Isabel Elizabeth Francis

On 11 January 2022, 30-year-old Isabel Elizabeth Francis, who was 15 weeks pregnant with a daughter, was stabbed to death by her 33-year-old husband David Brian Chow Kwok-Hun (周国坤 Zhōu Guókūn) inside their Ang Mo Kio flat.

Chow, who was arrested and indicted for murder, was said to have misunderstood that his company would go bankrupt due to an accounting error made by his employee regarding the company's finances.

Due to increasing depression over the "financial crisis" of his company, Chow wanted to commit suicide but he thought of killing his wife and unborn daughter to spare them from the heartbreak and shame of losing a loved one to suicide, and thus he used a fruit knife to stab Francis to death before attempting suicide twice, but his attempts all failed.

Chow was later diagnosed with adjustment disorder that caused him to suffer from an abnormality of the mind at the time of the offence, and hence Chow's murder charge was reduced to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, and he was sentenced to seven years in prison on 26 October 2023.

On the morning of 11 January 2022, police responded to a report regarding a stabbing case that happened in a flat at Ang Mo Kio.

The police arrived at the flat, where they discovered a man alive with multiple injuries while a woman lying motionless with multiple stab wounds all over her body.

The injured man was rushed to hospital while the woman was pronounced dead at the scene.

The victim, whose case was classified as murder, was identified as 30-year-old Isabel Elizabeth Francis, and the injured man was her husband.

According to an autopsy report, Francis sustained a total of 15 stab wounds on the head, neck and torso, and two of them were sufficient in the ordinary course of nature to cause death, as one penetrated the left lung while the other was inflicted on the upper part of Francis's neck.

The report also determined that at the time of her death, Francis was pregnant for an estimated 15 weeks, and the foetus was identified to be a girl.

Additionally, a law school student and female classmate of Francis from Singapore University of Social Sciences told the press that two weeks before her death, Francis had told her she was pregnant and was expecting to give birth in the middle of the year.

Residents told the press that they never sensed anything amiss at all on that morning when the murder happened, They noted that the couple went outdoors for exercise regularly and they even celebrated Christmas together with family and friends weeks before the murder.

One neighbour, however, stated that she briefly heard someone screaming before the murder was uncovered by the police.

The police later announced that they placed the victim's husband under arrest for murder after some preliminary investigations, and the police confirmed that the suspect would be charged with murder.

A bloodstained fruit knife, believed to be the murder weapon, was recovered from the flat.

On 12 January 2022, a day after his arrest, Francis's 33-year-old husband, David Brian Chow Kwok-Hun, who was still hospitalized for his injuries, was officially charged with the murder of his pregnant wife by a field magistrate at Tan Tock Seng Hospital.

As the charge of murder under Singaporean law carried the death penalty by hanging, Chow would be sentenced to death if found guilty.

His case was adjourned to 26 January 2022.

On 16 February 2022, Chow, who was remanded in prison awaiting trial, had completed his psychiatric evaluation.

By then, Chow was represented by Shashi Nathan, Jeremy Pereira and Laura Yeo, and the police prosecutor applied for Chow to be brought back to the crime scene to re-enact the murder and assist the police in their investigations.

David Brian Chow Kwok-Hun, born in Singapore in 1988, was the third of four children in his family.

Chow was reported to have struggled in his studies during his younger years, but he managed to enter university and graduated with a degree.

According to sources, Chow felt inferior to his three siblings, who was reportedly doing much better than him in life and school.

Chow, who would become the director and chief executive of his family's training company, found success in the business after running it, and many acknowledged Chow's good character at work and outside work.

Chow was also the director of another company that provided both online and physical security services.

In December 2021, Chow received the training company's half-year financial report from an accounting staff and found the numbers to be unusually poor.

This caused Chow to believe that the business would fail and go bankrupt, and he gradually became plagued with depression and worry, so much so that he lost his sleep due to worry and stress over the company's finances, and he only got to sleep one or two hours every night.

Born on 4 September 1991, Isabel Elizabeth Francis, an Eurasian Singaporean, was the second of three children, and had one younger brother (born in 1993) and one elder sister (born in 1988) who was diagnosed with special needs.

At one point during her childhood, Francis's parents divorced, and her mother gained custody of all three children, who went to live with their mother and aunt somewhere at the East Coast area of Singapore.

According to her brother Emanuel, Francis and her siblings shared a very close relationship, and together, they would record song covers at home, with Emanuel playing the guitar and Francis herself singing.

Francis and her siblings were raised as Catholic, and they regularly went to the Church of Christ the King in Ang Mo Kio, where Francis taught catechism classes.

Francis was described to be an outgoing, generous and loving person, and often mingled with her friends.

Francis studied at CHIJ Toa Payoh before she was enrolled in Ngee Ann Polytechnic, where she pursued a diploma in mass communications.

After completing her diploma, Francis furthered her studies at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) Singapore.

Francis first met her husband David Brian Chow in 2014 when she became an intern at his family's security training company and they started dating soon after she left the company, before they married on 28 December 2019.

As of 2022 when she was murdered, Francis worked as an assistant manager at Deliveroo, and she enrolled as a part-time student at the law school of Singapore University of Social Sciences.

Based on the records, Chow's company had earned about S$1 million in profits between July 2020 and June 2021, and never suffered any financial loss between July 2021 and November 2021 even during the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, these numbers did not stop Chow from worrying about the projected financial loss his business had encountered.

Despite the re-assurances from his colleagues, family members and his wife, Chow's behaviour did not improve.

This worsened so much that Chow's father decided to bring him to see a psychiatrist on the same date of the murder.