Tourist from Hell - John Martin Scripps and the Body Parts Murders
The following story has been taken from MACABRE TRUE CRIMES & MYSTERIES: 20 SOLVED AND UNSOLVED TALES FROM AROUND THE WORLD - Volume #4 by Guy Hadleigh
John Martin Scripps, a charming British drifter, turned Asian resorts into killing grounds, using butchery skills learned in prison for his methodical body-parts murders
The black plastic bag floats against the pier pilings like urban flotsam, bobbing in the dark water off Singapore's Clifford Pier. March 13, 1995. A boatman hooks it, curious. The bag is heavy, waterlogged. He pulls it aboard and the plastic tears. Inside: a human leg, severed cleanly at the knee and thigh, skin already graying from decomposition. The boatman radios harbor police. Within hours, another bag surfaces. This one contains thighs. Then a third—a headless torso, naked, expertly disarticulated.
The body parts belong to someone. The cuts tell a story. Forensic pathologist Chao Tzee Cheng examines the joints, notes the precision. These aren't hack-job dismemberments—the bones were separated at proper anatomical points, tendons sliced cleanly, muscle peeled back with knowledge. A surgeon's work. A veterinarian's. Or a butcher's.
Singapore's Garden City is about to meet its first Western serial killer.
The Wanderer
John Martin Scripps was born December 9, 1959, in Letchworth, Hertfordshire—a quintessentially British market town that produced a boy who'd grow into anything but quintessentially British. His father Leonard drove lorries. His mother Jean worked Fleet Street pubs, pouring pints for journalists who chronicled London's underbelly. Young John traveled often with his father, close to the man, learning the roads.
Then Leonard Scripps committed suicide. John was nine years old.
Something broke in the boy after that. Dyslexia emerged, or worsened—reading and writing became struggles. He dropped out of school at fifteen and hit the road, traveling wherever odd jobs and antique sales would take him. The nomadic life suited him. No roots. No attachments. Just movement, always movement, chasing some horizon that never quite materialized.
His first crime came at fifteen: burglary, May 1974. A conditional discharge, £10 fine. Highgate Juvenile Court thought leniency might straighten him out. It didn't. Three more thefts by August 1976. Then indecent assault in 1978—a £40 fine, another slap on the wrist.
In Mexico, drifting through Cancún, Scripps met María Pilar Arellanos. They married in 1980 when he was twenty-one, embracing a vagabond existence—van life before Instagram made it aspirational. Two years of beaches and movement, until the law caught up. Theft, burglary, resisting arrest: three years in British prison. María waited at first. Then Scripps escaped during home leave in June 1985—months before completing his sentence—and burgled again. Another three years added to his time.
María divorced him and married Ken Cold, a Royal Protection Squad officer. Scripps, fuming at the betrayal, stole Cold's clothing during his next home leave. Petty revenge from a petty criminal. María eventually divorced Cold too and returned to Cancún. Scripps, upon release, legally changed his name to John Martin—shedding the past like a snake sheds skin.
But underneath, same snake. Same venom.
DID YOU KNOW? In 1993, while serving a drug-trafficking sentence at Albany Prison on the Isle of Wight, Scripps completed a six-week butchery course. Prison officer James Quigley taught him to debone beef quarters, portion pork carcasses, and expertly separate chicken joints. The course was meant to provide job skills for reintegration into society. Instead, Scripps applied those techniques to human victims, dismembering bodies with surgical precision that horrified even veteran forensic pathologists.
The Escape Artist
October 1994: Scripps is serving a six-year sentence at The Mount prison in Hertfordshire for drug smuggling. Prison officials describe him as "quiet and reserved," with no violence in his record, "no longer considered a risk." They grant him weekend home leave.
He doesn't come back.
Using the birth certificate of fellow inmate Simon James Davis, Scripps applies for a passport. It works. Within weeks, he's in Mexico City under his new identity, then San Francisco, building a network of stolen names and documents. He opens bank accounts. Reports his Simon Davis passport "lost" to the British Embassy in Mexico, receives a replacement. Layer upon layer of false identities, each one another escape route.
Scripps is wanted for questioning in Mexico City after British tourist Timothy MacDowall, 28, disappears. A dismembered body surfaces in San Francisco—a male homosexual found in a rubbish bin. Police link a "Simon Davis" to the killing but can't locate him. In Belize, MacDowall's scuba diving trip with Scripps becomes the last time anyone sees him alive, though body parts discovered later can't be conclusively matched.
The pattern is forming: befriend tourists, particularly Caucasians far from home. Share accommodations. Then kill, dismember, disappear. Use their credit cards, drain their accounts, assume their identities like changing clothes.
March 8, 1995: John Martin Scripps, traveling as Simon James Davis, arrives at Singapore's Changi Airport on a flight from San Francisco. 2 a.m. The airport hotel desk is crowded—Singapore tourism is booming, vacancies scarce. Scripps strikes up conversation with another man seeking a room: Gerard George Lowe, 32, a South African chemical engineer on a shopping holiday. Both are white, both traveling alone, both looking to save money.
They agree to share a twin room at River View Hotel.
The Kill Room
Room 1511. River View Hotel overlooks the Singapore River, a respectable mid-range property catering to business travelers and budget-conscious tourists. Scripps and Lowe check in together sometime after 2 a.m. on March 8. Within hours—possibly before noon—Lowe is dead.
The official story, the one Scripps would later tell in court, involves unwanted homosexual advances. He claims he was sleeping when Lowe, wearing only underwear, touched his buttocks and smiled. Scripps, traumatized by past prison assaults, "freaked out" and kicked Lowe away. Lowe, enraged, threw Scripps's camping hammer at his stomach. Scripps grabbed the hammer and beat Lowe's head until he collapsed.
The court wouldn't believe a word of it.
What actually happened in Room 1511 remains between Scripps and the dead. But the evidence suggests premeditation: Scripps carried an electroshock weapon, handcuffs, a 1.5-kilogram hammer, knives. These aren't tourist accessories. They're a killer's toolkit.
He incapacitated Lowe—likely with the stun device—then bludgeoned his head with the hammer. Once Lowe was dead or dying, Scripps dragged him into the bathroom. The bathtub became a butcher's table. Over the next hour, maybe two, Scripps dismembered Gerard Lowe's body: head separated from torso, arms removed, legs severed at thighs and knees, each cut precise, anatomically correct, utilizing the skills James Quigley taught him in that Albany Prison workshop.
The body parts went into Lowe's own suitcase and a smaller bag. Scripps stashed them in the wardrobe, then went shopping.
March 9-10: Scripps uses Lowe's credit cards, withdrawing S$8,400 cash from DBS Bank, buying a S$490 video recorder, S$82 speakers, Nike shoes, socks. He attends a Singapore Symphony Orchestra performance at Victoria Concert Hall on March 10—cultured relaxation after committing murder. On March 9, he has Lowe's name removed from the hotel registry.
March 11, 6:35 a.m.: Security guards observe Scripps leaving the hotel with a heavy suitcase. Fifteen minutes later, he returns without it. The Singapore River behind River View Hotel has accepted its grim cargo. Scripps checks out, visits Thomas Cook on Anson Road to arrange transferring S$8,500 cash and US$5,000 in traveler's checks to his San Francisco bank account under the name John Martin. He leaves a smaller bag at the office—contents never recovered.
That evening, Scripps boards a flight to Bangkok. Destination: Phuket.
DID YOU KNOW? Singapore in the 1990s was experiencing rapid tourism growth, with millions of visitors annually drawn to its status as a safe, orderly "Garden City" where violent crime was exceptionally rare. The Scripps case shattered that image. His trial became Singapore's most sensational murder case since Adrian Lim's 1981 ritual child killings, with courtroom monitors displaying autopsy photographs of decomposed body parts—making it one of the grisliest trials in the nation's history.
March 15, 1995: Thai Airways flight from Bangkok to Phuket. Among the passengers: Sheila Mae Damude, 49, administrator at Pacific Christian School in Victoria, British Columbia, and her son Darin Jon Damude, 22, a college student. Mother and son are celebrating spring break—Darin flew to Asia first, Sheila met him in Bangkok, now they're headed to Thailand's famous beach resort for rest and relaxation.
They're seated in the same row as a polite British man traveling under the name Simon Davis. John Martin Scripps, charming and conversational, befriends them during the one-hour flight. By the time the plane touches down at Phuket, the three agree to share a taxi and check into the same hotel: Nilly's Marina Inn, facing Patong Beach.
Scripps gets Room 48. The Damudes are assigned Room 43—right across the hall.
March 16, morning: The Damudes eat breakfast at the hotel. Other guests see them, alive, together, planning their day. That's the last confirmed sighting.
Around 11 a.m., Scripps approaches the receptionist with a request: he'd like to switch to Room 43. Why? Oh, the Damudes left early, he explains. Checked out. He'll cover their bill, no problem.
The receptionist, seeing no reason to doubt the friendly British tourist, makes the switch.
Inside Room 43, the scene plays out like Singapore: incapacitation, bludgeoning, dismemberment. Two bodies this time—mother and son—requiring more work, more time, more disposal sites. Scripps operates methodically. The bathroom runs red. Body parts accumulate. This isn't frenzy or rage. It's procedure.
March 19: Scripps checks out of Nilly's Marina Inn and flies back to Singapore. He's carrying the Damudes' passports, credit cards, over US$40,000 in cash and traveler's checks. Also in his possession: the electroshock weapon, hammer, knives, handcuffs, thumbcuffs, mace. And Gerard Lowe's belongings—passport, credit card, personal effects.
He's returning to complete the Thomas Cook money transfer, confident the Singapore police haven't connected the floating body parts to Simon Davis, confident he can waltz back through Changi Airport unchallenged.
He's wrong.
The Net Closes
March 13-16: While Scripps was in Phuket killing the Damudes, Singapore authorities were working the Lowe case. The body parts from Clifford Pier yielded no immediate identification—no head, no fingerprints. But hotel records showed Gerard George Lowe checked into River View Hotel on March 8 with someone named Simon James Davis. When Lowe's wife Vanessa filed a missing person report from South Africa on March 12—Gerard was supposed to return that day—Singapore police put the name Simon Davis on their wanted list.
March 19, evening: John Martin Scripps presents his Simon Davis passport at Changi Airport immigration.
Alarms trigger. Officers converge. Scripps is arrested on the spot.
In the airport police interview room, reality crashes down. Two days earlier, on March 17, Singapore hanged Flor Contemplacion, a Filipina domestic worker convicted of double murder. The execution made international headlines. Scripps knows Singapore's reputation: death penalty for murder, mandatory hanging, no appeals that matter.
He smashes a glass panel, grabs a shard, slashes his wrist. The suicide attempt fails—officers subdue him, the cut is superficial. He's taken to Alexandra Hospital for treatment, then into custody.
Police inventory his belongings: six passports total—one in his real name (John Martin Scripps), two British passports for Simon Davis, two Canadian passports for Sheila and Darin Damude, one South African passport for Gerard Lowe. All with Scripps's photograph affixed. Credit cards belonging to the Damudes and Lowe. The hammer with bloodstains matching carpet samples from the Damudes' Phuket hotel room. The full murder kit.
A key in Scripps's possession opens a Singapore bank safe deposit box containing 1.5 kilograms of heroin—unrelated to the murders, just another criminal sideline.
March 19: Thai authorities discover the Damudes' skulls in a disused tin mine in Phuket's Kathu district. March 24: A torso, arms, and legs turn up along Bahn Nai Trang Road, 9.7 kilometers away. The bodies are so decomposed that visual identification is impossible. Royal Thai Police use dental records to confirm the skulls belong to Sheila and Darin Damude. The torso and limbs are likely Sheila's. Darin's remaining body parts are never found.
March 25: Scripps is formally charged with Gerard Lowe's murder.
DID YOU KNOW? Scripps's modus operandi specifically targeted Caucasian tourists because they were vacationing far from home, making discovery less likely and giving him more time to escape. He would strike up conversations at airports or on flights, suggesting shared accommodations to save money—a pitch that resonated with budget-conscious travelers. Once he gained access to their rooms, the electroshock weapon allowed him to incapacitate victims quickly and quietly, minimizing struggle and noise that might alert hotel staff or neighboring guests.
The Trial
October 2, 1995: The High Court of Singapore. Justice T.S. Sinnathuray presiding. No jury—Singapore doesn't use them. Scripps sits in a glass and steel cage between armed guards, legs in irons, handcuffed. His mother and sister watch from the gallery. He nods to them as he's led to the dock.
The prosecution, led by Jennifer Marie with deputies Norul Huda and Toh Han Li, presents 570 exhibits and testimony from 21 witnesses over more than a month. They construct an ironclad narrative: Scripps befriended tourists, murdered them, dismembered their bodies with butcher's precision, stole their identities and money, then moved to the next victim.
Prison officer James Quigley testifies about teaching Scripps butchery at Albany Prison in 1993. Forensic pathologist Chao Tzee Cheng explains that Lowe's body was disarticulated by someone with specialized knowledge—the clean cuts through tendons, the proper separation at joints. Chao had told police early on to look for a serial killer.
Hotel staff testify. Credit card records are presented. The timeline is reconstructed minute by minute. Scripps's shopping spree with Lowe's money. The symphony performance. The casual disposal of a dismembered corpse.
Then the Thai evidence: Scripps sat with the Damudes on the Phuket flight. Checked into adjacent rooms. Switched to their room claiming they'd left. Their body parts bore the same dismemberment hallmarks as Lowe's.
Scripps's defense, led by Edmond Pereira and Joseph Theseira, offers the homosexual advance story. They claim Lowe's death was accidental, a sudden fight, heat of passion. As for the Damudes? A mysterious "British friend" in Singapore killed them and dismembered their bodies. Scripps refuses to name this friend, claiming fear of reprisals against his family.
Justice Sinnathuray isn't buying it. The calm, measured judge tears apart every defense claim. The homosexual advance story contradicts earlier police statements Scripps made. The timeline doesn't support a sudden fight. The British friend is pure fabrication—Scripps can't even describe what hotel this alleged friend stayed at on Sentosa island.
Vanessa Lowe testifies from South Africa that her husband was heterosexual, that he'd told her he would disown a gay son. The suggestion that Gerard Lowe made sexual advances is offensive and baseless.
November 10, 1995: Justice Sinnathuray delivers his verdict. The courtroom is packed. Scripps slumps forward in his chair as the words land:
"I am satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Martin intentionally killed Lowe. After that, he disarticulated Lowe's body into separate parts, and it was he who subsequently disposed of the body parts by throwing them into the river behind the hotel. On the evidence, I had no difficulty finding that it was Martin who was concerned with the deaths of Sheila and Darin and for the disposal of their body parts found in different sites in Phuket. The disarticulation of the body parts of Lowe, Sheila, and Darin have the hallmark signs of having been done by the same person."
The sentence follows centuries of legal tradition, unchanged in its solemnity: "I order that you be taken from this place to a lawful prison and thence taken to a place of execution and hanged by the neck until you are dead. May the Lord have mercy on your soul."
Scripps must be supported by officers as he's led from the cage.
The Last Mile
November 13, 1995: Scripps files notice of appeal.
January 4, 1996: He withdraws it. No explanation offered. Defense lawyer Edmond Pereira tells reporters that Scripps wrote in his own hand to prison authorities that he didn't wish to pursue the appeal. Maybe he accepted his fate. Maybe he couldn't face another trial, more testimony, more photographs of what he'd done.
March 9, 1996: President Ong Teng Cheong offers Scripps the chance to petition for clemency. Scripps declines.
April 19, 1996: Changi Prison. 408 days since Gerard Lowe's murder. John Martin Scripps, 36 years old, eats his last meal—pizza and hot chocolate, comfort food from a childhood that seems impossibly distant now.
He's led to the gallows alongside two Singaporean heroin traffickers, Richard Low Gee Boon and Lee Meng Hong. Three nooses. Three men. The trapdoors open simultaneously.
John Martin Scripps becomes the first Briton executed in Singapore since the nation's 1965 independence. He's also one of the first Westerners to receive the death penalty in the modern Singaporean state—preceded only by Dutch drug trafficker Johannes van Damme, hanged in 1994.
That same day, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Royal Thai Police close their files on the Damude murders. Case solved. Justice, such as it is, served.
The British government, normally vocal opponents of capital punishment, decline to intervene. Perhaps they figure Singapore did the world a favor.
The Aftermath
In May 1996, Straits Times reporter Tan Ooi Boon—who covered Scripps's case from the first body parts discovery through the execution—publishes a book: Body Parts: A British Serial Killer in Singapore. He writes it in three months using material prepared for the newspaper, mixing factual reporting with narrative dramatization. The book becomes required reading for true crime enthusiasts and law enforcement professionals studying serial murder.
July 1996: Singapore's Crimewatch television program airs an episode about Scripps, featuring actual autopsy photographs. It's the first time a current affairs show in Singapore receives a Parental Guidance rating.
The confirmed body count: three. Gerard Lowe, Sheila Damude, Darin Damude. But investigators suspect more. The dismembered male homosexual in San Francisco. Timothy MacDowall in Belize. Body parts that couldn't be conclusively matched. Drug-related killings in Mexico City.
Scotland Yard suspected Scripps in the disappearances of financial adviser Timothy MacDowall and accountant William Shackel, both from south London. American Express records show someone used a Simon James Davis passport in San Francisco in early March 1995, exchanging Swiss francs and Dutch guilders. A bank account was opened in San Diego on March 3 under a British name—the same person reported missing in Mexico City four days later.
How many tourists checked into hotels with the friendly British drifter and never checked out? How many passports cycled through his collection before he was caught? The full scope of Scripps's crimes died with him.
What remains are questions without answers. What turns a petty thief and drug smuggler into a serial killer? Was there a first victim we don't know about, some line crossed that made subsequent murders easier? Did prison—meant to rehabilitate—instead provide him with butchery skills that enabled more efficient killing?
The "Tourist From Hell" nickname, coined by British tabloids, stuck. It's reductive, sensational, but captures something true: the perversion of tourism's promise. Travel is supposed to open horizons, create connections, foster understanding between strangers. Scripps weaponized that openness. He turned the trust travelers extend to fellow wanderers into a hunting strategy.
Gerard Lowe wanted electrical goods for his home in Johannesburg. Sheila and Darin Damude wanted a spring break beach holiday. They got butchered in hotel bathrooms by a man who smiled at them, shared their spaces, then killed them with industrial efficiency.
Singapore's Garden City image took a hit. The trial's grisliness, the photographs of body parts, the revelation that a Western serial killer operated undetected for weeks—all of it contradicted the nation's carefully cultivated reputation for safety and order.
But the system worked, eventually. Eleven days from Lowe's murder to Scripps's arrest. Swift investigation, overwhelming evidence, a trial that international observers called fair despite its grim subject matter. Singapore hanged John Martin Scripps and no one protested too loudly.
The real horror isn't the execution. It's the banality of how Scripps operated. Airports. Hotel lobbies. Shared accommodations. Conversations between strangers about saving money. Normal interactions that turn lethal when one party views other humans as resources to be harvested—passports, cash, credit cards extracted from bodies the way Scripps extracted meat from bone.
In the end, he was just a drifter who couldn't stop drifting, a man who shed identities like changing clothes, who moved through the world leaving corpses in his wake until the movement stopped.
The last person to see John Martin Scripps alive was the hangman at Changi Prison. What Scripps said, if anything, before the trapdoor opened remains unknown. Maybe there were no last words. Maybe there was nothing left to say. The Tourist From Hell had reached his final destination.
TIMESCALE OF EVENTS:
December 9, 1959: John Martin Scripps born in Letchworth, Hertfordshire, England; father Leonard drives lorries, mother Jean works Fleet Street pubs
1968: Leonard Scripps commits suicide; John (9) experiences traumatic break; dyslexia emerges or worsens
1974: John (15) drops out of school, hits the road traveling wherever odd jobs and antique sales take him
May 1974: First crime at age 15: burglary; receives conditional discharge, £10 fine from Highgate Juvenile Court
August 1976: Three more thefts committed
1978: Indecent assault; receives £40 fine
1980: Scripps (21) meets María Pilar Arellanos in Cancún, Mexico; they marry, embrace vagabond van life
1982: After two years of traveling, Scripps arrested for theft, burglary, resisting arrest; sentenced to three years in British prison; María waits initially
June 1985: Scripps escapes during home leave months before completing sentence; commits burglary; another three years added to sentence
Mid-1980s: María divorces Scripps, marries Ken Cold (Royal Protection Squad officer); Scripps, enraged at betrayal, steals Cold's clothing during next home leave; María eventually divorces Cold and returns to Cancún
Late 1980s-early 1990s: Upon release, Scripps legally changes name to John Martin; sentenced to six-year term for drug smuggling
1993: While serving drug-trafficking sentence at Albany Prison (Isle of Wight), Scripps completes six-week butchery course taught by prison officer James Quigley; learns to debone beef quarters, portion pork carcasses, expertly separate chicken joints
October 1994: Scripps serving sentence at The Mount prison in Hertfordshire; prison officials describe him as "quiet and reserved" with no violence in record, "no longer considered a risk"; granted weekend home leave
October 1994: Scripps doesn't return from leave; uses birth certificate of fellow inmate Simon James Davis to apply for passport; works successfully
Late 1994: Scripps in Mexico City, then San Francisco, building network of stolen names and documents; opens bank accounts; reports Simon Davis passport "lost" to British Embassy in Mexico, receives replacement
Late 1994/Early 1995: British tourist Timothy MacDowall (28) disappears in Mexico City; Scripps wanted for questioning; dismembered male homosexual body found in San Francisco rubbish bin; police link "Simon Davis" to killing but can't locate him; MacDowall's scuba diving trip with Scripps in Belize is last time anyone sees him alive
March 3, 1995: Bank account opened in San Diego under British name (person reported missing in Mexico City four days later)
Wednesday, March 8, 1995, 2:00 AM: John Martin Scripps, traveling as Simon James Davis, arrives at Singapore's Changi Airport on flight from San Francisco; airport hotel desk crowded; Scripps strikes up conversation with Gerard George Lowe (32), South African chemical engineer on shopping holiday; both agree to share twin room at River View Hotel
March 8, 1995, morning (before noon): In Room 1511, Scripps incapacitates Lowe (likely with electroshock weapon), bludgeons his head with 1.5-kilogram hammer; drags him to bathroom, dismembers body over 1-2 hours using butchery skills; head separated from torso, arms removed, legs severed at thighs and knees, each cut precise and anatomically correct; body parts placed in Lowe's suitcase and smaller bag, stashed in wardrobe
March 9-10, 1995: Scripps uses Lowe's credit cards, withdraws S$8,400 cash from DBS Bank, buys S$490 video recorder, S$82 speakers, Nike shoes, socks; attends Singapore Symphony Orchestra performance at Victoria Concert Hall on March 10
March 9, 1995: Scripps has Lowe's name removed from hotel registry
Saturday, March 11, 1995, 6:35 AM: Security guards observe Scripps leaving hotel with heavy suitcase; 15 minutes later returns without it (Singapore River behind River View Hotel has accepted body parts)
March 11, 1995: Scripps checks out, visits Thomas Cook on Anson Road to arrange transferring S$8,500 cash and US$5,000 in traveler's checks to San Francisco bank account under name John Martin; leaves smaller bag at office (contents never recovered); that evening, boards flight to Bangkok; destination: Phuket
Sunday, March 12, 1995: Vanessa Lowe files missing person report from South Africa (Gerard supposed to return that day); Singapore police put Simon Davis on wanted list
Monday, March 13, 1995: Black plastic bag floats against pier pilings off Singapore's Clifford Pier; boatman hooks it, finds human leg severed cleanly at knee and thigh; within hours, another bag surfaces containing thighs; third bag contains headless torso, expertly disarticulated
March 13-16, 1995: Singapore authorities work Lowe case; forensic pathologist Chao Tzee Cheng examines joints, notes precision of cuts; tells police to look for serial killer; hotel records show Lowe checked into River View Hotel March 8 with someone named Simon James Davis
Wednesday, March 15, 1995: Thai Airways flight from Bangkok to Phuket; passengers include Sheila Mae Damude (49, administrator at Pacific Christian School in Victoria, British Columbia) and son Darin Jon Damude (22, college student) celebrating spring break; seated in same row as John Martin Scripps traveling as Simon Davis; by landing, three agree to share taxi and check into Nilly's Marina Inn, facing Patong Beach; Scripps gets Room 48, Damudes assigned Room 43 (right across hall)
Thursday, March 16, 1995, morning: Damudes eat breakfast at hotel; other guests see them alive together planning their day (last confirmed sighting)
March 16, 1995, approximately 11:00 AM: Scripps approaches receptionist requesting to switch to Room 43; explains Damudes left early, checked out, he'll cover their bill; receptionist makes switch
March 16, 1995, late morning/afternoon: Inside Room 43, Scripps incapacitates, bludgeons, dismembers mother and son; bathroom runs red; operates methodically
Friday, March 17, 1995: Singapore hangs Flor Contemplacion, Filipina domestic worker convicted of double murder; execution makes international headlines
Sunday, March 19, 1995, morning: Scripps checks out of Nilly's Marina Inn, flies back to Singapore carrying Damudes' passports, credit cards, over US$40,000 in cash/traveler's checks; also electroshock weapon, hammer, knives, handcuffs, thumbcuffs, mace; Gerard Lowe's belongings
March 19, 1995, evening: Scripps presents Simon Davis passport at Changi Airport immigration; alarms trigger, officers converge, arrested on spot
March 19, 1995, evening: Airport police interview room: Scripps smashes glass panel, grabs shard, slashes wrist in suicide attempt; fails, cut superficial; taken to Alexandra Hospital for treatment, then into custody
March 19, 1995: Police inventory belongings: six passports total (one real name, two British for Simon Davis, two Canadian for Damudes, one South African for Lowe—all with Scripps's photo affixed); credit cards belonging to victims; hammer with bloodstains matching Damudes' hotel room carpet; full murder kit; key opens Singapore bank safe deposit box containing 1.5 kilograms of heroin
March 19, 1995: Thai authorities discover Damudes' skulls in disused tin mine in Phuket's Kathu district
Friday, March 24, 1995: Torso, arms, legs found along Bahn Nai Trang Road, 9.7 kilometers away; bodies so decomposed visual identification impossible; Royal Thai Police use dental records to confirm skulls belong to Sheila and Darin Damude; torso/limbs likely Sheila's; Darin's remaining body parts never found
Saturday, March 25, 1995: Scripps formally charged with Gerard Lowe's murder
Monday, October 2, 1995: High Court of Singapore trial begins; Justice T.S. Sinnathuray presiding (no jury); Scripps in glass/steel cage between armed guards, legs in irons, handcuffed; mother and sister watch from gallery
October-November 1995: Prosecution (led by Jennifer Marie) presents 570 exhibits, testimony from 21 witnesses over more than a month; prison officer James Quigley testifies about teaching Scripps butchery; forensic pathologist Chao Tzee Cheng explains disarticulation by someone with specialized knowledge
October-November 1995: Defense (Edmond Pereira, Joseph Theseira) offers homosexual advance story for Lowe's death; claims mysterious "British friend" in Singapore killed Damudes; Scripps refuses to name friend, claims fear of reprisals; Vanessa Lowe testifies from South Africa that husband was heterosexual
Friday, November 10, 1995: Justice Sinnathuray delivers verdict finding Scripps guilty; sentence: death by hanging; Scripps must be supported by officers as led from cage
Monday, November 13, 1995: Scripps files notice of appeal
Thursday, January 4, 1996: Scripps withdraws appeal in his own handwriting; no explanation offered
Saturday, March 9, 1996: President Ong Teng Cheong offers Scripps chance to petition for clemency; Scripps declines
Friday, April 19, 1996, 408 days after Lowe's murder: Changi Prison: John Martin Scripps (36) eats last meal (pizza and hot chocolate); led to gallows alongside two Singaporean heroin traffickers; three nooses, trapdoors open simultaneously; becomes first Briton executed in Singapore since 1965 independence
April 19, 1996: Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Royal Thai Police close files on Damude murders; British government declines to intervene
May 1996: Straits Times reporter Tan Ooi Boon publishes book Body Parts: A British Serial Killer in Singapore in three months; becomes required reading for true crime enthusiasts and law enforcement
July 1996: Singapore's Crimewatch television program airs episode about Scripps featuring actual autopsy photographs; first time current affairs show receives Parental Guidance rating
Present: Confirmed body count: three (Gerard Lowe, Sheila Damude, Darin Damude); investigators suspect more including dismembered male in San Francisco, Timothy MacDowall in Belize; full scope of Scripps's crimes died with him
AUTHOR'S NOTE
This account draws from court documents, trial testimony, police records, forensic reports, and contemporaneous news coverage of the John Martin Scripps case. The three confirmed murders—Gerard Lowe, Sheila Damude, and Darin Damude—are documented through Singapore High Court proceedings and Royal Thai Police investigations. Timeline details, including dates, locations, and specific evidence, come from verified sources including Tan Ooi Boon's book Body Parts: A British Serial Killer in Singapore (1996) and official trial transcripts. While dialogue and some atmospheric details have been reconstructed for narrative purposes, all significant facts—murder methods, investigation procedures, trial testimony, and sentencing—are historically accurate and court-verified.
SOURCES
• Wikipedia. "John Martin Scripps." Accessed November 2025.
• Serial Killer Calendar. "Serial killer John Martin SCRIPPS - The Tourist From Hell." Accessed November 2025.
• Capital Punishment UK. "John Martin Scripps – 'The Tourist From Hell'." Accessed November 2025.
• National Library Board Singapore, Infopedia. "John Martin Scripps: Body-parts murder." Nureza Ahmad, 2005.
• BiblioAsia, National Library Board Singapore. "Murder Most Malevolent." Volume 13, Issue 2, July-September 2017.
• UPI Archives. "Briton gets death in Singapore." November 9, 1995.
• UPI Archives. "Briton's murder trial begins in Singapore." October 2, 1995.
• UPI Archives. "Slain man's wife identifies body parts." April 1, 1995.
• South China Morning Post. "Death took the next seat." April 1, 1995.
• The Last Supper Podcast. "John Martin Scripps The Tourist from Hell and his Horrific Crimes in Asia." January 28, 2025.
Image Credit:
https://www.grunge.com/491706/this-is-how-traveling-killer-john-martin-scripps-was-finally-caught/
MACABRE TRUE CRIMES & MYSTERIES: 20 SOLVED AND UNSOLVED TALES FROM AROUND THE WORLD - Volume #4 by Guy Hadleigh
Blog written by Guy Hadleigh, author of Crimes That Time Forgot, the Macabre True Crimes & Mysteries Series, the Murder and Mayhem Series, the British Killers Series, the Infamous True Crimes and Trials Series - and many more!
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