Two sex workers killed within 24 hours in Melbourne, Xiaozheng Lin pleads guilty

In December 2022, he attacked two women (31-year-old Yuqi Luo and 51-year-old Hyun Sook Jeon) and left them for dead after stealing cash and personal belongings, including designer bags.

Lin, now 24, had been facing a murder trial for two deaths in August.

But a month before the trial, he offered to plead guilty to two involuntary manslaughter charges, and prosecutors agreed.

Details of the case have not been reported since early 2023 due to the court’s gag order, which has since been lifted.

Lin remained silent and kept his head down as he made his way to the Supreme Court in Melbourne for a pre-sentence hearing on Monday.

On Boxing Day 2022, she visited a brothel and then called a friend and took him to see Luo, a Chinese national who was running a sex work business from her apartment in Melbourne.

Lin told his friend that he planned to rob Luo because he had recently lost money gambling with TAB.

She was dropped off near Luo’s apartment after midnight on December 26, while he showered and had sex with her.

He then asked her to perform oral sex on him, but she refused to do so without any additional payment.

Lin became enraged at Luo and pressed him to the bed, but he fought back and bit Lin’s hand.

He hit and strangled Ms Luo, later telling police he was angry at her demand for an additional payment of A$100.

Lin stole her A$7,000 in cash, her phone and several designer bags and left her for dead.

He later told police: “He was having trouble breathing and I thought, well, I did a robbery today and I didn’t kill him.”

A friend of Luo’s called a locksmith and found his body before calling emergency services.

The 31-year-old woman’s father, Luo Bo, said her death was “a big blow to my heart”.

“It is extremely difficult to accept the brutal fact that my daughter was killed,” she said in her statement read to the court.

Less than 24 hours after attacking Luo, Lin went to see another sex worker, South Korean national Jeon, who was living in a flat in Docklands.

After they had sex, he fatally attacked her and stole her laptop, bank cards, phone and building keys.

When Jeon’s body was found, it was too decomposed to determine the cause of death.

Lin told his lawyer Paul Smallwood that Jeon was “assaulted in circumstances where he was severely shaken,” the court heard.

Smallwood acknowledged that his client faces a lengthy prison sentence and will be deported back to China.

Prosecutor Kristie Churchill said Lin’s offending was “subjectively serious”.

“It caused two defenseless women to die within 24 hours of each other in their own homes, where they had the right to feel safe and feel safe,” he told the court.

“He stole from them and left them in positions that disregarded their safety and dignity.”

Lin, who has been detained since his arrest on December 29, 2022, will be sentenced at a later date.