Maid murders 73-year-old employer after being let off for stealing, gets life imprisonment

After this, he went to his bed and used his phone until he fell asleep.

Sumiyati began plotting to kill him as she was angry at being falsely accused and worried that he would discover the theft of the cash.

She concluded that the only way to solve her concerns was to silence him, and that therefore he must die.

She ran through different plans in her head which she rejected – she decided against stabbing as she would have to clean up the mess, and against throwing him out of the flat as it would be difficult if he struggled.

She also did not want to strangle him and leave incriminating handprints on him.

As she was thinking about the method of killing, Sumiyati allegedly spoke to the third scammer who suggested using sleeping pills.

However, as she had no such pills, she decided to suffocate the elderly man with a pillow as she would not have to see his face and feel bad.

It would also leave no injuries and might look as if he died of natural sickness, she thought.

Sumiyati waited in the kitchen until she heard snoring at about 4.20pm.

She approached Mr Low on his bed and began suffocating him with a pillow.

He woke up and struggled, asking her what happened and what she was doing.

In response, she leaned her body into the pillow and held it there until he stopped moving.

She checked the clock and saw that it was 5pm and stole S$70, both Mr Low’s phones and a pair of earrings from his wife before leaving with her belongings.

She then sold the phone and remitted the cash she had before trying to meet the scammer, who had purportedly arrived in Singapore.

However, she waited for more than an hour and he did not appear or accept her calls.

Sumiyati claimed she wanted to surrender to the embassy but did not know her way there. She was arrested early the next day on an overhead bridge in the Bishan-Toa Payoh area.

Meanwhile, Mr Low’s wife returned home some time after 8pm and found that her husband was unresponsive.

She tapped him to try to wake him but he was cold to the touch. She then called her daughter, who asked her to get an ambulance.

A man responded to an alert on the volunteer life-saving myResponder application and tried to resuscitate Mr Low, but he did not respond.

When paramedics arrived, they found no signs of life and pronounced Mr Low dead.

An autopsy confirmed that the cause of death was consistent with suffocation.

Sumiyati was assessed and found to have no mental disorder at the time. However, she had borderline intelligence.

She claimed to have been hypnotised and controlled by another person, but there was no evidence of this.

Deputy Public Prosecutors Marcus Foo and Janessa Phua did not object to life imprisonment, and did not seek an additional jail term in lieu of caning.

MITIGATION

Mr Muzammil similarly called for life imprisonment. He detailed his client’s background – a repeat divorcee with only primary education, Sumiyati had to stop schooling at the age of 14 because of her family’s financial situation.

She took on simple jobs in Indonesia, was subjected to domestic violence in her first marriage which yielded a daughter, and later lived with her aunt.

This aunt cared for her other children when she later began working overseas, first in Malaysia before becoming a maid in Singapore in 2019.

When her contract was about to expire, she wanted to return to her country but was persuaded by Mr Low to extend her employment, said Mr Muzammil.

He claimed that Sumiyati did not have complaints against the victim but did not get on well with his wife. The increase in salary was another reason she stayed on, as she needed the money to support her kids in school.

Mr Muzammil claimed his client was cheated of money by three men whom she had only met online.

She became romantically attached to the first scammer as he promised to marry her, and she looked forward to a happy marriage after having bad ones.

The second scammer was a relative who practised traditional medicine and claimed he could help her make the first man marry her using his spiritual powers and black magic.

About two months before the murder, Sumiyati was in constant contact with the third scammer, known as Karyadi, who said he could help her recover the lost money.

Mr Muzammil claimed his client felt controlled and hypnotised by Karyadi, who claimed to practise black magic. However, he accepted that she had voluntarily killed Mr Low.

Sumiyati purportedly needed to pay Karyadi an advance sum of S$1,000 to cover administrative fees for her to be taken back to Indonesia to sign papers and obtain 650 million rupiah.

On the day of the killing, Mr Muzammil said his client was performing her chores when Mr Low nagged and scolded her, asking her to return stolen jewellery to his wife.

Sumiyati was angry at the “incessant nagging” and “hypnotised by black magic” and claimed that Karyadi asked her to kill Mr Low.

“I have been informed by Madam Sumiyati to extend her greatest apologies to the family of the victim and she seeks their forgiveness,” said Mr Muzammil.

In response, Mr Foo said the prosecution could accept that this was Sumiyati’s version of events – that she was a victim of scams.

However, the prosecution cannot accept as a fact that the scams had actually occurred.

In sentencing, Justice Mavis Chionh said this was a tragic case where Sumiyati purportedly lost money to scams, stole from her employers and killed the victim after becoming angry at a false accusation of theft.

She said that while there was a degree of premeditation and planning, this was limited as Sumiyati had hatched her plan spontaneously on the day itself.

The killing of Mr Low was a “horrific tragedy” but this was not a case where the offender exhibited viciousness or a blatant disregard for human life deserving of the maximum penalty of death, said Justice Chionh.

After the hearing, Mr Low’s sister told the press that she had no idea of the purported scams. Another woman with her said she was “disappointed”, presumably at the outcome.

They declined to say anything further.

For murder, Sumiyati could have been sentenced to death.