Warning: This story mentions suicide and contains descriptions of a suicide attempt.
SINGAPORE: A managing director of a training company who suffered insomnia after mistakenly thinking his business was failing stabbed his wife and their unborn child to death.
David Brian Chow Kwok-Hun began ruminating on the financial health of his company after receiving a half-year financial report from an accounting employee that showed low-performing numbers.
The numbers were later found to be inaccurate. Despite his family encouraging him and trying to seek help for him, Chow made up his mind to kill himself and his wife, in order to “save” her and their unborn child from any debtors.
After another night of insomnia, he grabbed a kitchen knife and stabbed his pregnant wife to death.
He then tried to kill himself but was unsuccessful and decided to call the police to avoid implicating his father who was on his way to fetch him.
Chow, a 35-year-old Singaporean, pleaded guilty on Thursday (Oct 26) to one charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder.
He had been suffering from adjustment disorder with anxious and depressed mood at the time of the offence and qualified for the partial defence of diminished responsibility.
The court heard that Chow and the victim, 30-year-old Isabel Elizabeth Francis, registered their marriage in 2019 and lived together in a flat since May 2021.
Chow was the managing director of KnowledgeTree Training Centre, a training company providing workforce skills qualifications and other courses.
In December 2021, he asked for the company’s half-year financial report from his accounting staff.
When he received the report, he went through the numbers and felt there must have been an error, as the numbers were unusually low. He asked the employee to check again and get back.
In January 2022, the accounting staff got back to Chow and confirmed that the numbers were accurate.
It was later revealed that the numbers were wrong and were not an accurate representation of the company’s financial health.
DESCENT INTO TROUBLED THOUGHTS
Chow began thinking that the company was not doing well and would probably run into failure. This was despite the fact that it had been profitable, racking up S$1 million (US$729,000) in earlier profits.
Between Jan 5 and Jan 7 in 2022, Chow began losing sleep. He was worried and stressed over the company finances and slept only one to two hours per night on average. His family members, wife and colleagues noticed his behaviour.
When Chow spoke to the manager of his company about finances on Jan 8, 2022, the manager saw that he looked stressed and noted that the company was still making a profit.
Chow’s mother and brother also met him to talk about the finances and assured him that the company was still making a profit.
Because of what the company earned over the years, it was in a financially sound position to weather the next two years.
His parents also had dinner with him to encourage him and assure him that everything would be fine.
Chow’s wife booked a counselling session with a counsellor to help him deal with his work stress, but Chow continued losing sleep over the finances.
He began seeing things in his head if he closed his eyes, including images of soldiers marching, a devil and “a scary dog”.
His family members continued trying to reach out to Chow. His father made an appointment for him to see a psychiatrist and arranged to ferry him to work.
Chow tried listing down his problems on a counselling worksheet and felt slightly better, but still could not sleep.
At about 1am on Jan 11, 2022, Chow began pacing up and down the corridor of his flat in Ang Mo Kio.
He continued ruminating over his business concerns and looking at the LinkedIn profiles of business competitors.
He logged into an e-learning portal and realised his employee still had not rectified an issue that was earlier pointed out, and was concerned that his mother would scold the employee, who would leave.
The managing director was also worried about his employees quitting and losing confidence in him, as they had noticed him breaking down.
THE DAY OF THE KILLING
From 3am to 4am that day, he began having suicidal thoughts – the first time he had such thoughts, court documents showed. He was worried that his wife would feel shame from having a husband who took his own life.
If his business failed, he fretted that others would go after his wife and unborn child.
The man felt he had to do something, and thought of killing his wife to spare her and their unborn child, so they could “go to heaven” while he killed himself, said the prosecution.
At about 5am, Chow took a knife from the kitchen and headed to the master bedroom, where his wife lay sleeping on her side.
He turned her and thrust the knife into her abdomen, telling her: “Sorry, I have no way out.”
He then stabbed her multiple times in her head, neck, abdomen and back until she stopped moving.
After killing his wife, Kwok checked the peephole of his main door to make sure no one had been alerted by his wife’s screams.
He tried various ways to end his life, including stabbing himself with another knife and asking the “devil to take him”, said the prosecution, adding that he also took an assortment of tablets.
Chow realised his father had sent him a message saying he was on his way to fetch him. Chow decided to call the police to tell them that he had killed his wife, as he did not want to implicate his father.
He also did not want his father to see the state that he and his wife were in, so he called his father and asked him not to come over. After calling the police, Chow unlocked the main door and lay down to wait.
The police and paramedics arrived shortly after and the victim was pronounced dead while Chow was taken to hospital and arrested.
An autopsy of Chow’s wife found that she had died of stab wounds to her back and neck. She had suffered 10 stab wounds and five incised wounds on her head, neck and torso, two of which were fatal.
An autopsy was also done on the foetus, which was found to be a girl of about 15 weeks’ gestational age. It would not survive at such an age if it had been born, medical reports stated.
Chow was assessed by an associate consultant from the Institute of Mental Health, who found that he was suffering from adjustment disorder with anxious and depressed mood at the time of the offence.
While the IMH doctor and the defence psychiatrist had different diagnoses of the subtype of adjustment disorder Chow suffered, they agreed that he had symptoms of anxious and depressed mood.
Chow was found to have catastrophic thinking, fearing that he would go bankrupt and was overwhelmed by the premonition that people would go after his wife if he did.
However, his impulse control was not impaired, as he had performed goal-directed actions in killing his wife, said Deputy Public Prosecutor Jiang Ke-Yue.
Mr Jiang said Chow had penned his thoughts in the counselling sheet prior to the killing, tested the sharpness of the knife and covered his wife’s mouth before checking if anyone heard her screams.
He was not of unsound mind and was fit to plead.
The prosecution is seeking nine to 12 years’ jail for Chow.
Chow is defended by Mr Shashi Nathan, Mr Jeremy Mark Pereira and Mr U Sudharshanraj Naidu from Withers KhattarWong. His family members attended the court hearing.