The couple agreed by promising to give Mazlan a talisman comprising a tongkat and a songkok supposedly owned by Sukarno, the first President of Indonesia, with an offer of RM 2.5 million.

[13] On 2 August 1993, Mona Fandey, her husband Mohamad Nor Affandi Abdul Rahman and the couple's assistant Juraimi Hassan were charged with the murder of Mazlan Idris and remanded in custody.

[14] In the aftermath of Mazlan's murder, Mona was also suspected by police to have been linked to other unrelated serious crimes, such as involvement in the disappearance of five house maids who worked for her at various times during the late 1980s.

[15] Additionally, the remains of a family of three (Tan Kim Ann, his wife and their five-month-old son), whose dismembered and mutilated bodies were discovered buried at two different sites in Kemaman District in early August 1993, were identified as former followers of Mona who had also mysteriously disappeared a couple of years earlier.

[16] News reporters at the crime scene near Kijal spotted Mona's husband Nor Affandi being taken away in a police car, and it was later revealed that he owned the plots of land where the bodies were discovered.

[17] Authorities believed the victims were offered as human sacrifices as part of a witchcraft ritual,[11] however Tan's sister made a statement that his wife arrived at her house in an agitated state without her baby one day asking to borrow a large amount of money, which coupled with the fact that the remains of the parents and baby were discovered at two separate locations raised the possibility the infant was kidnapped for ransom, and the entire family was murdered after the money was handed over to prevent the crime being reported.

Affandi then led the officers to a house in Lata Jarum in Pahang, where after ordering the padlocked door of a storeroom to be opened he then indicated an area of the cement floor for the team to start digging.

[22] Forensic pathologist Doctor Abdul Rahman Yusof testified to having performed an autopsy on Mazlan's body, and asserted that the neck was severed with a sharp weapon that caused the victim to die instantly from a combination of catastrophic blood loss and the immediate stopping of vital organs (such as the heart and lungs).

[28] On 23 October 1994, while giving evidence in his own defence, Juraimi Hassan challenged the admissibility of statements he gave to the police while under arrest, claiming to have been beaten and threatened into making a confession.

However, Judge Datuk Mokhtar ordered that sections of the statement regarding two separate murders committed in Selangor and Terengganu involving the three defendants be redacted, as they were irrelevant to the charges Mona was on trial for and therefore should not be revealed to the jury.

[33] On 23 November 1994, Justice Datuk Mokhtar Sidin declared that the prosecution has established prima facie evidence against the three accused and called them to make their defence against the charge of murdering Mazlan Idris.

Changing into a sarong, Mazlan then lay down in a candlelit bathroom, where Mona placed an orchid on his forehead and told him to close his eyes and wait for a "mysterious voice" to ask him how much money he wanted to appear.

[35] Under cross-examination, Nor Affandi admitted that while he claimed to be too traumatized to stop at any of the 10 police stations he thereafter passed on the way to the Plaza Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, he had recovered sufficiently to forge the signature of Mazlan on documents and attempt to fraudulently transfer ownership of the victim's land when he held a meeting with a lawyer the next morning.

[35] In an hour long summing up, Deputy Public Prosecutor Zakaria Sam asserted that Mona and Nor Affandi had murdered Mazlan for his money, pointing out how they went on a shopping spree that included buying a Mercedes Benz for RM125,000 in cash the day after he disappeared.

Prosecutor Zakaria said the murder of Mazlan was pre-meditated, with the victim being lured to a secluded location for what he believed to be a black magic ritual designed to enhance his political career during upcoming elections, however when he dropped his guard and was at his most vulnerable he was ruthlessly killed instead.

[38] Observers later remarked that Mona had finally received the spotlight she had craved her entire life, with her demeanor more comparable to a celebrity arriving at a movie premiere than a criminal defendant being escorted into court by prison officers.

[39] On 9 February 1995, Mona Fandey, her husband Mohamad Nor Affandi Abdul Rahman and the couple's assistant Juraimi Hassan were found guilty as charged and sentenced to death by hanging for the murder of Mazlan Idris.

[48] The crime was covered in a chapter called Pop Singer Witch Doctor in the best-selling Malaysian Murders & Mysteries book written by journalists Martin Vengadesan and Andrew Sagayam.