"Four walls of emptiness": 6 January 1979, Block 58 Geylang Bahru

On 6 January 1979, at 6.35 a.m., Mr Tan Kuen Chai, 36, and Mdm Lee Mei Ying, 37, operators of a mini school bus business, left their one-room flat on the fifth storey of Block 58, Geylang Bahru.

While they were away for work, their children between 5 and 10 were viciously butchered, possibly between 6.35a.m. and 7.10a.m. They were:

• 𝑇𝑎𝑛 𝐾𝑜𝑘 𝑃𝑒𝑛𝑔 陈国平, 10
• 𝑇𝑎𝑛 𝐾𝑜𝑘 𝐻𝑖𝑛 陈国兴, 8
• 𝑇𝑎𝑛 𝐾𝑜𝑘 𝑆𝑜𝑜𝑛 陈国顺, 6
• 𝑇𝑎𝑛 𝐶ℎ𝑖𝑛 𝑁𝑒𝑒 陈珍妮, 5

Mercilessly slashed across their heads and bodies, at least twenty times each, their mutilated bodies were found piled on top of each other in the bathroom.

The Straits Times, 7 January 1979

𝐊𝐨𝐤 𝐏𝐞𝐧𝐠 had his right arm nearly severed. 𝐊𝐨𝐤 𝐇𝐢𝐧 had the back of his head split open. 𝐊𝐨𝐤 𝐒𝐨𝐨𝐧 had more than twenty wounds on his forehead, eyes and cheeks. The youngest, 𝐂𝐡𝐢𝐧 𝐍𝐞𝐞, suffered deep slashes to her face.

A brutal, sickening and gruesome slaughter of four young innocent lives.

The harrowing screams of their parents broke the morning calm. Since then, a perpetual nightmare has been indelibly etched in their hearts.

In an interview with The Straits Times, a year on from the murders, the Tans described their home as “four walls of emptiness”. Their lives were irrevocably altered, for the worst.

The community and the nation were also visibly shaken by the savagery and the callousness of this heartless, chilling crime.

As retired Assistant Superintendent of Police, Simon Suppiah, who was then a CID investigator called to the crime scene on that fateful morning, recalled, “Throughout my career with the CID, I have never seen four children being murdered in such a way.”

The siblings, in their best dress, were buried on 7 January 1979, a mere two days after their murders. Mdm Chan Seow, 66, the siblings’ grandmother prepared toys and schoolbags for her grandchildren, to be buried with them.

Along with the loss of a young life are dashed hopes and expectations – graduation, enlistment, a driver's license, career, marriage and having their own children and grandchildren.

Photos of the Tan siblings, carefree, diffident and cheeky, in their kindergarten graduation gown, are etched on their respective tombstones.

They are our cruel reminders of a family tragedy, standing as a memorial of their lives ruthlessly cut short. They stare out at us.

We, too, can’t help but feel the loss, agony, anger and the incomprehensibility of it all.

Today, it is still very painful to read and write about this case. Though the original housing block has since been torn down and redeveloped, the trauma is still keenly felt, a chasm in the nation’s consciousness.

Tan Kuen Chai, the siblings’ father, unfortunately, passed away several years ago, before justice was served.

To this family in Singapore, regardless of the number of years that have since gone by, the dates of the siblings’ respective birthdays and 6 January are bound to bring back deeply emotional memories and painful feelings.

The days leading up to the siblings' birth and death anniversaries will still feel like four walls of emptiness closing in on them.

Since that fateful day 45 years ago, the Tan family’s screams have only grown with intensity, loudly and silently.

It remains our hope that the eventual truth be known and the murderer(s) identified, and may the family of Kok Peng, Kok Hin, Kok Soon and Chin Nee find the rest and peace that have eluded them each day, for the past four-and-a-half decades, since 6 January 1979.

Their home is still, today, four walls of emptiness.

Source: Mediacorp, 21 March 2022

Source: Dark Asia with Megan, 7 October 2023

Source: Mothership.sg, 4 October 2020

Photo credit (unless stated otherwise): Mediacorp