At about 10am on 18 July 2009, police and emergency services attended a two-storey residence at 55A Boundary Road, North Epping in response to a triple-0 call.
The bodies of four people (two women, Lily Lin aged 44 years, and her sister Irene Lin aged 39 years, and two children, Henry Lin aged 12 years and Terry Lin aged 9 years) were located in three of the four bedrooms on the upper storey. A fifth body (an adult male, Min Lin, Lily Lin's husband, aged 45 years) was located later that day underneath the bedclothes beside his wife's body. A fourth bedroom was unoccupied and undisturbed. It was later confirmed that the occupant of that bedroom, Ms AB (Min and Lily Lin's 15 year old daughter), was overseas at the time of the murders.
The bedrooms in which the five deceased were found were awash with shed blood. This was an immediate and graphic indication to police of the severity of the murderous assaults from which each had died. The quantity and concentration of blood in the bedrooms, coupled with the absence of any deposits of shed blood elsewhere in the house, was also an early indication that each of the deceased was killed in their bedrooms and the three adults in their beds.
There were no signs of forced entry to the premises. There was no evidence of any disturbance in any of the rooms on the lower floor of the house or the garage. It was later determined that the murderer had used a key to gain access through the locked front door and that the electricity had been disabled at the main power board located at the side of the house. This indicated to police that the murders were likely to be the result of planning by someone with intimate knowledge of the layout of the house.
Post-mortem examinations confirmed the extreme gravity of the blunt force injuries implicated in the deaths of all the deceased. There was a discernible pattern in the shape and contour of many of the blunt force injuries on the heads and faces of each of the victims. The forensic pathologist determined that those injuries were inflicted with a hammer-like weapon.
The post-mortem examinations also revealed the severity, extent and spread of the asphyxial injuries identified as a contributing cause of death in four of the five deceased. There was no evidence of asphyxia in the post-mortem examination of Irene Lin. The forensic pathologist identified a range of possible mechanisms for the infliction of the asphyxial injuries, including the application of compressive force to the throat and neck.
Lily Lin and Irene Lin were found by police lying on their backs in their blood soaked beds. Lily Lin was struck at least five times with the hammer-like weapon to her face and head. Her hyoid bone was fractured. Of the eight separate strikes directed at Irene Lin's head, as evidenced by rope mark impressions in blood on the wall adjacent to her bed, at least four connected. Some of the lacerating head injuries sustained by both women were contiguous with depressed skull fractures which penetrated into the cranial cavity and the underlying neural tissue. A complex of facial fractures on Lily Lin's face penetrated her sinus cavity.
An analysis of the blood patterns in and around the beds in which the two deceased women were found established that whilst both women were attacked within the confines of their beds (either whilst they were sleeping or upon being roused from sleep) their bodies had been moved by the murderer from the position in the bed where they were killed to the position in which they were ultimately found by police. Lily Lin's body had been moved so that her head was hanging from the side of the mattress at the head of the bed. Blood from her head injuries had pooled on the carpet beneath her head. Irene Lin's legs and torso had been moved such that her legs were draped over the side of her bed. There was no forensic evidence that either woman had been sexually assaulted.
The range and severity of the disfiguring blunt force injuries to Min Lin's face and head were similar to those sustained by his wife. The configuration of his injuries, when coupled with the blood pattern evidence, also established that he was fatally assaulted within the confines of the bed and that his body had been moved after he was killed. His head was also angled off the mattress at the bedhead, after which the murderer completely covered his body with bedclothes.
Henry Lin and Terry Lin were lying on blood soaked carpet in the vicinity of various items of bedding that were also heavily blood soaked in the bedroom they shared. That room shared an internal wall with the bedroom in which Irene Lin was found. The children had also been viciously assaulted with a hammer-like weapon. At least six blows connected with the side and back of Terry Lin's head. Henry Lin was struck at least three times. The spread and pattern of shed blood in the children's bedroom and on their clothing indicated that Terry Lin had offered some resistance before he succumbed to the force of the attack and that Henry Lin was upright at least at some point when he was attacked.
The number, range and severity of the head injuries suffered by each of the five deceased, in combination with the asphyxial injuries identified in the post-mortems of Min Lin, Lily Lin, Henry Lin and Terry Lin, indicated that of the five deceased, only Terry Lin was likely to have survived for any period of time after the fatal injuries were inflicted.
A large number of rope mark impressions in blood were identified within the crime scene. They were concentrated on the walls of the bedrooms where Irene Lin and the children were found. By their number and configuration, it was clear that a rope was implicated in the attack on those three deceased. It was the opinion of the crime scene analysts that the rope was initially wrapped either around the handle of the hammer-like weapon, or the hand or wrist of the murderer, that it became unfurled in the course of the attack on Min and Lily Lin and was free hanging when the murderer left their bedroom and entered Irene Lin's bedroom where the weapon was wielded multiple times at her face and head before the murderer moved to the children's bedroom where they were attacked.
No weapon was ever located.
The angle and orientation of shoe print impressions in blood on the carpet of the upper storey revealed that the murderer moved sequentially between the three bedrooms, killing Min and Lily Lin first, then Irene Lin and then Henry and Terry Lin.
On 11 May 2011, after a lengthy police investigation, Lian Bin (Robert) Xie was arrested and charged with the murder of the five deceased. The offender was the brother-in-law of Min and Lily Lin (his wife being Min Lin's sister) and the uncle of Henry and Terry Lin. At the time of the murders he lived with his wife, Kathy Lin, and their son in their family home at 4 Beck Street, North Epping - 300 metres from 55A Boundary Road.
In the course of executing a search warrant over the offender's residence in May 2010, a small transfer blood stain was located on the garage floor. It was the Crown case at trial that this was the blood of at least four of the deceased inadvertently transferred by the offender onto the garage floor after the murders.
On 12 January 2017, after a trial that extended over six months, a jury of 12 returned majority verdicts of guilty on each of the five counts of murder.
Section 19A(1) of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW) provides that the maximum penalty for murder is imprisonment for life. Section 19A(2) provides that a person sentenced to imprisonment for life for murder is to serve that sentence for the term of their natural life.
Section 61(1) of the Crimes (Sentencing) Procedure Act 1999 (NSW) ("the Sentencing Act") provides that a court is to impose a life sentence on a person convicted of murder if the court is satisfied that the level of culpability in the commission of the offence is so extreme that the community interest in retribution, punishment, community protection and deterrence can only be met by the imposition of a life sentence. Although it is the presence and significance of any combination of these considerations, and their combined effect, which is the critical enquiry mandated by s 61(1), an assessment of the offender's culpability for murder remains the primary focus of that enquiry.
By operation of s 21(1) of the Sentencing Act, the Court has a discretion to impose a determinate sentence where an offender's subjective circumstances justify a lesser sentence, notwithstanding that the criteria in s 61(1) are otherwise met.
It is for the Crown to satisfy the Court that this is a case which attracts the imposition of life sentences, and to do so beyond reasonable doubt (R v Merritt (2004) 146 A Crim R 309; [2004] NSWCCA 19). Since the imposition of a life sentence is reserved for offending of the most heinous kind, the Crown is also obligated to prove beyond reasonable doubt any facts that are intrinsic to a finding that the murders are within the worst case category.
The Crown submitted that it has discharged that burden of proof and that life sentences should be imposed in this case on each of the five counts of murder.
The offender advanced no submissions on sentence concerning the operation of s 61(1) or s 21(1) of the Sentencing Act or the application of those sections in this sentencing process. Ms Greiner, the offender's solicitor, informed the Court that she was instructed to advance no submissions on any issue of fact or law raised by the Crown's submissions on sentence. That said, I am mindful that I must not take into account any matters adverse to the offender unless they are proved beyond reasonable doubt (see R v Olbrich (1999) 199 CLR 270; [1999] HCA 54).
The Crown relied upon a number of features of the offending as justifying the imposition of a life sentence on each of the five counts of murder.
The Crown placed particular reliance on the meticulous planning that preceded the murders as evidenced, amongst other things, by the offender's construction and use of an improvised murder weapon. I am satisfied the offender attached rope to a hammer-like weapon, most likely to ensure that he did not lose control of the weapon as he wielded it at the heads and faces of Min and Lily Lin, and in order to maximise the degree of assaultive force to ensure that he killed them with speed and efficiency. I am also satisfied that the rope remained attached to the weapon, but free hanging, as it was wielded at Irene Lin and then the two children, becoming blood soaked in the process of those assaults.
I am satisfied that the key the offender used to enter 55A Boundary Road with the intention of killing at least Min and Lily Lin was cut from a spare key that had been entrusted to the offender's wife for her safe keeping. I am also satisfied that in perpetrating the murders the offender used knowledge he had acquired as a family member, including, in particular, the layout of the bedrooms upstairs and the location of the power box to enable him to enter the house by stealth.
One further feature of the planning employed by the offender in carrying out the murders needs to be considered.
Consistent with the verdicts of the jury, the Crown disproved the alibi relied upon by the offender at his trial to the criminal standard. Although the offender did not give evidence at his trial, evidence in support of the alibi was adduced from his wife who said the offender was in bed with her when the murders were committed, an account the offender had given to police when he was interviewed within days of the murders and the account he maintained when he was interviewed by police the following year.
It was the Crown case that the jury would be satisfied that the alibi was false and that the offender had sedated his wife to facilitate leaving his home in the early hours of 18 July 2009, without his wife's knowledge, in pursuance of his plan to go to 55A Boundary Road and kill at least Min Lin and Lily Lin. It was the Crown case on sentence that this was another feature of the offender's premeditated plan to kill at least Min Lin and Lily Lin and that I would find that feature established beyond reasonable doubt.
At trial the Crown adduced two forms of direct evidence in proof of the fact that the offender sedated his wife. The first, the evidence of Witness A, a prison informer, who said that in the course of a conversation in the prison yard the offender volunteered that he had sedated his wife and the second, a conversation recorded on a listening device when Witness A raised with the offender that earlier conversation in response to which, in the Crown's submission, the offender is heard to murmur his assent to the proposition that he had sedated his wife or at least did not to demur from it. There was no other evidence adduced at trial bearing upon the issue of sedation per se.
The jury were directed that they were entitled to have regard to all of the evidence led at trial when considering whether the Crown had negatived alibi beyond reasonable doubt. While I consider it very likely that the offender sedated his wife, I am unable to be satisfied of that fact beyond reasonable doubt. There remains, in my view, a possibility that Kathy Lin simply did not wake when the offender left the house sometime after 2am on 18 July 2009, returning later that morning. In coming to that view, I have taken into account Kathy Lin's evidence that she had never woken to find the offender not beside her in bed and would always wake if he left the bed for any reason. Since I accept Ms AB's evidence that the offender entered the bedroom she shared with the offender's son and sexually assaulted her on repeated occasions between August 2009, when she became a member of the offender's household, and when he was arrested in May 2011, Kathy Lin's evidence that she would always wake if the offender left the bed, and that he had never done so and gone into Ms AB's bedroom at night, cannot be accepted as reliable.
At the trial of the offender the Crown relied upon two possible motives operating separately or in combination in proof of the Crown case. First, the offender's sexual interest in Ms AB, as evidenced by his sexual interest in her before the murders and his serialised sexual abuse of her after the murders when, upon the death of all members of her immediate family, she became a member of his household. Secondly, the offender's perception that he was relegated to what he considered was as an undeserved subordinate status within the extended family in contrast to what he considered was the undeserved high regard in which Min Lin was held.
The jury were instructed that it was not necessary for them to find either of the motives proved beyond reasonable doubt before they could convict the offender of murder. They were also instructed they could take the evidence of motive into account on the question of guilt without being satisfied that either of the possible motives relied upon by the Crown was proved beyond reasonable doubt.
While either or both of those motives may have been what motivated the offender to execute the meticulously planned murder of at least Min and Lily Lin (irrespective of whether that plan also contemplated the potential that other occupants of the house might need to be killed if they were roused from sleep by the force of his attack on Min and Lily Lin, to avoid them identifying him as the killer or raising the alarm and inhibiting him from leaving the house unseen), I am unable to make that finding beyond reasonable doubt. However, given that I am satisfied that the offender entered the Lin family home knowing the occupants would be asleep, that he disabled the power in order to exercise control over them and that he was armed with a weapon fashioned for the purpose of applying maximum assaultive force, the fact that I am unable to reach a point of satisfaction to the criminal standard as to what in fact motivated him to do what he did does nothing to diminish the gravity of his offending.
The commission of a series of intentional and brutal killings of five members of a family, including two children, in their family home in the early hours of the morning whilst they were sleeping or on being roused from sleep, in a single episode of brutal and calculated murderous violence, is a course of offending that can only be described as heinous in the extreme.
A further feature of the gravity of the offending relied upon by the Crown on sentence concerns the fact that two young children were murdered and that they were likely to have learnt of the offender's presence in the house upon being wakened or roused by the attack on their parents or their aunt and were likely to have been conscious when the offender launched the attack on them.
In circumstances where, as here, multiple murders are committed by the one offender, the offender's culpability for each of the murders is informed by his culpability for all of the murders (see R v Dean [2013] NSWSC 1027 at [108] (Latham J) citing R v Baker (Court of Criminal Appeal (NSW), 20 September 1995, unrep) and R v Villa [2005] NSWCCA 4).
After full account is given to the range, spread and severity of the injuries causative of the death of all five deceased, and the multiple forms of extreme violence implicated in the infliction of those injuries, with the face and head of each of the victims being deliberately targeted, no other finding is open other than that each of the murders is within the worst case category of murder.
The offender is currently 53 years of age. He was born in China where he qualified as an Ear, Nose and Throat Specialist. He migrated to Australia in 1999. He operated a restaurant in Melbourne with his wife until 2005 when he moved to New South Wales. He has not worked in paid employment since that time.
There is nothing in the offender's subjective circumstances, and nothing put on his behalf, to mitigate the extreme gravity of his offending.
There were no submissions advanced on his behalf directed to the aspect of future dangerousness in s 61(1) of the Sentencing Act or whether, from the evidence led at trial, he is at risk of committing further offences of violence, or the extent of any risk of that kind that may arise.
While a finding of future dangerousness is not a precondition to the imposition of a life sentence under s 61(1) of the Sentencing Act, the circumstances in which this offender presents for sentence allows me to find that there is a risk of him committing further offences of violence, a risk that has not been ameliorated by the passage of time since the murders or qualified by any expression of remorse. The meticulous planning involved in the timing and styling of the murders, coupled with the offender's resolve to execute that plan and then to persist with the infliction of extreme violence with the intention that all occupants of the house should die, despite the active resistance offered by Terry Lin, the youngest victim, as he struggled for his life, is an ample basis upon which to make that finding. The risk that this offender may commit offences of violence in the future, and the community's legitimate expectation that it is protected from that risk, is amplified by the sexual violence the offender inflicted on Ms AB after the murders, as the surviving member of her family.
In the sentencing hearing, the Court received a written statement from Ms AB.
She described the devastating impact of the loss of her entire immediate family on every aspect of her life. She told me her achievements feel hollow and as she has passed various milestones from adolescence to early adulthood since the death of her family, celebrating those achievements with others is bittersweet. She described missing the support and guidance her parents had given her as their eldest child with the certain knowledge that would have continued. She has difficulty sleeping. She is dealing with an array of mental health issues and is experiencing some trouble with her tertiary studies.
Despite Ms AB's gratitude for having been welcomed into loving families and for the support her friends have given her, she recognises, and the Court well understands, this can never be a substitute for the love, support, warmth and intimacy of her own family.
I acknowledge the profound grief she has suffered and continues to suffer. I also commend her for her strength and dignity, and her courage as she faces the future without parents, siblings or a loving aunt.
While the law does not permit a sentencing judge to take into account in the imposition of sentence any additional penalty because a family member of a murder victim has suffered through their death, since it is the criminal culpability in the taking of life itself that is the departure point for the appointment of criminal punishment, in this case the far reaching and immeasurable harm done to Ms AB is also an aspect of the harm done to the community and, for that reason, as provided for in s 28(4) of the Sentencing Act, I also take that into account when imposing life sentences in this case.
I note that the offender remained in custody following his arrest until 8 December 2015 when he was released to conditional bail (see R v Xie [2015] NSWSC 1833). His bail was revoked on 22 December 2016 during the course of the trial. The commencement date for the sentences has been adjusted accordingly.
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Sentence
Lian Bin (Robert) Xie, on counts 1 to 5 inclusive on the indictment, you are convicted of the murders of Min (Norman) Lin, Yun Li (Lily) Lin, Yun Bin (Irene) Lin, Henry Lin and Terry Lin. On each count, you are sentenced to imprisonment for life, commencing on 25 May 2012.
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Decision last updated: 13 February 2017