How a jealous desire to be his wife’s parents’ ‘honoured’ son drove Robert Xie to murder his wealthy brother-in-law and his family
INSIDE STORY: Out of work and deemed lazy by his parents-in-law, Robert Xie played out a happy family facade, but he secretly seethed as his wife’s brother ran a $1m-a-year newsagency in Epping.
NSW
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A crime leaves no room for secrets.
The two couples appeared to be the very model of a close-knit family. Min Lin and his wife Lilly ran a popular Epping newsagency where they employed his sister Kathy Xie.
Min and Kathy’s parents, Yang Fei Lin and Feng Qing Zhu, lived for their grandchildren, Henry Lin, 12, and his brother Terry Lin, nine, and loved having the whole family around for dinner with Kathy’s husband Robert.
Henry and his uncle Robert were particularly close, sharing a love of badminton.
In the Lins’ loving home on a battleaxe block in Boundary Rd, Epping, the first thing anyone walking through the front door saw was a photograph of them on their wedding day, which was hung on the wall at the bottom of the stairs.
Kathy and Robert, a former ear, nose and throat specialist in his native China, lived around the corner in Beck St, just a short walk away from their in-laws.
‘A GOOD MAN’: XIE’S WIFE VOWS TO STAND BY HIM
That happy family facade was shattered on July 18, 2009 by the shocking slaughter of Min, 45, Lilly, 43, their sons and Lilly’s sister Irene, 39, who was studying at Macquarie University. Detectives who looked for the truth behind the slaying discovered that all was not as it seemed.
Robert Xie was revealed to be an angry, jealous man whose secret hatred for Min and Lilly simmered below the surface.
He thought he should be the number one “honoured son” — not Min.
He knew Kathy’s parents kept telling her she could do much better than him as a husband, both in looks and money.
Xie also had a sick sexual fascination for a teenager connected to the family, “breathing heavily” as he touched her inappropriately and experiencing an erection while rubbing himself up against her, his murder trial was told.
Then there was Lilly, who had been caught by her father-in-law fantasising about leaving her marriage for a man called “Rob” — who she had denied was Robert Xie.
And Min Lin had been horrified to learn that the post boxes at their Rawson St newsagency had been used by an international drug cartel to smuggle cocaine, MDMA and heroin through the mail from Thailand, Indonesia, Spain, Bolivia, Columbia, Pakistan, Brazil and the United Arab Emirates.
The Australian Federal Police had been monitoring the drug ring which operated without the knowledge of Min Lin.
Min Lin’s dream of a new life started when he became the first of the family to move to Australia.
A qualified engineer, he had arrived in 1989, aged 23, on a student visa after his parents borrowed the money to fund his continuing education.
Even as he studied, he worked as a welder and taxi driver and every week sent money home to repay his parents in Shenyang.
Classmates from Shenyang’s No.20 High School remembered him as cheerful, funny and honest friend who lived his life “wonderfully”.
In Sydney, lonely and a long way from home where he knew no one, Min befriended a fellow student, Lilly. Divorced after a short marriage, Lilly was studying science and later became Min Lin’s wife.
“In those days it was challenging for someone from China to come and work in a foreign city,” a family member, Erin Lin, told The Daily Telegraph after the murders.
“Having no friends here, they found love and company with each other.
“They gave each other support, the bond they established was very, very strong. Min was a very, very nice man, a great husband and a great partner. They were very much in love and they appreciated each other because they had been through those difficult days in their lives.”
In 1994, Min Lin could afford to bring his parents to Australia and bought them a unit in Merrylands, telling friends “that is what Asian families do, they look after their parents”.
Behind the counter of their busy newsagency, Min greeted customers with his disarming grin day-in and day-out for almost seven years.
While he was there opening up at 5am, Lilly fitted in school runs with their sons between working side-by-side with her husband.
As the couple built it up into a business turning over $1 million a year, they bought their two-storey family home for $575,000 and invested in two local commercial units. They were asset-rich and lived a comfortable life, but they were heavily mortgaged.
To Min’s brother-in-law Robert Xie however, the Lins looked like they had everything — and he hated it. Unlike Min, everything Xie touched turned to the proverbial.
He had never wanted to be a doctor but was pushed into it by his mother. He wanted to be an engineer and quit his job as an ear, nose and throat specialist to work in a shoe factory before following Min Lin to Australia. Kathy was an assistant to one of Cathay Pacific’s managers in Guangzhou.
In December 2001, Xie took over a former Sizzler restaurant in the Melbourne suburb of Berwick from the Foodstar chain and continued to trade as a buffet diner. But profits were down and Xie wanted to take the restaurant up-market.
He told the Migration Review Tribunal that with the Chinese restaurant business booming, he needed to bring in three Chinese chefs on work visas to create authentic cuisine.
In 2004, his application was refused after the tribunal said it was not satisfied he would upgrade the menu if he were successful. The restaurant closed and in 2006, the Xies moved to Sydney.
While Kathy worked with her brother, her in-laws just thought their son-in-law was lazy.
He was unemployed and spent most of his days at home nurturing his hatred for what he saw as the successful side of the family.
He had a unit and some land in China which gave him a comfortable income — he even boasted he was rich — but he felt humiliated because he was not afforded the respect he felt was due to him while Min was the family favourite.
In jail awaiting trial for the five murders, Xie was secretly recorded denigrating his in-laws as “poor people … they always try to take my face. In my culture face more important than money”. He called Min “shit”.
Amid the seven-day grind of running a business, Lilly Lin began a relationship of sorts with a man called Rob.
During a shift working in the shop in 2008, her father-in-law Yang Fei Lin discovered her diary entries as she dreamed in the pages of escape to another life “full of colour”.
“On my occasions he always considers things for me and my end … it is indeed not an easy thing to leave one’s family and children … I really hope I can have an income, this way I would not have so much pressure from my family,” she wrote in one entry about “Rob” in June 2008.
“He made my life full of colour and ups and downs, I would never feel lonely and bored, I am used to this existence.”
In another entry, she wrote: “This time I have a sense of relief.
“I seem to understand how the wait should be … just like what it says in the Bible, not to worry about tomorrow but to live each day well. Life is short. One day, one will say goodbye to all of this.”
Mr Lin senior told Xie’s murder trial that he had confronted his daughter-in-law and asked her who “Rob” was.
He said Lilly told him he was a man from “direct marketing” and promised to have nothing more to do with him if Mr Lin senior did not tell her husband. Her secret was kept until after the murders when Mr Lin senior told police about the diaries.
Detectives quickly discounted that “Rob” had anything to do with the murders.
A Nigerian national was arrested as a local link in the international drug syndicate using the newsagency’s post boxes and there was no evidence that was linked to the murders.
A letter addressed to Kathy Lin that arrived at the shop on October 7, 2009, purporting to be from the Triads and claiming Min Lin owed more than $128,000 for drugs was a hoax.
Police went back through the family’s history and even spoke to every one of the 950 people whose papers were delivered through the newsagency but there was nothing suggested as a motive.
Their only suspect was Robert Xie and he was arrested on May 5, 2011.
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