SOLVED: The Lin Family Murders

hey guys it's bella welcome back to my channel i hope you're all having an incredible day today in today's video we're going to be covering another mystery monday case it's a solved case and it's also an australian case which was really big here in australia a couple of years ago and it was described as one of the most gruesome grizzly crimes in new south wales history but before we get into the case i do want to thank caystify for sponsoring today's video i am so incredibly excited to be working with them again and i'm so incredibly excited to show you guys these incredible cases that are 100 compostable as well so this is obviously not the case this is the packaging the phone comes inside and it comes with this little card here that tells you how incredible your case is basically and the inside of your phone also tells you how incredible your case is so these are made from a bamboo based material they have absolutely no virgin plastic in them they are 100 compostable 100 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was 45 and mother yonlin known as lily who was 43 met in sydney after both having migrated from china after their studies they had three children together brenda their eldest child who was 15 henry who was 12 and their youngest child terry who was nine growing up men and lily didn't really have a lot so one of their main goals in life was to be able to provide for their children and to be able to give them the best possible life and education that they could so min opened a news agency which was called the epping central news agency it was located on rawson street which is like a popular shopping strip in the suburb of epping and this news agency was a major success it brought in about one million dollars a year it also made the family and men particularly as he worked at the news agency every single day even when it was closed like he would go in and stock the shelves or whatever but it made them basically a daily fixture in a lot of local people's lives min was well known as a very hard working but very friendly and family-oriented oriented man the couple ended up buying a two-story family home at 55a boundary street in north epping where they also lived with a lily's sister yunmin who went by the name irene and it was 39 years old the lynn family as i mentioned were very family oriented and min bought his parents yang fei lin and fenquin zhu who migrated to australia from china as well a house in maryland which was about a 30 minute drive away from their home in north epping and they also lived just 300 meters away from min's sister kathy and her husband robert z and kathy and robert had also migrated to australia from china in 2002 robert claims that he was a successful ear throat and nurse specialist in china and was hoping for i guess the same sort of success in australia as he had back in china and also as his brother-in-law min was having in australia so kathy and robert first migrated to melbourne where robert attempted to open a restaurant he wanted to bring three chefs over from china but was denied and the restaurant unfortunately failed so in 2005 they made the move to sydney to be closer to kathy's brother and parents and they were all very close very tight-knit the lens the z's and min and kathy's parents and kathy and irene also both worked part-time at the news agency on friday the 17th of july the three families went to yang fei lin and fenqing zoo's house in maryland's for dinner and everyone was there besides brenda because she was in new caledonia on a school excursion with her french class because they speak french in new caledonia so they were going to learn the language and brenda was like a very she had a tight group of friends with school and she was a very like studious intelligent and a hard-working girl so anyway it was just a regular family night henry complained to his grandmother that his shoes were broken and then his grandmother ended up giving him 50 for winning his badminton competition which he was very happy about made him completely forget about his broken shoes she was also trying to convince henry to stay over that night spend some time with them but he unfortunately couldn't because he and robert were going to be playing badminton the next morning which he was very excited about he loved playing badminton and that was it it was a nice you know regular family night together but unfortunately it would be their last night that they would ever spend together the next morning the news agency didn't open as usual there was a bundle of papers just sitting outside that hadn't been taken in the doors were locked and customers thought something was off because as i said men was like a daily fixture in a lot of local people's lives they saw him every day there was never a day that the news agency didn't open especially on a saturday morning because that was like one of their busiest time periods so some of the concerned customers begin to ring kathy and kathy and robert were up early that morning even though robert usually liked to sleep in on his saturday mornings he was up early cleaning the garage when they were receiving the calls and kathy i mean she knows her brother she knows that he was there every day and it was very unusual for the news agency not to be open she thought something was off but never in her wildest dreams would have imagined what had actually taken place her and robert living just 300 meters away walked immediately after getting these calls to the lynn family home once kathy and robert arrived at the lynn family home they noticed that the front door was unlocked which obviously wasn't a good sign but upon entering the house things looked relatively normal there were shoes scattered the front door there was key sitting on the kitchen bench top the kids school bags were sitting behind the laundry door it all just looked so ordinary but they were calling out to everybody in the house and received no response so kathy and robert headed up the stairs and upstairs was a very different story and what they found was described by both police and paramedics as one of the most grisly crime scenes in all of new south wales history there was blood everywhere they first checked the master bedroom where they found lily's body lying on top of the bed sheets and she had been bludgeoned to death the room was soaked in blood across the hall they also checked irene's room and found pretty much the same scene and she was found slumped up against the bed covered in blood henry and terry's room was pretty much the same it was an absolutely horrific scene and the entire lynn family had been murdered besides brenda who was on her trip in new caledonia with her school men's body also wasn't accounted for they could not find him anywhere after this discovery kathy ran downstairs and called triple zero and this call is so incredibly frustrating to me i'll play a snippet for you now you're someone who's gone thank you we are coming you need to stop screaming and tell me what the problem is yeah i think snowflake my brother someone killed my goddess under here why do you think that yeah because i want to eat you for halloween i had not to know anybody so um difficult and opener and they understand my brothers i couldn't find it have you found have we are driving there answer my questions please have you found a body and i i guess we're going to check it and i find it it's quick we are driving there don't say quick tell me what's wrong have you seen your brother i i love we're already driving there you don't need to worry we're on the way but can you see your brother i'm not sure no it's yes or no can you see him i'm not sure no it's yes or no have you seen me this call like literally had my blood boiling i just felt like the operator was being so incredibly insensitive and impatient and rude honestly i understand that it might be frustrating to try and understand and to try and get information from somebody who is so panicked but that is just not the way to go about it in my opinion she was clearly traumatized she just found her entire family's bodies in this completely gruesome scene at their house and i just felt like the opposite operator was being really condescending and i just don't think the situation was handled well at all during the call as well you can also hear kathy speaking in cantonese which is her and robert's native language and she was basically like begging him not to leave her saying that she was terrified and robert was like i have to go i have to go get your parents and i have to tell them what happened so he left a terrified traumatized kathy alone at the house still not having found men's body not knowing if he was the attacker if he was still there and he left on the hour round trip to go and get kathy's parents paramedics and police arrived at the scene not long after and they were greeted by kathy who was outside screaming for them they searched the entire house as well and found absolutely no signs of men eventually when robert arrived back at the home with min and kathy's parents the detectives informed them that they had found four bodies but that they still didn't know the location of men which is when kathy told them that they should check underneath the doona in the master bedroom and on her advice they checked and found men's body as well who had been bludgeoned to death almost unrecognizable so let's go ahead and talk about what they had found at the scene and what they had concluded from the crime scene it was first determined that the murders occurred between 2 and 5 30 am the electricity to the house had been cut by the power box outside and there were no signs of forced entry so it definitely seemed as though whoever the perpetrator was knew the family was in the family and knew the layout of the house and this in my opinion at least definitely seemed like a crime of passion to enter somebody's home in the dead of night while they are sleeping and it is pitch black in their most vulnerable state and to bludgeon them to death so brutally that they're almost unrecognizable that is a crime of passion it was determined that a makeshift hammer type of weapon was used to carry out the murders and that it likely had a roped heart around it so that the perpetrator didn't lose their grip but to this day the murder weapon has never been found the severity of the injuries was so bad that police and paramedics originally thought the men had been shot because he was so unrecognizable but post-mortem exams showed that the causing factor of death in all victims was blunt force trauma and that asphyxiation was a contributing factor in four out of five of the victims so the likely scenario from this is that they were suffocated to subdue them and then they were beaten to death it's believed that min and lily were murdered first and that they received the most violent most brutal murder of all of the victims their bedroom was covered in blood the bed was soaked there was blood on the floor the walls the ceilings on the door the wall charges the phones it was everywhere lily's sister irene whose room was just across the hall was determined to have been murdered next she was found slumped against the bed in her room and the scene looked very similar to that of the master bedroom with blood splattered everywhere it was also determined that irene was likely murdered in the same way that min and lily were it's likely that henry and terry were murdered last and their bedroom was down the hall and their scene was slightly different it was determined from the blood splatter that at least one of the boys was actually awake before they were murdered and it seems as though the boys tried to fight their perpetrator and would have seen the perpetrators face before they were murdered it seems as though after murdering henry and terry the killer then left by going back down the stairs and leaving blood smeared on the stair railings and on every single bedroom door except for brenda's and then exiting through the front door leaving it unlocked brenda's room though seemed as though it hadn't so much has been entered because like i mentioned there was no blood on her door handle like there was with every single other room which just like further fueled the idea that whoever the perpetrator was knew the family knew the layout of the house they knew brenda wasn't going to be there and they knew exactly where brenda's room was the blood smears throughout the house showed that the killer likely wore gloves and there was also 24 bloody shoe impressions found throughout the house and these were determined to be between a men's u.s size eight and a half and ten and a half kathy robert yang fei lin and fung quinzu were taken to hornsby hospital to be treated for shock and to receive counselling which is when they were formally told that min had been found dead at around the same time which was a few hours after paramedics and police arrived at the scene brenda who was in new caledonia and a few of her friends there as well decided to hop on facebook so they could you know catch up on life back home see what was going on talk to friends and family and everyone started asking brenda if she was okay and she had no idea why she was so confused so somebody told her that her family had been murdered and she couldn't believe it at first she thought it was some kind of sick joke and there's no way something like that could have happened to her and her family her school principal susan bridge who was not on the school trip got in contact with the teachers who were on the trip and organized for brenda to be put on the first available flight back to sydney kathy was waiting for brenda at the airport with a few police and as soon as brenda arrived she was escorted by police into a private room where she was told what had happened to her family and that i suppose is when it really hit her and she just completely broke down in tears in her aunt's arms she said that her biggest regret is how she left her family her dad dropped her off for a trip at 4 00 a.m on monday that week and you know she was 15 at the time she you know when you go through that phase where you just kind of think you're too tough for hugging or kissing your parents her and her dad kind of awkwardly stood there said their goodbyes didn't hug didn't tell each other they loved each other before she left she thought you know it's a week-long trip i'm going to come back and i'm going to see them as soon as i'm home and she says that her biggest regret is not hugging her dad and telling her that she loved him and telling him what an amazingly loving and caring parent he was and this literally broke my heart when reading it i i couldn't imagine at 15 brenda was still a minor so robert and kathy became her legal guardians in fact robert actually offered just hours after the discovery of the murders to adopt brenda and robert and kathy also became the owners of the news agency kathy and robert really just tried to make her life as normal as it could possibly be despite what had happened and you know she was with people that she felt comfortable with and that were supporting her and not only were they supporting her but the whole community was rallying around her and actually started up a trust fund which people donated to for brenda and for her education the community also used the news agency as a bit of a memorial and flowers and tributes just filled the outside of the footpath of the news agency now this case was huge in australia and the media were all over it like absolute vultures so as i'm sure you can imagine there was a massive amount of pressure on the detectives to try and solve this case and figure out who the murderer was there were so many like rumors and theories flying around like the chinese mafia had something to do with this that it was gang-related that the lynn family were in a huge amount of debt the idea that it was a murder-suicide also circled around for a bit but this was very quickly ruled out as none of the injuries on any of the victims were self-inflicted another possible theory came to light when an arrest was made in parramatta which was linked to a number of violent armored car robberies and these robberies took place in and around epping in the early mornings while armored cars were on their way to fill up atms on the 28th of may just two months before the murders men actually witnessed one of these robberies because it occurred just across the road from the news agency at a local rsl and it was thought possibly that in a bid to eliminate any witnesses the rubber murdered men and his entire family however it was determined that this incident was unrelated to the murders by 2010 there really hadn't been a lot of leads but detectives by this point were convinced that the killer was somebody either extremely close to the lynn family or was actually a family member it had to be somebody who knew the family who knew the layout of the house and who either had a spare key or even was close enough to have a key of their own they also thought it may have been somebody who was close enough to know that brenda wasn't home but they weren't sure at this point whether or not brenda not being there was a coincidence or not they also believed that there had to be a single perpetrator because only one set of footprints was found in the house now because of all of this evidence police really felt like there was only one suspect who made sense and that was robert z both robert and kathy were interviewed just four days after the murders and in kathy's interviews she was very calm collected and clear but roberts however he really struggled he struggled to make eye contact first of all he barely did it he mostly just stared at the table or the floor or his fidgety hands and he spoke in his native language of cantonese and despite this he still really struggled to put sentences together i suppose about the scene of the crime and particularly when talking about henry and terry's room he seemed to get like a little choked up in his interview robert also described the night before the murders and he told police how they had dinner he and kathy went home he stayed up to about 2 am watching tv had a bath and then went to bed and kathy corroborated his alibi because brenda was living with robert and kathy at the time police were stuck in a bit of an uncomfortable position so they carried out a number of risk assessments and concluded that if robert was the killer he wasn't going to harm brenda robert clearly knew that brenda wasn't going to be home so if he had any intention to harm brenda he could have waited till she was home and he hadn't harmed her in the following months when she was living with him and kathy police obviously still wanted to be certain of brenda's safety so they ended up installing cameras throughout robert and kathy's home and this would be the start of a six-month electronic surveillance operation on robert both robert and kathy were interviewed during this time period and during one of these interviews robert actually made quite a big oopsie um he said that when he was at the scene of the crime he saw five bodies and he said that he saw min's body next to lily now the reason why this was a big upsy is because a few months later he ended up calling police to clarify that uh he may have said he saw five bodies but he actually meant to say he saw four or five bodies the fact that the prime suspect calls up to like clarify something that he must have been mulling over and worrying about at home another reason why this phone call was suspicious is because if you remember cathy was the one who told detectives to look under the doona for men's body police actually had their suspicions that robert was the one who told kathy to tell them this despite the fact that cathy denies this claim kathy was adamant that she simply had a feeling that he was under there in another interview with kathy she was informed that there were bloody shoe impressions found at the scene of the crime and that they were between a u.s men's size eight and a half and ten and a half and that they were determined to be one of three different types of asics trainers and one of the shoe models was the asics gel evasion i believe which hadn't actually been in production since 2005 and then a few days later when investigators were watching the video surveillance from inside robert and kathy's home they saw robert cutting up an asic's shoe box into small little tiny pieces and flushing these pieces down the toilet and on closer inspection they found that these shoes were a men's u.s nine and a half a few days after the surveillance footage in may of 2010 police started a five-day search of robert and kathy's house police knew from previous interviews that robert had been up cleaning his garage the morning the murders were discovered so they paid careful attention to that area there they found on the floor under a chest of drawers that there was a two by six centimeter stain on the floor which was photographed swabbed and labeled stain 91. stain 91 was a complex dna mixture and forensic experts believe it was a transfer stain meaning it was likely produced from coming into contact with another object like a bag or a weapon or clothing and when that object was placed on the floor the wet blood transferred to the floor in the garage australia's dna testing wasn't quite that advanced yet so it had to be sent off to a specialty lab in the usa and when the test came back the lab was able to determine that the sample contained dna from four of the five victims and that it matched terry with a 1 in 500 quadrillion chance of it being anyone else in the world so on the 5th of may in 2011 robert z was arrested for the five murders he applied for bail in december of 2011 but was denied in february of 2012 the linn family home was put on the market by a real estate agent that originally sold the home to the lynn family they made a statement saying that once the house was sold any fee that was earned would be donated to brenda robert again in march of 2012 applied for bail but was denied again and on the 20th of august in 2012 robert's committal hearing in central local court began and a committal hearing by the way is basically like a pre-trial in which a magistrate determines whether or not there's enough evidence to send somebody to trial on the 19th of december in 2012 robert was committed to stand trial for the murders he also applied for bail once again but was denied and on the 8th of may in 2014 almost five years after the murders took place robert's trial began and robert plead not guilty during his trial not only did they present the dna evidence from staying 91 but also a large number of recordings between robert and a fellow inmate in long bay jail between july 2011 and february of 2013. so the inmate in this trial was referred to as witness a and it was made well known that he was receiving a substantial reduction in his sentence for helping police out by recording and trying to get information out of robert witness a testified to multiple conversations with robert he claimed that in a conversation with robert roberts said he purchased a hammer from a store he knew didn't have any cctv footage but that he was worried that there was cctv footage of him disposing of the weapon shortly after the bodies were found he apparently also said that he wanted to dispose of the hammer in an innocent person's house but just never got around to it he also told witness a about a pressure point on the body that could incapacitate a person apparently robert also said that he didn't want to be the one to discover the bodies because he felt like that would make him a prime suspect but that it just kind of happened the way that it happened and he couldn't do anything about it witnessed also testified that robert had said that he sedated kathy the night of the murder so that he could sneak out and all of these like things that i told you about some of these conversations were recorded and some weren't during this trial two possible motives for the murder came out the first one being jealousy obviously robert claimed to have been an ent doctor back in china he came over had a failed restaurant he mentioned at some point to his family that he felt like he was an embarrassment to them especially in comparison with min who had this successful news agency a beautiful family was able to provide for his parents and buy them a home and because of all of this robert felt that his in-laws favored men which i thought was such a weird thing because like they're his literal parents and just your in-laws like of course they're going to favor their son or is that just me like um the main motive for these murders however is believed to have been robert's sexual obsession with brenda brenda testified during this trial that robert had inappropriately touched her before the murders took place and that these sexual assaults only escalated once robert and kathy became her legal guardians and she moved in with them brenda said that she didn't reveal this information sooner because she truly believed that robert was innocent of the murders this motive also explains why brenda wasn't there during the murders it was obviously done on purpose it was planned it explains why brenda's room hadn't even so much has been entered because robert knew that brenda wasn't home he knew she was in new caledonia so it was almost like a ploy to get control of her and on top of this kathy and robert took over the estate the min estate he kicked out min and kathy's parents from the home in maryland's that men had bought them and you know it's believed that he possibly did this so that brenda had no choice but to live with him and kathy and brenda's grandfather also testified that one time while he was living with robert and kathy after they were evicted from their house by robert that he actually saw robert standing by brenda's door one day one night while he was going to the bathroom however on the 10th of july after the sexual assault was brought to light justice peter johnson decided to declare a mistrial which i'm assuming is because this information must not have been cleared so it would have been an unfair trial robert's second trial began on the 5th of august in 2014 it was presided over again by justice peter johnson and seven weeks after the child began it had to be aborted because justice peter johnson fell sick in october of that same year robert once again applied for bail but was denied on the 4th of february in 2015 robert's third trial began and this trial was presided over by justice elizabeth fullerton the same evidence was presented witness a's testimony stay 91 the possible motives of either robert's jealousy as well as his sexual obsession with brenda this trial ran for 10 months which was actually the longest trial for a single accused in new south wales history it concluded on the 12th of november and the jury began their deliberations which took 19 days on the 1st of december the jury returned and told the court that they could not reach a verdict meaning it was a mistrial and robert would have to have a fourth trial because of this and because robert had been waiting in jail for four trials now justice elizabeth fullerton decided to grant him bail on the 8th of december robert's fourth trial then began on the 29th of june in 2016 with an all-new defense team and all new prosecutors but it was once again presided over by justice elizabeth fullerton the same information was brought up as the previous trials they also brought up the fact that despite robert's medical training he never once tried to check if anybody was still alive they brought up the fact that he left kathy alone at the home still not knowing where min was not knowing if min was the killer if he was still there if kathy was in any danger at all and kathy defended her husband the entire time maintained his innocence the entire time believes that he was framed by police she lied for robert on multiple occasions about the assets possibly about if robert told her to tell paramedics and police to look under the dooner as police suspect she did there was also a recorded conversation where it seemed as though robert was coaching kathy into what to say you know i looked in this door and i saw this and this door was left like this and you know that sort of thing anyway in december of 2016 robert was taken back into custody as the trial finished and the jury was deliberating on the 12th of january in 2017 the jury had reached a verdict and they came back and told the court that they found robert guilty on all five charges of murder justice elizabeth fullerton then sentenced him to five life sentences meaning he is going to spend the rest of his life in jail and that is it that's all of the information i have on this case so let me know your thoughts in the comments down below and hopefully i will see you guys in my next video bye guys

Channel: Bella Fiori

Views: 1,381,553

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Id: j64AU5CGT-Y

Length: 33min 36sec (2016 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 16 2020