Sim Woh Kum

Sim Woh Kum was born in 1933, as the only child and son of his parents.

His father died when he was ten years old, making him being raised by his mother.

Sim had little to no education in his childhood, and he had to help his mother Yip Kum Koi to do manual labour.

He became an apprentice of a mechanic at age 16, but he lost his job four years later.

Sim then became a HDB sweeper and also worked part-time as a school canteen stallholder.

In 1956, at a picnic, Sim, then 23 years old, first met Wong Weng Siu, a 17-year-old woman was invited to the picnic by a friend.

Subsequently, both Wong and Sim became romantically involved.

The couple dated for the next two years before they married in 1958.

The couple went on to have two sons, one in 1958 and another in 1962 respectively.

However, their happiness did not last long, as the couple began to argue frequently over family issues.

Wong, who was said to be ill-tempered since young, frequently abused her husband and used weapons on Sim whenever their arguments turned violent.

Sim, who had a mild-temper and calm personality, often silently endured these physical abuses, which at one point left a scar on his forehead.

He even ran out of the house to escape any assaults a lot of times whenever Wong picked up a knife or wooden rod.

Wong had also abuse her own mother-in-law, who considered her as an "empress daughter-in-law".

Not only that, Sim was addicted to gambling, and he always gambled away the couple's hard-earned money, which aggravated the family's already-precarious financial situation.

Sim was later fired from his job because of this habit, and the family's life savings were subsequently spent away.

This forced Wong having to go take up part-time jobs to support their family, including a stint at a bar as a hostess.

Despite his loss of employment, Sim continued to gamble, and he sometimes stole Wong's hard-earned income to gamble.

Given their financial difficulties and Sim's own incompetence, Wong was slowly becoming disillusioned with Sim, and she thus left him in 1963.

After her separation from Sim, Wong took up a job as a bar hostess.

Under the stage name Mimi Wong, she earned fame among the male customers of the bar through her beauty and slim body figure, leading to her becoming the cabaret queen of the bar in Singapore.

Since then, Wong would purposely go to strut with her boyfriends in front of Sim.

Sim, who still loved Wong despite their separation, had always hoped that Wong would reconcile with him and often told her not to do that in front of him.

During the couple's separation, Sim continued to take care of his mother and sons.

Both Sim and Wong were alleged to have murdered Ayako Watanabe, who was the wife of Wong's Japanese lover on 6 January 1970.

Sim had also helped Wong to restrain the victim while Wong repeatedly stabbed the woman to death.

In January 1970, Mimi Wong went back to her estranged husband Sim Woh Kum, then aged 37, to tell her about her plans to kill a Japanese woman.

Wong even offered Sim some money if he could help her to do the job.

Despite his own reservations about committing murder, Sim decided to accept the offer for he still loved Wong and he was facing huge financial troubles while alone taking care of his mother and two sons.

While she was separated from Sim, Wong met a Japanese engineer named Hiroshi Watanabe, who was a married father of three.

After his wife Ayako found out about the affair, Hiroshi wanted to end the affair but Wong was unwilling to.

Filled with jealousy, Wong then asked for help from Sim to help her in the murder of Ayako, who came to Singapore a few days ago with their three children to visit her husband.

On 6 January 1970, Wong and Hiroshi shared a dinner at their Everitt Road house.

Upon knowing that Hiroshi was working overtime that night, Mimi Wong knew that she could take the chance to execute her plan.

After contacting Sim, Wong and her husband went together to the Jalan Sea View house where the Watanabes were spending the night.

Wong brought along a pair of gloves and a knife, while Sim took a tin half-filled with toilet-cleaning liquid, in order to pretend to be a worker coming to repair the house toilet.

Using this excuse, the couple managed to let Ayako make them go into the house.

At the same time, the Watanabes' eldest daughter, nine-year-old Chieko Watanabe, was inside her bedroom with her two younger siblings (a boy and a girl), and she could not fall asleep despite having tried her best to do so.

Sim Woh Kum (c. 1933 – 27 July 1973), also spelt Sim Wor Kum, was a Singaporean who was best known to be the accomplice of Mimi Wong, a bar hostess who was the first woman to be sentenced to death for murder in Singapore since its independence.

Both Sim and his wife were executed on 27 July 1973, making them the first couple to be subjected to capital punishment in Singapore since its independence in 1965.