2007: Leong Siew Chor, Kallang Body Parts Murderer

On this date in 2007, Singapore hanged Leong Siew Chor.

Perpetrator of a crime evocatively known as the Kallang Body Parts Murder, Leong circa mid-2005 was a 50-year-old married man having a fling with a 22-year-old aide, Liu Hong Mei … owner of the body parts in question.

Having swiped his lover’s bank card and withdrawn a few thousand dollars on it, Leong belatedly realized that security camera footage was sure to expose him. A day or two after this epiphany, pieces of Liu Hong Mei’s torso were found adrift in the Kallang River and then elsewhere. She’d seemingly been strangled to death at Leong’s home, after which he’d “cut body bit by bit, starting with feet,” in the words of a headline.

The horror of the crime belied the smallness of its author. For nothing but a pittance of money and a want of commonsense foresight, Leong had careened in a matter of days from humdrum marital malfeasance to an improvised abattoir. He lamely tried to claim that they’d been part of a suicide pact that he chickened out of, while also undercutting himself by acknowledging that he feared her discovering his ATM embezzlements.

On this day..