also included both sudden and grave provocation and sudden fight, as Khoo pinpointed the blame on Cui for assaulting him and insulting him during the argument prior to her death. The prosecution's psychiatrist noted that Khoo was capable of self-control at the time of the strangulation, and the prosecution noted numerous lies and discrepancies in Khoo's account.^{[21][22][23][24][25][26]}

After an 11-day trial that lasted from March to July 2019, on 18 July 2019, Khoo was convicted of murder under Section 300(b) of the Penal Code. The trial judge Audrey Lim of the High Court dismissed all of Khoo's defences as well. The judge also stated that based on the claim of sudden fight and Cui's smaller body size, it is more likely that Khoo acted in a cruel and unusual manner, and that Cui never physically abused Khoo at all; it would have been clear to Khoo that pressing Cui's neck with great force would likely lead to her death. Justice Lim additionally rejected Khoo's claim that he cremated Cui's body to allow her to rest in peace, and further affirmed that Khoo indeed had an affair with Cui despite his repeated denials. Due to the guilty verdict of murder, Khoo would either be sentenced to death, or to life imprisonment.^[27][28]

Submissions and verdict

The prosecution, led by Hri Kumar Nair, sought a life sentence for Khoo in their final submissions on sentence while the defence asked for the sentence to be backdated to Khoo's date of remand. After adjourning sentencing for a month, on 19 August 2019, Justice Lim decided in her sentencing verdict that Khoo did not show any blatant disregard for human life or viciousness from the manner of killing, for which his case would not warrant the death penalty. She also accept that there was no premeditation of killing Cui Yajie on Khoo's part, as his intention, before the killing, was merely to calm her down and dissuade her from confronting his supervisors.

Justice Lim also noted that while Khoo had gone to great lengths to dispose the body to cover up his crime and never called for help when Cui went motionless, it was not a relevant factor to be considered during sentencing. Besides, due to the cremation of the body, it was hard to ascertain the true extent of the injuries to observe the degree of viciousness exhibited in the manner of the killing. Hence, she decided to sentence 51-year-old Leslie Khoo Kwee Hock to life imprisonment and backdate Khoo's life term to the date of his remand, as what Khoo's lawyers requested for (and which the prosecution did not object to). Khoo was also spared the cane as he was above 50 years old at the time of sentencing.^{[29][30][31][32][33]}

In the aftermath of his trial, Khoo withdrew his appeal to the sentence, as he, as described by his lawyer Mervyn Cheong, was remorseful for his actions.^[34] Khoo is currently serving his life sentence at Changi Prison, until the end of his natural life. Khoo still faces the possibility of release on parole after the minimum of 20 years served.^[35]