Neighbours - Gold Bars Triple Murders 1972

Oct 1972. Because our front door was always open in the day at our Bedok kampong house, our mother would once-in-a- while chance upon a friendly man with his young daughter just outside waiting for a school bus to take her to preschool. He was a neighbour that lived further down the kampong but had to walk up nearer to where we were as the bus did not travel all the way down to his house. Other days it was his wife with the little girl but in days when he was waiting, he would strike up a chat with our mother and conversations were always friendly. They soon moved out of the kampong and we believed all went well.

So imagine the shock the family had when we read the headlines of the Straits Times and saw this story. We recognised this former neighbour among the perpetrators of this terrible crime!

It is more than 50 years since and we feel sad for the victims and their families and still find it hard to match the friendliness of this man vs the viciousness of the crime. Not a memory one would hold to but we remember it as it is part and parcel of the overall collective of what made the house and its memories that it contained, and the interactions we had with all our neighbours despite this terrible outcome.

1967 - Our mother seated at the house entrance (foyer type marble table here) with open entrance door behind her

Oct 1972 news report