RedHanded - Episode 181 - Adrian Lim: Singapore's "Ritual" Child Killings - Part 1

Episode Date: January 21, 2021

Adrian Lim's fascination with the occult, and his obsession with power, drove him to transform himself into a black magic "bomoh". He promised his followers whatever they desired, but in exchange he would need from them, everything that he desired... Lim's depravity quickly escalated; he became increasingly violent, turned his attention to younger and younger victims, revelled in torture, rape and eventually murder. Sources: Book - Unholy Trinity by Alan John  www.redhandedpodcats.com   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Saruti. I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed. I know a lot of you guys have been asking us to talk about the Capitol riots and are we going to talk about Trump and second impeachment, all of that stuff. We know, guys. We are on social media. We've seen you asking.

We just feel like if we get into it now, we're never going to talk about this case or any case that we've got planned for the next month. So we have done a full kind of 30-minute episode on it and put it up on Patreon on under the duvet last week. It is up there. It's there for $5 patrons and over. So you can go listen to it if you're like really keen to hear our thoughts on it. It just feels like so much that we can't bring it into these main episodes right now. But what we are going to do is keep an eye on what's happening see how things unfold and then Hannah and I are really keen to I don't know look at some sort of episode on QAnon like a deep dive

into all these conspiracy theorists like where this is going and the outburst of violence that we saw last week so don't worry it's on our radar we're trying to find a way to do it but if you cannot wait head on over to patreon.com slash red handed now where there is an episode up at the moment so other than that you're just gonna have to wait a little bit longer guys and also compartmentalization is important yes yeah we're all living through a generalized hum of anxiety and safe spaces are important so we're not going to talk about it for the next hour and a bit because we don't need to think about it for the next hour and a bit we can just think about something else horrifying instead and this is quite, this is like a normal episode of Red

Handed masquerading as a Halloween episode, masquerading as a geographic. I don't know what it is, but it is absolutely bananas. It is. And I'm really excited to cover this case because I don't think many of you guys are going to have heard of this case. Like, I'm just going to put this out there as a loud, confident and possibly wrong prediction. I'm going to guess that not many of you know it. So, in early 1981, the residents of the flats in Block 12 of Lerong or Road 7 in the Toa Payoh housing estate in Singapore started hearing odd noises coming from their neighbours in Block 11.

It sounded like chanting and bells ringing and every now and then it would even sound like someone jumping up and down. They even found themselves waking up at midnight every night thanks to the noise of eerie chanting. Growing sick of this they made a complaint to the local housing board but the disturbances simply continued. It was weird and it was annoying, but none of the neighbours could have predicted what was really going on in flat 467F, block 11. But they would soon find out.

This is the case of Singapore's infamous child ritual killings. And it is just as weird as Hannah just said. It is a story of blood drinking, body mutilation, torture, child murder and alleged human sacrifice. There is not that much information out there on this case if you do some googling, etc. And I'm kind of glad about that because that means that you're going to have to wait for part two next week because yes, there is so much that we have found that this is going to have to be a two-parter. If you do want to try and, you know, pip us to the post, I don't know, is that the

right saying? Possibly. There is a book out there. There is only one book out there and it's called Unholy Trinity and it is by a man named Alan John. It is the main sort of source for our two episodes that we're going to be putting out on this case. Good luck finding it though. It's not even on Amazon. I will leave a link to the only website that I managed to find it on. You might be able to find yourselves a used copy. So, with that being said, let's get on with it. This story is particularly interesting, not just because of all of the truly horrible and weird shit we're about to delve into,

but because it brought to the forefront something very unexpected. Singapore in the 1980s was still a very young country. It became an independent nation in just 1965. But from its humble beginnings, with a GDP per capita of just $500 in 1965, to surpassing South Korea, Israel and Portugal with a GDP of $13,000 by 1990, and now today matching the US in terms of GDP. Singapore has been booming for decades. But this case, when it happened in the 80s, shone a light on the flip side of that kind of shiny modern city-state that we all think about, and revealed that in amongst the rapid economic growth and hyper-modernisation, just beneath the surface, lay old superstitions. I think when I think of Singapore, I think of very clean and fancy.

Those are the two images that come into my head, even though I've never been. Yeah, very clean, very fancy and delicious food. Those are the top three things. You get very heavily fined for, I think chewing gum is illegal, right? Chewing gum is illegal in Singapore. That tells you everything you need to know. They're like, no, no, no, no, no. We don't care about your minty fresh breath. We're keeping these streets spotless. And they do. So prepare yourself for super clean streets and a case of a story that is as old as time. One of a man who craves above all else power and the freedom to play out his deepest depravities. He becomes entranced by the occult, he collects devotees, he abuses them financially and sexually, and then he tortures, rapes and kills.

All this, all by himself, on his own personal, hand-built altar of black magic. And this particular man's name is Adrian Lim. Lim was born on the 6th of January 1942 in Singapore. He was of Chinese heritage and his dad was a civil servant. His family enjoyed a pretty well-to-do middle-class life. Despite the hopes his parents had for him academically, Adrian wasn't great at school and after he failed the equivalent of his A-levels, he dropped out. After that, he hopped around from job to job for a while before finding himself work as a debt collector at the age of 19.

I can't imagine a 19-year-old debt collector being particularly intimidating. That's what I thought. Child knocks on your door. And I have your money, please. But he was really bloody good at it, even at 19. But then maybe it's kind of the way in how, do you remember as you got older,

you just started to become more and more afraid of teenagers to the point that you would just be like scared if you saw a group of them together with their hoods up and I'd be like, oh my God, they're going to attack me. Maybe it's like that. Yes, I have had that thought. But a lone 19-year-old though. Send them over to collect your debts. Whatever we might think about 19-year-olds collecting money, it went very well.

Adrian, who was an outgoing person, seemed to excel at his role. And with this newfound financial comfort in place, when he turned 22, he got married to his childhood sweetheart. We're not going to name this lady. And you're just going to have to hear us referring to her as his wife and we're not being dicks about it because often you do find that in true crime narratives where they're like oh this male name and his affiliated woman and then you never hear her name that's not the reason we're doing that we're not going to name her because she has tried extremely

hard to distance herself from this case and seeing as she has absolutely no involvement in anything that happened, we are going to respect her wishes on that front. So Adrian Lim and this lady got married and had two children. They bought a three bedroom flat in the new Topayo housing estate and settled down for what looked like it would be a very ordinary life. But it wouldn't last long. Adrian had been brought up Roman Catholic, but as an adult, he had started to develop a strong interest in the occult and specifically in bomos. Bomos are traditional Malay shamans or witch doctors. They are medicine practitioners and doers of black magic. The term bomo is mainly used in Malaysia, Singapore and parts of Sumatra. Whereas many of you battered listeners will remember from the episode we did in Halloween on the case of Ahmad Siraji. And Mona. Oh yes,

and Mona. Mona the bad Bomo. Oh yeah, yeah. So Mona was in Malaysia, so she said Bomo. And if you remember Ahmad Siraji, who was in Indonesia, referring to something very similar, but in Indonesia, they call it a ducken. It's basically the same thing. It's like a witch doctor, a shaman, etc, etc. So Adrian Lim is going along with his very normal life, doing his debt collecting, having his family, buying his flat, and just starting to have a little toe-in-the-water curiosity about the occult. We've all got one of those. Oh, yeah. We all like to have a little wiggle.

Of course. I mean, if you're that scared of the occult that you won't even put your toe in, come on now. Come on now. Let's get real. As we go on to find out, Adrian goes beyond toe-in-the-water to, you know, just full-on fucking drowning in the stuff, which is where problems arise, I would be so bold as to say. And I couldn't really find out anything more specific about

the bit I'm about to tell you next. I don't really know how this connection happens. But apparently, one day, someone introduced Adrian to a real life Bomo named Uncle Willie. That is his official BOMO name, Uncle Willie. I'm just oozing maturity and I'm not even going to make the joke. I'm just going to move straight past it. You can make it in your own heads at home. There you go, a do-it-yourself adventure. So Uncle Willie was a long-time witch doctor in Singapore who made his living like a lot of other BOMOs did

by casting spells, selling potions, placing hexes, removing hexes, and so on and so on, from anyone who was in need of such things, and of course, who could pay. Having now met Adrian and seen his wild-eyed enthusiasm, Uncle Willie decided to branch out. He told Adrian Lim that he could help him become a bomo, in exchange for an unspecified amount of money to be paid as and when upon request. Adrian jumped at the chance, even though you would think as a life job debt collector, life job, lifelong debt collector, he would maybe be like, oh, maybe I should have got a quote first.

Am I heading face first into some financial trouble here? I know, right? Literally, Uncle Willie is just like just like okay so today we're gonna learn about this and that's gonna be nine hundred dollars please and it just goes on like this for fucking ages but then you know if they did have a contract for bomo tutoring services rendered would that stand up in court possibly I don't know I don't know. Hey, man, invoice is an invoice. That's true. That's true. I do think it's silly that like so much is put on invoices, accountants, tax, blah, blah, blah, blah. They are so easy to forge.

Oh, yeah. You could just make it up. Makes no difference. Good. They're not handwritten. Everyone hear that? Good. Thanks, HMRC. We'll be awaiting your audit. On this public broadcast that we've put out there. I didn't do it. I just said it was possible. So Adrian jumped at this chance and he started his tutelage by joining Uncle Willie for various sessions. Adrian watched in amazement as

Willie chanted over people, gave them potions, rubbed powdered concoctions on their heads, and then they seemed to be healed. Adrian watched as hundreds of people crammed themselves into Uncle Willie's flat on a weekly basis to watch him dance around in a trance in front of the statue of the Hindu goddess Kali, who is the same one you will remember from our Halloween episode. Can't remember which year it was, about child sacrifices to Carly herself. Yeah, that was, I think that was not last year, but the year before. So 2019 Halloween episodes, go dig it up. If you haven't, we did a big old deep dive into Carly and her love of, well, not her love of, I don't want to speak on her behalf, but her devotees' love of killing little kiddies for her, because they think that's what she wants. Join us next week where we all have the Hindu goddess Carly as a guest on the show to dispel

all rumours that she likes dead children. Friend of the show Carly will be joining us to tell her side of the story. Uncle Willie's tiny house was packed to the rafters with statues and pictures of gods, deities and demons from various religions all over the world. story. Uncle Willie's tiny house was packed to the rafters with statues and pictures of gods, deities and demons from various religions all over the world. A real pick your own blessing, pick your own possession. Yeah, it's like a very smorgasbord of what's gonna scare you? Let me stick it in and take your money. This anthetic was very on brand and it really gave the flat a creepy religious you might die here kinddie-here kind of vibe and that worked supremely well on all of the punters. After every session with Uncle Willie, Adrian became more and more transfixed.

One day, perhaps sensing that the more impressive his tricks were, the more he could woo and charge Adrian, Uncle Willie took out a sword in front of his audience and cut himself on the arm. As the blood poured, he had his assistant catch it into a bowl. Adrian, Uncle Willie took out a sword in front of his audience and cut himself on the arm. As the blood poured, he had his assistant catch it into a bowl. Business card, Bomo's assistant. Top skills, blood catching. Microsoft Word. No hazard pay. Zero. After the blood catching, Uncle Willie then took a long, slim brass trident and proceeded to pierce his own tongue. And he did that all the while dancing

around the room and splashing himself with the blood from his cut arm, splashing himself and splashing it everywhere else. Uncle Willie then took the bowl his assistant had obediently filled with blood and drank it. He finished the ceremony by spitting some of the blood all over the statues and photos on his altar, much to the delight of the gathered crowd. So while, you know, everything we just told you sounds pretty intense, of course it is, but what Uncle Willie is up to here, and when I say up to, I'm talking specifically about the face piercings and not about the blood drinking or blood spraying,

this is actually a practice derived from Hindu Tamils and the festival of Taipusam in honour and worship of Lord Murgan, the Hindu god of war. So at this festival, Tamil Hindus perform what's known as a Kadavi Atam, which translates to like hardship dance or burden dance. It's essentially a pilgrimage that can last, you know, anything from like a few hours to a few days. And in the lead up to it, you know, you can't do anything fun. You can't do any of the good stuff. You can't eat any delicious food. You can't have any meat. And you also can't have any meat in another way because you're not allowed to have any sex.

And this is all because you are cleansing your soul. That's what you're doing. You know, you're having a little bit of a soul detox. But that's not really the soul your soul. That's what you're doing. You know, you're having a little bit of a soul detox. But that's not really the soul cleansing bit. It's not really the ultimate juice cleanse, soul cleansing bit. Because during the walk or the dance, people have to bear some sort of hardship. So you can, for example, carry something really heavy. But the truly hardcore devotees will do some pretty Hellraiser style body modification. If you think I'm exaggerating or you think that this can't be as bad as I'm describing, follow us on social media because I'm going to be posting some pictures. If it doesn't make your stomach flip, I will, I don't know, I'll eat my hat and give you a million pounds. Like it's just so

intense. So basically what these people will do is that they will pierce their bodies with spiked metal rods, like through the skin on their stomach, through the skin on their chest, their arms, all over. And I believe that you have to do 108 piercings. And these are long, long metal poles that will like go through your skin and multiple spots it's a lot and then what they do is they rest heavy metal ornaments over the rods so then the person who's walking or dancing has to hold the rods up because if you let your arms drop the weight of the things that are hanging off the end are going to tear through your skin are going to make the rods tear through your skin i I am so not squeamish. Like I follow like really disgusting medical Instagrams and look at people's

insides like all day long. And that has made me feel really unwell. It's a lot. It's really a lot. And it gets worse. So some people will even do things like put loads of hooks in their backs, like through the skin in their backs, and then have chains hanging off those hooks that are tied to like chariots with loads of statues of the gods in and then they have to walk dragging these chariots with the hooks, you know, pushed into their backs basically, while it's just like pulling your skin. It's so much. It's like, you know, in Latin America, they do like the passion of the Christ. And like in some places, people actually get crucified and stuff. Oh, my God. It's like

super duper extreme version of that. I went to one in Costa Rica and they had like little kids pretending to be Jesus. And obviously they weren't really being crucified. But it was so weird, like all of these little children like dressed as Jesus, like walking a really long way. Oh, my gosh. It is bizarre. It's just like that very bloody and intense side of religion. And you know, there's not just one specific religion. Like there's so many that kind of go with that very like grisly side of things. But this is a very like modern and public thing that is still happening, which is just so weird to me. thing is obviously this started in India because they're Tamil Hindus but it has actually been banned in India now the practice of that Karai Atom like

they can't do that anymore but it is still however practiced in Malaysia and in Singapore so you can see where some of Willie's Uncle Willie sorry inspiration may possibly have come from I really tried very hard to find a picture of Uncle Willie so I could see what his like ethnic background was but I cannot find a single picture of the man so I have no clue and Uncle Willie is quite a vague name. But the important thing to know though is that this is a very extreme version of this kind of practice and although this is banned in India in India you will still regularly see people doing what Uncle Willie just did, which is to pierce their tongues or their cheeks with these brass metal tridents. That happens all the fucking time. Just go to a temple during the month of Daipuzam and you are going to see it.

You're going to see people stabbing their faces with this kind of thing. Sorry, it's not the month of Daipuzam, the festival. With a trident is so specific. What a specific shape. It's because the gods hold one. So it's like his little trident thing that they're piercing their face with. It's just so extreme. Again, I'll post pictures so you guys can see. But essentially why people do this is it's meant to be like a ritual of self-sacrifice and a way to defeat one's inner demons and sins and the people who do it say that they kind of enter a trance like state when their skin is being pierced and it brings them closer to God they also claim that they don't feel any pain when the piercings are happening I find this very hard to believe

but maybe if you have sort of whipped yourself up into a frenzy and gone into a trance, maybe you can't feel it anymore. I don't know. But it is interesting to see in a lot of photos, the wounds don't appear to be bleeding. And this is a big thing that they always say that because you're under the protection of God when you're doing it, they won't bleed or even scar. I don't know how true this is. It feels very not true because that's not how biology works, but that's what they say. And this is exactly what Uncle Willie told Adrian. He told him that if he could pierce his cheeks with no blood spilling, it meant that Carly approved of him. As the lessons and payments continued, Adrian told Uncle Willie that one of his main aims

in wanting to master the dark arts was the opposite sex. He's still married, by the way, friends. Oh, yeah, yeah. Married with two kids. And so Willie showed him how to make a potion that would make him more desirable to the ladies. And it was made from the bodily fluids of an unmarried woman, along with clippings of her pubic hair. It's definitely just Uncle Willie's just pissed into a jar himself and clipped his own pubes. Like there is no way. Oh, for sure.

For sure. Because so many, you're going to find out, so many of their little like fucking spells and potions that they put together require various odd items, including bodily items of unmarried women. I'm like, where are you finding all these unmarried women I'm like where are you finding all these unmarried women to just give you fluids I don't know weird and presumably unmarried means virgin as well like that's what the code for that is oh for sure Willie also gave along with a sandwich bag of his pubes he also gave Adrian a small statue of the Siamese sex god Pragangan. What? I really tried to find somewhere to help me learn how to pronounce this and I just couldn't

find it. So I think Pragnan. Pragnan. Loud, confident and wrong. Moving on. And Willie told Adrian to place this little statue in the, quote, panty, what a disgusting word, of an unmarried woman, yet again, probably a different one than the pube one. And then after he'd put it into an unmarried woman's pants, he was supposed to wrap it up in the used sanitary pad of yet again, an unmarried woman doesn't specify if it has to be a different one or whether one size fits all. And after he had wrapped it in the used sanitary pad, Adrian was to wrap it again in a red cloth. After 30 days, Willie told Adrian to remove the statue from all of its delicious wrappings and place it on his own altar. And then

Willie told Adrian that he needed to smear the statue with blood regularly, menstrual blood being the preferred option, if he could get his hands on it. It literally says in the book, you know, I don't know how much of this is the author sort of taking poetic license or creative agency or whatever, but it says like, apparently Uncle Willie specifically told Adrian, menstrual, if possible, if possible, you know, Carali will make do. But if possible, that's what Pragnan really likes. It's just, it's so much, it's so much. But it's kind of like, you know, the placebo effect. I was reading about this. And it's really interesting. I'm sure lots of people know about this. But you know, obviously, like with the placebo effect,

it still works as well in some cases as like actual medication and what's really interesting about it is the more complicated you make the ritual so of taking this said drug or this said medication that is a placebo the more effective it is because the harder something is to do or to acquire the more value we place in it feels like the reasoning so that kind of lends itself into why these men make these weird, complicated rituals, because it feels like the weirder and harder it is to do, the stronger the placebo effect, whether they believe it or not. It's interesting. It's complicated, but interesting. That is really interesting. Yeah, it has to be,

can't just be any old hag. It has to be an unmarried woman. You can't just wait until everyone else has their fun with the olives. So over the next few weeks, Uncle Willie taught Adrian about all of the gods and goddesses that he would need to invoke to truly be all powerful. Willie focused, though, in particular on Kali. Like we said in the Halloween episode we did in 2019, Kali is the Hindu goddess of time, death and doom. Carly literally translates from Sanskrit into she who is death. And you know, I was thinking like Carly's actually quite a nice name. I was like, if I ever had a little girl, would I name her Carly? I actually might.

But actually it would mean she who is death. Too much? And Willie and Adrian were bloody mad for a bit of Carly. They were fucking obsessed with her. But Carly didn't come easy. Uncle Willie informed Adrian that if he wanted to be a disciple of Carly's, she demanded blood. Adrian would need to make a blood sacrifice to Carly monthly to stay in her good books. And again, just like with the, if possible, menstrual blood,

it seems to be, you know, quite open about what you could do. Apparently, Uncle Willie told Adrian that it could be chicken's blood or it could be his own blood, but the most powerful would be the blood of another human. And on and on it went. Willie began to divulge to Adrian not just the magical secrets of the Siamese gods and Malay black magic, but also his own sneaky tricks. For example, you're about to learn the egg and needle trick. This is my favourite of all of the crazy shit. This is particularly impressive. Adrian watched one day as Uncle Willie took out six eggs and then pierced five needles that he had blackened over a flame into one of these eggs. Willie then touched up the needle entry points with a little bit of powder and voila!

You'd never know, it was a tampered with egg. When the next client arrived, a man who was convinced he was being possessed by an evil spirit, Willie started chanting and he broke some of the eggs on himself, the five non-needle eggs. And then he smashed the remaining last egg onto the man's chest and Willie gasped as the black needles were seen and then told the man that he had just removed all of the evil spirits with one solitary egg. Of course, this worked perfectly.

Maybe not in terms of removing anything evil from this troubled man, but the man and his family certainly believed that evil had been removed, and in some cases, that is enough. Placebo. I am going to stab some eggs after this. I really want to see if this works. Shall we try? Please make an IG video if you do stab some eggs with some blackened needles. I will. I will. I mean, I've got not much else to do at the moment. So it would be my absolute pleasure to make an egg needle video. And then

I'll just become a BOMO. I support you. I've already got the tarot cards down. We just need to give you a really good name. Yeah, I know. I've been trying to think. First, I need a silk turban. That's the first thing. And then a crystal ball and then the best name. Oh, I know. I've been trying to think. First, I need a silk turban. That's the first thing. And then a crystal ball and then the best name. Oh, I've got one. You can borrow it. I couldn't separate you from your beloved turban. I know how much it means to you. Hey, ladies and gents, you want to stop that hair breakage? Get yourself a silk turban to sleep in. We're not sponsored and I'm not going to say the name of whose I bought, but there's loads.

It's the most obvious one. Yeah. On top of the egg secrets, Willie also gave up heaps and heaps more. He told Adrian that the way to make a woman stay with him was to just get her to drink a glass of his urine. Easiest thing in the world. Just have a pint of my piss. Or some would argue an easier option. All he had to do to get a woman to stay with him forever and ever was get her to suck his penis and swallow his sperm. Yep. She doesn't need, you know, attention or you to listen to her or just be thoughtful and kind and reciprocative and, you know, a good lover. Just get her to drink some of your piss or just get that that jizz in her. And then she'll be yours forever, men.

Oh, man. Are we in sales now? Is that what's happened? What a turn up for the books. So these lessons that Willie was doling out for months, they weren't free, remember? They were unspecified amounts of money demanded as and when Uncle Willie needed them.

And Adrian was paying a hefty price. So all the while he was doing, you know, his little being tutored by Uncle Willie sessions, he still had to keep his day job as a debt collector, which I just fucking love. I know the pain of like you having to do your day job to like put you know food on the table and needles in eggs and you know you really want to follow your passion you really want to go become that true crime podcaster or go become that bomo but he's trapped and this began to frustrate him hugely so Adrian decided that he needed to find a way to use his newfound skills to start making money and fast he needed to set up. But Adrian knew that he couldn't just open some sort of occult, blood-swigging, Carly-worshipping temple in his own home.

Because remember, after all, all this time, his wife and kids were still there. Like, he's still with them. Then luck struck. During one of his bill collecting trips, Adrian met a woman called Susan who seemed to be renting out the rooms in her house to local sex workers. She was offering low rates, so he decided to rent himself a room there too and set up his very own BOMO business. At first, Adrian started off just reading cards and palms, selling potions and talismans and whatnot to the women Susan brought him. Because you see, Susan was incentivized. She was taking half his money.

So she was like siphoning off the women that came there, like her friends. She even brought her grandmother there. She'd like point the sex workers she had a good connection with to go visit Adrian. Like she's fully in on it. Soon, Adrian started to realise that he could trick these women into giving him more than just their money. One day he told a 22-year-old woman sex worker who had come to see him about her waning business that she was struggling so much because she was just too ugly. But he told her not to worry because he could help her.

Adrian informed the woman that she needed a floral bath ceremony to make her spirit more sexually attractive. He told her to strip and lie on the bed. Adrian then rubbed her body with rose petals and then inserted an idol of the sex god into her vagina. He told her to hold it in there for a while before he removed it and then replaced it when he inserted his own penis in there instead. Apparently the woman resisted at first but Adrian told her it was the only way her business would pick up. Adrian was delighted with his rape ruse and so one by one he worked this con with more desperate and vulnerable women. Some were sex workers who were losing business. Some were married women whose husbands were

straying and they came to have sex with Adrian to make themselves desirable again. Whoever it was, Adrian never failed to charge for the ceremony. After all, his wife believed that he was still a debt collector and not a brothel bomo. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down.

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a seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder.

Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life.

I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness. And inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling

stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. One of the key questions that comes up in this case again and again is whether Adrian Lim really believed in what he was doing. As in, did he really believe that the gods were acting through him and through his penis? Or did he know it was a con i mean i think

i know what we think about that and i think that our thinking on this is backed up when you take into account that when a woman came to see adrian for spiritual healing and he didn't find them physically attractive or as he put it they didn't have a good body, Adrian would just sell them some Jostics and send them on their way. So that's quite interesting. And also, he is being taught tricks as well by his, like, big favourite Bobo man. Like, he knows the egg thing isn't real, so obviously he's going to continue in not real things. Yeah, he's just like, what is it that I specifically want from these people?

And he's figured out a way to do that. So it goes on like this. And in January 1974, an 18 year old girl turned up at Adrian's door. Her name was Catherine Tan Mui Chu. Adrian knew immediately that he wanted Mui Chu to be his mistress. And so he told her, there and then, on their very first meeting, that he loved her. But Mui Chu told Adrian that she was a virgin and she didn't want to have an affair with him. I suspect that this only made Adrian want her more. And so he continued to pester her. Until finally, she gave in.

And the two even got a secret flat together where they'd meet up daily. As much as Adrian was enjoying himself at this point, he quickly realised that his business just wasn't making quite enough money for him to hold down both his mistress' flat and his home home with his wife and kids. So he forced Mui Chu to start sex work by day

and work in a bar by night. And of course, he took all her money. But it still wasn't enough, and Adrian hatched a plan to avoid the double rent altogether. Here is his master plan. He took Moichu home with him and told his wife that they could earn more money by renting out their spare room to this girl his wife had never seen before in her life. So obviously, Adrian's wife was a hard no, but Adrian forced her into it. And within days, his wife and he were arguing furiously about whether he was having an affair with this mystery girl.

One day, his wife told Adrian to swear on a picture of Jesus that he wasn't. But as he went to place his hand on the picture, his wife stabbed him in the side. How ironic is it that, like, out of all of the deities she could have picked, Jesus is probably the one he's least bothered about? I know. You're so right. As we go on to find out,

if she had put up a picture of Carly, he genuinely, I think, wouldn't have liked because he's so fucking scared of her. And it does seem to flip-flop between him, like, knowing some of this stuff is like lies and a con and a trick and like genuinely also having some weird reverence to these deities that he's worshipping, quote unquote. But you're right, he doesn't give a fuck about Jesus of Nazareth. All right, love, I'll put my hand on there and swear.

Oh, whoops, you've stabbed me instead. After the Jesus stabbing incident, Adrian's wife took an overdose of tranquilizers and tried to kill herself. She did survive, thankfully, and then she left Adrian, taking the kids with her. Mui Chu's life up until this point had already been a very sad one. And now here she was, at just 20 years old, living with a 34-year-old man who had forced her into prostitution. But she stayed, because despite all of the abuse that she got from him, as far as she was concerned, Adrian was kind to her. He listened to her, and he took care of her. And this skewed thinking that Adrian was kind was obviously because of Mui Chu's past past and the other people who had been so terrible to her. When Muichu was born, her mum left her in a bin because she wanted a boy instead. Her

grandmother was the one who had saved her. Eventually, when she was 12, her parents sent her to a home for runaway girls. And due to the begging of her grandmother, Mui Chu's father would come and visit her once a month, but her mother never came. When she was 16, her grandmother passed away, and a very lonely Mui Chu was recruited for a job in a high-end bar, where she earned decent money in pay and tips. They never sort of explicitly say this, but because she is recruited by this woman, who kind of seems to be quite like a shady figure who just comes and sort of picks up Mui Chu, knowing that she's quite a vulnerable and lonely child, she's 16, I'm not convinced that this place was some sort of like sexual bar, just gonna say.

There's not explicitly said, but I suspect that's the case. And this is when she had met adrian lim which you had gone to him because she was worried that another girl who worked at the bar had cursed her out of jealousy that she got more tips and attention during their relationship adrian would regularly tell moitu that she was the only one who could save him he said that he had a heart condition that, very conveniently for him, could only be kept under control by having sex with younger women. Unbelievable. Placebo. Placebo in the most pleasurable way possible for me. Yes, please. Overall, I think

this made Moichu feel needed, probably something she had never felt before but of course having 20 year old Moichu wasn't enough and Adrian asked her to bring him her younger sister who was just 14. Moichu obliged she brought her sister to the flat and waited outside while her sister and Adrian went into the bedroom together. Her sister came out after a little while crying, but Adrian just denied doing anything wrong. After Adrian's wife had left him, he had decided, you know, why also now split that fucking BOMO business money with Susan. So he sacked off the rent of that room as well and moved his business into his home, along with his black magic altar. And one day, a terrified Muichu watched as he seemed to go into a trance and started speaking to her in a strange voice. The voice coming out of Adrian now said that

Muichu needed to ring the bell on the altar nine times while holding nine jostics and swear her obedience to Adrian, an oath that if she broke, she would die horribly. Mui-Chu was terrified, so of course she did it. The strange voice immediately stopped, and Adrian returned, only to inform Mui-Chu that she was now his holy wife. He also now told Mui-Chu that there were three different entities that would come and leave his body at various times, sporadically, completely at random, and there was no way she could predict it or that he could. And these three entities would be the old master,

and that was the voice that she had just heard, Pragnan, the Siamese sex god, and finally, Adrian's own soul. Soon, Adrian began becoming regularly possessed by the old master, who seemed to relish in beating Muichu. He beat her if she wasn't pleasing her clients well enough, or if she complained about the sex work, or if she ever just didn't look happy enough. All the while, Adrian continued the sex rituals and the scams. He started doing birthday celebrations on a weekly basis for

various deities, and performing the old needle in the egg trick. In June 1977, Moichu and Adrian got officially married. Not in a possessed demon kind of way, in a legal town hall kind of way. But this was nothing to do with romance or love. It was actually to do with the fact that Adrian's abuse was just getting worse and worse. Adrian told Moichu soon after their wedding that if she wanted to stay young and beautiful, she needed to have sex with young men and swallow their semen. There were a few teenage boys who used to come by the flat slash temple

regularly to pick up potions and oils for their mothers. Adrian started asking these boys to have sex with Moichu and of course he had to watch. After a few months of this Adrian stepped it up again and told Moichu to bring her 16 year old brother over. Adrian then forced the two of them to have sex in front of him. This went on for over a year. You just see it's that typical thing of just like one sick thing one depravity and once that's been explored he's like how much further can i keep pushing the boundaries and it's something we often also see with domestic abuse victims it's like how far can i keep pushing this person that's exactly what he does and muichu it gets complicated because obviously as you'll see later

in this episode and much more in next week's episode, that she is involved in some of the horrendous crimes that he goes on to commit. But I think that it's safe to say she is also a victim of his. Like he is completely controlling her and abusing her and breaking her down. And also she first meets him when she's 16 from like a horrendous family situation where her parents literally sent her to a runaway home instead of having her at home. It's understandable that her moral compass might have been a little bit skewed and that she just does what he says. Yeah. So despite his growing depravity at home, Adrian's business continued to grow. And in 1979, a woman brought her adult daughter, Ho Lai Ho, to Adrian Lim.

Le Ho had been in a psychiatric hospital for years, but she was still struggling with her mental health. And her mum and her sister, Ka Hong, who accompanied them on that first visit, hoped that Bomo Lim would be able to help her. Adrian asked them to leave Le Ho there with him and that he would cure her. His version of a cure is obviously going to be incredibly stomach-churning. Lim raped Leho on a daily basis while she was there in his flat. He would drug her up with tranquilizers

and spend time dunking the woman in water and electrocuting her. So immediately we see this starting to escalate. He's already been doing the rapes, but he's taking that further now, and he's also starting to incorporate drugs, and we see the emergence of torture for the first time. When Leho's mum and sister returned after a couple of weeks, Adrian did the old needle-in-the-egg trick again in front of them, and her mum was so impressed.

They thought she'd been cured. During this visit, suddenly, Lim proclaimed that yes, Lei Ho was cured. But now, he said, after pulling out a random card from a deck that he was holding, that her 25-year-old sister, Ka Hong, who was also there, was possessed by an evil spirit. I mean, it's just unbelievable. It's like the sister comes along to help the mum with the other sister and he's like, oh, I fancy her. I'm just going to say she's possessed. So yeah, like we said, Ka Hong had just come along to help her mum and now on hearing this news, she was shocked. I found this next bit quite bizarre because Ka Hong, upon hearing that she was possessed by an evil spirit immediately believed it and she also immediately suspected that the culprit must have been her

husband. Like she just immediately jumps the fact that she thinks her husband is the one who put this curse on her and that's why she's possessed. So a bit of background information on Car Hong and her husband. Apparently the husband was a man that she had married a long time ago, but never really been that keen on. But apparently this guy had pursued her relentlessly, and Car Hong had eventually given in and married him. She now thought that maybe the reason she had given in was because he had cursed her, and that's why she was possessed. She told Adrian all of this, and at first Adrian agreed with this theory. And so Car Hong started visiting him regularly for cleansings. After a while, however, even her mother started to become suspicious and warned Car Hong not to go. And Adrian told Car Hong that

it was her mother who had cursed her, and it was the spirit of her dead father that had possessed her. During a ritual one day, Adrian performed the same ritual he'd done to Mui Chiu and made Kahong his holy wife. And oddly, perhaps, Adrian started to insist that Kahong bring her husband, Benson Lowe, over to the flat. He said that Benson Lowe was involved in Carhong's curse as well in an order to lift the curse they needed to be nice to Benson. So on the 7th of January 1980 Carhong invited Benson over to Adrian's temple flat and once Benson was there Adrian told him that his wife was only indifferent to him because of the evil spirit that possessed her and that he could get rid of it with Benson's help. They just needed to do a very minor electric shock therapy treatment. That'll do it. That'll fix your indifferent wife. That will do the trick. So he made Benson and Car Hong sit on the floor

with their feet tied together in a tub of water. Adrian then, I don't know if I can read this. Yeah, it's horrendous. Adrian then pumped urine up both of their nostrils using a syringe. This made both of them violently vomit, but Adrian said they had to continue. Then he placed a small brass idol in Benson's mouth and a chain around his neck. Then, despite his protests, Adrian placed Car Hong's underwear and her used sanitary pad on Benson's head. According to Adrian, this was to mock the demon and expel it. Why is he obsessed with sanitary pads?

What is this? It's so strange. I don't know, but I would wager that his relationship with his mother might need some examination. I think so, and let's leave it at that, shall we? I don't know. Maybe it's something to do with fertility. I don't know, but it's just, it's an obsession. It comes up time and time again.

So after the sanitary pad and the underwear on the head, Adrian then made Benson and Ka Hong lock arms before he covered both their faces with wet towels. Adrian then placed two live wires in the tub and turned on the electricity. Ka Hong began to convulse, but Benson lost consciousness almost immediately and hit the floor. Ka Hong and Mui Chu, who had also been in the room and watched everything, were shocked. Benson was dead. Adrian tried to quickly take control of the situation again and told the two terrified women that the demon must have jumped from Ka Hong and into Benson and killed him.

It couldn't possibly be the electricity. It had to be this sanitary pad scared demon. Adrian then demanded that the two women needed to clean the scene thoroughly. And then he got Car Hong to call Benson's parents. So these are her in-laws. And Adrian obviously coached the story. Car Hong was to tell them that Benson had been sick with a fever and they had gone to get a fan for his room and ended up electrocuting himself to death on said fan. He's a fucking grown man.

How is that a story that makes any fucking sense? But just to complete their ruse, the three of them laid Benson's body on the floor and placed a fan near him and then called the police. Unbelievably, the story actually worked.

And they got away with it. For now. Adrian's next brush with the law came in 1980. On a date in October, a young woman named Lucy came to the house. She was a make-up sales girl and she was there to see Mui Chiu, but she wasn't there. So Adrian offered to read her cards for her while she waited. And these cards obviously told Adrian that Lucy had an evil spirit hanging around inside her. When Lucy didn't seem that swayed by that information, Adrian drugged her and took her into his bedroom where he raped and sodomized her.

Lucy woke up and realized with horror what had happened. She went to the police and although Adrian was arrested, he was let out on bail. He was furious and this incident would become a real turning point in this case. It wouldn't be long before Adrian found himself in the spotlight for a series of even more shocking crimes. It was 3.30am on Sunday 25th January 1981. The detective inspector, Richard Pereira, received a call. The body of a young girl had been found.

A man who had been walking home from the cinema at around 2.30am had spotted an odd-looking brown vinyl bag by the lift outside Block 11 in the Topayo estate. He had opened the zipper and watched in horror as the head of a small child had popped out. The girl was quickly identified as nine-year-old Agnes Ng Su Hoek. She had only been missing for around 13 hours when her body was found. Agnes and her sister Pauline had gone to their weekly religious class at the Church of the Risen Christ the previous day. Agnes's class usually finished at around two, but Pauline's wouldn't end until five. Usually, Agnes would just hang around the church until

Pauline was finished, and then they would go home together. But that day, when Pauline came out, she couldn't find Agnes anywhere. And so her terrified family had called the police. Almost immediately, the police started a huge investigation. Singapore has almost always enjoyed very low crime rates. But despite that, or perhaps because of that, they took this disappearance extremely seriously. The search didn't have to stretch very far, though, because Agnes's body was found just a kilometre from the church. The post-mortem revealed that Agnes had died of asphyxia, and there were indications of vaginal penetration and sodomy. The country was in disbelief,

how could this have happened? Agnes's family were devastated, she was always such a quiet and shy girl. She was sweet and followed the rules. They were sure she wouldn't have gone off with a stranger. Their horror only deepened when about a week after the killing, a mystery woman had called Agnes's mother at home. She said that she knew what Pauline, Agnes's older sister, looked like and if she ever saw her again, she'd quote, chop Pauline up too. Despite the deranged call, the police had no obvious leads. There was very little left at the scene of the crime. So they had to go wide.

Over 250 people were questioned within the first 10 days of the hunt. But then, about two weeks later, on Saturday the 7th of February, the body of another child was found. And guys, that's where we're going to leave it today. There is so much to this case. There's so much coming next week. More kids get killed. Let's just, you know, put it that way. It's not going to be an easy episode as this one surely

wasn't either. But hopefully you will join us then when we will finish off the case of Adrian Lim and Singapore's ritual child killings. Thank you so much. Keep an eye out for the egg video. You can follow us on Instagram at redhandedthepod. I'm completely serious. In fact, I probably will have posted it by the time you're listening to this, so go and find it. I'm so excited. And if you want to see all the kind of weird pinhead, hellraiser,

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information so yeah glad you guys enjoyed that i'm just going to assume that you did and we'll see you next week for more bomo fun goodbye bye Bye. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two

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Claudine Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the BostonI regime, and there's much more to come.