Vengeful family friend plotted cruel murder of 16-year-old girl
SCHOOLGIRL Wenjing Lin was part of a loving family who were wellrespected in the tight-knit Valleys community where she lived and selflessly helped out with the familyowned business while juggling her schoolwork.
There was a bright future ahead but her brief life was cruelly snatched away by the most unlikely of sources – a family friend treated as “a nephew” by her mother.
Her death on March 5 left her family and community asking why this should happen to such a young, gentle, talented and intelligent child who had her whole life ahead of her.
Here is the full story of how a man fuelled by revenge at a perceived slight destroyed a family and left a small town reeling.
Wenjing Lin
Wenjing Lin was 16 years old at the time of her death, having been born in Belfast on September 20, 2004.
She moved to Ynyswen, in Treherbert, Rhondda, from London with her mother Meifang Xu and stepfather Yongquan Jiang Yang.
She attended Treorchy Comprehensive School, where she was described as a “popular and wellloved” student who was wellregarded by her teachers and friends.
Describing Wenjing, her mother said: “My daughter is a quiet and gentle soul... Wenjing was always a good girl, she was good at school and helped all the time at the business. She was my only daughter and child.”
Rhiannon David, deputy headteacher at the school, said: “She was an exceptional student and was hardworking.”
Wenjing also helped her parents at the family-owned Blue Sky Chinese takeaway in Baglan Street, which had been bought in 2018.
Chun Xu and the money dispute
Chun Xu, 32, was born in China on August 23, 1989. He and his sister were extremely close to Wenjing’s mother Meifang, whose parents lived next door to Xu’s family.
She regarded them as “members of the family” and described Xu as her “nephew”, having known him since birth, despite them not being related by blood.
Despite their familial relationship, matters between the two families deteriorated when they both moved to South Wales.
Xu’s sister and Meifang were initially going to purchase a Chinese takeaway restaurant in Pontypridd in 2018 but Meifang pulled out and purchased the Blue Sky takeaway in Ynyswen.
Meifang said: “Our relationship started to break down at this point.”
In 2019 Xu worked at the Blue Sky restaurant but when his sister found out he left the business.
The relationship deteriorated further when Xu started running a money business with his brother-inlaw, which involved sending money from the UK to China.
Meifang gave £30,000 to Xu in September 2020 to send to a friend in China who had loaned her money to purchase the Blue Sky, but Xu blew £14,000 of the money on gambling.
As a result he fell into debt with Meifang and was made to pay back the debt in instalments.
At the time of the murder Xu did not have any previous convictions and was living and working in the UK illegally, having never had valid leave to remain in the country.
The night before the killing
On March 4 this year Chun Xu messaged Meifang and asked her if he could visit her and the family but asked her not to tell anyone he was visiting. When he arrived he gave Meifang £3,000 towards the debt.
But Xu was acting strangely and began touching Yongquan’s neck from behind. Xu did it again during the evening meal when he pinched Yongquan’s neck and massaged his shoulders and continued doing it when they went to watch television upstairs. Yongquan put this down to Xu messing around.
But unbeknown to him, Xu was already planning his attack and trying to ascertain how to cause the most damage with a knife he had secretly taken from the Mai Wah restaurant in Pontypridd, where he had been staying. At 3am on March 5 the family retired to bed and Xu spent the night in a spare room.
The murder of Wenjing Lin
At 7.55am on March 5 Xu made a number of Google searches on his mobile phone.
The search terms included: “Will fingerprints be burned by fire?”, “My fingerprints are on a knife will they still exist after the knife is burned by fire?”, “If I burn a brick can I get rid of fingerprints?”, and “Will fingerprints be altered if hand is burnt by fire?”
At 7am Meifang and Yongquan were sleeping but she heard her daughter Wenjing rising and preparing for the day ahead
She said: “I woke up and heard my daughter getting up and having a shower.” She added: “She said she was going to a birthday party.”
Throughout the morning Wenjing sent a series of Snapchat messages to a schoolfriend but the last message she sent was at 9.27am. The friend continued to send further messages but at 10.04am she messaged, “Where are you?”.
By now Wenjing had been strangled to death by Xu and had been left lying on a black mat in the serving area of the restaurant.
The attack on Wenjing’s stepfather
While his stepdaughter’s body lay downstairs, Yongquan woke at 11am and heard someone pacing around somewhere beneath him. Xu appeared at the bottom of the stairs and asked him for a cigarette and frozen fish from the freezer in the basement.
As Yongquan walked downstairs to the basement, Xu followed armed with two knives and unleashed a ferocious and unrelenting attack by stabbing Yongquan’s neck – where he had massaged him the previous day.
Describing the attack, Yongquan said: “I suddenly felt my neck was painful and there was force on my neck... pom, pom, pom.”
He added: “I didn’t realise until I turned my body around he was using two knives and stabbing me. I was struggling with him and I was holding his hand. I asked him, ‘What’s wrong with you today?’ He didn’t respond.
“Maybe because of the blood the floor was very slippery, so I had a fall.
“His face was very fierce. It was as if he was going to kill... After I fell my face and everywhere was stabbed by him. I managed to grab his hand again.”
Xu eventually stopped, said he was tired and asked: “Shall we stop fighting?”
“I said, ‘What’s wrong with you today? Are you controlled by a ghost today?’ He didn’t respond and looked very fierce,” said Yongquan.
“I called my wife, I called her many times, but she couldn’t hear me. I felt my life was in danger, I don’t know how I can get the strength. He pressed me down, he was on top of me, and I turned over on top of him and at that point I took one knife off him.”
Yongquan again asked Xu why he had attacked him. He replied: “Money, money, money.”
He added: “[Xu] didn’t want me to call [Meifang] and grabbed my phone. I got my phone back from him and
said, ‘I’m nearly dying, I’m dying, I have to ring your aunt.’ He said, ‘No.’”
Xu cruelly allowed Yongquan to phone Wenjing – knowing she wouldn’t answer as her body lay upstairs. The stepfather felt blood dripping from his wound and “thought he was going to die”.
Xu told Yongquan: “I want to kill myself now,” adding that he didn’t want to go to jail in the UK and asking if he could leave through the back door. Yongquan persuaded him to throw one of the knives away and called his wife. But when Meifang came down the stairs and attempted to grab Xu’s wrists, he bit her.
Describing the moment she was confronted by the scene in the basement, Meifang said she saw her husband’s face “covered in blood”.
She said: “I was screaming when I saw what had happened... My husband managed to take the knife out of
Chun Xu’s hands and he sat on the stairs of the basement. Chun Xu saw me making a phone call and grabbed my arm. He bit my arm really hard.”
The discovery of Wenjing’s body
Making his way upstairs to open the door of the takeaway Yongquan made the devastating discovery of his stepdaughter’s body lying pale and lifeless on the floor of the serving area.
He said: “I walked close to Wenjing and her face was purple. I was trying to pick her up. I think she was stiff or hard. I got to touch her nose but it didn’t have any life sign. She was lifeless.”
He screamed to his wife, who came up and hugged her daughter’s body.
She said: “Wenjing was just lying down near the counter table. There was no movement, she was lying still. I am just holding her and saying: ‘Baby, baby.’”
She added: “I couldn’t find any injuries on her body. She was just lying flat on the floor, just sleeping. Her head was lying flat.
“My daughter is very pretty. She has fair skin and I couldn’t find any bruises or wounds. I lifted up her clothes and saw a dark mark on her neck. It was coloured purple and reddish and quite thin.
“I said, ‘How cruel, you didn’t stop and savagely killed her like this.’ I called her, ‘Baby, baby.’ I touched her nose and my daughter was very cold. Everywhere I touched was very cold.”
Meifang called a friend known as Yun-Yun who arrived a short while later and the two moved Wenjing’s body to the back of his car where they began to perform CPR. Yun-Yun called his English-speaking daughter who called the emergency services. Once paramedics arrived they took over Wenjing’s treatment.
When attempts were made to find Chun Xu, Meifang discovered him lying on the kitchen floor having slashed his own neck open. He was unconscious and in cardiac arrest. Paramedics could not find a pulse but he was taking shallow breaths.
Martin Sullivan, one of the paramedics who treated Wenjing at the scene, said: “We worked on the young female for 15-20 minutes but despite all our efforts there was no response from her body and still no pulse or indication of life.”
She was declared dead at the scene.
The investigation
A post-mortem examination found her cause of death was pressure to the neck.
Yongquan was taken to the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff, where he received treatment to a number of wounds to his face and body including a collapsed lung, fractures to his skull and stab wounds. He spent the next 15 days in hospital before being discharged.
Chun Xu was taken to the same hospital where he received treatment for his self-inflicted injuries. Once he was deemed fit enough to be detained, he was arrested on March 9 on suspicion of murder, to which he responded: “I don’t wish to say anything, I don’t want to speak now.”
During his police interviews Xu made no comment and remained silent but when questioned by a psychiatrist, he said: “I didn’t mean to hurt the little girl, I wanted revenge on the mother. She had upset me on many times and she did not listen to what I say. My intentions were revenge on mother, not little girl. No turning back any more, I decided to take my life by cutting my throat.”
A forensic examination of the scene revealed one of the knives used to injure Yongquan had been taken from the Mai Wah restaurant in Rhydyfelin by Xu and the other had been taken from the Blue Sky takeaway. One of the knives had been snapped from its handle and was found to have blood on it with DNA profiles matching Xu and Yongquan.
A large bloodstained “butcherstyle” meat cleaver was also discovered on the worksurface and the blood was found to contain the DNA of Xu. Yongquan had bled heavily in the basement of the takeaway and blood found on the floors and walls matched DNA profiles belonging to him and Xu.
A Marigold glove found near Wenjing’s body contained her mobile phone and a mark from a Marigold glove was found on a CCTV camera in the serving area. In a pocket of Xu’s jacket police found plastic packaging for Marigold gloves and keys belonging to Wenjing.
The trial
Chun Xu’s trial began at Merthyr Tydfil Crown Court on November 1, almost eight months after Wenjing’s death.
On the first day of the trial Xu pleaded guilty to manslaughter and unlawful wounding but denied murder, attempted murder and section 18 wounding with intent.
During the course of the evidence, the jury heard of Xu’s thirst for revenge against a perceived slight made by Meifang and her family after he became enraged that his sister had been told about his money troubles and gambling addiction.
Prosecutor Michael Jones QC said: “You know there is something of a financial history in this case but there was something clearly troubling this defendant about the fact this family had told his sister what he had done and was dishonest and dishonourable with that money.
“When you look at intent and his actions on that day, one thing you may think is significant when looking at the family – not just Wenjing but Meifang and Yongquan – you remember when there was that pause in the violence, after Yongquan had been brutally stabbed, he said, ‘Why are you doing this?’ and the defendant claims he said, ‘Your family had told my sister about the money problem and I had asked that had not been done.’ Yongquan says the defendant really said, ‘Money, money, money.’
“He treated them as one and said this was about revenge.”
On Tuesday, November 10, after the jury had been deliberating for two and a half hours, Xu was found guilty of both Wenjing’s murder and the attempted murder of Yongquan. The defendant was emotionless as the verdict was returned.
Speaking outside court, Meifang said: “My beautiful daughter is gone and I can never forgive you.”
She added: “Before that horrible day she was a very, very happy girl. She loved spending time with her friends and she enjoyed school.
“We’ve been to the school to speak to them. My daughter has passed all her GCSEs with As but she will never know her results that she has worked so hard for... The perpetrator has broken our family. I had to begin counselling to help me but it will never take away the pain the perpetrator has caused us.”
The sentencing
When it came to sentencing, cowardly killer Xu refused to leave his cell and attend court for Friday’s hearing.
Sentencing, Judge Paul Thomas QC said: “Mr Xu, you cruelly murdered an innocent 16-year-old girl in her own home. You killed her as a wicked act of revenge upon her mother. Wenjing had done nothing at all wrong to you. You, however, ended her life by strangling her with your hand or hands, face-to-face. It has left her mother utterly bereft.
“Her only daughter taken from her by you – somebody she considered to be, in effect, a member of her extended family.”
He added: “Wenjing’s was a life of infinite promise. All that potential, and it was rich, is now unfulfillable. Her mother Meifang’s life will never be the same.
“She was by all accounts a particularly lovely and widely-loved girl of huge potential. Her family and many friends mourn her deeply now and in the future.”
Xu was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 30 years before he can apply for parole.