How ‘Stain 91’ found in Xie’s garage 10 months after brutal murders condemned him as the killer
THE EVIDENCE: The discovery of ‘Stain 91’ in Robert Xie’s garage 10 months after the brutal murders of five members of his family was pivotal to his conviction. But it wasn’t the only mistake he made.
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STAIN 91 was the blood smear that Robert Xie forgot about, the mark on the floor in a corner of his garage that confirmed him to be a murderer.
The mysterious spot contained the mingled DNA of four of the five victims of one of the country’s worst mass murders — Xie’s brother-in-law Min Lin, 45, and his sister-in-law Lilly Lin, 43, their sons Henry, 12, and his brother Terry, nine, and Lilly’s sister Irene Yin, 39.
Called “Stain 91” during Xie’s murder trial, the dark-grey, brown discolouration on the concrete floor measured just 2cm by 6cm.
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It was found by forensic scientist Jae Gerhard and two of her colleagues searching on their hands and knees after they moved a tallboy in the southwestern corner of the garage.
The breakthrough in the murder investigation came during a search of Xie’s house on May 12 and 13, 2010, 10 months after the family was bludgeoned to death in the bloody attack in their house just 300m away around the corner.
Xie’s murder trial was told that the stain was found when the forensic experts used “white light”. Using two chemicals including a reagent called Otol, they dipped a swab on to the stain and got a “strong instant” reaction which led one of them to say: “We’ve got something here.”
Crown prosecutor Kate Ratcliffe told the jury that Ms Gerhard, an expert in blood stain pattern analysis, believed it was a transfer stain from coming into contact with an object like “clothing, a weapon or a bag” wet with blood.
In January 2011, the then-head of the homicide investigation, Detective Inspector Chris Olen, got the call that he later said “answered all our prayers”. The forensic laboratory had analysed the sample and found it contained the DNA of Min Lin, his sons Henry and Terry and sister-in-law Irene.
Stain 91 was the last link police needed to prepare a brief of evidence and on May 5, 2011, Xie was arrested and charged with the murders.
He had not been the first suspect — that was Min Lin himself.
About 10.20 or 10.30pm on July 17, 2009, Robert Xie dropped his nephews off at home after they had dinner with their paternal grandparents, Yang Fei Lin and Feng Qing Zhu, in Merrylands.
Henry was going to stay the night but decided to go home because he had badminton arranged for the Saturday morning. When they got home to Boundary Rd, Epping, their parents and their mother’s sister Irene were already in bed. Henry used his computer for a while before going to bed.
Xie drove around the corner to Beck St where his wife Kathy, Min Lin’s sister, was at home. Her evidence was that they went to bed about 2am.
The next morning, Kathy got a number of calls to say her brother had not opened the newsagency and they drove around to the Lin’s house where the power had been turned off. Up the carpeted stairs, they opened the main bedroom where Xie grabbed his wife from behind and told her: “Don’t look.”
That was his first mistake, according to the prosecution. He showed he had prior knowledge of the horrors that were inside because from where he was, he had no line of vision to the bed.
There was blood all over the bedroom and Lilly Lin was lying on the bed, naked apart from her panties which were inside out. Next to her, the doona was lumped up.
In the second bedroom were the boys Henry and Terry which was where Xie made his second mistake, the prosecution said.
Despite being a trained medical specialist, he made no attempt to check if the boys were dead, notwithstanding his fondness for Henry. Irene was found dead in another bedroom.
Xie left his wife to call triple-0 when, wailing hysterically, she was heard telling her husband: “I’m more scared than you.” He drove off, leaving her alone before police and ambulance officers arrived despite not knowing if there was still an armed killer in the house or in the area and despite his wife’s treaties for him to stay with her. That was mistake number three.
The prosecution said he left to go home to Beck St and clean up evidence in his garage — mistake number four. Number five was that within two minutes of leaving Kathy, he rang his parents-in-law with the horrific story that their family had been wiped out — and told them to catch the train. He eventually went to pick them up after they insisted.
At Boundary Rd, emergency services found four members of the family dead — but they couldn’t find Min Lin anywhere in the house. Police thought that he was the brutal killer who had murdered his family in the dark of night and gone on the run, possibly still armed.
There was no evidence the house had been broken into and whoever had turned off the power had to know where the power box was at the side of the house. The evidence all pointed to someone who knew the house and the movements of the family well.
An alert was put out for Min Lin.
But on the prosecution case, Xie knew he was and this was where he made the next mistake. He and Kathy had accompanied her shocked parents to Hornsby Hospital and that afternoon he asked Kathy to call police and tell them that maybe they should look under the doona on the bed next to Lilly because she had a “feeling” about it.
They found Min Lin’s body under the doona, where Xie had covered it up. The prosecution said that Xie had told his wife to make the call. She denied that.
When police interviewed Xie as part of their routine inquiries, he inadvertently let it slip that he knew Min had been under the doona at a time when he would not have known, had he not been the killer. Then he tried to cover up his latest mistake by falsely attributing that information to a police officer.
In the Lin’s house, the killer had left a number of footprints on the blood-soaked carpet. Crime scene investigators did not recognise the pattern — it did not match any on the police databases.
They were matched to the distinctive sole of a 9½ Asics Gel-Evation shoe manufactured before 2005 — the exact shoe worn by Xie in a family photo from 2006.
When he discovered their interest in this shoe-type, the prosecution say he methodically and painstakingly cut the Asics shoe boxes in his possession into tiny bits, made a water-based mixture with them and flushed them down the toilet.
It was after this that the police search of Xie’s garage revealed the blood stain, which the prosecution said he had missed when he cleaned the floor. There was also evidence that it was his custom to sleep in on a Saturday morning, except on the morning of July 18, 2009 when he was up cleaning the garage before 9am.
In the Beck St house, police found an improvised massage device which was a piece of wood wrapped in elastic-banded cloth. The prosecution case was that there were “marked similarities” with the blood-soaked elastic-banded cloth found at the crime scene which “could not be explained by coincidence”.
Forensic officers believe the deadly attack was carried out with a hammer-like object wrapped in the cloth with a rope attached.
Charged on May 5, 2011 with the murders, Xie was refused bail and remanded to jail where he was befriended by a career criminal who went by the codename Witness A. The crook, who was well aware he could use this as leverage to get a lesser sentence, claimed Xie had told him he had secretly sedated his wife on the night of the murder so he could slip in and out of bed without her knowing.
Witness A got in touch with police and some of his damning conversations with Xie were recorded. Xie was heard to reveal his real attitude towards his brother-in-law, referring to Min Lin as “shit” and speaking in disparaging terms about him and the way he was killed.
Xie also revealed to Witness A his “Plan B” and gave him documents to enable a key to be cut to the Boundary Rd house which was to be planted in the home of someone he had not at that time determined. However that person was to be deceased and the key placed on him to deflect attention from Xie. He never got the chance to put that plan into action.
The jury that yesterday convicted him of all five murders was told that Xie had his own key to Boundary Rd, knew where the power box was and who was asleep in each of the bedrooms. After 2am on July 28, he soundlessly went into the house and first killed Min and Lilly Lin with a ferocity showing intense bitterness and hatred.
Irene and the boys were likely attacked after being woken by the noise. According to their post-mortems, Henry and Terry survived longer than the adults who died almost instantly.
Tellingly the fourth bedroom in the house was not disturbed, its door was not even opened. Only someone who knew the family well would have known that bedroom was empty. Xie had that information.
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