MENTION the name Rabidin Satir (pix) in Bentong and chances are it will send a chill down the spine of residents there.
With the jungle as his home and living off the land, Rabidin was perhaps the most savage criminal the country had ever seen, striking terror in the town between 2009 and 2012.
He carried out lone attacks with a tactical “Rambo” knife and a homemade rifle. This led to him being referred to as “Rambo Bentong”.
Vicious, nasty and heartless, he was a robber, rapist and killer who preyed mainly on underage girls.
During his three-year terror spree, he was responsible for at least six rape cases involving two children aged eight and nine, three teenagers aged 16 to 17 and a woman in her 20s.
Although it was said he was behind four murders, only two were proven against him.
His victims were from villages surrounding the jungles where he roamed and hid each time he pulled off his crimes.
Villagers, fearful of Rabidin’s assaults, formed neighbourhood groups and took turns keeping watch to safeguard their homes.
Despite a massive police hunt, he remained holed up in the jungles and managed to evade arrest.
On March 7, 2009, the Sabahan, then aged 40, broke into a house at Kampung Ketari Bentong before midnight and crept into a room where 17-year-old Annie Kok Yin Cheng was asleep.
He held her at knife-point and raped her twice before slitting her throat and stabbing her repeatedly.
The following morning, Kok’s family members found her body covered in a blanket in the room.
Rabidin went on to commit rape, sodomy and murder on other victims until his last assault on Nov 3, 2012, when he broke into a Forestry Department quarters in the wee hours.
He held up a staff of the department, Khairul Hazri Jamaludin, 31, and his wife, who were both asleep in the living room.
Armed with his homemade rifle, Rabidin battered Khairul with it until he fell into a semi-conscious state.
He ransacked the couple’s house and when he was done, he went after Khairul’s wife.
Despite telling him she was pregnant, he raped her in front of her husband.
When he was done, he resumed searching the house for valuables before raping the woman a second time before escaping.
Khairul, who was rushed to a hospital, died from his injuries soon after.
Police intensified their search for Rabidin, and on Nov 14, 2012, he was caught in a jungle near Taman Sahbandar in Bentong.
Over the following weeks, he was charged for his crimes. The cases were heard over the next three years and by the end of 2015, Rabidin had been dealt 133 years’ imprisonment, 50 strokes of the rotan and sent to the gallows.
In 2018, he exhausted his final appeal against the death sentence when it was upheld by the Federal Court.
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