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A man in Australia tried to pull a not-so-talented “Mr. Ripley” by killing his wealthy female roommate, cramming her corpse into a “body box” and then stealing her identity to net $700,00, authorities say.
“Why won’t you die?’’ annoyed sicko Yang Zhao hissed as he fatally choked Qiong Yan, 29, according to prosecutors.
Zhao, 30, who went on trial in a Queensland court Monday for the slaying, allegedly killed Yan in the Brisbane suburb of Hamilton in 2020 and took over her identity to pay off his heavy gambling debt and market losses.
His twisted scheme included bilking his dead victim’s unsuspecting mom out of hundreds of thousands of dollars by posing as her daughter — and selling off Yan’s $300,000 Porsche Panamera SUV, officials said.
“[Zhao] needed money. He lost money. He killed [Yan]. He posed as her for a while. He took her money,’ Crown prosecutor Chris Cook told the court.
“Murdering for money can be a profitable crime if you get away with it.’’
Zhao, a Chinese national who overstayed his student visa, brutally beat and strangled Yan, also a Chinese national who worked as a migration agency director, reports said.
The jury Monday watched video from Zhao’s interrogation with police after cops discovered Yan’s body in July 2021.
“I sat in front of her and hit her on her head three times,” Zhao said in the chilling footage. “I think I go crazy. I ask her why she wouldn’t die.’’
He went to a nearby hardware store at some point, bought a large toolbox, workman gloves and duct tape — and went about concealing his victim’s body, according to prosecutors.
He later told cops he stashed the corpse in a “body box,’’ what he called the oversized 6-gallon toolbox in which police found Yan’s badly decomposed remains.
While keeping the victim’s body hidden and pretending to be her, Zhao used Yan’s phone and banking apps to steal and also con her family and friends, authorities said.
The unemployed Zhao allegedly sent 2,000 texts pretending to be Yan to carry out the plot, which involved ID theft akin to the 1999 hit eerie flick “The Talented Mr. Ripley.’’
Zhao’s scheme only unraveled when one of Yan’s friends thought some of those texts were growing increasingly odd and went to police.
The jury saw a photograph that investigators took of Yan’s body when they found it in the toolbox in July 2021 — shoved under a black sheet with one of her feet exposed.
Zhao originally told police that the killing was part of a suicide pact.
He has pleaded not guilty to the murder charge but copped to interfering with Yan’s corpse.
His lawyer, Andrew Hoare, encouraged the jury to pay close attention to how Zhao described Yan’s death during the police interviews.
“You may think that event is unique to Mr Zhao to such an extent that those facts out to be etched indelibly in Mr Zhao’s memory,” Hoare said.
“Some parts of the interview got to the point that Mr. Zhao’s memory was not as indelible as you would expect from a person who was recounting true events.”
English (US)