Crime scene photographs reveal the Lin family bloodbath
INSIDE the Lin home was the sort of bloodbath nightmares are made of, a scene that horrified police. WARNING: Graphic.
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WARNING: Graphic content
INSIDE the modest home in a quiet suburban street was the sort of bloodbath nightmares are made of. A murder scene that horrified even experienced police officers.
When visitors walked through the front door of the Lin home in Epping, north of Sydney, they were greeted by a wedding photograph of Min and Lily Lin hanging near the entrance.
It was likely that it was here the killer — trusted family member Robert Xie —slipped inside quietly, past the picture of the lives he was about to end, heading straight towards his targets asleep upstairs.
Xie, 53, was last week found guilty of murdering his brother-in-law Min “Norman” Lin, 45, Mr Lin’s wife Yun Li “Lily” Lin, 43, her sister Yun Bin “Irene” Lin, 39, and the Lins’ two sons Henry, 12, and Terry, 9 in July, 2009.
The Crown said Xie’s motive for murder was that he was furious by what he perceived to be his lowly status within the family.
An important part of the prosecution case was that the killer knew what they were doing and where they were going. Even though the home was shrouded in darkness, the killer knew the house layout intimately.
And, crucially, there was no forced entry. Once Xie used a key to gain access to the home he’d been welcomed into so many times before, he turned to his right and crept quietly up the carpeted stairs to where his victims lay sleeping.
Beneath the bedrooms in the family home are the dining room, kitchen and lounge. Just a few short hours before they were filled with Lin family going about their routine ... totally unaware of the carnage that lay ahead.
It was an ordinary family home still at this point. Family members shoes were scattered by the front door, three sets of keys sat on the kitchen bench alongside a single mug. On a chair in the family room a ‘Paris Hilton’ brand handbag sat on a dining room chair, a blue medicine ball nearby.
Magazines and tissues sat on a coffee table. Children's’ backpacks were dumped behind the door of the laundry, while in another room a desk has a computer and papers scattered about.
Nothing out of the ordinary. But within minutes it was going to be one of New South Wales’ most grisly murder scenes.
Crime scene photographs released by the NSW Supreme Court to news.com.au reveal for the first time what police and paramedics saw when they first arrived during the early hours of July 18, 2009.
There was blood everywhere. On the victims, on the floors, up the walls —the harsh red of the blood that flowed from vicious wounds on the five victims contrasting strongly with the clean white walls of the well-kept two storey home.
In one image, blood is clearly visible on the door frame of Min and Lily’s room. In another a Samsung mobile phone is surrounded by blood splatters. The door handle to Irene’s room is smeared with blood where a bloodied hand has gripped it.
Other brutal images show police rulers alongside long blood streaks on walls, and splashes of blood on everything from light switches to the stairwell railing, door frames and a mobile phone.
Their deaths came without warning and brutally quick. The first to die were Min and Lily Xie in the first bedroom. Like all the deaths that night, Xie brought his weapon down hard on their heads and faces leaving them in a pool of blood in their bed.
The murder weapon was never found, but prosecutors have said it was hammer-like and “assembled for maximum effect to incapacitate and kill”.
When the first police officer arrived at the scene he saw Lily’s face was covered in blood and she was naked from the waist up. Min was nowhere to be seen. For reasons unknown, Xie returned to the room when the killings were done and arranged then in a “V” like shape, with Min hidden under the covers.
Irene, Lily’s sister, was the next to be found, slumped against a wall with large blood smears on it. She died second, after her sister and brother-in-law. Xie would have crossed the hallway quickly from the master bedroom to begin his assault on Irene.
The injuries to the victims faces were so severe that the first responding officers wondered if a shotgun had been used.
Such was the violence used they had to be careful where they stepped to avoid the large pools of blood.
While the three adults probably didn’t see Xie coming, there is evidence to suggest that the two boys woke up and tried to escape. Possibly Xie killed them because he knew they could identify him.
The Supreme Court murder trial heard there was a “furious struggle in that bedroom.”
The proof was in the wounds received and, chillingly, from the way the blood splattered across the walls. The patterns indicated the victims were moving as the deadly blows rained down on them.
Mission complete, Xie then left the house, walking down the staircase and —if he came through the front door — through the foyer and outside in the night.
The fact that the spare room hadn’t been opened fitted with the prosecution case againt Xie. If the killer was someone who knew the house, they reasoned, they would know that on this night it was empty.
Last week, after four trials, and seven years, Xie was finally brought to justice for the horror he caused inside 55a Boundary Rd, North Epping.
Sentencing submissions begin on February 10.
Originally published as Crime scene photographs reveal the Lin family bloodbath
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