Two days after their arrest, Lim, Tan and Hoe were charged in the
Subordinate Court for the murders of the two children. The trio were subjected to further interrogations by the police, and to medical examinations by prison doctors. On 16–17 September, their case was brought to the court for a
committal procedure. To prove that there was a case against the accused, Deputy Public Prosecutor
Glenn Knight called on 58 witnesses and arrayed 184 pieces of evidence before the magistrate. While Tan and Hoe denied the charges of murder, Lim pleaded guilty and claimed sole responsibility for the acts. The magistrate decided that the case against the accused was sufficiently strong to be heard at the High Court. Lim, Tan, and Hoe remained in custody while investigations continued.
Judiciary, prosecution, and defence The High Court was convened in the Supreme Court Building on 25 March 1983. Presiding over the case were two judges: Justice
Thirugnana Sampanthar Sinnathuray, who would deliver judgment on serial murderer
John Martin Scripps 12 years later, and Justice Frederick Arthur Chua, who was at the time the longest serving judge in Singapore. Knight continued to build his case on the evidence gathered by detective work. Photographs of the crime scenes, together with witness testimonies, would help the court to visualise the events that led to the crimes. Other evidence — the blood samples, religious objects, drugs, and the notes with Ng and Ghazali's names — conclusively proved the defendants' involvement. Knight had no eyewitnesses to the murders; his evidence was circumstantial, but he told the court in his opening statement, "What matters is that [the accused] did intentionally suffocate and drown these two innocent children, causing their deaths in circumstances which amount to murder. And this we will prove beyond all reasonable doubt." Tan, with Lim's and the police's permission, used $10,000 of the $159,340 (US$4,730 of US$75,370) seized from the trio's flat to engage
J. B. Jeyaretnam for her defence. Hoe had to accept the court's offer of counsel, receiving Nathan Isaac as her defender. Since his arrest, Lim had refused legal representation. He
defended himself at the Subordinate Court hearings, but could not continue to do so when the case was moved to the High Court; Singapore law requires that for capital crimes the accused must be defended by a legal professional. Thus Howard Cashin was appointed as Lim's lawyer, although his job was complicated by his client's refusal to cooperate. The three lawyers decided not to dispute that their clients had killed the children. Acting on a defence of
diminished responsibility, they attempted to show that their clients were not sound of mind and could not be held responsible for the killings. Had this defence been successful, all three defendants would have escaped the
death penalty but be sentenced to either
life imprisonment, or up to 10 years in jail for a reduced charge of
culpable homicide not amounting to murder (or
manslaughter) instead of murder.
Proceedings After Knight had presented the prosecution evidence the court heard testimonies on the personalities and character flaws of the accused, from their relatives and acquaintances. Details of their lives were revealed by one of Lim's "holy wives". Private medical practitioners Dr. Yeo Peng Ngee and Dr. Ang Yiau Hua admitted that they were Lim's sources for drugs, and had provided the trio sleeping pills and sedatives without question on each consultation. The police and forensics teams gave their accounts of their investigations; Inspector Suppiah, the investigating officer-in-charge, read out the statements the defendants had made during their remand. In these statements Lim stated that he had killed for revenge, and that he had sodomised Ng. The accused had also confirmed in their statements that each was an active participant in the murders. There were many contradictions among these statements and the confessions made in court by the accused, but Judge Sinnathuray declared that despite the conflicting evidence, "the essential facts of this case are not in dispute". Lim's involvement in the crimes was further evidenced by Fung Joon Yong, a witness who vouched that just after midnight on 7 February 1981, at the ground floor of Block 12, he saw Lim and a woman walk past him carrying a dark-skinned boy. On 13 April, Lim took the stand. He maintained that he was the sole perpetrator of the crimes. He denied that he raped Lucy Lau or Ng, claiming that he made the earlier statements only to satisfy his interrogators. Lim was selective in answering the questions the court threw at him; he verbosely answered those that agreed with his stance, and refused to comment on the others. When challenged on the veracity of his latest confession, he claimed that he was bound by religious and moral duty to tell the truth. Knight, however, countered that Lim was inherently a dishonest man who had no respect for oaths. Lim had lied to his wife, his clients, the police, and psychiatrists. Knight claimed Lim's stance in court was an open admission that he willingly lied in his earlier statements. Tan and Hoe were more cooperative, answering the questions posed by the court. They denied Lim's story, and vouched for the veracity of the statements they had given to the police. They told how they had lived in constant fear and awe of Lim; believing he had supernatural powers, they followed his every order and had no free will of their own. Under Knight's questioning, however, Tan admitted that Lim had been defrauding his customers, and that she had knowingly helped him to do so. Knight then got Hoe to agree that she was conscious of her actions at the time of the murders.
Battle of the government and private psychiatrists In 2021, Justice
Choo Han Teck, who was Cashin's associate during the case, said that in the 1980s, "People on the Government side (the Woodbridge) saw it as an almost defensive mechanism to disagree everything with the private psychiatrists". He also pointed out that it was difficult to even find private psychiatrists to testify in court. A senior psychiatrist in private practice Wong Yip Chong was the only one to do so and R. Nagulendran came along later. R. Nagulendran, a consultant psychiatrist, testified that Tan was mentally impaired by
reactive psychotic depression. Her depression worsened with the horrific physical, mental and sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of Lim over the years, including him forcing her to become a prostitute and a stripper so that he could use her earnings. The use of drugs also caused her to hallucinate and be susceptible to Lim's lies. The prosecution's expert witness Chee Kuan Tsee—a psychiatrist at Woodbridge Hospital—believed that Tan was happy with the material lifestyle that Lim gave her and did not have the impression that Tan had an unhappy married life. Later during cross-examination by J.B. Jeyaretnam, he admitted that he disregarded Tan's abuse though he continued to insist that Tan was mentally sound during the killings. He felt if she was mentally unsound, she would have becoming increasingly neglectful of her personal appearance but instead had skincare and slimming treatments. Chee did not link this with how Lim's perverse demands for Tan to look youthful, even forcing her into depraved acts such as copulating with her own younger brother. Chee also alleged that Tan was happy with Lim providing her with "nice clothes, cosmetics, and whatever she needed", although it was already established that Lim had forced Hoe into prostitution and controlled all earnings that Tan was bringing in. Both Nagulendran and Chee agreed that Hoe suffered from schizophrenia before she met Lim. After abuse from Tan, which included frequent electric shocks, Hoe's condition worsened to the point that she beat her mother and poured urine on her mother. Conversely, since the Woodbridge doctors thought she appeared well during her follow-up checks (16 July 1980 – 31 January 1981), Chee evaluated she was well at the time of the killings. Chee claimed that were Hoe as severely impaired by her condition as Nagulendran described, she would have been unable to work. But she had continued her factory work. Chee also believed that a mentally ill person is more likely to resist being controlled than a healthy person can, and concluded that he did not think that Hoe was controlled by Lim. Chee did not appear to have made any links between his diagnosis and Hoe's history of abuse by Tan, including being regularly tortured and witnessing Tan kill her husband. Wong believed that Lim was mentally ill at the time of the crimes. He said that Lim's voracious sexual appetite and deluded belief in Kali were characteristics of a
mild manic depression. He also said that only an unsound mind would dump the bodies close to his home when his plan was to distract the police. Chee Kuan Tsee said that Lim was "purposeful in his pursuits, patient in his planning and persuasive in his performance for personal power and pleasure". In Chee's opinion, Lim had indulged in sex because through his role as a medium he obtained a supply of women who were willing to go to bed with him. Furthermore, his belief in Kali was religious in nature, not delusional. Lim's use of religion for personal benefit indicated full self-control. Lastly, Lim had consulted doctors and freely taken sedatives to alleviate his insomnia, a condition which, according to Chee, sufferers from manic depression fail to recognise.
Closing statements Cashin declared that Lim was a normal man until his initiation into the occult, and that he was clearly divorced from reality when he entered the "unreasonable world of atrociousness", acting on his delusions to kill children in Kali's name. Jeyaretnam pointed out that Tan had depression for a long time. On top of that, she was living in fear of Lim who had abused not just her but her family members too. These made it hard for her to feel able to say no to Lim. Isaac concluded, "[Hoe's] schizophrenic mind accepted that if the children were killed, they would go to heaven and not grow up evil like her mother and others." Isaac criticised Dr Chee for failing to accept Hoe's symptoms as schizophrenia. The prosecution started its closing speech by drawing attention to the "cool and calculating" manner in which the children were killed. Knight also argued that the accused could not have shared the same delusion, and only brought it up during the trial. The "cunning and deliberation" displayed in the acts could not have been done by a deluded person. Urging the judges to consider the ramifications of their verdict, Knight said: "My Lords, to say that Lim was less than a coward who preyed on little children because they could not fight back; killed them in the hope that he would gain power or wealth and therefore did not commit murder, is to make no sense of the law of murder. It would lend credence to the shroud of mystery and magic he has conjured up his practices and by which he managed to frighten, intimidate and persuade the superstitious, the weak and the gullible into participating in the most lewd and obscene acts." Knight described that Tan helped with the killings because "she loved [Lim]", and that Hoe was misled and did not have a mental illness.
Verdict On 25 May 1983, crowds massed outside the building, waiting for the outcome of the trial. Due to limited seating, only a few were allowed inside to hear Justice Sinnathuray's delivery of the verdict, which took 15 minutes. The two judges were not convinced that the three defendants were mentally volatile during the crimes. They found Lim to be "abominable and depraved" in carrying out his schemes. Viewing her interviews with the expert witnesses as
admissions of guilt, Sinnathuray and Chua decided that Tan was an "artful and wicked person", and a "willing [party] to [Lim's] loathsome and nefarious acts". The judges found Hoe to be "simple" and "easily influenced". Although she suffered from schizophrenia, they opined that she was in a state of remission during the murders, hence she should bear full responsibility for her actions. All three defendants were found guilty of murder and received
mandatory death sentences, which was the only available punishment allowed for murder under Singapore law at that time. The two women did not react to their sentences. Lim beamed and cried, "Thank you, my Lords!" as he was led out.
Appeals from Tan and Hoe Lim accepted his punishment and gave up his right to appeal, but the women appealed against their sentences. Tan hired
Francis Seow to appeal for her, and the court again assigned Isaac to Hoe. The lawyers asked the appeal court to reconsider the mental states of their clients during the murders, charging that the trial judges in their deliberations had failed to consider this point. The Court of Criminal Appeal reached their decision in August 1986. The appeal judges which consist of
Chief Justice Wee Chong Jin, Justice
Lai Kew Chai and Justice
L P Thean reaffirmed the decision of their trial counterparts, noting that as finders of facts, judges have the right to discount medical evidence in the light of evidence from other sources. Tan and Hoe's further appeals to London's
Privy Council and Singapore President
Wee Kim Wee met with similar failures.
Final days and hanging of the murderers While on
death row at
Changi Prison, the trio were counselled by Catholic priests and nuns. Lim refused to see a counsellor for most of his time on death row. Tan and Hoe had
Sister Gerard Fernandez as their spiritual counsellor. Tan was already known to Fernandez who operated the vocational centre that Tan attended as a youth. In 1983, Gerard Fernandez contacted Tan who wrote, "Sister, how could you love me after what I have done?", signing off as a "black sheep". The nun converted both women to Catholicism. Tan began to spend hours in prayer, while Hoe was baptized. The week before the execution date, Lim joined in, asking for repentance. He asked Australian priest Brian Doro for absolution. In their final days, all three of them received a
Holy Communion. On 25 November 1988, the trio were given their last meal and led to the
hangman's noose. Lim smiled throughout his last walk to the gallows. At 06:00, the trio were executed by
long drop hanging and later pronounced dead. After the sentences were carried out, the three murderers were given a short Catholic funeral mass by Doro, and cremated on the same day.
Commentaries years later Twenty years after the trio were executed, Nathan Isaac, the former lawyer of Hoe Kah Hong, died on 10 January 2009, 14 days short of his 72nd birthday. Isaac was survived by his wife, four sons and two grandsons; one of his sons recalled his father's experience of defending Hoe during the trial. Isaac's son stated that his father was saddened by not saving Hoe from the gallows, as he believed that Hoe was misled and manipulated into committing the murders by Lim, and felt that Hoe did not deserve the death penalty as Lim did. In 2021, Justice
Choo Han Teck, who was Cashin's associate during the case, said that in the 1980s, "People on the Government side (the Woodbridge) saw it as an almost defensive mechanism to disagree everything with the private psychiatrists". He also pointed out that it was difficult to even find private psychiatrists to testify in court; Wong Yip Chong was the only one to do so and Nagulendran came along later. Even in the short period of time interacting with Lim for the trial, Choo, Cashin and Wong found Lim volatile and difficult. == Legacy ==