Chao Tzee Cheng

Chao Tzee Cheng (22 September 1934 in Hong Kong – 21 February 2000 in New York City) was a renowned forensic pathologist in Singapore.

Chao was respected for solving several notorious crimes in Singapore, and raised Singapore's level of professionalism in the area of forensics.

Chao Tzee Cheng was the son of a professor in cultural studies and a school principal.

Of Cantonese origin, he later migrated to Singapore with his parents and received his education at Catholic High School and Victoria Continuation School.

Although offered a scholarship to read engineering in the United States, he decided to take up medicine at University of Hong Kong.

After graduating with an MBBS in Hong Kong in 1961, Chao returned to Singapore to serve as a medical officer.

Chao married Joyce Wong Yoke Choy in 1963.

They had one son Dr Alexandre Chao (born 1966), who succumbed to SARS in 2003, and two granddaughters.

Upon his return to Singapore, Chao was appointed the forensic pathologist at the Department of Pathology in the Ministry of Health.

Almost immediately, Chao was involved in his first case as a pathologist.

Chao also took a Diploma in Clinical Pathology in 1967, followed by a Diploma of Pathology in 1968 and a Diploma of Medical Jurisprudence in 1968.

However, a car accident in West Malaysia left him with a weakened right arm and dashed his hopes of a career in surgery.

Unfazed, Professor Chao turned to a career in pathology.

By 1968, Chao qualified as a pathologist, obtaining his specialised skills from the Royal London Hospital, Medical College, currently under the Queen Mary, University of London.

He was invited to be an expert witness in the murder case of Koh Liang Chuen in 1969.

The notoriety of this case raised Chao's standing as a forensic expert in the region.

His forensic expertise and duties extended beyond Singapore to countries like Malaysia, Hong Kong and even certain states of West Africa.

In his career, Chao performed over 25,000 autopsies and was the authoritative expert witness in many unsolved murder cases worldwide.

His forensic capability was demonstrated in the investigation of mass disasters such as the Spyros blast, the Singapore Cable Car tragedy, the Hotel New World disaster and the SilkAir Flight 185 tragedy.

He also helped solve notorious crimes in the annals of Singapore criminal law, such as the Adrian Lim cult murders, the John Martin Scripps body parts murders, the Bulgarian girl murder and the Flor Contemplacion case.

He was nicknamed the "Justice of Murder" by his associates for his uncanny ability to solve murder cases.

Despite the political sensitivities of several of his cases, Professor Chao remained objective and presented the facts as he knew them.

He was also known to stand for justice, no matter which side of the fence it stood on.

On 6 January 1970, 31-year-old dance hostess Mimi Wong Weng Siu (黄婉秀) and her 37-year-old ex-husband and sweeper Sim Woh Kum (冼松锦) murdered 33-year-old Ayako Watanabe, who was the wife of Wong's Japanese lover Hiroshi Watanabe.

The murder was witnessed by the Watanabes's 9-year-old eldest daughter Chieko (Chieko would later become the prosecution's main witness against the couple), who came together with her mother and two siblings to Singapore to visit her father.

Hiroshi, an engineer, who had an affair with Wong for 3 years and gotten disapproval from his wife regarding the issue, wanted to end the affair with Wong, who was not willing to.

Filled with jealousy, Wong then asked for help from Sim, with whom she bore two sons, to help her in the murder.

While he was conducting an autopsy on her, Professor Chao found two knife wounds on Ayako Watanabe's neck, and one to her abdomen, along with a few others.

Chao also made a certified finding that the woman died around 5 to 6 minutes after the fatal wounds were inflicted on her.

At the trial, both Wong and Sim (who initially admitted to his participation in the killing) pointed fingers at one another, with Wong even putting up a defence of diminished responsibility, with her psychiatrist Dr. Wong Yip Chong claiming that she caught the Japanese encephalitis virus from Hiroshi Watanabe and thus suffered from a viral brain infection at the time of the killing.

However, she was found to be not suffering from any diminished responsibility by the prosecution's psychiatric expert.

For example, in 1975, he testified as an expert witness for the defence at the Kuala Lumpur High Court trial of Hugh Ashley Johnston for the murder of his wife.

In the end, a six-to-one jury verdict held that Johnston had no intention to kill his wife.

For his services to Singapore, Chao was awarded the Public Administration Silver Medal in 1975, Gold Medal in 1979 and the Meritorious Medal in 1995.

He also founded the Medico-Legal Society, and served as its President from 1985 until his death in 2000.

Chao served in various capacities, including the Master of the Singapore Academy of Medicine (1992–1995), and President of the Singapore Society of Pathology (1987–1990).

In 1999, Chao co-authored a book with Audrey Perera entitled Murder Is My Business, which documented some of his better-known cases.

Chao died in his sleep on a visit to his sister in New York on 21 February 2000.

At the time of his death, Chao was holding posts in the Institute of Science and Forensic Medicine, Ministry of Health, National University of Singapore and Singapore General Hospital in Singapore.

In memory of him, the National University of Singapore has set up the Chao Tzee Cheng Professorship in Pathology and Forensic Science.