How couple fell prey to senseless urge to kill

A man told a friend he was experiencing urges to kill. A young couple in their Essendon apartment were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Yuqing Li and Ying Zhao were brutally murdered in their Essendon apartment.

• Rowland Legg is one of Victoria’s most experienced murder investigators. In a new series he delves into some of his strangest and most challenging cases.

Married couple Yuqing Li and his wife Ying Zhao, both 31 years of age, arrived in Australia from their homeland of China two and a half years before their deaths.

They moved into a unit in Essendon in April, 2004. It was there they were found deceased on May 10 that year. Li was found facedown in the loungeroom and Zhao in a similar position in a bedroom. Significant blood was present.

One of the usual initial inquiries revealed neither deceased had criminal convictions in this country.

Ms Zhao had not been at work on Friday May 7 or Monday May 10, so a friend and co-worker attended the home with her husband at 8.30pm on the 10th for a welfare check. A neighbour assisted in gaining entry to the locked unit and police were then called.

It is believed that neighbour was the last person, other than the killer, to see the couple alive. This sighting was on Thursday the 6th.

My crew members and I arrived with the crime scene examiners just after 10.30pm. We were satisfied both victims were fatally stabbed where they lay. Blood throughout the unit, including in the kitchen sink, bathroom basin and on towels and walls, indicated the offender had also bled, most likely as the result of wounds sustained during what appeared to be frenzied attacks.

Rowland Legg outside the apartment block where Yuqing Li and Ying Zhao were murdered.

Our attending blood expert believed it to be arterial blood and that indications were the offender was “wandering” and attempting to reduce his own bleeding after killing the couple. In the bedroom where Ms Zhao was found was a grey bloodstained jacket, suspected to belong to the offender and discarded. In the pocket was part of an ATM receipt dated 6/5/2004.

Two bloodied chef’s knives were also found near her body. The on-call pathologist who attended the scene observed that the weapons were consistent with having inflicted visible wounds to both deceased.

Autopsies later performed by him revealed that Mr Li had suffered in excess of nineteen stab wounds to the head, neck and upper body, while his wife had been stabbed some fifteen times, predominantly to the neck and upper body.

What was thought to be Mr Li’s mobile telephone was found in the toilet bowl. Ms Zhao’s was in her handbag. Both telephones were sent to our computer crime experts for analysis and a request submitted for call records.

The co-worker friend who discovered the bodies told us that the couple had been advertising for a boarder. They had accepted a male who she thought was Asian.

He would call Ms Zhao on her mobile telephone while she was at work, the last call being on May 5.

Li Yuking and Zhao Ying.

She said he had been provided with a key to the unit to enable him to bring in furniture. Our then Asian Crime Squad was also briefed and asked to assist.

We located a friend of a neighbour. He informed us he had seen an Asian male with bandaged hands walking from the direction of the victims’ unit on the afternoon of Friday May 7 when he was visiting the neighbour.

An affidavit and warrant were prepared for execution on the Commonwealth Bank to identify the holder of the account relating to the ATM receipt and recent transactions.

By 11am on May 11 we had reason to think we were on the right track. The subscriber for the mobile telephone calling Ms Zhao was 22-year-old Andrew Jek Kabo of Marine Parade, St Kilda.

Later the Kabo theory strengthened when the warrant executed on the Commonwealth Bank provided us with the name of the account holder relating to the ATM withdrawal receipt. It was Andrew Jek Kabo, 22 years of an address in Cardigan Street, Carlton.

Grieving relatives of murdered couple Yuqing Li and Ying Zhao.

Another transaction prior to the killings related to the purchase of two such chef’s knives. We were later told that shortly before the murders, Kabo had been seen playing with the knives at the college he was attending.

There had been a further transaction of interest to us. This had occurred at a “7-ELEVEN” store near Essendon on May 7. We obtained the related CCTV material showing Kabo. It indicated he was having difficulty in using his hands and the salesperson recalled they were bleeding.

Additional inquiries revealed he had arrived in Australia from Indonesia in February 2002 on a student visa and had recently been working at a restaurant in Albert Park. He was studying at an international college in Melbourne and it was on a notice board there that the advertisement for a boarder had been posted.

We later discovered his father was a medical specialist in Indonesia and he came from a respectable family.

All addresses we found for Kabo in Melbourne were checked, however he could not be located. Seven of the eight addresses we identified either did not exist or had been vacated by him.

We later discovered that the eighth, being in South Yarra, was where he was living at the time of the murders. The usual “keep a lookout for” details were circulated to all police members and an alert provided to national agencies should he attempt to leave the country.

A courtroom sketch of Andrew Jek Kabo. Picture: Joe Benke

Homicide Squad detectives bring in Andrew Jek Kabo.

After having the Chinese Consulate in Melbourne arrange for the notification of the families of Li and Zhao in China, we were informed there was a delay in family members being able to travel to Australia.

Through our Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Canberra we were able to arrange some justified queue-jumping. Obviously, family members wanted to view the bodies of their loved ones and settle matters in Australia.

Also counselling needed to be arranged for neighbours of the deceased couple, those who discovered the bodies and workmates of Kabo. Such matters and many others are being attended to in the background as the hunt for an offender continues.

On May 12 shortly after 11.30am a call came to us from an Australian Federal Police member at Melbourne Airport. Kabo was under observation at Customs, intending to board an international flight. The direction was then given to arrest him.

Later at the airport we went through the formalities with Kabo in his cell then returned him to our office for interview. He admitted having sat watching television with Mr Li on the afternoon of May 6. Without provocation he had then produced the knives and had commenced the attack.

He had then sat waiting in a chair beside the body until he heard Ms Zhao returning from work. She had then been taken to the second bedroom where he had repeatedly stabbed her also.

In an attempt to ascertain a motive, he was asked during his interview whether either victim did anything to upset him. He replied that was not the case, adding that they were lovely people.

Among the numerous statements taken in the course of the full investigation was that of a workmate of Kabo at the restaurant in Albert Park. This witness stated that several weeks prior to the murders Kabo had told him he was experiencing urges to kill someone.

The colleague told us he did not take this comment seriously as such a claim by Kabo appeared out of character.

We didn’t discover exactly why Kabo returned to the scene of the crimes on the day after he murdered Li and Zhao, however we believe he inflicted further wounds to his hands at that time.

He did admit to some of his wounds being intentionally self-inflicted. A theory was that this was driven by remorse and guilt.

Kabo was convicted at the Melbourne Supreme Court of two counts of murder and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment with a 20-year non-parole period.

He had pleaded not guilty on the grounds of mental impairment. This however was rejected. It is expected he will be deported after serving his sentence.

– with Mark Buttler

Rowland Legg is one of the state’s most experienced and respected murder investigators. By the time he retired in 2010, Mr Legg had worked for 18 years in the homicide squad, 15 of those as a senior-sergeant leading a crew of detectives. Mr Legg and his crew investigated some of the state’s biggest cases and others little known.