Sole survivor: Brenda Lin's harrowing story of betrayal and murder | 7NEWS Spotlight

[Music] i'd go to um my friend's house and you see their parents and with their families and i know that i would never have that you'd see sometimes you know as teenagers children fight with their families and i'd be mad i'd give anything to have my family back whenever i see families now i sort of smiled myself and i think it's absolutely lovely and but it's also very bittersweet it it reminds me of what i don't have and probably never will [Music] police emergency earthquake what's wrong with you someone died i'm not sure why do you think someone's dying i'm not sure if they're thinking someone killed my friend my brother's [Music] in one unthinkable night in this middle-class suburban house on sydney's leafy north shore australia's most horrific family massacre five members of brenda lynn's family bludgeoned to death in their bedrooms [Music] brenda's mum lily her father mim her little brothers henry and terry and her aunt irene brenda was 15 her family's only survivor and the person she turned to for help and a safe home was her uncle robert even on the wall there was blood [Music] on the bed yes brenda had no idea what he'd done or how much danger she was in my goodness she was living with her family's murderer that is just yet another awful aspect of an awful tale he was someone i trusted tonight for the first time brenda confronts the awful truth about what happened and why did he ever hurt you um this terrible tragedy is also a story of love and hope how a young girl who lost her entire family her life shattered her heart broken managed to emerge strong loving and grateful forever thankful to all the people who rescued her your identity has been suppressed yes it has why do you want to come out now because i started off being really bitter and just i didn't like what happened to me i was i blamed know the world how could there be such horrible people in this world throughout that journey a lot of really really amazing people just everyday people who've reached out a helping hand and and it's really changed my life in the way that i see things it's changed my perspective on life and on people as well the lynn family's life in australia is typical of so many migrant success stories brenda's mum and dad lily and min migrated from china as students they met in sydney and fell in love your dad an absolutely amazing person he's probably the most hardworking person i know tell me about your mum she was always with us at home we'd cook together or she'll take us to the park and she spent a lot of time with us and very very loving lily and min worked hard saved hard and began a family brenda was their firstborn next came henry he really loved tennis in badminton and very outgoing a very cheery person someone you just would you know automatically friends with and easy to talk to and very much like my dad i think in that sense and three years later terry was born he used to follow me around everywhere and i definitely felt like the big bossy sister all three of us had very similar interests and now we used to all sit on the couch and read books together we'd read the same books and so we'd talk about them afterwards oh no we'd sit in front of the tv and i'll play play games and we each have a control and be reversing each other and wanting to win and all that so it was good it was very very fun yeah lilly's sister brenda's aunt irene also moved into their two-story family house at epping she helped out by working part-time with the family's thriving news agency the business kept brenda's dad min busy seven days a week he's worked really hard and everything he's done was for this family was to give me and my brothers the best education possible for us to have the best possible life and have everything that he didn't have when he was a child there were also regular family get-togethers with brenda's aunt kathy and uncle robert he was an ear nose and throat specialist in china and after migrating to australia opened a restaurant in melbourne which failed they moved to sydney just around the corner from the lynn family uncle robert would play badminton with brenda's brother henry my uncle was also good at good at badminton he was going over there on daily basis during school holidays to practice with him on the surface uncle robert was a caring and loving relative as a child you're brought up being told that no your family are amazing people your parents always right there the people you look up to and you know definitely don't know there are bad people in the world and bad things happen in the world but your family is definitely not one of them they'll always be there to to protect you and they're people that you can rely on but uncle robert was not all that he seemed he was secretly jealous of the success of brenda's family and their news agency he also harbored unspeakable desires the target his niece brenda she had no idea i felt like i knew my uncle and he's this amazing guy he's my family in july 2009 brenda was in year 10 at one of sydney's leading public high schools quiet studious i've had a look at past reports and she even then had a very close group of friends and worked very well and cooperative with other students but a very intelligent girl as part of her studies brenda signed up for a school excursion to practice french in new caledonia the night before leaving she recalls being nervous and excited i hugged my mother i told her i'd miss her a lot went back upstairs went back into bed got out of bed went to go see henry which was he was in the room opposite me and tell him i'd miss him a lot as well and that no have fun without me but i'll be back soon by that time terry was already asleep irene was in her room as well i didn't want to disturb her i thought look it's going to be a week it's going to go by so ridiculously fast i'll be back before they even know it the next morning her dad min drove brenda to the airport where her school friends were saying emotional goodbyes to their parents a lot of them were in tears saying they would miss them a lot and and as a teenager and i was trying to be cool and i was thinking i know you guys are just being absolutely ridiculous so i also my dad stood next to me and sort of stood there awkwardly sort of looked at him and i didn't say anything i didn't say anything to him i just would have watched everyone else be emotional and i thought it was ridiculous and [Music] then we all left and that's the last time i saw him i i didn't get to say thank you for being an amazing father oh and you get to tell him i loved him and that was the last time i talked to him i just wish i told him that he's an amazing person and thank you for doing doing everything for us and i never told him that i was grateful never taught him i loved it never be able to either [Music] [Music] the lynn family home sits at the end of a long driveway in the middle class sydney suburb of epping brenda's mom dad her two brothers and aunt irene were asleep in the early hours of july 18 2009 brenda was overseas in new caledonia on a school trip it's going to be a week it's going to go by so ridiculously fast i'll be back before they even know it the first inkling that something was wrong was when the family news agency didn't open brenda's auntie kathy and uncle robert lived just across the park about 300 meters away from the lynn family home down this driveway they were the first to come here that morning police emergency what's wrong [Music] you can see the place right i saw my sister-in-law lying on the bed and i also saw the uh blood marks on the wall in three bedrooms with five bodies all of brenda's family had been brutally murdered my sister lying maybe a part of bodies out of bed and and also that besides that one is i think maybe my brother but i i can't see any hand leg or um head or any part of my brother's body the bodies were found by a family member just before 10 this morning the cause of death is yet to be established and the bodies remain in situ news of the massacre quickly spread brenda was in new caledonia with a girlfriend looking at facebook one of my friends sent over a link to a news article and it had a photo of my house and i go to chao that's my house it was such so it was such a surreal sort of feeling it i didn't believe it it's not possible it's someone else i i don't know i was i was just in so much shock immediately my phone started ringing from parents in the community and teachers who live in the community to ensure that i was aware that it was one of our families and i will never forget that day the principal of brenda's school susan bridge began arranging help and support for her year 10 student my first thought was brenda um i knew she was overseas and i wanted to make sure that she was she was safe [Music] brenda caught the next flight home we got to send the airport and the police met us there walked us through through this room and there was my aunt and uncle and cousin as soon as i saw my aunt she gave this to me this massive hug she was crying as well that's when i knew it was all real at the crime scene in epping police were piecing together how the calculated and brutal attack had unfolded brenda's mum and dad lily and min were bludgeoned to death with a hammer-like object as they slept the killer moved quickly down the hallway to aunt irene's room and bashed her to death then the killer turned on twelve-year-old henry and nine-year-old terry they both woke up during the attack henry was killed with three blows to the head terry fought back and was struck six times anything you may say or do will be recorded on dvd video and audio and may later be using evidence of court do you understand that yeah uncle robert had discovered the crime scene with his wife kathy how long was it before you noticed the blood he was interviewed extensively by police his car was seized and within a few weeks he and his wife were running the lynn family news agency during police interrogations uncle robert claimed he was horrified by the murders trying to stop kathy to look at this thing i don't want to have to work to look sad things yeah that's what i want why was that [Music] scary it was scary it doesn't bear the hallmarks of a typical home invasion in that we haven't established that anything was stolen from the home [Music] detectives suspected the killer had a key to the house knew its layout and knew the family well uncle robert even made an appeal to catch the killer people haven't experienced this cannot feel what we are experiencing if anyone can help please contact the police uncle robert was among the hundreds of mourners at the funeral the enormity of the tragedy evident in a slow painful procession of five coffins brenda recorded a message for the service mom where are you why did you leave now that you have gone who am i going to share my secrets with who is going to fuss over me every single day i miss you i miss you so much do you remember thinking through that do you remember doing it recording it i remember recording it and and i remember just not knowing what to say it was just so soon after and there's lots of things i want to say to them but i think at that time i was really very i don't know if anger is the right word they're very upset that they left me behind [Music] i was just so amazed by the turnout how the school had organized and robust to take all the girls there and just the amount of loving people that came up came up to me hugged me and i remember everyone just a lot of us linking arms and comforting each other and um i thought that was like really nice we were just stuck we're all stuck together you can't you can't like like replace what's been lost like you can't take the brokenness out of a situation we kept being friends we did it as best as we could [Music] i've been to funerals before i've wept for people i've never seen such raw grief in my life um it was torrential grief um it was overwhelming grief her grandparents were distraught and while i'm absolutely respected it was very moving but there was no room in that grief for a 15 year old girl i eat saying they were torn apart by grief it was distressing to to watch um and impossible not to be moved by going to the cemetery and on the headstone they're all and i won't be there with them the murders had left brenda an orphan where was she going to live i really wanted to go home also just imagining myself living there on my own for the rest of my life i don't know why but everybody wanted to go home we went there but it was just so scary working in being there when it got dark i think i pictured i imagined what might have happened at night all the furniture the beds were gone and with blood on it was cleaned and gone and you just knew that something had happened in there and yeah it just reminds you of it brenda was just 15 too young to live alone so she moved in here to the family she felt closest to her aunt kathy and uncle robert brenda had no idea she was now living under the same roof as the killer five members of the lynn family are dead the killer has not been found the sole survivor brenda lynn contemplates returning to live in the home but she's 15 and needs someone to care for her [Music] she moved just across the park here into the home of aunt kathy and uncle robert my aunt and uncle they were the substitute family i had and i lived with them for a long time they took me to school made my school lunches if i needed anything done they'd help me out they were the next best thing to my family but school principal susan bridge had serious doubts about who brenda had chosen to live with she'd witnessed a disturbing encounter between brenda and her uncle robert [Music] he was so physically very close and face only this far away speaking loudly rapidly in chinese brenda with her head bowed down tears falling down it was clear he was trying to get her to agree to something i did feel that i had seen a sign of robert that was a potentially dangerous side what did you say to your husband that night when you went home i think i've spent all day with a murderer she told me she went home and said to her husband that night i just had lunch with a murderer she knew then how did she know it was definitely not a murder in my eyes and he was just an uncle a family guy that was it a year after the murders uncle robert had become a prime person of interest to the homicide investigators have you got any idea who may have been responsible for the murders i don't know have you thought about who may have been responsible bloody footprints at the crime scene matched the size and style of the pair of asic's ge elevation joggers owned by uncle robert the only bedroom where there were no bloody footprints was brenda's suggesting the killer must have known she was not at home at the time i just got a gut feeling that he was a dangerous person and i was very worried for brenda's safety i did share those with the police but that was all i could do i mean what else could i do susan introduced brenda to a lawyer patrick parkinson he too began to suspect uncle robert even though brenda didn't think it was possible i think she didn't believe he was it could have been guilty um for a very very long time and i'm sure that that was um an important mechanism for her to cope with it with it all how could one believe that your uncle has murdered the rest of you of your family but evidence against the uncle was mounting police installed cameras in his home and recorded him destroying a shoebox that matched the shoes worn by the killer they put some secret cameras into the house and there was evidence of him taking that shoe box and cutting that up and flushing it down the toilet and in uncle robert's garage under a chest of drawers one of the most damning pieces of evidence a smear of human genetic material known as stain 91 it matches the dna of several of the victims according to the best expertise the prosecution could bring forward at least seem to indicate the mixed dna of four of the victims on may 5 2011 nearly two years after the lynn family murders brenda's uncle robert z was arrested he was surprised i think to be have the police arrive at his door an absolute shock i knew he didn't do it because he's a family member and he i knew him but during the first trial brenda was forced for the first time to confront all of the evidence police had gathered against her uncle the blood in the garage the footprints matching his shoes the knowledge of the house and the uncle was secretly recorded in jail confessing to a cellmate that he'd sedated his wife kathy in order to sneak out of their house unnoticed realizing that he might be involved with something that was life changing something that was yeah completely eye-opening is there anything else you want to tell me about him things he may have done how he ever made you feel i think at the times after the murders he and as a teenager myself i was very insecure very i didn't know what i was doing and and he knew that he read it very well uncle robert had taken advantage of brenda at her most vulnerable and in the most despicable way but she found the strength to trust her lawyer with the shocking truth she revealed uncle robert had been sexually abusing her since before the murders brenda revealed something that she didn't think was relevant to the uh murder trial um but which i thought was and so i think the trial judge had no choice but to start the trial all over again on the opening day of the second trial sensational new evidence the prosecution claims robert z's motive for murder was his sexual obsession with his niece he killed her whole family everyone she loved so brenda would be forced to live under his roof did your uncle robert z sexually abuse you yes he did and it that's something that i'm not very i'm very private about and something that at this point in time i don't feel comfortable talking about as well so i hope people can respect that and respect my privacy and you know at one point in time in the future maybe i will be able to talk about it i just with everything that happened to you with everything you were going through i can't begin to imagine just how it made you feel at this point in time i haven't quite processed it properly and i don't even know how i'm i'm meant to feel about this or how i meant to describe what how it's affected me do you remember the moment you realised that maybe this was part of his motivation to do what he did for a moment i did think that but i also don't think that something like this would warrant him to kill five people i don't know what goes through his mind and i can't be sure i don't think i ever will be sure about why he was motivated to do what he did justice would take years the second trial was aborted when the judge fell ill the third trial ended in a hung jury and uncle robert being released on bail i'm grateful to be home and i'll continue to fight for my finishes at about 10 am in january this year the jury in the fourth trial convicted robert z of five murders you are sentenced to imprisonment for life brenda's evidence of sexual abuse had been suppressed by the court it was finally addressed by the judge earlier this month as she sentenced robert z to five life terms in jail the court was told that he was driven to commit the unthinkable crime by a sick and depraved obsession with brenda first the offender's sexual interest in miss ib as evidenced by his sexual interest in her before the murders and his serialized sexual abuse of her after the murders when as i have noted upon the death of all members of her immediate family she became a member of his household do you feel relieved that it's out there people know i'm not quite sure yet because everyone who knew me before the murders or were close to me after know already but it's still fairly strange having all these people who know so much more about me the love for you from people who don't even know you is extraordinary it is indeed um i i wasn't expecting it i've been on on on the internet and just having a look at through all of them and some of the comments are just so lovely i don't think i've seen one bad comment so that's been very very encouraging to me and also is it not wanting to have this define who you are because you are so much more than what happened to you i hope that's the case i hope people can see that as well [Music] brenda lin is on a pilgrimage to guangzhou china retracing her family's past the family massacred by her uncle seven years ago that's so loud oh here comes the smoke this is where her parents min and lily are from brenda's come here to honor their memory does it make you feel a little more connected to your family heritage being here oh definitely so um to understand it a little bit more and understand the environment they grew up in and i think through that you could understand what sort of people they were like and maybe the life they might have had as well so it means a lot to me that no i can still connect with it in yeah some sort of form [Music] one of the things i noticed the most was whenever you speak to me about your family you talk about them in the present tense i realize that too as well because i like to think they're still here and still still are with me today yeah i hope they're looking down at me and still seeing how i'm going and but it's hard because they're not physically here with you [Music] you've seen humanity at its worst yeah and you've also experienced and seen humanity at its best i have but it took amazing people in the wider community who've done amazing things and i've seen that the majority of humanity being i think i've seen the good in people [Music] back in sydney it's a relief to see brenda can still be a happy young woman with her old school mates once brenda came back after everything had happened we all just really looked after each other which was really nice special under this tree after the murders beck and pip were part of brenda's group in the simplest ways they helped her through the darkest of times treating her just as normal was the only way we knew how and just felt right just to do normal teenage things just hang out watch movies and do makeup and hang out as we'd always done it just felt really right these friends have remained close to brenda in the years since her uncle robert murdered her family his wife her aunt kathy still refuses to believe he's guilty he is innocent we believe he is innocent we are keeps fighting for him i was very hurt and disappointed by that because when i when i gave evidence i didn't i told the truth and she used to send me messages saying that he was innocent he's being framed by the police i hope one day she can realize that all i did was tell the truth she's better off not with him a key person in brenda's journey back to some kind of normal life is her high school principal susan bridge how have you been i've been fine take a seat let's catch up yes definitely she talks with brenda regularly about life family and the future i learned as much from brenda as anything i may have given her what did you learn from brenda i was always worried that she wouldn't remember how to love that that that would be something that was also taken from her i needn't have worried she she taught me that love is the most important thing helping brenda to feel love and trust again is her new best friend skye a one-year-old husky you know i do everything with her i take her with me everywhere it's like looking after a little kid sometimes and she's family and with dogs the great thing about them is that you know they'll always love you and they don't have any other agenda and that's something i've been worried about for a long time with people and being cautious about that with people dogs just genuinely love you for who you are and they're there for you so this guy is great she's probably one of the best decisions i've made in my life [Music] a few days ago a small but very special gathering of friends they've come together to celebrate the beginning of a new chapter in brenda's life just by all that she's been through she's been able to help so many people already and i know she'll like help so many people in the future as well just by sharing her story brenda's just been such a great encouragement to us saying things to us like hope is the only thing that keeps everyone living and brenda's former school principal susan bridge wouldn't miss this for anything hello darling i have said to her some time ago now that it is my dearest wish that one day she will invite me to her wedding and that one day i can attend the christening of her child because she will make a wonderful mother and she will start a fabulous family susan bridge tells me she can't wait to be invited to your wedding if that ever happens that'd be yeah lovely because it's um things like this where no graduations weddings where traditionally you've got your family there so it'd be really sad no one came but as in it reminds me i think times like that makes me miss them the most because it reminds you so much that they're not there but dad min mom lily little brothers terry and henry and aunt irene are never far from brenda's thoughts how do you honor them i like to be someone they're proud of i think just doing the things they would have wanted me to do and would have liked me to have done so how do you see your future what what do you want to do i'm sure that i would like to do something to help other people in the future i want to be able to show kindness to people to others the way they've shown kindness to me because it's made a very very big impact to who i am now and what i have now and i'm extremely extremely grateful he is four years into his punishment for killing the lynn family so what is time for robert z when he's serving five life sentences a course of offending that can only be described as heinous in the extreme it took four trials spanning three years to secure the convictions and ten minutes for him to learn he was unsuccessful in appealing against them the appeal court did not accept that a miscarriage of justice occurred zee maintains he didn't kill his brother-in-law min lin his wife lily their two boys henry and terry and lilly's sister irene in their north epping home in 2009 and claims he had no intention of taking over the family business so his lawyers lodged an appeal criticizing the expert evidence provided on staying 91 a small blood spot which contained dna from four of the five victims found in zee's garage it was misleading or confusing to the jury causing prejudice but the appeals court did not agree robert z appeared via video link from jail and put his head in his hands when the judges handed down their decision his only and final option now would be to appeal the convictions in the high court will you be going to the high court his wife kathy would not say her niece and soul survivor brendolin sat meters behind her in court a once close family split by greed and bloodshed leonie ryan 7 news you

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Id: i3yC76a8TdQ

Length: 43min 4sec (2584 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 16 2021