‘Neck scratches’: Chilling mugshot after ‘germaphobe’ student murdered by boyfriend over STI row
The mugshot of a posh student who murdered his ‘germaphobe’ girlfriend over an STI accusation has revealed a chilling detail.
A posh American student was pictured with scratches on his neck in his mugshot after stabbing his “germaphobe” girlfriend to death.
Joshua Michals was found guilty at the Old Bailey of murdering his girlfriend after claiming he killed her in self-defence after a furious row over an STI, The Sun reports.
Zhe Wang, 31, was found dead in her bedroom, lying in a pool of blood, on 20 March last year.
Her boyfriend Joshua Michals, 26, had called the emergency services saying there had been a “knife incident” at her flat in Hither Green, southeast London.
When police arrived, he said: ‘It’s not what it seems’.
He was seen in his police mugshot with four distinct scratches on his neck.
Ms Wang was obsessed with germs and cleanliness and had accused Michals of giving her an infection after she developed a rash.
He went to her flat to discuss it with her and killed her in a murderous rage.
The students had been seeing each other for six months but had slept together only once.
Ms Wang was studying an MA in Creative Writing and Education at Goldsmiths, University of London, and hoped to become a teacher, while Michals was doing an MA in filmmaking.
The victim was a self-confessed “germaphobe” and had spent days scrubbing and bleaching her flat before she moved in.
She met Michals while collecting her student ID card, and the pair began a relationship.
Ms Wang told him she wanted a life partner, but he did not see the relationship as anything serious.
The pair only had sex once, in February 2024, because of Ms Wang’s high standards of cleanliness.
Ms Wang had insisted on seeing Michals’ STI test results before the encounter.
She had taken the morning-after pill and became concerned about a rash on her body, which may have been a side effect.
Ms Wang told Michals she would rather die than get an infection and demanded he take another test.
When Michals refused, she accused him of ruining her life and threatened to seek help from the university.
On the day of the killing, Michals took food round to Ms Wang’s flat to make a charcuterie board to try and console her.
But a row broke out, and he stabbed her twice in the face and strangled her before leaving the flat.
He claimed that when he arrived at the flat, he went to the toilet and when he came out, Ms Wang was holding a knife and said she looked “crazy”, “demented” and “possessed”.
Michals said he wrestled the knife from her, but she came up behind him, and he stabbed her with the knife, leaving it in her face.
He claimed he then leaned on her neck, trying to restrain her until she stopped moving.
Ms Wang might have survived, but Michals spoke to his father and obtained details of solicitors before he called an ambulance later that night.
She was found face up on her bedroom floor with two stab wounds to the face and lying in a pool of blood by the police.
It was heard at court that she was alive for 30 to 60 minutes after the attack.
He denied murder but was convicted of the charge by an Old Bailey jury on Monday.
Chicago-born Michals claimed Ms Wang came at him with a knife, and he killed her accidentally while trying to protect himself.
His defence was privately funded by his parents – his father, David, is a vice president of sales strategy for a company in Chicago – they travelled from the United States to watch the trial.
Judge Richard Marks, the Common Serjeant of London, said he will sentence on a date to be fixed, which is convenient for Ms Wang’s family and Michals’ parents.
Michals, wearing a blue jumper with a white shirt underneath, leaned on the glass of the dock in front of him and clutched his chest as he was convicted by the jury before placing his head in his hands.
His parents looked to their son with vacant, pained expressions from the public gallery.
“This case concerns the killing of a young woman by a man she’d only been seeing for a few short months,” said prosecutor Henrietta Paget, KC.
“This was a brutal and savage attack. She was killed in her own bedroom.”
Michals told the court he was not looking for a life partner in Ms Wang, and it did not worry him that she told him she was.
He said he did not tell her he only wanted something casual, and that she would disinfect his sofa before sitting on it and clean his flat when she came to see him.
Ms Wang became frustrated that Michals was not making time for her and took the relationship more seriously than he did.
In February 2023, they agreed to have sex and Ms Wang sent him instructions on how to enter her flat, wash himself and the condom before coming to the bedroom where she would await him.
He said he went to her flat, where she had left the front door open for him and followed the instructions before going into her room, where they had sex.
Ms Wang became concerned about having an STI because of a rash she found, but Michals told her she would be fine.
After the horror incident, Michals put the knife, Ms Wang’s phone and the food he had brought in a bin bag and dumped it in the communal bins outside the flat before taking an Uber home.
“I wasn’t ready for it, and I didn’t see the rush,” Michals responded when he was asked why he didn’t call emergency services earlier.
Michals deleted his WhatsApp conversations with Ms Wang from his phone, but the police recovered them.
“She was a quiet and gentle person. Her tutor described her as funny, very organised and well turned out,” the prosecutor said while describing Ms Wang.
“She was a talented writer and keen to talk about her writing- wanting to complete a PHD and return to China.
“She was a reflective, insightful person interested in mindfulness and meditation.”
This article originally appeared in The Sun and has been reproduced with permission.
Originally published as ‘Neck scratches’: Chilling mugshot after ‘germaphobe’ student murdered by boyfriend over STI row
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