Singapore — A man has come forward with new information, after the family of a 7-year-old girl raped and murdered in 1995 appealed to the public for help with leads last week.
On Jan 10, the family of Lim Shiow Rong had asked the public for help in finding the little girl’s murderer.
They had been inspired by the recent arrest of a man in the 2007 Felicia Teo case.
Shiow Rong’s family made the public appeal in collaboration with the Crime Library Singapore, a non-profit organisation whose aim is to promote the awareness and prevention of crime.
Mr Joseph Tan, its executive director, said in a Facebook post: “The grieving family is appealing to the public for the first time for more information for the police to make arrest in this case.”
And now, someone has indeed come forward with a tip-off.
A man reached out to Crime Library Singapore last week to say that he had information concerning a man who had frequented the coffee shop the Lim family owned at Toa Payoh.
Moreover, the man who gave the tip-off said that this patron matched the description of a photofit that the police had distributed after Shiow Rong’s murder.
The little girl had last been seen at the coffee shop, located in Block 75, Toa Payoh Lorong 5.
The straitstimes.com (ST) reported that, after the tip-off was submitted to Crime Library Singapore, the victim’s sister, Ms Lim Jia Hui, now 27, said that she had, on Thursday (Jan 14), filed a new police report with the tip-off.
She added that she has been contacted by the Special Investigation Section of the Criminal Investigation Department.
The publication quotes her as saying: “My mum and I were happy and glad that they listened to our appeal and are looking into the case.”
On June 24, 1995, the day she went missing, the little girl told her mother that she was going off to meet “papa’s friend”.
This was the last time anyone saw her alive. By 9.30 that evening, she was reported missing.
The following day, her body was found in a half-sitting position in the vicinity of a drain at Jalan Woodbridge. The cause of death: Strangulation. The child’s underwear was found with bloodstains.
And while a description of the little girl’s possible killer was circulated shortly after her body was found, no person matching the description was ever discovered.
The child’s father, Mr Lim Kim Siong, who was in jail on a drug-related conviction at the time of her death, approached the police in 1997 and 1998, only to be told that there were no new developments.
He went to the police again after some years to tell them that some men had approached his other daughter but nothing came out of it.
In 2016, he died of an aneurysm.
Both he and the child’s mother, Madam Ang Goon Lay, were beset with guilt for years since their daughter’s death.
Ms Lim told the media that she has made it her mission to find her sister’s killer in order to help her mother find closure after all these years. /TISG
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