Robert Xie spent four years and seven months incarcerated without a conviction. He was finally convicted after a hung jury in his third trial triggered a fourth trial in 2016/17. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for the savage murder of five members of his wife’s family in July 2009, including his two beloved young nephews under 13. Really.
As he stood to hear the verdict, he proclaimed his innocence to the court in his Chinese accented English. “I did not murder the Lin family. I am innocent.”
This book sets out to prove he was telling the truth.
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Foreword by Stuart Tipple, Lindy Chamberlain’s former lawyer
So if not Xie, who?
In trial 3, the court heard evidence that for some considerable time around the Lin family murders, an international drug syndicate was using a convenient system to smuggle contraband into Sydney. Many newsagents had installed sets of post office boxes in their front windows. Customers could obtain their mail at any time of the day or night and were not under surveillance. The Lins’ Epping newsagency provided such a service.
Border control was aware of what was going on; they would periodically intercept articles and confiscate them. It is unknown whether they took into account the difficulty they were creating for the newsagents when an expected article did not arrive.
Several customers of the newsagency testified (in trial 3) that they saw heated exchanges between Min Lin and other customers from time to time. Clearly not all contraband was seized, or even detected. There is no doubt there was a syndicate involved in the process; that’s Detective Sergeant Maree’s evidence from the AFP. Substantial amounts of drugs were involved, over a lengthy period of time, which could result in life sentences for the culprits.
It is not difficult to imagine that the dealers harboured suspicions that it was Min – or perhaps his wife Lily – intercepting some of the packages for his/their own benefit. They can hardly contact Border Control and make enquires. Min could recognise the regular recipients – a threat to their operations. That is a credible possible motive for the killings.
The extreme violence and barbarity of the murders makes headlines around the world. What a clear warning to anyone thinking of cheating the syndicate.
The jury voted Xie ‘guilty’ 11 to 1.
Notwithstanding, the public is entitled to entertain plenty of doubt and consider the Lin family murders unsolved; a cold case. The drug gang got away with murder – and those who helped secure these wrongful convictions, which they did in our name, also got away with it. For now.