Leslie Khoo Kwee Hock

His case was the second murder conviction without a body after the high-profile Sunny Ang trial in 1965.

The murder of Cui Yajie, which took place nearby Gardens by the Bay, became known as the Gardens by the Bay murder to the public.

Leslie Khoo Kwee Hock (born c. 1968) is a criminal from Singapore who was convicted for the murder of his Chinese girlfriend Cui Yajie, with whom he had an extra-marrital affair.

Leslie Khoo Kwee Hock was born in Singapore in 1968.

Khoo married twice, first in 1995 before he divorced and married another woman in 2001.

He used to be the owner of a successful business, and in 2001, due to a debt of S$300,000, he strangled his wife, leading to a personal protection order filed against him, before their relationship recovered.

At another point, Khoo once again strangled his wife, as a result of her discovering his adultery, and she filed a personal protection order.

Through counselling, their relationship was again repaired.

He also twice committed offences related to misuse of computers in 2001 and 2016 respectively.

Khoo turned to Christianity in prison and later became a volunteer of a welfare group for ex-convicts.

He was later employed as a retail manager of a laundry business, helping former prisoners find jobs in the same business.

Khoo's supervisor and colleagues noted that he was a good employee.

Leslie Khoo continued to have affairs with other women outside his marriage, and continued to cheat them of money.

Of all the lovers, one of them was 31-year-old Chinese national Cui Yajie.

Cui Yajie, an only child in her family, was an engineer born in Tianjin, China.

He fathered a son in 2004 with his second wife.

Khoo was first convicted in 2004 of criminal breach of trust and sentenced to six months in jail, and he had also been convicted for forgery.

Seven years later, he was found guilty of a similar offence and served a longer 16-month jail term.

Cui, who graduated from University of Southampton, first came to work in Singapore since 2012, and had gained permanent residence status during her next three years in Singapore.

Khoo and Cui first met in 2015 outside the home of her former boyfriend (with whom she just broke up with, where he comforted her. Later, they began a relationship after he lied that he was single and was the owner of a laundry business. Later, when Cui became suspicious, Khoo told her that he was divorced. Khoo's wife later got wind of her husband's relationship with Cui after Cui sent her a message on Facebook to demand that Khoo's wife leave Khoo alone.

The relationship would later on be riddled with quarrels over Khoo spending less time with Cui and a debt of $20,000 which he owed her for making an investment in gold.

Half of that amount was eventually paid back by Khoo, who asked a former lover to, on his behalf, remit the money in Cui's father's bank account.

Khoo, who had previously been criminally convicted for cheating and forgery, argued with his girlfriend in a car on 12 July 2016; the argument turned violent and Khoo strangled Cui in a moment of anger.

Later, Khoo took Cui's corpse to a forest in Lim Chu Kang where he burned the body for three days before he was arrested on 20 July 2016.

Khoo was found guilty of murder three years after his arrest and sentenced to life imprisonment.

On 12 July 2016, Cui Yajie wanted to go to Khoo's workplace, supposedly to expose Khoo's lies, but Khoo intercepted her, and he offered to drive her to his workplace.

He subsequently took her to a secluded place near Gardens by the Bay, where he intended to calm her down and dissuade her from meeting his supervisor.

However, the couple's argument grew fiercer, and in the heat of the quarrel, Khoo lost control of his temper and strangled Cui Yajie to death, and after he drove aimlessly around Singapore, he went back home at night with Cui's corpse, which was covered in laundry bags, still hidden in the car.

The next day, Khoo took the body to a forest in Lim Chu Kang after buying some charcoal and kerosene, where he burned it for three consecutive days.

On 17 July 2016, after the police investigated into the disappearance of Cui, Khoo, who was the last person to see her before her death, was arrested as a suspect.

Khoo later confessed to the killing and he led the police to the place where he burned the body.

By the time the police got there, there were only a few clumps of hair, a bra hook and partially burnt pieces of Cui's dress left at the site where Khoo burnt Cui's body.

Khoo was charged with murder and remanded in the case of Cui's death.

This murder case became known as the "Gardens by the Bay murder" in media reports.

Leslie Khoo also faced charges of cheating and embezzling a total of S$88,600 from his company and his four other lovers prior to his killing of Cui.

When his trial started in the High Court of Singapore in March 2019, Khoo, then 50 years old, denied having an affair with Cui or having intended to kill Cui.

His lawyers waged the defence of diminished responsibility against the murder charge by citing his intermittent explosive disorder (IED), which was argued made him unable to control himself, leading to an impulsive strangling of Cui.

The defence also included both sudden and grave provocation and sudden fight, as Khoo pinpointed the blame on Cui for assaulting him and insulting him during the argument prior to her death.

The prosecution's psychiatrist noted that Khoo was capable of self-control at the time of the strangulation, and the prosecution noted numerous lies and discrepancies in Khoo's account.

After an 11-day trial that lasted from March to July 2019, on 18 July 2019, Khoo was convicted of murder under Section 300(b) of the Penal Code.