Nothing can come between me and my lunch break siesta. Absolutely nothing. It has become my ritual, known to those who know me so well, every work day for the past so many years, the moment I stepped out of office for lunch break, destination one would be my bed.  It may not be much, even just for a 10 minute-nap, is completely enough as a push for me to go back to office and continue with the afternoon half of the work day.

24 Nov 2022 started off just like any other ordinary work day. Arriving home at 1250H for lunch break that day, I excitedly flailed open my door gate, unlocked the door, came in, locking the door behind me, said a quick hi to my cats, took off my shoes, dropped my work bag on the floor, took off my work dress, put my phone on silent mode, set my alarm, then with a big, long sigh, put my head on my pillow, then I was out.

My gentle-sounding Samsung phone alarm was supposed to wake me up at 1315H. But, that day, my precious nap was interrupted by a loud crashing sound. This was louder than loud. The likes of a crashed elevator sound, or the sound of a shipping container trailer that fell on its side. I was awakened immediately as my cats scrambled away in shock. At that moment, I had a critical decision to make – whether to brush it off and continue napping or to check out what was the origin of that loud sound.

Well…there was nothing to decide between actually, as it was a no brainer. Are you kidding me? Definitely I sprung out of bed to check out what had crashed, what had created that loud sound. Judging from the WTF level of loudness, I was certain that the “thing” was happening super super near to where I was. First, I quickly scanned out the window down to the road area. Nothing was out of normal, no shipping container trailer on its side. Hmmm… So I moved on to my second theory, our building’s elevator had crashed. I hope there was no one inside the elevator, that must be a gruesome sight…, I said to myself. I grabbed my phone, just in case, and made my way from my bedroom to the main door just to take a peek from the peephole to see if the elevator’s LCD display went haywire or if there were some signs of dust or debris billowing up.

As I turned the corner into the living room and approached the corner to the front door, my vision suddenly came in contact with THE origin of the loud crashing sound. I was right, it was indeed near, but I totally didn’t expect it to be that near, as in happening in my apartment unit. I was completely gobsmacked. Someone had Muay-Thai kicked open my front door, yup, hence the loud crashing sound, and the man who did that was already stepping into my apartment.  He was oblivious of my presence even though I was just standing a few feet away to his left.

Now, what have my years of obsessing on true crime and investigation stories prepared me on what to do in situation like this?

Ok, first thing first, never neverrr take things for granted. I have been a strong believer that home invasion cases whether by burglars, thugs, zombies and other unwanted intruders could be totally avoided by installing door gates and window grilles. But, even though I had installed iron gates at my front and back doors, I didn’t shut and lock the front door gate during my lunch breaks. I got careless, and thought that since it was just less than an hour, nothing could possibly happen. Well, I thought wrong, and I learned my lesson there and then.

The not-taking-things-for-granted mantra also applies to when hearing any unusual sounds in your surroundings regardless of during what time of the day. Never ever dismiss them as nothing. Always investigate. Had I not gotten up and just continued napping, I would definitely be in a vulnerable position to any crimes of opportunity when discovered by the intruder.

Now, back to the elephant in the room. Since the guy didn’t see me yet, it gave me a few seconds head start to assess the threat before deciding on how to react to the situation. He was alone, skinny, average height and I didn’t see any weapon in his person. So, I thought to myself, hmm…if a have a long weapon with me, like a broomstick, I could catch him off guard, charge towards him with my broomstick, and beat the crap out of him. It needed to be a long weapon so that I could still keep a distance when attacking the threat. Good plan!

But, unfortunately my broom was not nearby. I knew I must act immediately and deliver the element of surprise before he sees me. So, I used my fake man voice (for real!) and shouted “Oi!! Keluar!!! (Get out of here!!!)” He was startled alright, backed up and in a split second he was out the door. I ran to shut and lock the door gate, since my door lock was busted.

It wasn’t long after I saw him entering the elevator that I heard another crashing sound, followed by another one. You got to be kidding me! I said. Instead of fleeing the building, he went to other floors of the building and from the sound of it, kicked open two more doors. This guy is really psycho. At that point, I could just let the tenants of the affected doors deal with him, go back to work and fix my busted door lock later. But….the thought crossed my mind…what if the guy enters someone else’s home, attacks the occupants, senior citizens or little children, severely injuring or killing them. Then I would feel guilty for just moving on and not doing anything. So I dialled 993 (the police hotline).

I got a question for my fellow Bruneians. Have you ever heard or experienced yourself what will go down when the police are called while the crime is still going on / the criminals are in action. For example, if someone dialing 993 while hiding in the closet, whispering, telling the dispatcher that there is an intruder in the house at that very moment or if someone called the police saying that he saw from his car someone trying to break into someone’s home. If your answer is no, then let me tell you about it and get ready for a wild ride.

So there I was, adrenaline pumping, waiting for the police to come, anticipating some police actions. There is a police station just nearby, less than a mile away from my place, and so I thought they should be here any second now. I was looking down to the road from my balcony, but seconds and minutes passed by, there was no police car at sight. Then I saw the intruder walking out to the main road, approached a guy in a car that parked at the roadside in front of our building. It seemed like they know each other. The other guy gave him a cigarette, and they smoked together while having a chitchat, with no care that the police might be coming. But was the police coming though??

It was a good 30 minutes after I made that call to the police, but not a single policeman come. I can see the police station from my balcony, by the way. After their long chitchat, the other guy left in his car, and the intruder walked down the road leaving our building area. He wasn’t rushing or anything. In hindsight, perhaps the intruder knew well that the Brunei police would not scramble, jump into their vehicles and rush to the scene upon getting a distress call from a crime victim.

To be continued….

You are everyone’s best friend until you are not.

Thieves population continued to increase. Theft cases everyday. Prison overcrowded with habitual thieves. Is anyone keeping track?

Brunei has no shortage of thieves. From shoplifters to cat burglars to cable thieves, you name it. Even fruits and livestock are not spared, they too got snatched by thieves. From way back when, thefts have been the number one crime in the country, and as years and decades went by, the activity is showing no sign of slowing down. Making it worse is over the years, some local thieves had taken up a fancy to knives and machetes and graduated to become daring robbers and murderers. Mugging began to emerge. In 2020, a man, in broad daylight, threatened the cashier of a convenient store using a knife asking for the victim to hand over proceeds of the shop. The daring armed robbery on a goldsmith at Kg Tanjung Bunut also in 2020 is another wtf development. Unlike in the more advanced countries, where fingerprints would lead to arrests and CCTV footages are meticulously analysed, we can’t expect much from our local police force where the arrests were either thanks to lucky breaks or dumb criminals. Until such time when our country is able to keep pace in the crime busting department, we just have to live with this reality.

My family has experienced first hand that CCTV footage did not result in conviction. So don’t think that having CCTVs would help deter criminals, let alone getting a slam dunk case. Not in Brunei. An alarm system, on the other hand, would do an excellent deterrent job. Thieves would definitely scram once the alarm got set off. Granted that fixing an alarm system could be expensive and not yet mainstream in Brunei, the best approach for now is to deny the thieves any opportunity to break into your homes or premises. Thieves love naked doors and windows, so fix metal bars everywhere, that would do it. Never take  the danger of housebreakers lightly. Gone are the days when thieves tip toed their way in and out people’s homes quietly, mindful not to alert the sleeping homeowners. Once they successfully broken into your house, thieves, who in most if not all of the time, have some kind of weapons with them, will have no issue manhandling the homeowners. There have been a number of times where housebreaking victims got tied up and threatened with weapons. For the two unfortunate cases below, the homeowners weren’t so lucky.

On 21 June 1999, two men, broke into a house in Kiarong. The house was occupied by a doctor from India, his wife and their two children. The doctor’s wife was awaken when one of the thieves opened the door to their bedroom on the first floor of the house. She got up to switch on the light and was shocked to see a man standing just 2 feet away from her. Instead of getting the hell out of there, the thief was unhinged and instead walked towards her. The wife screamed waking her husband who impulsively jumped off his bed and went after the man who had ran down the stairs. The man managed to get away but not before stabbing the doctor with a knife. The doctor staggered a few steps up the stairs then collapsed. He was rushed to the hospital and was pronounced dead 15 minutes after arrival at RIPAS. Two men were later held as suspects in the crime, 26-year-old Mohammad Dahrie bin Jaraee and 31-year-old Saufi bin Mohd Arif. Unsurprisingly, both were habitual thieves who have been in and out of jail before. The case dragged on for years, partly because the doctor’s heartbroken widow, the witness of the crime, had packed up and returned to India 3 days after the incident. In 2001, she was flown to Brunei to testify in court where she identified one of the suspects as the one who she saw in their bedroom that fateful night. Despite the prosecutor’s fierce objection, the two suspects, who pleaded not guilty to the charge, were granted bail and the case was adjourned to January the following year. Nothing has been publicised on the case after that (at least not in my knowledge). By way that the suspects pleaded not guilty and the sole witness being thousands of miles away in India (perhaps too traumatised to step foot in Brunei again), I am not surprised if the two suspects eventually walked, or just got mere 4 years jail term, the “sacred” number of years for culpable homicide.

On 18 April 2000, at about 3am, a thief broke into a house in Kg Jerudong. The 31-year-old son of the house owner detected the thief’s presence and gave chase. He managed to grab the thief who put up a fight. The scuffle woke up a number of the family members. They rushed to the living room where the noise came from and witnessed in horror as the thief struck the victim’s head with a hammer. As the victim fell to the floor, the thief fled through the back door where he had broken in from. With a nasty gaping wound on his head, the victim managed to remain conscious, even asking if everyone, especially his mom was okay. He remained conscious in the ambulance but fell into a coma upon arrival at RIPAS. Sadly, he never regain consciousness and passed away 9 days later. The victim’s sister had a good look at the thief and was able to give a description to the police. The police had their work cut out for them when, lo and behold, a man with the same description was seen at the ICU in RIPAS and outside the operating theatre where the victim was undergoing surgery. Perhaps the thief felt guilty and was quietly hoping that the victim was okay. Regardless whether he had no intention to kill, he must be kidding to think that someone would come out okay after being hit on the head by a hammer. It turned out that the thief, 28-year-old Musa bin Panjang was no stranger to the police. On top of being ex police officer (no kidding!), he also had been in and out of jail before, for you guess it..theft. Now he had graduated to become a murderer. Musa was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment and 10 strokes of the rattan. My guess is he did not serve the full 15 years and was released early for good behaviour, reoffended and continued on getting in and out of jail.

Apart from these two murders, there have also been a number of cases involving people who lived alone who were found dead with stab wounds on their bodies and items missing from their homes, suspected of being murdered in the hands of thieves as well. In these cases, what went down that led to their murders remained a mystery with the perpetrators never discovered.

What were they thinking? But then again, probably they just thought that it was just a harmless joke.

It is perhaps not an overstatement to say that today most Bruneians spend their every waking hour on their mobile phones. We can always count on our mobile phones whenever there is the need to kill time, to pass boredom, to pretend not to realise someone’s presence when bumping into them, and many more uses. But this is now. How about back then, before there were iPhones and androids. Circa 2005. What did people do in place of constantly “playing” with their cellphones during that time. Well, the PC played a big part. I remember there were the mIRC (remember mIRC?), MSN messenger (remember MSN?), Bruclass (remember Bruclass?), Skype, not a whole lot, but good enough. 

In 2005, 3 friends – 32, 41 and 49 year old men, were playing around with some media editing app and had this idea of making the mouth move on a still picture of a face – a talking picture. They overlayed the mouth on the still picture with a video of their mouth and voice talking about some funny things. The result was a less than a minute video clip which the men later shared with their close friends and family members, whom they innocently thought would appreciate the humor, through MMS (remember MMS?) and email. Expectedly, those close friends and family members then shared the clip with their respective circle of friends and family members and on and on. I won’t say that the clip went viral, but it reached quite a number of the country’s population. These included the authorities.  

It didn’t take long before the authorities were able to track the men down who conveniently worked at the same company. One day in June 2006, the three men went to work as per their normal work days, none of them having the slightest inkling of what was about to go down that day. They didn’t get to go home from work as the authorities came to their workplace, scooped them up and took them away. Their officemates who saw the whole thing were left puzzled having no idea what it was about. Nothing had crossed their minds because they saw the three men as quite decent gentlemen and held good positions in the company. It was only after the police released a press statement on the arrest that their trouble with the law was revealed. Yep, it was the video clip. The less than a minute long clip they produced during their moment of goofiness would cost them a year in jail. 

So, what was wrong with the video clip? It might not be a big of a deal had they NOT used a still picture of the country’s leader. They were charged with carrying out activities considered seditious and derogatory to the royal family. It was the first such case in Brunei. It caught the population by surprise, but nonetheless necessary to bring awareness on the needless to say big no no.  

One morning in July 1991, Zai was pacing up and down the living room, peering through the window every 5 minutes. She was anxious. After a hard discussion with her husband, she finally agreed to employ a domestic helper to take care of their 2¼ years old child. Zai had been burned out for the past year juggling between house work and taking care of their toddler. Her husband thought a domestic helper will provide Zai the much needed breathing space. The day had finally come as Zai anxiously waiting for the maid to be delivered to her house. 

A little bit after 9am, a white Toyota Corolla pulled in her driveway. It was Zai’s friend Jauyah. Jauyah played a big part in Zai’s decision to agree with getting a domestic helper. She had been coaxing Zai about how beneficial it would be for Zai to get a maid and assuring her that it was hassle free and she would deliver the maid in no time. And deliver the maid in no time she did. What Zai didn’t know at that time was that “the maid” is the cousin of Jauyah’s maid. This cousin had already arrived in Brunei and living in Jauyah’s house in Telisai eager to follow her cousin’s footstep to earn money to be sent to her poor family in the Philippines. Jauyah had been contacting several people, Zai included, persuading them to get a domestic helper and she could help in getting and delivering one. 

Out the car with Jauyah was the domestic helper, wearing worn out shirt and skirt, flip flops, a worn out duffle bag on her shoulder. It was not hard to tell that this woman had a tough life. As they reached the door, Jauyah introduced them, “Shirley, this is Zai. You will be working with her from now on”. With her head down, Shirley said “Good Morning maam”. Zai pointed to the room by the kitchen and said “you can put your bag in there”. Shirley nodded her head, smiled and said “Thank you maam”, but just stood there. Then Jauyah said “Oh by the way, Shirley doesn’t speak any Malay or English”. It turned out that Good Morning and Thank You are the only English words that she knew. But Jauyah assured Zai that Shirley will learn the language “in no time”. Apart from Shirley being 30 years old, had experience working in a dressmaking shop and nannying a child  back in the Philippines, and oh yeah speaks no English or Malay, Jauyah didn’t offer much more information on this maid to Zai. Still speechless with the revelation about the language barrier, with the dumbfounded look on her face, Zai watched Jauyah got in her car and left. It was too late for her to change her mind now…

How to train someone who doesn’t speak your language? There was no goggle translate back in the 1990s. But Zai just had to suck it up and put in the effort. Despite her best efforts and a lot of patience, Zai became increasingly frustrated when even after a month, Shirley still didn’t pick up any English, let alone Malay. By the second month, things remained the same, reaching the point where Zai began to think that Shirley was comfortable with not being able to understand her instructions as a way to dodge doing some tasks. The third month came and Zai thought that she had tolerated enough. Having the domestic helper didn’t give her the benefits that she initially expect, instead had given her more stress than she already had. So Zai made a decision, agreed by her husband, to terminate Shirley’s employment. She asked Shirley to pack up her things and called Jauyah to come and pick Shirley up. Not wanting to hurt Shirley’s feeling, Zai told Jauyah that the decision was not because Shirley wasn’t a good domestic helper, it was just that there was no chemistry between Shirley and her child, hence not a good fit. Seeing Shirley with her head down in Jauyah’s car as she was driven away, Zai felt a bit of guilt and sympathy. Little did she know at that time how life-altering that the decision would be.

Shirley was devastated. She feared that Jauyah was going to send her back to the Philippines where she had to face the people who lent her the money to get to Brunei. She had been sending her salary back to the Philippines to pay out the debt. She feared that if the monthly payment stop, the lenders will go after and hurt her family. She feared about the safety of her 7-year-old son. Her cousin Helena conveyed this concern to Jauyah who sympathised with Shirley’s plight. At the same time, Jauyah knew that it would be hard to get Shirley a new employer given the language barrier. So, Jauyah made a fateful decision to send Shirley to work for her sister, Gauyah, a decision that she would later regret tremendously. 

On 08 October 1991, just 2 days after Jauyah picked Shirley up from Zai’s house, Jauyah sent Shirley to Gauyah’s house at Kg Sg Basong, Tutong. Jauyah convinced Gauyah that Shirley is good and Gauyah took her word for it. She thought that she could use some help to look after her 18-months old son. Before she left, Jauyah explained to Shirley about her tasks. Shirley nodded her head repeatedly, not that she understood anything though, she was just happy that she got to stay being employed in Brunei and not sent back to the Philippines. 

The following day, 09 October 1991, Gauyah and her husband, Daus woke up early as in any other weekday to get their two other kids ready for school and for themselves to get ready for work. At 7.15am, Daus left to send the two kids to school nearby. Then he came back to the house to pick up Gauyah to send her to work with Shirley and the toddler tagging along. Gauyah works at the Tutong hospital less than a minute away from their house. After dropping off Gauyah at the hospital, they went to pick up Jauyah and brought her back to their house to supervise and further brief Shirley on her tasks. Before leaving for work, Daud said that he will be back at 9.50am to bring Shirley to meet her cousin, Helena as Shirley had requested. On his way out, a carpenter, Bakar arrived to repair a cabinet in the master bedroom. 

Now left in the house with the toddler were Shirley, a domestic helper who they just met the day before, the carpenter and Jauyah. Gauyah and Daus drew comfort from the fact that Jauyah would be there to ensure the safety of their toddler in the presence of the two “strangers” in the house. 

However, in a lapse of judgment, Jauyah left the house. 

Bakar was in the master bedroom doing his thing with the cabinet. At some point he heard clanging sounds coming from the kitchen, but he didn’t put much thought to it. He stayed focus on fixing the cabinet. Around 9.40 Bakar felt hungry and went out of the room to get something to bite. Nothing prepared him for what he would see outside. 

Bakar saw Shirley, her clothes full of blood, cradling the toddler in her arms, walking from the kitchen right past him towards the main door. The toddler was covered in blood, no sound, not moving. He saw a bloody butcher knife and blood on the kitchen floor. Bakar asked “What happened??” but Shirley didn’t say anything. She just walked out the door and calmly sat on a rattan chair on the porch still holding the bloody toddler. Bakar panicked and sprinted to the nearby Land Transport Department to call the police. There was no cell phone yet in 1991. 

After calling the police, Bakar bumped into the unsuspected Daud who was on his way back to the house to pick up Shirley for her meeting with Helena. Bakar told Daud that the maid had done something to the toddler. Daud arrived at the house just as the police arrived at the scene. Neighbours and onlookers have already congregated watching in horror at this woman with bloody clothes sitting quietly on the rattan chair at the porch of the house holding the bloody toddler with a blank look on her face staring off into space.

Daud immediately grabbed the toddler, and as soon as he did that, Shirley snapped out of her daze and started to scream hysterically. The police arrested Shirley. Daud rushed the toddler to the hospital where unfortunately the toddler was pronounced dead. 

Autopsy report showed that the toddler had seven cut wounds in the neck and four on the hands. Two deep wounds in the neck caused the death. The bloody butcher knife, Shirley’s and the toddler’s bloody clothes were all sent for forensic analysis, where it was determined that Shirley had indeed murdered the toddler. But, why did she do it? What was the motive? 

News about the horrific incident quickly spread to the country’s public, not as quick as today though. The words that went around were that this crazy amah sitting on the front steps nonchalantly sembalih a baby with a knife in clear sight for everyone to see. Although this version of event was not accurate, one thing the rumour got right, that the amah is indeed “crazy”. 

When asked why she did it, Shirley said that on that morning, she heard voices telling her to “do it”. When asked to do what, she answered “to kill the cat”. She took a knife from the kitchen and killed the “cat” by chopping it on the kitchen floor. The two mental experts who evaluated Shirley, including one flown in from Manila, said in their reports that Shirley has mental illness and was experiencing a psychotic episode the morning when she killed the toddler. 

The killing of an innocent baby by a psycho domestic helper shook the nation to the core. In particular, fear swept through families who have domestic helpers in their homes, questioning if their maids have undiagnosed mental illness and could have a psychotic episode anytime. It is not something that can be found in their resume when selecting one. Even the details in the resume are not necessarily all true. So, practically it is a gamble. When Zai learned about the murder, her face turned pale, her knees felt weak, she slumped down on the floor in shock, “that could’ve been my baby”, she thought in her mind. When news about it reached the Philippines, the lady whose child was once being nannied by Shirley also had the same emotional reaction – it could have been her child too. Looking back, it dawned on them that there were actually some peculiar things which they didn’t pick up as red flags, as they recalled catching Shirley talking, laughing and crying to herself.

While admitting to killing the “cat”, at her trial Shirley pleaded not guilty of murdering the toddler by reason of insanity (How to get away with murder 101). The two doctors who evaluated her vouched for her insanity stating that  “when she committed the crime she was mentally ill, psychotic, and not aware of what she was doing. She was suffering from psychosis of the schizophrenic type”.  Well, we all know where this is heading, as far as getting justice is concerned.

This was on the 19 August 2021 BB. Anyone care to address the elephant in the room here? Do they expect people to just read this and move on to the next article without asking questions?

Before I get to the elephant, now let me first talk about this Mohammad Rafi fella. This guy has been in and out of jail for theft. By now, the authorities should get the message that repeatedly giving him “piecemeal” jail sentences for theft has no effect at all in stopping him from reoffending. Obviously this guy is either too lazy to earn a living or a hardcore kleptomaniac, in both cases he should be institutionalised permanently. On a bigger picture, criminals who were in and out of jail were not uncommon in Brunei especially thieves, with the record holder being sent to jail for more than 20 times!

Perhaps its due to the Covid-19 pandemonium that other major things that are going on get overlooked by the public’s attention. I mean theres a dead body of a woman in a car parked on the roadside at Jalan Mumong. Surely, that don’t happen everyday, but wheres the news coverage on that? Wheres the police press conference on it? How did she die? How did the dead body get there? Was she murdered? If she was, then shouldn’t the police at least appease the public by saying that they will investigate and catch the killer. Not divulging about the murder to the public wouldn’t help much in ensuring public safety when clearly there’s a murderer still at large (plus scores of other murderers of the many unsolved murders in the country).