This does not look good

Australia: Police used psychological warfare on Lin killings accused, court hears. Typical of what knowall cops do to extract false confessions

Police investigating the 2009 Lin family killings engaged in a single-minded pursuit of their chief suspect, Robert Xie, subjecting him to psychological warfare and ignoring evidence suggesting an alternative theory, a Sydney court has heard.

The claims were made by the lawyer for Mr Xie, 47, during an application for bail in the NSW Supreme Court today.

Mr Xie was charged in May last year with five counts of murder for the killings, following one of the largest homicide investigations in NSW history.

In submissions made to the court today, Graham Turnbull, SC, said the police investigation "has the hallmark of a single-minded pursuit of the accused to the exclusion of all others", and that it ignored evidence that did not fit with their predetermined explanation.

Police claim that Mr Xie switched off the power in the Lin family's North Epping home before killing them, but DNA found on the power switch could not be identified as his.

There were also a significant number of hairs found at the crime scene but - other than those belonging to the victims - these could not be identified either.

"There was in fact no DNA from the applicant [Mr Xie] found on any items taken by police from the crime scene ... nor any of the victims' DNA found on any of his items or his property," Mr Turnbull said.

In a bid to counter Mr Turnbull's claims, the head of the police investigation into the killings, Detective Inspector Joe Maree, was called by the Crown prosecutor to give evidence.

He revealed that, a few weeks before his death, Mr Lin had seen an armed robbery outside the Epping RSL Club, and that police had investigated the possibility that the murder of Mr Lin and his family was an attempt to get rid of potential witnesses.

However, this explanation was disproved by the fact that two of the armed robbers were out of the country at the time of the killings, while the others were "under close police surveillance", the officer said.

Detective Inspector Maree said "all of the possible alternative explanations" had been investigated by police.

Mr Turnbull then claimed that police had subjected Mr Xie to "psychological warfare" including subjecting him to a torrid interview characterised by sardonic and sarcastic comments by the police, and a refusal to allow the suspect to have an interpreter.

"You rattled his cage because you needed more evidence didn't you?" Mr Turnbull said. The officer denied this, but conceded that, at the time of the interview, police had needed more evidence before laying charges.

Original report here




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