“Everything seemed so perfect”.
That was what Shyller Tan, 46, with three children, 13, 11 & 9, said in today’s report about her father’s sentence of 8.5 years. It was reported by Cara Wong.
When I wrote about it a few weeks back, that is, the fatal stabbing of one’s son-in-law at a Telok Ayer Street coffee shop on 20 July 2017 at lunchtime, because he was “too much”, the comments for that post were quite overwhelmingly for the father-in-law, Tan Nam Seng, 72.
Many felt that justice was done in a way that was less rule-based, and more emotion-based. Many wished Tan and his family well and hoped they would find closure.
Well, with the sentence of 8.5 years, and with Tan having already served 3 years in remand, he will be released in about 2.5 years’ time.
Now, let’s return to what Shyller meant when she said “everything seemed so perfect”. Here’s the backdrop.
She said that she went “hysterical” when she received the call from her father, with this ominous message: “I can’t sleep at night. I have done it. I have killed him. Don’t cry. I am old already. I am not scared (of) going to jail.”
Shyller said she was screaming and crying, as she rushed to the scene where the stabbing took place. She was worried for her father, who was nearing 70, and was suffering from major depressive disorder at that time. The sentencing judge also noted that his health was “fast-deteriorating” in remand.
But then, what was seemingly perfect? I believe she was referring to her marriage to Spencer Tuppani, 39. After all, they have three kids and he was running the family business. But all was just not what it seemed.
She said she soon discovered that he had several affairs and had also misused company funds for his lavish lifestyle. “She said she found out about his mistress in February 2017 through a friend of his. She confronted (him), who admitted that he and the woman had two children, conceived through in-vitro fertilisation.”
Not only that, Spencer also persuaded the Tans to sell their company to GKE Corporation and Tan and his daughter only received $450k each, “instead of the $1 million and GKE shares they had expected,” the defence lawyer said.
On top of that, in 2017, Shyller found out that Spencer had purchased a property with company funds to house his second family, that is, his mistress and kids.
Spencer also assured his father-in-law that he will not contest custody of his three grandkids, but later went back on that promise and fought for their custody. He also recorded the couple’s arguments to use it in his divorce against Shyller.
Shyller said: “Betrayal is not an emotion that is easy to quell, and I too suffered many sleepless nights, but can only imagine it must have been a fraction of what my dad went through.”
To Tan, Spencer was simply “too much” and that led him to stab Spencer three times in the chest, saying to worried passers-by: “This is my son-in-law, don’t help him, let him die.”
Well, as a father myself with two young girls, I too desire more than anything for them to find love, true love that is prepared to go all the way for my daughter. Which father doesn’t want that for the apple of their eye right?
But to have a son-in-law like Spencer is a very exhausting challenge to resist the temptation to not mentally snap in more ways than one. Yet, no doubt Spencer had crossed the line, Tan himself had also crossed the line in a strictly rule-based judicial system.
Justice Dedar Singh Gill opined: “This was a vicious and brazen killing carried in broad daylight on an suspecting victim having a meal in a coffee shop in the Central Business District.”
The irony is that even in death, his mistress wouldn’t want him to rest in peace. It is reported that his “mistress has now filed a lawsuit against Mr Tuppani’s estate, to claw back over $3 million that she claimed was either borrowed from her by him or was from their joint bank account.”
Indeed, betrayal is an emotion that is not easy to quell, and Spencer had lived his life committing one betrayal after another.
And the prosecutor Jian Yi (who had asked for 12 years) may have called the attack a case of “vigilante justice”, but I think it is more complicated than that. It was a crime no less, but one done from a heart that is more broken than angry, more torn than is driven by hate, and more pained than filled with revenge.
In one of the comments I received in my last post, it was said that Spencer would have lived his life the way he had wanted, regardless of the people he had betrayed deeply.
He would have destroyed a family who had brought him in, provided, cared and trusted him as their own. He would have betrayed someone who had loved him and would have stood by his side in good and bad times. And he would have taken everything from them, not just the company, but even the children his wife and father-in-law loved so dearly.
Alas, for all that, justice and karma would have sat side by side each other, with arms folded, both riding on a sigh and a wistful prayer that Spencer would one day come to his senses. Will he?
Now, I am not at all encouraging people to take the law in their own hands, but I am lamenting about people who take other people, especially loved ones, for granted, and betraying them for sheer self-gains. And while some people may suffer from sleepless nights because their conscience torments them, I believe people like Spencer sleep quite soundly at night on a soft pillow with his conscience snoring along.
Let me end with this observation.
“Yesterday, about 20 people including Tan’s daughter and grandchildren turned up in court for the sentencing. Among them were several of his friends, who waved at him and gave him a thumbs-up as a sign of support.”
Usually in a case of murder (or manslaughter), the accused is demonised or given the thumbs-down, to put it mildly. But I guess in this case, the justice that is in the minds of many had quietly allowed an unlikely hero to be taken into custody to serve his time.
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