Joe Cinque and Anu Singh met in
Newcastle, New South Wales in 1995. The following year, the couple were living together in
Canberra while she was a law student at the
Australian National University. During the 1998 trial, one of Singh's friends testified that she had been
highly obsessed with her
self-image, particularly her body, since 1991 and had briefly taken
ipecac after Cinque mentioned it, something she was later angry with him for. Singh was also reportedly obsessed with fad diets and would spend hours working out at the gym—she had told friends "she'd rather be dead than fat". In May 1997, Singh told a friend that she wanted to kill several people, including Cinque, her ex-boyfriend Simon Walsh and her doctors.
Murder Singh's close friend Madhavi Rao invited acquaintances to two dinner parties in October 1997 and told them that a crime would be committed. Witness Sanjeeva Tennekoon reported that the first dinner party on 24 October was normal and that Singh and Cinque appeared loving. However, another witness told the court that Rao had told her afterwards that Singh had tried to kill Cinque that evening but did not deliver a sufficient dose, and that the witness had threatened to go to the police. The day after the first dinner party, Singh and Rao went to a friend, Len Mancini, and told him they had given Cinque drugs the previous evening. Cinque died on 26 October 1997, the morning after the second dinner party.
Toxicology reports showed high levels of
heroin and
rohypnol in his body. Witness Ross Manley claimed that Singh bought more heroin from Manley's friend on the morning of 26 October. Singh called an ambulance for Cinque at 12:10pm on 26 October, and the ambulance officers found that he had suffered from
cardiac arrest. Singh told police at the scene that she had administered drugs to Cinque. Police reported that when they arrived at the scene, Singh was hysterical and struggled with police and ambulance officers when they took her away from Cinque's body.
Trial Singh first appeared in court on 28 October 1997, charged with murder. She had told police that she had injected Cinque with heroin so that he would not interfere with a suicide attempt. Rao was charged with
conspiracy to commit murder and released on bail on 5 November. The prosecutor noted that both Singh and Rao had been indiscreet about their actions. The prosecution pinpointed Singh as someone who embodied strong
narcissistic traits. Singh and Rao were tried jointly in October and November 1998, but this trial was aborted on 11 November, with Justice Ken Crispin saying that one of the pieces of evidence was problematic as it was unclear as to which of Singh or Rao it was admissible against. For the second trial, Singh elected to stand trial by judge alone, forgoing a
jury. Justice Crispin ruled that Singh and Rao should be tried separately in the interest of fairness. In her 1999 trial, Singh's defence presented evidence that she was mentally ill and had
diminished responsibility, proposing an
insanity defense. The court was told that Singh believed she was dying from a muscle wasting disease, complained of "not being able to feel her head on her body" and was
bulimic. On 23 April Justice Crispin found Singh guilty of
manslaughter and the following day sentenced her to ten years' imprisonment with a minimum four-year
non-parole period. Cinque's mother was deeply unhappy with the short sentence. In Rao's second trial, she was charged with murder, manslaughter, attempted murder, and administering a stupefying drug and was acquitted of all charges. Singh was released on parole in October 2001 after four years imprisonment, including time she had served on remand since 1997. She was returned to jail in April 2004 after breaching her parole conditions by smoking
marijuana and re-released on 5 August 2004 after challenging her re-imprisonment on a technicality.
After release Singh completed a master's degree in
criminology at
Sydney University, having attended classes on day release from
Emu Plains Correctional Centre. In June 2005, concern was expressed in the
New South Wales Parliament about Singh's employment with the
Cabramatta Community Centre. The public was reassured that Singh was not employed to distribute clean injecting equipment and that her employment was on a time-limited project. In 2010, Singh began research at the
University of Sydney Faculty of Law, and in 2012 was awarded a
doctorate for her thesis ''Offending Women: Toward a Greater Understanding of Women's Pathways Into and Out of Crime in Australia''. It outlines "five major pathways that led [female prisoners] to crime: unstable upbringings, sexual and physical abuse, drug use, economic marginality and, mental illness". An edited version was released as a self-published
e-book in 2016. == In literature and other adaptations ==