A student who killed two sex workers within 24 hours has been sentenced to at least nine years in prison after admitting downgraded manslaughter charges.
Xiaozheng Lin, 24, was sentenced to at least nine years behind bars on Thursday after admitting two charges of manslaughter in July.
He was due to face a murder trial over the deaths of Yuqi Luo, 31, and Hyun Sook Jeon, 51, but prosecutors accepted his plea to the downgraded charges.
The women were both sex workers who operated their businesses out of their apartments.
On Boxing Day 2022, Lin visited a brothel in Melbourne’s Oakleigh South, before a friend drove him to Luo’s La Trobe Street apartment.
After having sex, in the early hours of 27 December, he requested further services from Luo, who told him it would cost an additional $100.
Lin became enraged at this request and pushed Luo into the bed, before strangling her.
He left her gasping for air and stole $7,000 in cash along with other personal belongings.
On the evening of the same day he visited Jeon at her Docklands apartment and engaged in sex before he assaulted her.
It is unclear how Jeon died, as by the time an autopsy was performed on 31 December her body was too decomposed to ascertain a cause of death.
Justice Stephen Kaye said Lin had killed two “vulnerable and defenceless” women in their own homes.
An aggravating factor was that he was undeterred from the first assault as he then went on to kill Jeon within 24 hours, he said.
“Having assaulted Ms Luo in circumstances where you left her stricken and gasping for breath … you plainly suffered no pang of consciousness.”
Lin was silent and kept his head down as he was sentenced to a maximum of 14 years in prison, with a non-parole period of nine years.
He has served almost two years of that sentence and will be eligible for release in seven years, when he will most likely be deported back to China.
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