Faced with the gallows after killing a man, I found my greatest treasure

Crouching behind parked cars at a multi-storey carpark in Beach Road, Michael Teoh and two of his gang members lay in wait for their robbery victim.

They had been following the fish auctioneer for more than a week and they knew where he parked his car. They knew what time he would show up. They knew where he kept his money. 

It was past 3am when they spotted him. 

As the gang’s “fighter”, Michael, then 16, was to lead the attack. Clutching a hammer in his fists, he waited for the 41-year-old man to walk closer.

And then he struck.

But the man put up a strong fight.

During the scuffle, rage and violence overcame the teenager. His mind went completely blank. He struck the man again and again until the older man fell unconscious.

The man was still breathing when they ran off with the money, said Michael. He did not think too much about the attack. Such fights were common; it was all in a day’s work.

Confirm hang

The next day, Michael was flipping through the newspaper when a face caught his attention. It was the victim from the night before.

Michael had dropped out of school at a young age and could not read. He could not tell what the story was about.

But as he stared at the jumble of words, making out some simple ones here and there, the truth dropped onto his shoulders like a crushing weight.

He had just killed a man.

Fear gripped him, suffocating him. He couldn’t eat. He struggled to sleep.

He tried to numb the fear with alcohol. In the rare times he could sleep, he was often jolted awake by nightmares of ghosts and a drowning darkness.

Fear taunted him wherever he went. After getting into a taxi one day, the taxi driver casually asked if Michael had read about the “murder” in the papers.

The taxi driver said: “This one very jialat. If kena arrested, confirm hang. Singapore so small, how to hide?”

Childhood darkness

Michael never had peace, even from a young age.

His parents divorced and he spent most of his growing up years being passed around from one family to another. 

At six years old, he lived with his mother and stepfather, a drunkard who physically abused him almost every night, said Michael.

His mother subsequently “chucked” him to his biological father, who had remarried another woman. In that household, he was sexually abused by his stepbrother, he said.

After some time, his father “chucked” him again to another ex-wife’s family. Here, he suffered physical and mental abuse for many years.

At 12, he finally decided that he had had enough. “I thought, end my life better. After all, there’s no meaning in carrying on,” he said.

One night, when everyone else was asleep, he climbed onto the kitchen ledge of his seventh-floor home. He steeled himself to step off.

In that moment, he looked at the night sky. For the first time in a long time, he noticed the twinkling stars. A thought came to him: Who made these stars? Who controls them? There must be Someone who does.

That thought gave him a glimmer of hope. Perhaps he could continue to live, he thought as he stepped down from the ledge.

Still, his circumstances did not change. He ran away from home and spent his days roaming the streets. He dropped out of school. He slept wherever he could find shelter.

He joined a gang, which introduced him to many vices. By 15, he was involved in running nightclubs, prostitution rings and gambling dens.

He became a hardened young man. “All through my childhood and my youth, my mind was just full of hate. I never tasted love. I had no love, no peace, no joy,” he said. “Only hate.”

It was this burning resentment that had overpowered him on July 13, 1982 – the night he took that innocent man’s life.

A desperate plea

Three months after that night, Michael’s the police showed up at his door.

When the police ransacked his cupboards and arrested him, the only thought in his mind was: “Finished.”

In police custody, he admitted everything he knew about that night, except for the names of his gang members.

But he later found out that one of them had ratted him out to the authorities.

After 21 days of interrogation, Michael was thrown into an isolated cell at the Queenstown Remand Prison (now-demolished) and charged with first degree murder. If convicted, his end was sure – death.

It was torturous. Every night, he thought about the noose around his neck and agonised over his soul. Deep down he knew that if they hanged him, he would go to hell.

Fear tightened its grip on Michael. He could not sleep. He could not eat. It drove him to the edge.

He cried out to all the gods and idols that he knew of, begging for power or for some kind of release.

“Bo xia bo yia – no sound, no appearance. No return call,” he said.

Michael began to doubt if there was even a higher power. In a last attempt, he turned his face to the ceiling of his cell and cried: “If there is a true God, a real God, come and help me. I’m at my end already. If you are there, come and save me.”

The moment he uttered this cry, an inexplicable feeling of peace and calmness washed over him, he said. It was like a drowning man’s first gasp of air.

The chaplain and the book

The next morning, all the prisoners in his ward were called out of their cells. An old prison chaplain had asked to see them.

It was the late Reverend Khoo Siaw Hua, one of the pioneering prison chaplains who had founded Prison Fellowship Singapore. It was a Christian organisation that ministers to prisoners, ex-offenders and their families.

Michael recalled: “The first thing he said was, ‘I’m sorry. So long never come and see you all because I was in hospital.’

“I was wondering, who is this guy? I don’t know him. He doesn’t know me. But he come to say sorry to us?”

When Rev Khoo asked who wanted to have a Bible, Michael’s hand shot up, to his own surprise.

First of all, he didn’t know how to read. Secondly, he was a tough gangster! Tough gangsters were not supposed to care about these things. No one else had raised their hand.

The chaplain sent a small Chinese New Testament to his cell.

When it arrived, Michael hesitantly held it in his palms. Remembering his cry from the night before, he said: “God if this is from You, You make me read.”

Then he opened the book and started reading, beginning from the Gospel of Matthew. “The first page, all names!” he exclaimed, referring to the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1:1-17.

But he persevered, his eyes scanning the words on the pages and picking up simple ones he could identify.

Despite his poor literacy, something miraculous happened. “Suddenly, I started to understand the words. I started to understand the story,” said Michael, amazement in his voice.

“Slowly I realised that Someone had paid for my all my wrong deeds. Someone had died for me, like in a gang where a brother dies for another brother. But this fella come and set people free from sin! There is hope!”

A warmth spread through his body. Michael became aware of how sinful he was. “I knew I had done a very, very wrong thing,” he said.

Regret and remorse washed over Michael. He did not know how to pray, and nobody had taught him how to confess. But he said simply: “I’m sorry, God. I’m wrong. Please save me.”

“The moment I said that, the load on my shoulders just dropped. Tears flowed from my eyes. But they were not sad tears, they were tears full of joy and full of hope,” Michael said.

Blessed assurance

That night, Michael could sleep. The prospect of death no longer ate at his soul, “because I knew that Jesus died and rose up three days later, and this Jesus is my hope”, he said.

There was one miracle after another. Whenever he woke up, he felt hungry to read the Bible even though he could not understand all the words.

The vulgarities that Michael typically hurled also became “stuck” in his throat, much to his own surprise.

But the biggest miracle was that he could smile. It was not something he had done – at least not genuinely – for as long as he could remember.

“I had no more sadness or fear. I was so happy. I was full of joy and peace,” Michael said. 

He wanted everyone to know about this Jesus he had just met.

He said: “I was so happy until I carry my Bible, go to the yard and tell people, there is hope! His name is Jesus Christ!” The other prisoners thought he had gone crazy.

Every night in his cell, Michael asked God to send people to tell them about Him. He also prayed that He would send someone to teach him more about the Bible.

After three months of praying, Prison Fellowship Singapore started a weekly chapel service in his ward. Many prisoners came to know Christ through it.

The Lord also sent a pastor who did one-on-one Bible study with him, as Michael had prayed. Michael was amazed: “In my heart I said, this God is real! I can fully trust Him.”

During the four years in remand, Michael’s relationship with God grew and matured.

He was baptised in prison when he was 20. He spent his time studying the Word and praying for the salvation of his prison mates.

“I thank God for those years inside the isolated cell,” he said. “That is my treasure, the treasure of my life. It was so beautiful being isolated with God every day. With Him, I really have joy.”

Grace upon grace

When it was time for Michael’s case to be brought to trial, he had no fear.

“My hope was based on the assurance that God will fully take care of this life and the next. My spirit could feel this assurance, this guarantee,” Michael said.

While waiting to enter the courtroom, he could not help but sing praises and hymns to the Lord. The officers who were with him were bewildered

In the courtroom, Michael was given much grace. His charge was reduced from first degree murder to robbery causing grievous hurt. Michael was sentenced to eight years imprisonment and 12 strokes of the cane.

Later, he was even accepted into a scheme that allowed him to work outside of the prison and come back only in the evenings as he served the rest of his sentence.

Michael was extremely grateful. “God never fails to answer prayers,” he said.

Redemption and forgiveness

In 1988, Michael was released from prison. His old friends, as well as some new ones he had known from his time behind bars, were waiting for him outside the gates. 

It was too easy to dive right back into his old life of alcohol, gambling and fighting. It was all he had ever known.

But things were different this time. As he engaged in these vices, Michael wrestled with a deep turmoil in his soul. The peace and joy he had discovered in prison also escaped him.

“I struggled between sin and the holiness of Christ. It was like two powers were holding onto me,” he said. Every night when he went home, he would go onto his knees and pray for God’s divine power to help him overcome temptation.

And once again, the Lord answered Him. One by one, his relationships with his friends soured. They said Michael had changed. They no longer wanted him around.

“Only in the name of Jesus can we overcome evil. And God had His way,” said Michael.

“At that time I didn’t understand. But now as I’ve matured, I understand – the holiness and light of God cannot go with the darkness (2 Corinthians 6:14). It’s so real.”

God also convicted Michael’s heart to seek forgiveness and reconciliation from his own family, whom he said were his “enemies that I hated the most”.

To his surprise, they apologised to him first – even though he had approached them. His stepfather even went on his knees to ask Michael for forgiveness.

“It wasn’t easy to forgive. But with God, we can,” said Michael. His mother and stepfathers are now Christians.

Michael also wanted to reach out to the victim’s family to ask for forgiveness. But was advised against it for fear of bringing back painful memories for them, he said.

However, he took the opportunity to apologise to them on-air when his story was reenacted on a Mediacorp show, Turning Point. “I said, I’m very sorry, really very sorry, really very regret.”

Since he came to know Christ in prison, he has also been praying for the man’s family. He knows he has caused them inexpressible hurt.

More than enough

For the next few decades, Michael, now 55, would keep walking closely with the Lord.

In 1989, he got married. He had met his wife, Christina, while working in a restaurant. They now have two grown up children.

A few years later, he obtained an ‘N’ level certificate and subsequently fulfilled his childhood dream to become a lifeguard and swimming coach.

Even before he was released from jail, Michael knew that he wanted to go back one day to help prisoners like himself.

“The prison is where God saved my life,” he said.

So, over the last 16 years, Michael has been a volunteer counsellor and motivational speaker to convicts. He also gives talks and workshops to youth-at-risk.

“Last time I killed people, now I want to save lives,” Michael said.

Even though Michael is now a free man – in more ways than one – he always remembers the God who had saved him when he was a totally helpless teen in an isolated cell.

“Every day I need to be trembling and humble before the Lord. We are the sheep, Jesus is the shepherd. We must be humble and hold His hand.

“We cannot run ahead of Him. We have to walk beside Him or behind Him. When we are weak, ask Him to carry us. Don’t feel paiseh (Hokkien for “embarrassed”).

“Since I gave my life to him in prison, he has never failed me. In fact, I’ve had more than enough.”

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This is an excerpt of a story that first appeared on Salt&Light.

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