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Surviving Lin daughter breaks her silence on family murders

Brenda Lin will break her silence on her family's brutal murder during a television interview later this month.

Brenda Lin will break her silence on her family's brutal murder during a television interview later this month. Photo: Channel Seven

The sole surviving member of the Lin family has broken an eight-year silence in a television interview that will air in full later this month.

Brenda Lin, the eldest child of Min and Lily Lin, was on an overseas school trip when her uncle, Robert Xie, bludgeoned her parents, two brothers and an aunt to death in their Sydney home in the early hours of July 18, 2009.

Details of the Mr Xie’s motive — along with Ms Lin’s identity— could not be reported until now for legal reasons.

But in a promotion for the Seven Network’s Sunday Night program she says: “He was someone that I trusted … as a person who isn’t a murderer.”

“I would give anything to have my family back,” she says, suggesting she will expand upon the motive for the murders.

During the NSW Supreme Court trial, which sentenced Mr Xie to five life sentences, Ms Lin testified that her 53-year-old uncle had touched her inappropriately on several occasions before the killings, and sexually assaulted her when she moved in with his family after the murders.

The Crown argued during the trial that a possible motive for Mr Xie’s brutal murders was to allow him to continue offending against Ms Lin while she was vulnerable and living under his roof.

Ms Lin, who was in New Caledonia when her family was killed, had her her victim impact statement read at Mr Xie’s sentencing hearing. In it, she said “there are not enough words to describe the pain and suffering caused me and those around me”.

In her sentencing remarks, Justice Fullerton elaborated on Mr Xie’s possible motives.

Robert Xie

Robert Xie did not give evidence during his trials. Photo: AAP.

“At the trial of the offender the Crown relied upon two possible motives operating separately or in combination in proof of the Crown case. First, the offender’s sexual interest in [Ms Lin], as evidenced by his sexual interest in her before the murders and his serialised sexual abuse of her after the murders when, upon the death of all members of her immediate family, she became a member of his household.”

The second motive was Mr Xie’s perception that that he had an inferior status to Min Lin within the family.

– with AAP

 

 

 

Topics: Robert Xie
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