59 Facts About Anthony Ler

Anthony Ler approached five youths and offered them a reward of S$100,000 to kill Leong.

Anthony Ler threatened and manipulated the youth to carry out the deed.

Anthony Ler was convicted of masterminding the murder, and was hanged after he lost his appeal and clemency plea.

The memoir of Subhas Anandan, Anthony Ler's lawyer, was adapted into another true crime series and published in Guilty As Charged: 25 Crimes That Have Shaken Singapore Since 1965, a collection of crime stories by The Straits Times.

Anthony Ler Wee Teang, who was born sometime in 1967, was the youngest of four children.

Anthony Ler, who was not close to his two brothers and one sister, completed his primary and secondary education at River Valley English School and Thomson Secondary School respectively before moving on to study in a polytechnic.

However, Anthony Ler dropped out in his first year after his father refused to continue paying for his education.

At the time of his arrest, Anthony Ler was working as a graphic designer.

Anthony Ler first met his wife Annie Leong Wai Mun in a church when he was 19 years old.

Anthony Ler had an affair with a woman named Belinda Ho Wei Lynn, who later found out that Ler was a husband and father.

Later, Anthony Ler even allowed Ho into his flat to live with him and his wife and daughter.

Anthony Ler had an affair with another woman named Marilyn Tan Su Fen, with whom he engaged in business.

Anthony Ler had quit her job from the bank to help her husband to set up a business, but returned to work after their daughter was born.

Leong returned to help him, and for Anthony Ler, it was a sign that their marriage could be reconciled.

The debt-ridden Anthony Ler knew that given his precarious financial situation he would be unlikely to gain custody of his daughter, believing he did not have the ability to raise her well due to the substantial debts incurred from his failed businesses; another factor was the pending sale of their flat.

Anthony Ler began to contemplate murdering his wife to gain custody of their daughter and the full ownership of his flat, intending that his debts would ultimately be paid off from the proceeds promised by the sale of the flat.

Anthony Ler began in February 2001 by befriending a group of five teenage boys who had gathered outside a McDonald's restaurant in Pasir Ris.

Anthony Ler acted as a mentor to them, and went on meeting them a few times.

One of the boys, a 15-year-old secondary school student whom Anthony Ler had known for five years, replied S$1 million; another boy, a 16-year-old school drop-out named Gavin Ng Jin Wei, said S$100,000; a third boy named Seah Tze Howe said S$100; the others gave unknown prices.

Anthony Ler agreed to Gavin's price, and asked them to name a target.

That was when Anthony Ler expressed that his target would be his wife, whom he said he hated for not allowing him to visit his daughter frequently and everything else.

Anthony Ler said he would pay that amount to any boy who dared to do it.

Anthony Ler said he would be selling the flat and use the money from the proceeds to pay him.

Tze Howe then suggested Anthony Ler to hire a professional killer to carry out the murder.

Anthony Ler later told him that he could not find anyone to do it.

Similarly, the remaining two of the five youths, 19-year-old Kong Ka Cheong and 17-year-old Vickneswaran Krishnan, felt that Anthony Ler was joking and they were disturbed at Anthony Ler's constant mentioning of the issue.

The youth was brought to Hougang Avenue 9 by Anthony Ler, who told him to go to Block 923, to the flat where Annie Leong lived.

Just then, a phone call from Anthony Ler came, and this compelled him into obeying Ler's orders to carry out the killing again.

Not only that, Anthony Ler even went as far as to make a threat on the lives of the boy's parents and two other siblings.

Anthony Ler told him he wanted the boy to use the sword to kill Leong.

Hence, Leong decided to go up to her mother's flat to get a pen, while Anthony Ler stayed behind to accompany their four-year-old daughter in the playground.

Anthony Ler quickly ran up the stairs and reached the fourth floor on time to see Leong stepping out of the lift.

In front of neighbours and family members, Anthony Ler put up a shocked expression, repeatedly telling his wife to not sleep while calling her name.

Anthony Ler put on a charade in front of the mourning family members and friends at his wife's funeral, pretending to be sorrowful and teary about the death of his wife.

Anthony Ler once told reporters that he himself was a bad husband, confessing that he was being unfaithful and debt-ridden; he even described himself as a "devil" while calling his wife an "angel".

On 18 May 2001, four days after Annie Leong's murder, the police officers brought in two of Anthony Ler's known acquaintances for questioning.

The prosecution consisted of Deputy Public Prosecutors Low Cheong Yeow and Edwin San Ong Kyar, while for the two defendants, Anthony Ler was represented by veteran lawyer Subhas Anandan and his assistant Anand Nalachandran, while the youth was represented by lawyers Edwin Seah Li Ming and Peter Ong Lip Cheng.

Subhas, in his memoir The Best I Could, he stated that in fact, he was not keen to take the case in the first place, as he had followed the news about the developments of the case and knew Anthony Ler would be found guilty eventually.

Anthony Ler expressed that he, like members of the public, wondered about the smile which Anthony Ler made, speculating that it could be a sneer or security blanket.

The prosecution's case against Anthony Ler was largely based on the statements and hand-written confession made by Z They called witnesses including Gavin Ng, Seah Tze Howe, Kong Ka Cheong, Vickneswaran Krishnan and the other teenagers present when Ler met up with the five boys.

All the boys and girls verified that Anthony Ler frequently brought up the subject of wanting his wife dead.

Subhas speculated that Anthony Ler might have realized that he would not get away with it after seeing the recovered contents of his emails.

Anthony Ler stated all those talks of wanting his wife dead, were all a "joke" and a bluff.

When he was asked why he did not bring a pen beforehand, Anthony Ler claimed that he had no habit to bring a pen.

Anthony Ler showed no remorse throughout the trial for his heinous crime and only smiled.

Anthony Ler stated that he was forced and manipulated by Anthony Ler to do the killing, for which he claimed that his actions as a result of the manipulation did not amount to the crime of murder, but of culpable homicide not amounting to murder.

The lawyer went on to put it to Z that he was lying about Anthony Ler instigating him to commit the murder, calling him "no angel" and "a monster" well-deserving of a long stay behind bars.

JC Tay conclude that Anthony Ler had every motive to kill his wife from what the prosecution presented, as he stood to gain from his wife's death by becoming the sole surviving parent of their daughter and the sole surviving joint owner of the flat.

Anthony Ler is not capable of concocting such an elaborate and consistent yarn.

Anthony Ler said that the boy would not have been able to describe his ordeal so clearly had it not been the truth.

And, despite him acting as the lawyer of Anthony Ler and being merciless towards the boy during his cross-examination of Z, Subhas Anandan wished the boy well nonetheless, stating that Z, after all, was just a 15-year-old boy and still deserved a second chance.

The clemency plea to President S R Nathan, which Ler submitted in hope of having his death sentence commuted to life imprisonment was dismissed.

Anthony Ler speculated that Ler's wishes to donate his organs could have possibly been atonement for his crime.

Anthony Ler added that Ler initially did not want to sign the clemency petition, but he did it for the sake of his mother.

Anthony Ler enrolled in a university, majoring in English and business studies, for which he earned a degree.

Anthony Ler was said to have model behaviour during his period of incarceration and had inspired other inmates to do so.

Anthony Ler has expressed in his hand-written confession that how much he wished he had never met Ler, and how he had let his parents and other people he knew around him down.

Subhas Anandan, the former lawyer of Anthony Ler, published his first memoir The Best I Could.

Anthony Ler wrote Anthony Ler's case as one of the cases he was well known for.