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

He left two women – Yuki Luo, 31, and Hyun Suk-jeong, 51 – for dead after attacking them in December 2022 and stealing money and personal items including designer handbags.

Lin, now 24, was due to stand trial on murder charges in connection with two deaths in August.

However, a month before the trial, he offered to plead guilty to two charges of manslaughter, which prosecutors accepted.

Details of the case have remained undisclosed since early 2023 due to a court gag order that has since been lifted.

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

He visited the brothel on Boxing Day 2022 and then called a friend to take him to Luo, a Chinese national who ran a sex business from her Melbourne apartment.

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

He was abandoned outside her apartment after midnight on December 26 while he was showering and having sex with Luo.

He then offered her oral sex, but she refused to do so without additional payment.

Lin got angry at Luo and pinned her to the bed, but she resisted and bit Lin’s hand.

He hit Ms Lo and strangled her, and later told police he was angry at her request for an additional payment of A$100.

Lin left her for dead after stealing A$7,000 in cash, her phone and several designer handbags.

“She was choking and I thought, OK, I had a robbery today and I didn’t kill her,” he later told police.

Luo’s friend called a locksmith and found her body, then called 911.

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

“It is extremely difficult to accept the cruel reality that my daughter was killed,” he said in a statement read in court.

Less than 24 hours after the attack on Luo, Lin went to see another sex worker, South Korean national Jeong, who lived in a flat in Docklands.

After sex, he attacked her and stole her laptop, bank cards, phone and house keys.

By the time Jeong’s body was found, she was too badly decomposed to determine the cause of death.

Lean told his lawyer Paul Smallwood that Jeong was “attacked in circumstances where she was seriously shaken”, the court was told.

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

Prosecutor Christy Churchill said Lin’s crime was “subjectively serious.”

“He caused the death of two vulnerable women in their own homes, a place where they had a right to feel and be safe, within 24 hours of each other,” she told the court.

“He stole from them, he kept them in positions with no regard for their safety or dignity.”

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