This is number 17 Jalan Batai in central Singapore. This single-storey property was,
for many years, owned by two sisters, Pearl and Ruby Tan. According to the neighbours who
have come and gone over the decades, they were a reclusive pair who didn’t seek companionship,
didn’t socialise, and at least in the last twenty years, were not seen at all. The story
of Pearl and Ruby Tan is one shrouded in mystery, as no one apart from distant family members seems
to know much about them at all. What is known is that during the 1940s they lived with their
family at number 1 Walton Road in Mountbatten, to the south-east of the country. Their father was a
wealthy man, at least at one stage, but when Singapore was occupied by Japan in World
War II – according to a cousin of the sisters – things began to go wrong for the family and they
eventually moved away from Mountbatten. What happened immediately after this is unclear,
but sometime during the late 1950s, the sisters moved to the Jalan Batai cul-de-sac just off
of Upper Thomson Road in central Singapore. They lived there with their mother, a widow by now, who
was bedridden for many years before she died in 1970. Neighbours at the time, some who still live
there to this day, remember the funeral taking place at the then well-kept home. The sisters
were known to be well-spoken, but because they were of Peranakan origin – meaning they descended
from Chinese settlers – they spoke the indigenous Malay language, a language their neighbours were
unfamiliar with. For the sisters, this was just the beginning of what would become a solitary
existence. One of their neighbour, a Mr. Kunji Rahman, who had lived on the road for the last 50
years, said in 2015, that he hardly knew the two women despite having lived on the street for most
of his life. Another man, named Freddy Neo, who lived next door to Pearl and Ruby from 1958 until
1979, recalls that the curtains were always closed and the house shrouded in darkness, even then,
and remembers hearing Pearl play the piano late at night. It was always Beethoven’s Fur Elise.
Mr. Neo also said that he had the odd conversation with Ruby, the younger of the sisters, before
Pearl would intervene and tell her not to speak to outsiders. Other neighbours had similar memories:
They all knew who they were, but they seldom saw them emerge from the house, and barely spoke
apart from the odd friendly “hello”. And this is how it would remain. In 1991 the already curious
case of the elusive sisters took a strange turn. According to reports, they attended the wedding
of a relative that year. It would be the last time Pearl was seen in public for 13 years.
Her bank account, however, remained active and saw $227,000 worth of bank deposits.
The last activity on the account was in 2004, and the Straights Times reported that on Sunday July 18th
2004, Pearl was seen leaving on a train departing from the town of Woodlands which is in the north
of the Singapore and eight miles from the house. There is no record of her ever returning. Sister
Ruby had suffered with schizophrenia, and in 1991 she began treatment under the countries Institute
of Mental Health. As the years went by, in Pearl’s unexplained absence, Ruby remained in solitude,
and she, like her sister, eventually vanished from society altogether. This absence was unrealised
by the new faces in the neighbourhood and seldom noticed by the ever-waning,
older generation. According to all available accounts, that’s how it remained. Until 2006.
This is when neighbours expressed their concern to local authorities about a possible breeding-ground
of mosquitos at the now entirely neglected Tan residence. They also said that at this
stage they hadn’t seen either of the sisters for the last decade. A National Environment
Agency officer was sent to the property on Wednesday July 12th 2006. During the inspection,
he waded through piles of refuse to make his way to the bathroom. When he entered the room,
he found a human skeletal remains in and around the toilet bowl.
The body was clearly beyond decomposition, there was no indication to the identity of
the corpse at the scene, and the cause of death was impossible to define. Finding
out through DNA testing, according to reports, was unsuccessful as the remains were too old,
but it was assumed that they belonged to one of the sisters. For now, it was unclear which one,
but a pathologist concluded that it was an old woman. Ruby and Pearl Tan would
have been 68 and 81 respectively in 2006, so being the oldest, it was decided that
the remains most likely belonged to Pearl Tan. There were fillings found in the teeth,
so whoever it was had seen a dentist. Over 1000 dentists were sent an image of the teeth,
but only a handful responded saying that they were unable to find a match amongst their records.
The opinion that the remains belonged to Pearl poses another question though,
as she was said to have left the area in 2004, with no record of her ever
returning. This doesn’t necessarily mean she didn’t return, of course,
but it raises the possibility that it could have been someone else altogether.
Obviously shocked by the find, the environmental health worker didn’t remain in the building long
enough to search any of the other rooms. Amazingly, even after the body was removed
by the coroner, the other rooms in the house remained undisturbed. It was declared
uninhabitable and another nine years would pass before anyone stepped foot in there again.
In August of 2015 Singapore’s Building and Construction Authority served Dangerous Building
and Closure Orders on the property after it was decided the severely damaged roof posed
a threat to the public. Inland Revenue records showed that the house was in Pearl Tan’s name,
but after failing to track her down, the Construction Authority took it upon themselves to
erected a temporary roof deck. This also involved the removal of a considerable amount of rubble
which had fallen into one of the guest rooms. On Wednesday September 9th 2015, while clearing the
room, workmen discovered the remains of a second human skeleton amongst the rubble. This time
all that was found was a skull and a few bones.
But coroner, Marvin Bay, stated in 2016 that the remains of the second woman was closer to the
chronological age of the younger sister, Ruby. The coroner estimated the age of the second
woman to be between 60 and 70 years of age. Even though the identity of the dead remained unclear,
in June of 2015 the Singaporean High Court declared that both Tan sisters were to be
presumed dead. And, as there were no wills and no immediate family to claim the house,
it would become property of the Public Trustees Office. Distant relatives did come forward to
stake their claim on the property, but after meeting with the unnamed claimants the Public
Trustees Office made the following statement:
One relative, a cousin of the sisters,
was 90-year-old Eunice Tan. Although not a claimant herself, she believed that other family
members did deserve a share of the property. She admits herself that she had lost contact
with Pearl and Ruby back in the 1980s. Regardless of the claims, the house remained property of the
state and three years later, in February of 2018, real estate company Knight Frank were
appointed to put it to auction. Superstitions about buying a property where two long-dead
corpses had recently been discovered failed to deter potential buyers, and on Tuesday February
27th, in a frenzied 12-minute auction held at Amara Hotel in southern Singapore, the house was
purchased by a property developer named Mr. Goh for the sum of $2.2 million Singapore dollars.
The mystery of the Tan sisters' deaths may never be solved,
but assuming the skeletal remains were those of Pearl and Ruby Tan, one thing is clear:
they led an isolated existence, so much so that when they died, the world failed to notice.