Talking with Serial Killers

by Christopher Berry-Dee

  As most visitors to Singapore were registered as hotel guests, the detective’s first stop was the centralised hotel registration computer. Within hours, a fax had been sent to every hotel in Singapore, asking if any guests were missing, or who had left without paying their bill. The Riverview Hotel responded immediately. Two guests – Gerard Lowe and Simon Davis – had checked out of Room 1511 without paying. But there was something else, the manager said. His duty reception staff recalled that the Englishman had been seen lugging a heavy suitcase through the foyer, the night before he and his companion disappeared. It was also noted that when he returned to the hotel, several hours later, he was empty-handed.

  On 14 March, the police in Johannesburg, South Africa, received a report from a distressed Mrs Vanessa Lowe, who said that her husband was missing. He had not called her from Singapore to say that all was well which, she explained, was totally out of character. Her concerns soon reached Gerald Lim, and he invited her to fly to Singapore, to view the disarticulated body and a few items of wet clothing.

  Before Vanessa Lowe arrived, Lim had determined that ‘Simon Davis’ had been using his victim’s Gold credit card. Davis was now the prime suspect and a warrant was issued for his arrest. Police now believed he had murdered Lowe for his money.

  When the distraught woman arrived, Superintendent Lim met her at the airport and, as delicately as he could, he asked her to identify the corpse. She bravely pointed out various marks on her late husband’s body. She recognised the appendectomy scar on the abdomen, the freckles on the back and the bony lump just below the right knee. She also identified the underpants, used by Scripps to tie up his victim’s thighs, and the orange strips were from here husband’s T-shirt.

  For some inexplicable reason, Scripps returned to Singapore on 19 March and, after a short struggle at Immigration Control, he was arrested and taken into custody. When officers opened the backpack of the man calling himself Simon Davis, which had been seized during his arrest, they were amazed at what they found. There, along with an ‘Enjoy Coca-Cola’ beach towel, a Pink Floyd cassette, a bottle of Paul Mitchell shampoo and some featherlite condoms, was what they came to describe as a ‘murder kit’.

  Scripps was carrying a 10,000-volt ‘Z-Force III’ stun-gun, a 1.5kg hammer, a can of Mace, two sets of handcuffs, some thumb cuffs, two serrated knives and two Swiss army knives. And that was not all. Another of his bags was filled with clothes, suitable for a middle-aged woman, consisting of skirts, dresses and even some pearl earrings. Hidden among them were passports in the names of two Canadian citizens, Sheila and Darin Damude, each of them containing crudely pasted-in photographs of Scripps. He was also found to be carrying more than US$40,000 in cash and travellers’ cheques, together with the passports, credit cards and other belongings of Lowe and the Damudes.

  * * *

  In the Singapore equivalent of Committal Proceedings, the preliminary enquiry saw written statements from as many as 77 witnesses for the prosecution supporting the murder charge, and 11 other charges ranging from forgery, vandalism and cheating, to possession of weapons and small quantities of controlled drugs. Douglas Herda, representing the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, also wanted to question Scripps about the murders of Sheila and Darin Damude in Phuket. The Singaporean authorities refused his request.

  The trial of John Scripps started on 2 October 1995 in Singapore’s new high-tech court. Security was heavy throughout the session, with Scripps sitting between two armed uniformed officers in a glass and metal cage. His legs were shackled to a metal bar. He had entered no plea but ‘claimed trial’ which, under Singapore law, means he was contesting the charges. Singapore does not have trial by jury, a judge alone hears the evidence.

  The first witness was James Quigley, who testified that he had taught Scripps butchery in Albany Prison. Chao Tzee Cheng, a government pathologist, said that the manner in which Lowe’s body had been cut up indicated that only a doctor, a veterinarian or a butcher could have dismembered it. ‘I told the police, “Look, you are dealing with a serial killer,”’ he said in his evidence.

  The prosecution alleged that Scripps, using a false name, had checked into the same hotel room as Lowe and killed him.

  In what amounted to a confession, Scripps told the court he met Lowe at Changi Airport on 8 March, and they had agreed to share a hotel room. He admitted killing him in the room after he was awakened by a half-naked Lowe, who was smiling and touching his buttocks.

  ‘I am not a homosexual,’ claimed Scripps, ‘and at that time it appeared to me that Mr Lowe was a homosexual. I freaked out; I kicked out and started swearing. I had experience of such things in the past and I was very frightened.’

  Scripps said he used the hammer ‘to hit Lowe several times on the head until he collapsed on to the carpeted floor. My right hand was covered with blood. Everything happened so quickly.’

  After realising Lowe was dead, Scripps testified, he sought the help of a British friend, whom he refused to name. The friend disposed of the body without telling him how. He denied that he cut up the body.

  The defence, led by Joseph Theseira, tried to show that Scripps had not intended to kill Lowe, and that the murder was an act of manslaughter, which carried a maximum penalty of life in prison.

  The prosecution claimed that he committed premeditated murder with the intention of robbing the dead man.

  On the fourth day of the trial, prosecutor Jennifer Marie said that Scripps had practised forging Lowe’s signature, suggesting that the murder was premeditated. She showed the court items seized from his luggage, including a notebook and tracing paper with practised signatures of Lowe’s name.

  In a nit-picking exercise, the defence questioned two police officers, trying to show how they conducted an inadequate search for blood traces next to the hotel room bed where, Scripps claimed, Lowe fell and bled to death. Both officers said there were no traces of blood on the carpet, only in the small bathroom. The prosecution argued that this evidence supported their contention that the killing was premeditated. Clearly on a losing wicket, Pereira implied that if the police found no blood traces on the carpet, it could have been because they did not conduct sufficiently thorough tests, and not in the exact spot where Lowe fell.

  During the court proceedings, on 24 October, Scripps said that while in police custody, after being arrested, he had tried to commit suicide, by slitting his wrists with a small, sharp piece of glass, to escape being hanged.

  ‘I believed I was going to be hung,’ the 35-year-old man said on his fifth day in the witness box. ‘I kept thinking about Lowe and the Filipino lady that got hanged.’ He was referring to the Filipino maid, Flor Contemplacion, who was hanged, on 17 March 1995, after she confessed to two murders.

  Now, digging his own grave, Scripps agreed with the suggestion, by Judge TS Sinnathuray, that it would take about five minutes for a skilled butcher to dismember an animal. Then the prosecutor jumped in.

  ‘Could your skills be used to dismember a human?’

  ‘The bones look similar,’ Scripps replied.

  Cutting to the chase, Jennifer Marie asked again, ‘Did you dismember Mr Lowe?’

  Scripps looked down at his shackled legs, and replied unconvincingly, ‘No, I don’t have the all the skills you mentioned.’

  On his sixth day on the stand, Scripps was asked by the prosecutor why he did not report killing Lowe to the police.

  ‘Because this man died at my hands,’ he said, ‘and under Singapore law that is an automatic death sentence. That’s what I understood at the time.’

  ‘So who is the mystery man who dismembered Mr Lowe?’ asked the prosecutor.

  ‘He is a British friend staying at a hotel on Sentosa. While he was doing it I fled.’

  Scripps said he had known this ‘friend’ for eight to ten years, and remembered that he had once worked at an abattoir. ‘He’s a very dangerous man,’ he said meekly. ‘I fear for the safety of my family.’

  The Judge then cautio
ned Scripps that his reluctance to give even basic information on his friend could harm his defence.

  ‘Here you are facing a murder charge,’ the Judge reminded him, ‘which carries the death sentence in this country. I have to ask myself, at the end of the day, this question – ‘did the accused, John Scripps, go to a hotel on Sentosa?’

  Sitting back in his seat, the Judge sighed as Scripps still declined even to describe the hotel, a refusal which prompted the prosecutor to accuse the defendant of lying, and that the activities of his friend were all a ‘complete fabrication.’ Discrepancies between Scripps’s earlier statements to the police on 29 April, and his testimony from the witness stand, were also highlighted.

  ‘You made no mention of attempted homosexual assaults while in prison in 1978, and the alleged 1994 assault by Mr Lowe, did you? I am suggesting that this 1994 incident never occurred,’ said Marie. ‘It’s yet another fabrication of yours.’

  With Scripps now firmly on the hook, the prosecutor started to reel him in. Pressed about his movements between 8 and 11 March, Scripps said that his memory was hopeless.

  ‘You have got a good memory?’ he was asked.

  ‘I haven’t,’ he replied nervously. ‘I’m dyslexic. I get things mixed up.’

  On 6 November, Jennifer Marie told the court in her closing arguments, ‘The conduct of the accused after the killing suggests that he was cold, callous and calculating, a far cry from the confused, dazed, forgetful man walking in a dream world, the picture he gives himself. He is a man very much in control of his faculties. When he embarked on the shopping spree using Lowe’s credit card, buying a fancy pair of running shoes, a video cassette recorder, and a ticket to a symphony orchestra concert, he becomes a man who has no qualms about lying continuously, consistently, and even on the stand.’ She added, with rare touch of venom, ‘This man’s excuse that he killed Mr Lowe because of a homosexual advance is just one of a string of lies to mask a premeditated murder by a greedy serial killer who preyed on tourists. And Mrs Lowe has stated on oath, a decent loving wife has come here to say that her husband had come here on a shopping holiday. He most certainly was not a homosexual. The accused has not only murdered and dismembered her husband; he now rubbishes his good name.’

  In his closing statement for the defence, Edmond Pereira said, ‘We urge this court to come to a finding that the accused is not guilty of murder, but is guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder. The killing occurred in a sudden fight in the heat of passion upon a sudden quarrel,’ and he added, ‘He is not a man prone to violence.’

  Pereira also urged Judge Sinnathuray to ignore the information from Thailand. ‘There is no evidence to suggest that the accused is responsible for the deaths of the two Canadians,’ he said, calling the Thai information ‘nothing more than circumstantial and prejudicial’.

  On 7 November 1995, Scripps, dressed in khaki, with a prison-style crew-cut and standing in the court’s glass cage, was said to be laughing and joking with his guards, before the verdict.

  ‘Karma is karma. It’s in God’s hands now,’ but his attitude changed within minutes.

  The Judge told the packed courtroom, ‘I am satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that Scripps had intentionally killed Lowe. After that, he disarticulated Lowe’s body into separate parts, and it was he who subsequently disposed of the body parts by throwing them into the river behind the hotel.’ Having announced the guilty verdict, Judge TS Sinnathuray sentenced Scripps to death by hanging. The condemned man was less glib as he was taken away to a place of lawful execution.

  After the verdict, defence lawyer Edmond Pereira told reporters, ‘Scripps has a right to an appeal, which he can exercise within 14 days, and he shall be advised of that right.’

  Privately, in an interview for the research for this book, the Judge said that he was convinced that Scripps had killed the Damudes, but added that he decided Scripps’s guilt independently of the Thai evidence.

  ‘On the evidence, I had no difficulty to find that it was Scripps who was concerned with the deaths of Sheila and Darin, and for the disposal of their body parts found in different sites in Phuket. The disarticulation of the body parts of Lowe, Sheila and Darin, had all the hallmark signs of having been done by the same person. The Thai evidence was materially relevant because it rebutted Scripps’s defence that he killed Lowe unintentionally during a sudden fight.’

  Upon hearing the news, at her home in Sandown, Isle of Wight, his mother, 58-year-old Jean Scripps, said, ‘I brought John into this world. I am the only person who has the right to take him out. I cannot believe how my boy could have changed from a kind human being into the monster described in court.’

  On 4 January 1996, John Martin Scripps virtually signed his death warrant when he wrote to the prison authorities to withdraw his appeal, which was scheduled to be heard on 8 January, but confirmed he would file for a clemency plea. This was the only sensible avenue open to him, and he had a brief six to eight-week window of opportunity to complete the paperwork.

  * * *

  The death penalty was in use during the colonial period in Singapore, and was retained after the City State became an independent republic in August 1965. Today, death sentences may be imposed for various offences under the Penal Code – the Internal Security Act, 1960; the Misuse of Drugs Act, 1973 as amended in 1975; and the Arms Offences Act. Capital offences include murder, treason, hurting or imprisoning the President, offences relating to the unlawful possession of firearms and explosives, and perjury resulting in the execution of a person indicted on a capital charge. The 1975 amendment to the Misuse of Drugs Act made the death penalty mandatory for possession of over 15g of heroin, or fixed amounts of other drugs.

  Capital offences are tried before the High Court. The defendant has the right of appeal against conviction to the Court of Criminal Appeal and legal counsel is guaranteed by law. On the dismissal of an appeal, prisoners may seek permission to appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in England, which serves as the final court of appeal for Singapore. If the Privy Council upholds a sentence, prisoners may submit a clemency petition to the President of Singapore.

  On 14 February 1996, a spokesperson from the British High Commission in Singapore, visited Scripps in prison. Afterwards, she told reporters, ‘He won’t be putting in an appeal. He’s eager to get it over and done with. He’s just waiting for the day,’ she said.

  This comment surprised Edmond Pereira who was moved to say, ‘There are some instructions Scripps has given to me, but I’m not at liberty at this stage to make any comment because the matter has not been finalised,’ he said, adding, ‘but, even if a prisoner refused to petition for clemency, the matter still has to go before the President. However, if we don’t request clemency, they won’t exercise clemency.’

  While he was being held in solitary confinement at Changi, Scripps spent most of his time watching television and reading. A priest visited him weekly, and, once a fortnight, a consular representative went to check on his welfare and to pass on messages from his family.

  The Singapore Sunday Times newspaper reported, on 10 March, that Scripps had declined to seek a pardon from President Ong Teng Cheong. ‘It was his wish to let the law take its course,’ the story concluded.

  * * *

  It was announced that John Scripps was to die, at dawn, on Friday, 19 April. He had turned down a request by Scotland Yard detectives, to interview him about the murder of British backpacker, Timothy McDowell, in Mexico in 1994. He spent his last two days writing garbled love poems to his former Mexican wife, Maria, described as the one true love of his life, from his cell. He was confined in a windowless cubicle measuring 8ft by 6ft, illuminated 24 hours a day and kept under continuous surveillance by a camera. There was a hole-in-the-ground lavatory and a straw roll-mat to sleep on.

  His sister Janet and mother Jean said their farewells to him in his cell, 12 hours before his execution. They had turned down an offer to be present at his death
. Janet said, in an interview with the author, ‘How do you say goodbye to your own brother like that? We didn’t actually say the word. I just couldn’t.’

  In a semi-literate scrawl, on a scrap of paper, Scripps wrote that he had given himself to God, who had betrayed him. ‘You may take my life for what it’s worth, but grant thows I love, pease [sic] and happiness.’

  For his last meal, he asked for a pizza and a cup of hot chocolate. He then requested another scrap of paper and left a final, rambling note which read:

  One day poor. One day reach. Money filds the pane of hunger but what will the emteness inside? I know that love is beyond me. So do I give myself to god. The god that has betrad me. You may take my life for what it is worth but grant those I love peace and happiness. Can I be a person again. Only time will tell me. What really upset me was when you are told every day that you are not a member of the uman rase.

  In accordance with the execution procedure, hangings are carried out in private on a large gallows, in Changi Prison, which can accommodate up to seven prisoners at a time. Hangings are carried out with a black hood covering the head and the use of the ‘long drop’ method.

  The recommended drop is based on the need to produce a force of 1,260lb on the neck and upper spine region of the condemned person as he plunges through the trap. This figure, divided by the prisoner’s weight in pounds, gives the length of drop in feet. Therefore, to kill instantaneously, it is crucial to get these calculations correct.

  It is also normal practice in Singapore to hang several prisoners simultaneously, although no specific details of the executions are released to the media. The ‘official’ version, which is issued for every execution as a matter of policy, was that:

  John Scripps was woken by guards at about 3.30am, and escorted to a waiting room where he, and two other prisoners, two Singaporean drug-traffickers, were prepared. He spoke to a priest and a prison chaplain before his time came when he walked bravely to his death.