Prostitute's killer still at large

[MarrickG]

TWO years after a Malaysian prostitute was killed in a brothel at Flanders Square, the murderer remains at large.

Ms Ng Gaik Sim, 41, who went by the name Coco, was seen coming out of her room at the brothel in Little India after occupants heard her door slam loudly.

When a fellow prostitute asked what had happened, Ms Ng said in Cantonese that someone had stabbed her. She then collapsed on the floor, bleeding.

A pimple-scarred man in his 30s with short, slightly curly hair and a dark complexion was seen running away.

The man, who left behind a jockey cap in Ms Ng’s room, could have targeted her.

Four prostitutes who had rooms in the same three-storey shophouse as Ms Ng heard her door slam at about 7pm on Oct 25, 2008.

The court heard that she would close and latch her room door whenever she was with a customer.

An inquiry into her death went before the coroner’s court yesterday as there has been no arrest to date.

Inspector Alvin Phua from the Criminal Investigation Department’s Special Investigation Section said in his report that Ms Ng, a divorcee, travelled to and from her home in Malaysia to Singapore daily.

She had been renting a room at the Flanders Square brothel to service customers since 2006.

At about 6.30pm that day, she told a fellow prostitute that she had served a Malay customer who had just been released from prison. She did not make any complaints about him.

Police seized, among other things, a 26cm-long knife, a cap, cigarette butts and an empty cigarette box from her room.

Ms Ng, who died from a stab wound to her abdomen, was known to be a blunt and straightforward person, and would refuse to take on Indian and Bangladeshi customers. She would at times shout at them to leave.

Six days before the incident, she was heard shouting at someone to leave.

In his findings, State Coroner Victor Yeo said that while the motive of the killing was not known, the evidence suggested that Ms Ng was being targeted by her killer, who had planned the attack.

“In my view, sex was clearly not in the mind of the assailant at the material time,” he said.

The coroner said that, given the witnesses’ accounts, the woman’s room door was latched from the inside after the killer had gone into her room, and she was immediately ambushed.

“I note that from the time the other occupants in the other rooms heard the sound of the latch and the door slammed open, they did not hear any commotion or the deceased shouting for help,” he said.

It appeared that the assailant was on a “single mission to cause harm to the deceased”.

He said: “In my view, the deceased was undoubtedly taken by surprise by her killer and was brutally stabbed even before she could scream for help or defend herself.”

He recorded a verdict of murder by an unknown person.