Meth Mean found guilty of murder of Ranny Yun in Springvale home in 1987
A man who got away with the brutal murder of 27-year-old Ranny Yun for more than three decades has finally been brought to justice after being found guilty today of killing the seamstress at her Springvale home in 1987.
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A man who got away with the brutal cold case murder of Ranny Yun for more than three decades has finally faced justice.
Meth Mean is facing life behind bars after he was today found guilty of killing the 27-year-old seamstress at her Springvale home on October 15, 1987.
The unanimous jury verdict comes after two days of deliberations and a month-long Supreme Court trial where shocking details of Ms Yun’s death were revealed.
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Ms Yun’s bloodied and naked body was found in the sewing room of her house.
She had been bashed over the head with a wooden block into an unconscious state, before her throat was slit so severely she had almost been decapitated.
The crime had remained unsolved until police made a DNA breakthrough and arrested Mr Mean in Western Australia in November 2017.
He denied any involvement in her death and even tried to point the finger at his father, Muy Mean, who had died a year earlier.
When questioned why his DNA matched semen found on Ms Yun’s body, he claimed he became aroused and masturbated on her when he found her dead naked body.
The jury’s guilty verdict means they did not accept his version of events.
They were also not deterred by the different potential suspects thrown up by Mr Mean’s lawyer Anthony Lewis, including Ms Yun’s husband Kuy Hieang Thong.
Mr Thong, now 71, vehemently denied any involvement in his wife’s death when giving evidence over three days of the trial.
Mr Thong and Ms Yun married after meeting in a Malaysian refugee camp where she was caring for his grandmother after fleeing conflict in Cambodia.
Mr Mean’s father Muy Mean was the uncle of Mr Thong.
It was Mr Thong who helped the Mean family migrate to Australia in the mid-1980s.
Just weeks before Ms Yun was killed she had stayed with the Mean family while her husband was overseas.
While police could not prove any motive for the killing, Crown prosecutor Nanette Rogers told the jury there was no doubt Mean intended to kill his victim.
“There was an intention to kill her, and that intention was carried out very effectively and very gruesomely,” Dr Rogers said.
She said Mean’s lies and changing accounts to police about what happened on the afternoon of the day Ms Yun was killed discounted his credibility.
On his arrest, he told police he went to Ms Yun’s property after school and found his father there alone with her.
He said he had a drink and left after five minutes.
But when confronted with the forensic evidence, Dr Rogers said Mean gave “a bizarre story” about how he later returned and was aroused and defiled her body.
He was never a suspect in the homicide investigation until the DNA sample found the semen was 100 billion times more likely to be his than anyone else’s.
Mr Lewis had told the jury they could not find Mr Mean killed Ms Yun beyond reasonable doubt as there were other suspects police had not ruled out.
He told them her husband was more likely to be the killer as he had a motive to want to be with his secret mistress who had fathered his child only two months earlier.
Another theory police did not rule out, Mr Lewis said, was that Ms Yun’s death was motivated by her association with the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, in the mass murders in Cambodia in the 1970s.
She also could have been killed by someone over an unpaid loan, as she was known to loan money to people and host gambling events at her home, Mr Lewis said.
But the jury discounted all of this.
Their decision brings to an end a long wait for justice for Ms Yun’s family, who wiped away tears in court as the word “guilty” was read out.
Mean will return to court for a pre-sentence hearing on May 29.
Justice Jane Dixon will then sentence him at a later date.