one who rented the room, and admitted that in 1982, when he bought four straws of heroin from a man, he gave him his identity card as collateral since he did not have enough money to pay for all the drugs. The heroin seller, revealed to be Tan Teow (also known as Michael Tan), who was the real person that rented the room, was arrested and charged with murder on 31 March 1983. The stolen items from the Yeong family flat were also recovered by the police. A month later, on 23 April 1983, having obtained information from Michael Tan, the police put up a public notice for Lim Beng Hai (alias Albert Lim), who was alleged to be Tan's accomplice in the killings. The next day, Lim surrendered to the police, and he was charged two days later with murder as well. Both Lim and Tan were remanded at Changi Prison Hospital for a pre-trial psychiatric evaluation. Tan faced an additional charge of having 8.52g of heroin in his possession. On 1 August 1983, the case was transferred to the High Court for trial hearing on a later date. Trial proceedings The prosecution's case The trial of both Lim Beng Hai and Michael Tan began at the High Court on 18 February 1985. Lim was represented by Freddy Neo while Tan was represented by M. Puvanendram, and Edmond Pereira of the Attorney-General's Chambers (AGC) was in charge of the prosecution. Justice Abdul Wahab Ghows and Justice L P Thean were the two trial judges assigned to preside the trial hearing. At the start of the prosecution's case, it was revealed that Tan first rented the flat on 1 January 1983, and during the three months he spent living there, he often got into arguments with Soh over Tan not paying the rent on time and her demand that he move out, and it was opined by the prosecution that after the quarrels over rent, Tan formed the intention to rob and kill the victims, due to his need for money to buy drugs, and roped Lim in for his robbery plan. Despite the fact that Tan already had a home and married with two daughters, he rented the room for the purpose of selling and smoking heroin. One of the witnesses, Sreedharan Udayakumar, an Indian friend of Tan, testified that on the night of the killings, Tan frantically came