In 1997, a young woman named Anu Singh murdered her boyfriend Joe. Her friends and acquaintances knew she was planning the murder and helped her procure the drugs she used to subdue and poison her victim. The murder took several attempts. Singh would drug Joe with Rohypnol and try to inject him with a lethal dose of heroin. It took days for him to die as she sat and watched him and brought friends to observe Joe’s agony. No motive was ever uncovered for the murder aside from Anu Singh’s desire to feel important and flatter her narcissism by controlling another human being in the most inescapable way.
Singh and her friends were law school students from well-to-do families. They were fanatical believers in freedom and choice, which is why none of them did anything to thwart Singh’s choice to murder her boyfriend.
Singh was arrested, tried, and served 4 years in jail for the murder. It was a strange jail where male and female inmates were allowed to socialize, so Singh – known to be very promiscuous – found several boyfriends during the pre-trial stage. When she was released, she went to continue her complex personal life at her parents’ lavish house.
Her female accomplice in the murder who procured the lethal drugs and stuck around to observe Joe’s agony didn’t serve a day in jail.
Helen Garner writes about this terrible story in a way that turns a true crime story into something much bigger. She sees similarities between Singh’s sexual, emotional and verbal incontinence and her drug-addled carelessness and Garner’s own lifestyle 20 years earlier. The horror unleashed by Singh and the utter indifference of the legal system and the people around her grips you even 30 years later. Garner doesn’t want to cause additional pain to Joe’s parents with whom she developed a profound relationship while working on the book but the young man’s dysfunction that leads him into a relationship with the abusive, immoral Singh is clear to anybody willing to notice it.
I’ll be reading more by Helen Garner in the new year for sure because this is a talented writer with a strong point of view and a brilliant writing style.
Clarissa's Blog 
Interesting.
She has two books available in my library system and I just reserved them both.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m very eager to read her controversial book about a groping incident.
LikeLike
I’m always looking for good true crime writers. Quality is really variable with this stuff. Even my fairly low standards often aren’t met.
LikeLike
4 years?
LikeLike
4 years in jail. For a premeditated, cold-blooded torture and murder. Plus a conspiracy and drug possession.
She claimed she was “mentally ill” with bulimia and the judge bought it.
LikeLike
“cold-blooded torture and murder”
The whole case (looking up some other sources) seems like the most… nihilistic thing I’ve ever read.
And Singh is a very nasty piece of work. I don’t buy the mental illness argument for a second (and I don’t buy the idea that she regrets what she did… she regrets that it didn’t work out well for her).
I’m just amazed she didn’t concoct a story about him being “abusive” to her (which would have worked even better for her) but as a narcissist she couldn’t put herself in a subordinate position even in fantasy….
LikeLike
She tried to float the idea of abuse but it was too ludicrous and nobody bought it except for one “expert.” In reality, she was abusive, mocking and humiliating him in front of others.
LikeLike
Do they usually give such light sentences for premeditated murder, with tons of witnesses and evidence, in Australia? From a US perspective that sounds bonkers.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The legal aspect is so weird. It sounds very Western European where there’s literally nothing you can do to avoid getting released in a few years. In Spain, they like to give sentences of several hundred years that immediately get commuted to just a few years.
The declared logic in Singh’s case was that the victim was dead anyway, and what’s the point of making anybody else suffer? The idea of punishment seems to be very alien to people.
LikeLike
So… the part where she might decide to kill someone else just not a factor? I feel like I just turned a corner and stumbled into an alternate reality.
LikeLike
” the victim was dead anyway, and what’s the point of making anybody else suffer?”
Well… to be fair, she had just lost her boyfriend…. so why make the poor dear suffer more?
LikeLiked by 1 person
This is why the death penalty is such a good idea. Anu Singh and her female accomplice should receive equal rights.
LikeLiked by 1 person