On the afternoon of 23 April 1991, at 3.30pm, 12-year-old Kuah Bee Leng (柯美玲 Kē Mĕilíng), who just returned from school to her flat at Bukit Merah's Viking Road, was shocked to discover her youngest sister Kuah Bee Hong, who was ten, lying dead with her body (clad in her school uniform) partially hidden under a sofa, with a bloodstained towel wrapped around her neck and a bleeding slash wound on her left wrist.

[1] At that time her sister Bee Leng arrived home, Kuah's parents - hawker assistant Kuah Chin Chye (柯进财 Kē Jìncái; aged 41 in 1991) and electronics factory worker Ng Siew Hua (黄秀花 Huáng Xìuhuā; aged 40 in 1991) were working while her eldest sister was at school.

Immediately, Bee Leng quickly ran down to the ground floor, seeking help from her uncle P. H. Koh and aunt who both operated a store.

[2][3] Professor Chao Tzee Cheng, the senior forensic pathologist, conducted an autopsy of the victim, and he determined the cause of Kuah's death to be strangulation.

The killer was suspected to be someone known to the victim, since there were no signs of forced entry into the flat, and the family, who described Kuah as someone who often avoid strangers, similarly shared the theory.

According to his confession, Goh stated that he arrived at the home of Kuah Bee Hong to look for her mother, as he wanted to borrow money from her to pay off the debts he owed to loan sharks.

He further used a knife to slash her left wrist to make sure she bled to death before he ransacked the house, stealing the gold items and jewellery of the Kuah family.

The prosecution, led by Bala Reddy, sought from the judge to reject the defendant's account of the killing, as the forensic pathologist Chao Tzee Cheng had noted in his autopsy report that the victim was strangled with a soft fabric like a towel before her death, as he observed that there were no external marks or bruises on the neck to indicate that Goh used his hands or even a small string to strangle Kuah, and there was no damage to her larynx, which demonstrated that it was only possible that death occurred as a result of the use of ligature during strangulation.

Judicial commissioner (JC) Kan Ting Chiu, who presided the trial hearing of the case, found that Goh had intentionally used the towel to strangle Kuah to death, and rejected the defendant's insistence that he used only his bare hands to strangle the girl before slashing her wrists, given that his testimony was inconsistent with the post-mortem findings of Professor Chao and hence accepted the prosecution's arguments.

They all expressed sadness over Kuah Bee Hong's murder, and they also revealed about how they knew the killer Goh, whom they formerly looked up as a neighbour and friend before his heinous crime.