Alex Josey: True Singapore Crimes: Bk. 1 - Tapa blanda

The Trial of Sunny Ang (1973) Bankrupt and desperately needing money, this is the true story of how a brilliant Singaporean psychopath tried to commit the perfect crime. Sunny Ang selected his victim with care Jenny was a young, divorced bar girl with little schooling, flattered that an educated, charming man should notice her. He made love to her and promised marriage. He tried to insure her life for a million dollars, which in the event of accidental death, was willed to someone she never knew his mother. Having insured her life, he plotted murder; first in a thwarted car accident and then later, in the fatal scuba diving trip off the dangerous waters of Sisters Islands. He succeeded, for Jenny went down and never came up nothing but a cut flipper was found. This landmark trial was the first of its kind in Singapore without a body, the prosecution had no medical evidence nor witnesses to claim unnatural death, so they caught Ang in a chain of circumstantial evidence he could not break, which ultimately led to his sentence. Pulau Senang The Experiment That Failed (1980) In 1965, 18 men, all convicted criminals were sent to death for murder. They were to be a haunting testimony to the failure of a bold experiment to transform Pulau Senang into a gaol without bars and a sad realization that creative work in healthy surroundings may not reform seasoned criminals. Right till his end, Daniel Dutton, Director of this model penal settlement, could not believe the men he had befriended and was trying so hard to rehabilitate would want to destroy him. Too late he realized the extraordinary hold secret society leaders had over their men. Reconstructing the events leading to the tragedy and trial, Pulau Senang attempts to throw some light to a question that has never been answered satisfactorily: Why did the experiment fail?

Alex Josey (1910 1986), writer, political commentator and journalist was born in 1910. He began writing when he was 12 in England, then worked as a foreign correspondent in the region. Later, he was the press secretary of Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew for 10 years, before becoming the Publications Manager of the Singapore International Chamber of Commerce (SICC). Sadly, he was crippled by the Parkinson s disease in 1984, and passed away in Singapore in 1986. A prolific writer, Josey had written more than 30 books. Among his books are Lee Kuan Yew, Asia-Pacific Socialism and The Trial of Sunny Ang.