Tan Chor Jin

Tan's parents were originally from Guangdong, China before they immigrated to Singapore in the 1950s, and they worked as food stall owners to make ends meet.

Tan, who had two sisters and four brothers, grew up living in a three-room flat at Kim Keat.

He was very close to his siblings and filial to his parents.

As he grew into adulthood, Tan Chor Jin joined the Ang Soon Tong gang, which existed since the 1950s and had a vast criminal network in trafficking drugs and arms, and both illegal money lending and gambling.

Tan had also engaged in such activities, and during his time in the gang, Tan rose through the ranks and became a feared triad leader of the underworld.

He also engaged into a career as an illegal bookie who collect horse-racing and football bets at a coffee shop in Balestier Road.

Tan Chor Jin (29 March 1966 – 9 January 2009), also known by his alias Tony Kia, was a Singaporean gang leader known for fatally shooting 41-year-old Lim Hock Soon, his former friend and nightclub owner, using a semi-automatic Beretta 0.22 calibre pistol on 15 February 2006.

Tan, who had underworld affiliations and was a member of Ang Soon Tong since his early years, had also robbed the Lim family of their valuables before he escaped Singapore to Malaysia, where he was arrested ten days later.

The media gave him the name "One-eyed Dragon" given that he was blind in the right eye.

Subsequently, Tan was charged with the execution-style murder of Lim, though the charge was later amended to one of an unlawful discharge of a firearm with intent to cause hurt or death in Singapore.

Both charges were known to warrant the mandatory death sentence if found guilty, yet Tan chose to represent himself in his defence during the court proceedings, which failed and led to Tan being sentenced to death as a result of a lack of evidence in his favour.

Tan Chor Jin, the youngest of seven children, was born on 29 March 1966.

Sometime in the 1980s, Tan was jailed for five years in Changi Prison for gang-related activities, including rioting and fighting.

A former inmate from the prison reported that during his time of imprisonment, Tan was well-behaved and spent most of his time studying.

He also liked to play Chinese chess during his free time, even when he was not in prison.

Aside from his gangland connections, Tan began to open a shop that sold traditional Chinese medicine in Malaysia.

He later expanded the business into a branch of four shops, and also expanded into the trade of Chinese religious products and penchants.

He became affluent enough to own branded cars.

Despite his gangster affiliations, Tan never talked about them in his home and never brought his friends to his siblings’ homes.

Even when he smoked, he did not do so in front of his family members and only did it near the window out of respect for them.

According to one of Tan's older brothers, he said that Tan was close to his three children, and they fondly looked up to him as an uncle they liked.

His father and mother died of old age in 1997 and 1998 respectively.

Tan spoke little English, but he could understand Chinese and a bit of Malay.

In 1999, Tan had a traffic accident.

Although he survived it, Tan suffered an eye injury due to the broken glass pieces having flown into his right eye during the crash, which pierced through and thus blinded him in the right eye.

Tan was married in 2001 to Siau Fang Fang, a Malaysian who was born in 1981.

Even though he moved to Hougang after his marriage, he lived with his wife and in-laws in Malaysia, where he operated his business.

He had no children with Siau.

Tan would later on have a mistress named Lian Yee Hwa, who was the same age as his wife.

Together, he and Lian had two children, a daughter (born 2002) and a son (born 2006).

His two accomplices, who played a part in assisting Tan to commit the crime and to escape Singapore, were each sentenced to six and twenty months' imprisonment in 2006 and 2016 respectively.

Early on the morning of 15 February 2006, at a HDB block in Serangoon, a family living in one of the block's second-floor units was robbed of their valuables, with the patriarch of the family having being shot dead.

In that same morning, the police were contacted and they arrived at the scene.

They entered the flat of the family, and found a dead body riddled with five gunshot wounds in one of the rooms.

The victim was recognised as Lim Hock Soon, a 41-year-old owner of a famous nightclub in Singapore (the Las Vegas KTV lounge on Havelock Road).

Lim's family was also earlier robbed of their valuables.

The police also found a total of six used cartridges on the floor of the study, along with a chair that was damaged by one of the spent bullets.

The wounds were found on Lim's left arm, right temple, right cheek, back and, left thigh.

According to Lim's 33-year-old Malaysian wife Kok Pooi Leng, Lim's 13-year-old daughter, and Lim's 22-year-old Indonesian maid Risa Erawati Ning Tyas, all three of them testified that they were being threatened by a Chinese man wearing black clothes and black cap, who was holding a gun and a knife.

After losing his appeals, Tan was hanged on 9 January 2009.