MS Unsolved is a series that hopes to raise awareness of cold cases in Singapore and generate new leads. If you have any information on the cases, reach out to MS News or the police.
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In 1994, a Singaporean man by the name of Thomas Yeo mysteriously arrived on Pulau Sibu Besar off the coast of Johor for a vacation, only to suddenly vanish.
His family and Malaysian authorities reportedly flipped the island on its head for a month to find him.
Some say he drowned in a sudden flood that arrived while he meditated inside a cave. Others say he secretly scurried away on a ferry to a different island.
Whatever the case, one thing remains clear: for the past 31 years, Thomas Yeo left all his belongings in his room, walked into the wild, and was never heard from again.
Source: meWATCH
On 3 March 1994, Mr Yeo arrived on Pulau Sibu to enjoy a month-long vacation.
Although it was an uncharacteristically long holiday, his family saw no signs of trouble and let him go.
Stranger yet, the purpose of his trip was not to relax, but to meditate.
With the island simply being off the eastern coast of Johor Bahru, Mr Yeo could have easily made it to the island in one day.
However, the 36-year-old man spent nearly half a week on his journey as he left home on 28 Feb.
Source: NewspaperSG
No one knows why it took him that long to arrive on Pulau Sibu, nor what he was doing before his arrival.
Yet, when he arrived by ferry, he simply checked into one of the two resorts on the island like any other vacationer.
The man quickly became a familiar face to locals, who remarked that he seemed like a loner but was generous and helpful.
According to a meWATCH documentary on the case, Mr Yeo helped the locals unload goods from boats at the pier.
Furthermore, he even purchased a meal for an Italian traveler who had run out of money.
During his stay on the island, Mr Yeo would often take walks and only return to his room once it was late.
On 15 March, twelve days after his arrival on Pulau Sibu, the Singaporean took a trek into the forest as usual.
Except this time, he would never return.
It took four days before locals noticed Mr Yeo’s disappearance.
On 19 March, staff at the resort checked his room, only to find all his belongings, including his wallet and passport, still there.
When they realised that Mr Yeo was nowhere to be found, the resort reported him missing to the police.
On 24 March, the Straits Times (ST) reported that three of Thomas Yeo’s brothers and two of his uncles joined a team of 20 Malaysian officers and locals to search for the missing man.
A fourth brother stayed in Singapore to find even more people to help with the search.
However, despite the island being only about 7km long and 1km wide — just slightly smaller than Sentosa — the search party failed to locate the man after four days, when officers had expected to find him within just two days.
The search only intensified from there.
On 25 March, officers trained in jungle warfare, along with tracker dogs, joined the search.
Source: NewspaperSG
Despite the increase in quantity and skill of the search team, no trace of Mr Yeo ever surfaced.
Malaysian authorities were baffled, finding no clues to the missing man’s whereabouts after combing the island more than ten times, and even extending the search to the surrounding water.
“We have no leads, there is no trace of him,” said the then deputy superintendent of the Mersing police district.
“None of us has ever come across anything like this before. And frankly, we have done everything humanly possible.”
Officers said if Mr Yeo had perished, they would have found him by now due to the smell of his decomposing body alone.
Source: NewspaperSG
After 30 days, his family, including Mr Yeo’s mother, who joined the search later, returned home without ever discovering what had happened to him.
Many theories have attempted to explain the vanishing, but none have been fully able to unravel the mystery.
Theories that Mr Yeo had somehow died on the island, due to a fall during hiking or some such, fell flat.
The rescue dogs did not detect any decomposing smell.
Some thought he could have drowned; however, the currents would have washed him ashore.
Another theory is that, somehow, Mr Yeo had snuck off the island.
Source: Southeast Asia Pilot. Image for illustration purposes only.
While some islanders said they saw the man board a ferry, such claims were difficult to prove, as checks on departing visitors were few and far between.
Furthermore, a search of the nearby islands also yielded no results.
The missing man’s mother said that he may have joined a cult in Thailand, but the search also ended fruitlessly.
Furthermore, many are skeptical that Mr Yeo could have gone far without his travel documents and his belongings.
At their wits’ end, the family consulted Malaysian shamans called bomohs, who concluded that Mr Yeo was taken by the mountain spirits.
Although his family thought he did not seem to be troubled as he went on vacation, hindsight has given Thomas Yeo’s disappearance a more sinister turn.
Namely, there were certain signs that he may have been planning his disappearance.
Before taking up his job teaching children with special needs, which he had suddenly quit before the trip, the man had two failed business ventures.
His girlfriend had also broken up with him, causing him to fall into depression.
Just days before Mr Yeo said he would go on his month-long vacation, he had suddenly apologised to his brother for not taking his advice over the failed business.
There had also been other conversations with other family members that, in retrospect, felt like they were part of him saying goodbye.
Perhaps the most mysterious part of his disappearance was the very reason he had gone to Pulau Sibu in the first place — meditation.
Source: Toni Reed on Unsplash. Image for illustration purposes only.
The Singaporean had been a part of a meditation class and would spend up to five hours a day meditating.
Mr Yeo kept this part of his life private, something his family would later learn was encouraged by his teacher, whom they had suspicions about.
Madam Lee See Moi, Mr Yeo’s mum, said the teacher once called her asking for her son.
However, when the family came knocking on his door to ask about Mr Yeo’s disappearance, the teacher denied ever knowing him.
Nothing arose out of those suspicions.
Now, 31 years later, Thomas Yeo remains a missing person.
No one feels as guilty over his disappearance as his mum.
“She cries a lot at home,” one of Mr Yeo’s brothers said.
“She feels guilty that she let him go to the island.”
According to the meWATCH documentary that aired in 2012, his mother held on to hope that her son was still alive even after 18 years.
Each Chinese New Year, the family would reportedly receive an anonymous call where the caller would never speak a single word.
The only thing they ever knew about those calls was that they came from overseas.
Also read: MS Unsolved: Were the 2 McDonald’s boys who ‘disappeared’ in S’pore kidnapped by a trusted adult?
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Featured image adapted from meWATCH and NewspaperSG.