Chinese national Yang Zhao found guilty of murdering flatmate at Brisbane unit

A judge has extended the minimum non-parole period for a Brisbane man jailed for life after he murdered his flatmate and stashed her body in a toolbox for 10 months on their balcony.

Yang Zhao has been found guilty of killing 30-year-old Qiong Yan.

A man who killed his Brisbane flatmate, posed as her online, extracted hundreds of thousands of dollars from her mother – who he callously sent a cat video purportedly by the victim who was by this stage rotting in a toolbox – has been found guilty of murder.

Chinese national Yang Zhao, 30, was sentenced to life imprisonment with an extended minimum non-parole period of 22 years for the brutal murder of his “best friend” Qiong Yan in September 2020 in their Hamilton unit at the Newport complex on Parkside Circuit.

After hitting the 29-year-old with a gas bottle used to make whipped cream and strangling her to death Zhao bought a Dewalt toolbox to store her corpse on the balcony.

Posing as her on the popular Chinese messaging app WeChat he cruelly kept up contact with Ms Yan’s Shanghai-based mother in an effort to extract funds to maintain his high life-habits that included fast cars and expensive luxury goods, and to maintain a lie that her daughter was still alive.

Killer Yang Zhao pictured after his arrest in July 2021.

Justice Martin Burns also sentenced Zhao to the maximum five years for interference with a corpse, which will be served concurrently, with 1394 days of pre sentence custody declared as time already served.

SCROLL DOWN TO READ THE JUDGE’S FULL DAMNING SUMMARY

“The depth of your moral culpability and the horror of your criminal acts enlivens the discretion … as well as the absence of any remorse,” he said.

VICTIM’S MOTHER ‘FULL OF ANGER AND HATRED’

Ms Yan’s Mother Rongmei Yan broke down in tears in court, while the killer remained unemotional.

She gave evidence about the devastating deceit waged by the killer and refused to leave the courtroom when graphic autopsy photos of her daughter were displayed.

Ms Yan’s mother Rongmei Yan, who temporarily lost her ability to walk on news of her daughter’s death, said the killer’s “vile and ruthless” actions had destroyed her world.

“I still cannot accept the fact my daughter is gone,” Mrs Yan said through tears in her victim impact statement that she read from the witness box through an interpreter.

“I’m still full of anger and hatred.

“Everyday I live in a deep abyss.”

Mrs Yan said she had been left devastated to learn her daughter’s killer was the person she had been communicating with in 2,500 WeChat messages over a 10-month period.

“At the time she’s already become a skeleton,” she said.

“She saw him as a friend … never imagining this trust will be used as a weapon against her.”

KILLER POSED AS HIS VICTIM

The court heard Mrs Yan had been left with nothing after Zhao, while posing as her daughter, duped her into transferring $463,000 into accounts he controlled.

This money had come from a compensation payment Mrs Yan received for property relocation in China.

Ms Yan, who eventually grew suspicious that the person she was messaging was not her daughter and caused a missing-person report to be filed in NSW, attended every day of Zhao’s murder trial in Brisbane’s Supreme Court.

After a missing-person report, police contacted Zhao who told them he’d heard from Ms Yan a few days earlier and she owed him $4000 in rent money and that she had moved to Melbourne, the court heard.

Police also contacted Ms Yan on WeChat in April 2021 telling her to present at a police station to which Zhao, posing as her the victim, agreed before apologising when the victim failed to turn up.

“Sorry to waste your time and resources I’m fine. My mother is looking for me because she thinks I spent too much of her money. It’s family problem,” Zhao posing as Ms Yan messaged police.

On the day the missing person report was filed Zhao messaged Mrs Yan, who by this stage was demanding a video call so she could establish proof of life of her daughter, a video of a woman’s hand petting Ms Yan’s cat Anchun, which has never been located.

With the missing person investigation in full swing and police in both Brisbane and Sydney, where Zhao had relocated, looking for her, detectives finally caught up with the killer in July 2021.

However police didn’t yet believe Ms Yan was dead and NSW detectives who were interviewing Zhao at his Sydney believed he may have been helping her hide from police.

Messages from Zhao meant the murder victim’s mother Rongmei Yan, left, believed she was alive for some time after her death. Picture: NewsWire / John Gass

Simultaneously Brisbane detectives had obtained a Missing Person warrant allowing to them access to the Hamilton unit Ms Yan had shared with Zhao.

Once inside the unit Det Sgt Tammy Storey said she noticed the tool chest on the balcony. What turned out to be little prayer bags on the locks caught her eye.

When she opened the tool chest the smell was immediate. She saw a human foot and immediately declared the unit a crime scene before frantically calling NSW police who at that very moment were chatting to Zhao.

Bodyworn camera footage showed the moment NSW detectives, who were talking to Zhao, informed him they had just been told Ms Yan’s body had been found in the tool chest and arrested him.

In the car ride back to the station Zhao asked police whether he had been convincing in posing as his victim online.

In that car ride and in two subsequent police interviews Zhao told police he killed Ms Yan, at her request, after they had spent the night inhaling laughing gas through creaming bulbs or nangs.

Zhao said they talked about dying but Ms Yan was trying to convince him not to kill himself, he claimed.

Forensic officers involved in the investigation of Qiong Yan’s death. Picture: Brad Fleet

“She’s been trying to convince me to kill her and she promised me she would give me all the information she needs to pay my money back and she asks me to pretend to be her too, to use her phone to talk to the mother.

He told police that Ms Yan owed him $500,000 through loans and commissions from introducing clients to her migration business.

Zhao said he smashed her over the head with a whipped cream bottle.

“I asked her to sit on the floor … and she asked me to do it as fast as quick I can to smash on her head but I wasn’t strong enough. She struggled and asked me to choke her. She said why don’t you choke me.”

“I was freaking out,”

“I’m thinking, if I give up now, she, you know, after I smash her head, she goes very ugly, and her head was, yeah, changed shape. And so I think if I stop now, she’ll be ugly in the rest of her life.

Over the following months posing as her on Chinese messaging app WeChat Zhao said he got

Ms Yan’s mother to transfer about 1.5 million Chinese Yuan to currency exchanges.

Ms Yan’s body was found in a toolbox on the balcony of an apartment she shared with Zhao. Picture: Brad Fleet

In court Zhao changed his story saying he never touched Ms Yan and after a night of gassing he found her dead on the floor of their lounge room.

He panicked and decided not to call for help or report her death because he was scared of getting into trouble for supplying the nitrous oxide they’d inhaled

He claimed that he had given three false confessions about killing Ms Yan, initially to police, because he wanted the death penalty as he was ashamed of his conduct in covering up her death, putting her body in a toolbox and fooling her mother.

The jury by its verdict of guilty rejected this far fetched story.

After just less than two hours of deliberating the jury found he had murdered Ms Yan.

At the start of his trial Zhao pleaded guilty to interfering with Ms Yan’s corpse.

Crown prosecutor Chris Cook sought the court extend the minimum non parole period to beyond 20 years for the “senseless murder” and the “appalling” treatment of Ms Yan’s body after she was killed.

“The jury seemingly accepted that Mr Zhao killed Ms Yan for his own selfish reasons, sought to profit from her death and he did,” Mr Cook said.

He asked for 22 years non-parole while Mr Hoare suggested it be 21 years.

Justice Burns remarked that count 2 – interference of a corpse – could be among the worst for that offence.

“Over 2500 WeChat messages posing as Ms Yan which ended in a vile way when he decided he would end the pretence by trying to upset Ms Yan’s mother so … posing as (Ms Yan) saying she had resorted to all sorts of misconduct including drug use causing enormous distress to Mrs Yan,” he said.

KILLER’S SINGULAR MOTIVE WAS ‘NAKED GREED’

Justice Burns said Zhao had killed his victim “in the most brutal of ways” after learning of the payment her mother received from the Chinese government.

“You were a gambler. You were obsessed with money,” he said.

“You decided to murder Ms Yan to gain access to those funds, as well as money in Ms Yan’s accounts and perhaps also ownership of a motor vehicle worth just over $300,000.

“You then embarked on what was to become a long cause of conduct stretching over almost 10 months, in which you acted in the most despicable ways.”

With Ms Yan’s lifeless body still on the floor of their apartment Zhao rifled through her papers to gain access to her phone, messaging her mother and later placing her body in the tool chest.

“Your singular motive for the murder of Ms Yan and the concealment of her body – naked greed – was thereby realised,” Justice Burns said.

“You got your hands on approximately $500,000 which you then seem to rapidly dissipate, because I’m told, you have nothing left to show for it.”

As a result Mrs Yan had been left penniless.

Zhao’s arrest in Sydney after Ms Yan’s body was found. Picture: 9News

“Not only have you consigned her to a lifetime of grieving, you drained all of her available money, and as far as I can go, she has been left destitute … with no realistic prospect of recovering anything from you,” Justice Burns said.

With Ms Yan rotting in a toolbox overlooking the Brisbane River Zhao continued to live a life “not affected in the least by the commission of your terrible crimes.”

Zhao’s plea of guilty to interference of Ms Yan’s corpse was not an indication of remorse because it “formed an essential part of the false narrative you shamelessly advanced at your trial”.

“Your attempts throughout the trial to avoid the consequences of your conduct are almost as reprehensible as your conduct between the date of Ms Yan’s murder and your apprehension,” Justice Burns said.

“You have no remorse, and I should say, you seem to be devoid of any empathy for Mrs Yan, whose suffering was only compounded by the need for her to give evidence at this trial.”

While the autopsy was unable to find a cause of death due to Ms Yan’s advanced decomposition Justice Burns found she died by strangulation on the evidence heard at trial.

Concealing her body in the tool chest was part of the “complex subterfuge” Zhao engaged in and formed the basis of the charge of interfering with a corpse.

“I regard what you did in this respect to be amongst the worst category of cases, it is deserving of the maximum penalty,” Justice Burns said.

Zhao shook his head at times but otherwise did not react through the sentence.

Originally published as Chinese national Yang Zhao found guilty of murdering flatmate at Brisbane unit