Chopped up body parts found in river
By Tanya Fong, Teh Joo Lin
June 17, 2005
The Straits Times
THE brown cardboard box sealed with masking tape fell apart in his
hands. A green plastic bag inside contained what looked like fresh
meat.
Cleaner Murugan Kaniappan, 27, thought at first that someone had
dumped the hindquarters of a freshly-slaughtered pig into the
Kallang River.
'I was going to lift it and throw it in the garbage bag, but it was
heavy,' he told The Straits Times.
Suspicions aroused, he used a twig to pull apart the
loosely-knotted bag.
'That was when I saw the lower half of a woman's body.'
Decomposition had not set in. 'The flesh looked very fresh, like
she was not dead,' he added.
She appeared to be young, slim and fair. Her naked body had been
severed - cleanly - at the pelvis and at the knee joints.
'There was no blood and no smell. I could see the bone at the knee
was very white.'
That was about 9.15am. The place: The river bank that runs parallel
to Crawford Street near a pedestrian crossing.
Soon, the banks of what is usually a popular spot for sea-sports
enthusiasts, such as wakeboarders and dragonboat rowers, were
swarming with policemen. Kallang Riverside Park was cordoned
off.
Forty-five minutes later, police found a red and white box just
300m downstream on the opposite bank.
Inside it, a green plastic bag held the upper half of a woman's
body. Her arms and hands were intact but she had been neatly
decapitated.
Up until press-time yesterday, a massive search was still going on
for the missing body parts - her head, calves and feet.
A 30-man battalion of Special Operations police officers scoured
the banks and bushes surrounding the river. Police Coast Guard
boats patrolled the river up to its opening with the sea.
Late last night, police continued with the search on land and sea
with floodlights. They also started searching the pillars under the
Nicoll Highway.
Said Assistant Superintendent (ASP) Victor Keong: 'We are presently
working towards establishing the identity of the victim. The search
for further remains and evidence is ongoing.'
The intact state of her body is expected to be helpful in obtaining
her fingerprints for identification.
Police declined to say more, but it is clear the boxes were dumped
into the river, washed up the banks and became visible when the
tide went down at about 8am.
Another cleaner, Mr S. Selvamani, 42, said he had seen nothing when
he started work just after 6am.
Kallang River stretches from a canal in Bishan up to a dam-like
structure at Boon Keng Road, near Geylang, which traps debris
floating from upstream. It then flows from Geylang Road into
Kallang Riverside Park to Kallang Basin.
Gruesome murders of this nature are rare.
In 1995, Briton John Martin, 36, killed and dismembered South
African tourist Gerard George Lowe, 33, in the River View Hotel. He
put the parts into black plastic bags - later fished out of the
waters around Clifford Pier. He was hanged for murder.
In 1984, the body parts of Mr Ayakanno Marithamuthu, 38, were found
in plastic bags dumped in roadside dustbins. The parts had been
cooked in curry. Five people, including his wife, were arrested in
what was dubbed the Curry Murder case but released later because of
insufficient evidence.
