On 28 March 1983, 28-year-old housewife Soh Lee Lee (苏莉莉 Sū Lìlì) and her two young children, three-year-old Jeremy Yeong Yin Kit (杨英杰 Yáng Yīngjíe) and two-year-old Joyce Yeong Pei Ling (杨佩玲 Yáng Peìlíng), were brutally murdered inside their flat at Ang Mo Kio.

Five years after the trial, Tan committed suicide while on death row; Lim was hung at the gallows for the murders.

It was alleged by the prosecution that after the quarrels over rent, Tan formed the intention to rob and kill the victims, as he needed money to buy drugs, and roped Lim into his robbery plan.

[15][16][17] Dr Naranjan Singh testified that he heard Tan admitting he was part of the robbery, but he stated he only wanted to rape Soh.

However, he suffered from severe drug withdrawal symptoms right before the start of his defence phase, so the trial was postponed for a month until Tan fully recovered.

Due to Tan's allegations that a prison officer supplied him the drugs, a 29-year-old prison warden (who was a Malaysian on a work permit) was found to have supplied heroin to Tan and other inmates, but due to insufficient evidence to formulate a charge against him, the ex-warden was indefinitely detained without trial.

[24] Tan admitted to the court that he rented a room in the flat in January 1983 under an assumed name for the sole purpose of smoking heroin, as his wife always reported him to the police when he used drugs at their Toa Payoh apartment.

[27][28] Tan steadily denied the prosecution's contentions that he had intentionally killed Soh and the children despite their pleas for mercy, and that he had fabricated his account.

During the execution of the robbery, Lim ran outside the flat while Tan was struggling with Soh inside the living room, with the two children crying in fright nearby.

[30][31][32] The prosecution argued that there was no doubt that the two defendants were culpable of the "brutal and wanton" killings of the Yeong children and Soh.

Pereira, who made the prosecution's arguments, also highlighted that the men's accounts of how the killings occurred were inconsistent with medical evidence, which described the victim Soh being stabbed while in a kneeling position rather than standing (as Tan claimed) or lying down (as Lim claimed), and that the children were being restrained when Soh was stabbed.

Tan's claims of diminished responsibility by influence of drugs, as well as his contention that he alone wanted to rob and Lim alone wanted to rape Soh, were all rejected by the judges,since the evidence demonstrated the defendants shared the common intention to steal from the victims and humiliate Soh.

[36] Both 32-year-old Michael Tan and 28-year-old Lim Beng Hai were found guilty of three counts of murder and sentenced to death.

Justice L P Thean pronounced the triple death sentences, one for each count of murder, for both men in a packed courtroom, where everyone was ordered to stand.

Tan's wife confessed she never knew that her husband would commit such a heinous act for cash, and expressed her regret for not preventing him from stepping on the wrong path.

It was further revealed that Tan was a former celebrity who first made his name in 1970 as "Mr Personality", and had once starred in a sentimental Indonesian film.

These inmates included infamous child killer Adrian Lim, who faced the gallows for killing two children, and lorry driver Ramu Annadavascan, who murdered a boilerman, Kalingam Mariappan, by hitting him with a rake and burning him alive using petrol as an accelerant.

[45] On 8 May 1990, while he was in solitary confinement in death row pending execution, 37-year-old Michael Tan Teow was found dead inside his cell at Changi Prison by a warden.

[46] At the time of his death, Tan was survived by his wife, two daughters (aged 18 and 14 at this point), his elderly mother and Jewish stepfather.

With Tan's death, his accomplice Lim was the only person left awaiting execution for the Ang Mo Kio murders.

[50][51] On 5 October 1990, more than seven years after committing the murders at Ang Mo Kio, 33-year-old Lim Beng Hai was hanged at dawn in Changi Prison.

The names of the victims were redacted to protect their identities, while Lim Beng Hai and Michael Tan were addressed solely by their surnames.