The trial took place for about two-and-a-half days before it concluded on 21 April 1993. 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. The judge also considered the possibility of someone else using the towel to strangle Kuah after Goh's escape from the scene but decided it was too remote a possibility to have occurred. He also pointed out that if Goh genuinely wanted to remove the fingerprints off Kuah's neck, he would have simply wiped them off the neck rather than tying the towel tightly around the unconscious Kuah's neck.
