Betrayed By Family: The Shocking Murders Of The Lin Family
When 15-year-old Brenda Lin’s entire family was murdered, she was taken in by her uncle Robert and aunt Kathy. However, it would come to light that Robert knew more than he was letting on
This article originally appeared on the true crime newsletter Tales From the Underworld. Subscribe for new and exclusive historical true crime content.
Background
On July 18, 2009, Min Lin, his 43-year-old wife Yun Lin, and their two children, Henry and Terry, who were only 12 and 9, were ferociously bludgeoned to death.
The fifth victim was Kathy Lin, the sister of Yun Lin.
There was one surviving teenage daughter, however, 15-year-old Brenda Lin. As luck would have it, she had been away on a school trip to North Caledonia. That itself wasn’t suspicious, but something about the timing of her absence would prove to be a pivotal key in solving the case.
Family Ties
Min Lin and his wife Yun Lin had both immigrated to Australia from China and had met each other as students while attending University in Sydney. The couple had three children, with Brenda being the oldest, followed by Henry and Terry. The couple were very hard-working and ran a successful newsagency business.
Among other family members who had relocated to Australia were Min Lin’s sister Kathy, and her husband Lian Bin Xie, generally known as Robert. The couple lived in a home very close to the Lin’s in North Epping, New South Wales.
Lian Bin ‘Robert’ Xie was a successful surgeon in China but a failed restauranteur in Australia. His attempt at launching his own restaurant went miserably and left him feeling emasculated and shamed, emotions that only exacerbated the feelings of jealousy he felt towards his wife’s very successful brother.
On the surface, however, Robert played the role of a reliable brother-in-law and supportive uncle to Brenda and her two brothers.
July 18, 2009
Everything changed for the Lin family on the night of July 18, 2009, when Yun Lin, Min Lin, their two boys Henry and Terry, and Yun’s sister Irene were all bludgeoned to death in their home in North Epping. The only surviving family member was 15-year-old Brenda who had been away overseas on a school-related trip. The bodies were first discovered by Robert and his wife Kathy who then called the police.
Paramedics were called, but even before they arrived there were no signs of life and too much blood splattered on the walls to raise hopes of any survivors.
The police showed up on the scene shortly after, gathered evidence, which included bloodied footprints, and took note of all the details, including the fact that the house was in complete disarray but that there was no sign of a forced entry, no broken door locks, or windows jimmied open.
Inconsistencies were evident from the start, not just the fact that there were no signs of a break-in or that nothing was stolen, but the fact that Brenda Lin’s room was completely untouched, undisturbed, not a pillow out of place.
It soon became obvious that the killer knew the family well, and must have been aware that Brenda was not home at the time.
Investigation
Even though it was not recovered at the scene, the investigators deduced from the horrific wounds that the murder weapon was some kind of hammer, yet some of the victims also displayed signs of asphyxia, as if they had been smothered in their sleep before being battered to death.
There was also evidence that the two young boys had tried to flee their attacker but had been hunted down, caught, and then permanently silenced with several savage blows.
Many of the officers had never experienced a scene like this before and were shocked and appalled at the sheer ferocity and cruelty that the killer had unleashed on this family.
Still, they did their job and were able to quickly identify that the footprints came from a size 9.5 ASICS sneaker, coincidentally, the same size shoe that was worn by Robert Xie.
He was now their prime suspect.
A surveillance operation was covertly launched around the clock to gather as much concrete evidence as possible by tracking his movements day and night, at home and at work, to ensure that they would have an airtight case and, of course, that he was their man.
After all, Robert Xie had no priors, had always been a well-rounded member of society, and had in fact, after the death of her parents, become the legal guardian of Brenda Lin.
Covering His Tracks
However, all the clues during the preceding months of investigation pointed to Robert as the prime suspect, especially when their early surveillance caught him cutting up and disposing of the Asics sneaker box. Unfortunately for them, he flushed the pieces down the toilet, destroying the evidence.
These were not the actions of an innocent man. Nor was sanitizing his garage.
A search warrant was obtained by the investigators before Xie could eliminate all traces of his involvement in this horrific crime.
His garage was searched from top to bottom, and if it weren’t for the forensics team crawling about on their hands and knees, moving furniture and benches around, they would never have discovered the tiny, faded blood stain that Xie had failed to scrub away completely.
A DNA test conclusively proved that it belonged to four of the five victims.
On the morning of May 5, 2011, at 9 am, Lian Bin ‘Robert’ Xie was arrested and charged with five counts of murder.
Trials and Shocking Revelations
The first trial date was delayed until March 17, 2014, On several occasions, the trial had to be delayed for various reasons, one of which was the ill health of the presiding judge.
Despite his protestations of innocence, it became apparent that jealousy and shame had played a part in the murder of the Lins.
That, however, wasn’t the driving force behind him brutally slaughtering five people, one of whom the prosecution told the jury had been struck 18 times.
The real reason why Robert Xie became a killer — he used a blunt instrument to beat five people to death — was because he wanted to cover up the sexual advances toward his niece, Brenda Lin.
Finally, on December 1, 2015, the trial concluded, and the jury’s decision — was undecided.
The retrial started in June 2016, but this time the details of how Robert Xie had escalated his abuse of Brenda Lin from unwanted and inappropriate touching while her parents were alive, to more aggressive sexual abuse when she began to live with him and his wife after their deaths came to light with her testimony.
The revelation of this ultimate betrayal and his true reason for murder were damning, yet they still failed to sway the last juror to deliver a unanimous guilty verdict.
One juror was unsure of Robert Xie’s guilt, and the defense lawyers convincingly cast doubts on whether there had been just one assailant, and if the blood stain was proof beyond a reasonable doubt to convict Robert Xie.
But the judge had heard enough.
Accepting the 11–1 guilty verdict, Justice Fullerton sentenced Lian Bin ‘Robert’ Xie to 5 life sentences on February 13, 2017, all to be run consecutively so he would spend the rest of his days incarcerated for his heinous crimes.
This was scant comfort to Brenda Lin, who, in one horrific night, had lost a father, a mother, two younger brothers, and an aunt.
They had all been massacred by someone who should have been a close, trusted confidant, but instead had been a sexual predator whose reasoning for murder had not been one of greed or financial gain, but because he had wanted to be able to molest Brenda Lin when he pleased in the comfort of his own home.
Now, thanks to Robert Xie’s ultimate act of betrayal, she would have to spend the rest of her youth living with her grandparents and estranged from her surviving aunt, who still, after all the testimonies and the evidence stacked against him, continued to support her husband, whose guilt and ultimate betrayal had been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Sources:
Wikipedia. Updated December 24, 2023 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lin_family_murders_(Australia) . Accessed March 2, 2024
New Zealand Herald. Dated February 16, 2017 https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/brenda-lin-the-only-surviving-lin-family-member-breaks-her-silence/TAVY52SOKN6DR7RSNIYXIAXR74/ .Accessed March 2, 2024
News Au.com. Dated June 23, 2020 https://www.news.com.au/national/courts-law/family-murderer-appeals-conviction-on-bludgeon-killings-of-five-relatives/news-story/edeceb04fe1cbe935191a408eae6f1a8 . Accessed March 4, 2024
