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上周六对很多居住在悉尼Epping地区附近的居民来说只是一个寻常的周末。人们起床后按照习惯，前往附近的一个书报店。然而向来可靠的书报店那天却铁将军把门，有一个告示写道：由于家庭原因，本店暂停营业。很多前来买报的顾客看到纸条后议论纷纷，但是谁都没想到最坏的可能性。一名好心的华人顾客见门口堆满了报纸，便自发替店主卖报，并将钱款放在窗台上，希望林姓店主随后赶来时能够看到。
晚上的电视新闻报道了造成书报店未能营业的家庭原因：林姓一家五人在家中遇害。
男主人林暋今年45岁，曾为一名工程师；女主人李云（音译）43岁，常在店里免费派发CD给附近的孩子，同邻居的关系也很和睦；12岁的儿子Henry，刚在事发前不久获得羽毛球比赛冠军，并梦想成为职业网球手；9岁的Terry性格活泼，富有创造性，同时在下棋和数学上颇有天赋；遇难的还有林暋的39岁的妹妹林云斌（音译）。
据勘察现场的警察透露，无名遇害人在死前一刻因遭受钝器袭击，而导致面部严重变形，以至于无法在尸检前辨认出死者身份。五名死者均在住所的二楼，父母在同一张床上，两个儿子在一个卧室，林暋的妹妹在另外一个房间。屋子并无遭强行进入的痕迹。最先报警的是林暋的另外一个妹妹林舒（音译）。她在周六早上同丈夫到达林暋家后发现尸体，并报了警。
太多的疑问围绕着这起灭门案。据当地居民反映，林家为人和善，几乎没有与他们有过节的人。就像Henry就读的Epping男子学校的校长Peter Garrard说的，林家堪称一个模范家庭。倘若澳洲需要在其移民宣传活动上采用一张家庭照，林家完全可以胜任。
负责该凶案的Geoff Beresford警官表示，该案件包含着明显的个人关联。灭门案并未是偶然事件，而是有针对性的。
正因为这样，林家的15岁大女儿Brenda从一次学校组织的外出活动回到悉尼后，即在姑妈林舒的看护下躲了起来。Beresford警官说，她是一个相当坚强的孩子。由于Brenda是林家仅存不多的直隶亲属，警方将找出有犯罪动机的嫌疑犯的希望寄在了小女孩的身上。不过Beresford也表示，孩子有时并不清楚父母生意上或其他方面的往来，关键的线索可能要从其他地方搜集。
林暋出生在中国广东，但是从小在上海的外婆家长大。他的一名高中同学在其网博上写道，林暋的父母都是技术人员，曾被派往辽宁工作。林暋有着很好的英语能力。
在90年代后，林暋一家从中国迁来澳洲悉尼，早先居住在悉尼西北区的Quakers Hill。2001年时，夫妻在Merrylands经营着名叫All You Need的小超市，并在当年底购买了位于North Epping的住所。一年之后，他们买下了Epping购物中心的书报店。
Garrard对林暋夫妻的描述是典型的具有上进心的亚洲移民。对此，居住在Epping地区的联邦议员Maxine McKew也表示认同。很多家庭选择居住在Epping，看重的是当地出色的州立学校。McKew议员在接受悉尼晨锋报采访时说，林暋夫妇希望给孩子提供最好的教育，让他们取得大学学位，日后成为专业人才。
说到McKew，她致力于促进多元文化的发展。在Epping的华人店内，常见的标语先用中文，再用英语。McKew议员认为这反映了Epping地区的多民族性。她上周出席了Epping居民自发的一个社区集会。会上大家在对林家不幸遭遇表示同情之余，还表现出了强烈的社区团体精神。
对于案件本身的侦破，警方首先排除几个可能性。其一是杀害林家是为了灭口一说。林暋曾出庭对发生在五月的一起抢劫运钞车作过证。但是当时的劫匪头戴面具，并且出庭作证的还有其他很多人；其二，有人称林暋的妻子在不久前被人用刀洗劫过书报店。警方也否认了这一事件同灭门案的关联。
警方在侦查过程中拖走了报警的林舒家的车子，因为他们在去过林暋家后用过车，导致车上可能有蛛丝马迹，不过警方表示这只是例行检查；随后他们在接到一邻居的举报后，对林舒的住所进行了勘察。不过所谓的痕迹并非血迹，Beresford警官之后也表示，警方相信林舒的住所同案件并无牵连。
在案件发生整一个星期之后，仍然有很多问题困扰着关注案件的人们：
- 为什么命案造成了那么多人遇难，而没有一个遇难者发现或逃生？；
- 行凶武器是什么？对此，Beresford坦言，这或许是个不解之谜，因为在涉及钝器击打的谋杀案中，凶器通常很难被找到；
- 命案带有种族色彩吗？Beresford警官宣称，虽然警方不能排除一切可能性，但是在目前看来，这起案子不是种族袭击事件。不过林家的遇害显然是有针对性的；
- 凶手同同样遭遇黑手的林云斌有关吗？林云斌生前曾在悉尼Macquarie大学商科攻读硕士学位，警方正在寻求她大学期间交往的线索；
- 凶手到底有几人？目前为止，警方尚没有确凿的答复。Bond大学犯罪学专家Wayne Petherick表示，可能有两名或以上凶手参与。尽管从目前的证据来看，案件并不具有系职业谋杀的特点，但是凶手有着极大的仇恨和报复情绪；
- 凶手很熟识林暋一家吗？Petherick教授认为很有可能，但也不完全一定。他认为，如果排除毒品和酒精因素，这样的犯罪行为是出于个人的。同开枪射杀不同，这样近距离的袭击暗示着凶犯有着极其强烈的怨恨；
- 谁能下如此狠心？Petherick认为很多人都会，但问题是谁会真正这么去做。谁能够出如此黑手，并准备好随后的后果？；
显然案件造成的影响是深远的，而承受后果最大的无疑是15岁的Brenda。事发后的周二，孩子们纷纷结束假期回到学校。学校事先安排了心理辅导员帮助学生和老师应对这一悲剧。Garrad校长表示，在周三的社区集会上，大家一致认同最要紧的是做一些具体的，有积极作用的事情。比如学校会问学生他们有什么想做的，这可能包括给Brenda捐款，或是设立永久性的纪念活动。当地一所教会的牧师复述他儿子的话说，出事的地方就在街角，就在我骑自行车经过的地方。这不是发生在电视上或报纸上的事件，而是真真切切地就在身边。Terry的一个好朋友，10岁的Benjamin Lu甚至对他母亲说，他晚上梦到了Terry，Terry还对他讲话。还有一名15岁的女孩在晚上睡觉时，不得不将一把锤子放置在枕头底下。不仅孩子，成年人也纷纷赶到震惊。当地的一名女士曾同林暋合伙经营过书报店。她回忆说，她的儿子和媳妇周二刚迎来了自己的孩子，她周三去书报店告诉了林暋的妻子李云，李云还特地去拿了一张贺卡来表示祝贺，不料周六就出了这样的事情。林暋家的一个邻居说，平时街道上经常能够见到玩耍的孩子，但现在空无一人。在林家住所对面的一个街心花园里，父母们交流着如何对孩子描述这一悲剧。有一名母亲告诉记者，她尽量不让自己表现得太悲伤，试图通过亲吻和拥抱孩子来告诉他们父母是多么爱护他们。“突然之间，其他所有的一切都变得如此的微不足道。”
Due to family circumstances a nation lives bewildered
http://www.smh.com.au/national/due-to-family-circumstances-a-nation-lives-bewildered-20090724-dw7n.html?page=-1
July 25, 2009
As police struggle for clues in the Lin family murders at North Epping, they're sure of one thing: this was no random attack. Rick Feneley, Dylan Welch and Geesche Jacobsen look at the events that shocked a nation.
When newspapers failed to land on doorsteps around Epping last Saturday, a slow parade of customers ventured out to check on their usually reliable newsagents, Min and Lillie Lin.
Among them was their federal MP, Maxine McKew. "We drove up Rawson Street and found the sign on the shop's door," McKew says. The sign read: "Closed due to family circumstances".
Milling outside the newsagency, locals fond of the Lins expressed mild concern, but none thought the worst. The morning papers were still stacked high outside, so a favoured Chinese customer began handing them out, collecting payment and piling the coins on a window ledge, expecting the Lins would soon arrive. They didn't.
It was not until that evening's television news that McKew and her constituents discovered the horror of the Lins' "family circumstances".
Five members of this one family, with no known enemies, had been bashed to death at their home in Boundary Road, North Epping. Dead were Min Lin, a 45-year-old Chinese immigrant and former engineer; his wife, Yun Li "Lillie", 43, who was popular with local kids for giving away CDs at the shop and popular with neighbours for her gifts of magazines; their sons, Henry, 12, who starred at badminton and wanted to become a professional tennis player, and Terry, a nine-year-old chatterbox, creative writer, chess player and mathematics whiz, and Min's sister, Yun Bin "Irene" Lin, 39.
It would be days before the full, appalling details of this slaughter emerged. Each victim had been bludgeoned to death with a blunt instrument, possibly while asleep, between midnight on Friday and 8am on Saturday. Their faces were disfigured beyond recognition, so violent were the blows. Forensics would be required to formally identify each victim.
All the victims were upstairs. By some reports, mother and father were in one bed, the two brothers were in a bedroom they shared, and their aunt was in another room. There was no sign of forced entry to the house.
Min Lin's sister, Shu Lin, who lives around the corner, called the police in a distressed state about 9.50am on Saturday. She had gone to the house with her husband, Lian Bin "Robert" Xie, and discovered the carnage. But she did not see her brother and mentioned only four bodies, and the initial police report called it "an apparent domestic-related incident". This led to false speculation of a murder-suicide - that the father had killed his family and fled to end his own life. That, tragically, would not have been such an unusual crime. The truth was an exceptional murder.
But who was capable of this outrage? That question - and why - has consumed police, the terrified residents of Epping and Epping North and most of Australia for the past seven days. While police say they are yet to identify a single suspect, a father summed up the bewilderment and heartbreak of locals when he stood up in a church hall this week and quoted his young son, who had asked him: "Why did they kill children?"
For one thing, it was "intensely personal", says the commander of the homicide squad, Detective Superintendent Geoff Beresford. To comfort Epping's families on edge, police have been at pains to tell them this was no random attack. It was clearly targeted.
And for that reason, the Lins' 15-year-old daughter, Brenda, has been in hiding all week, in the care of her aunt, Shu Lin. Brenda, who has grandparents in western Sydney, had been in New Caledonia on a school excursion with Cheltenham Girls High School when her family was battered to death. Beresford says she is a "very strong young lady". She may be among the few people with any comprehension of who might have a motive to kill her family. However, Beresford makes the point that not all teenagers know their parents' business or contacts. The vital "human connections" may have to be provided by others.
"THE LINS REALLY WERE THE model family," says Peter Garrard, principal of Epping Boys High School, where Henry was in year 7.
If Australia needed a poster family for its business immigration program, the Lins of North Epping could have have been it. In Chinese, Min Lin's given name means intrepid, and his life has been an adventure. According to a friend in China, he was born in Guangdong but grew up in Shanghai with his grandmother. One of his high school classmates says on a blog that his parents were technicians and had been sent to Shenyang, capital of Liaoning province, to work. Lin, meanwhile, had excelled at English.
It appears the Lins arrived in Sydney from China in the mid to late 1990s. Henry, their second child, was born at Blacktown Hospital in 1997, when the family lived at Quakers Hill in Sydney's north-west. By 2001 they were in business at the All You Need Supermarket in Merrylands. Later that year, they bought their home in Boundary Road, North Epping. In November 2002 they bought the newsagency at Epping Shopping Centre.
It is a typical tale of "upward mobility" among Asian immigrants, Garrard notes. McKew agrees. Families commonly move into the area, which she represents in Federal Parliament, to compete for places in its excellent state schools.
"I would say they were typical of many of the Asian families who have come here," she told the Herald. "They want the very best for their children. The Lins would have wanted their children well educated, to get degrees, professional jobs. I dare say they hoped that they would not end up working in a newsagency."
It was McKew who ousted the last prime minister, John Howard, from this seat of Bennelong - and not without appealing to the swinging vote of its large Chinese constituency, among many others. Shop signs here are often in Chinese first, English second, but McKew stresses it is a multi-ethnic area - with many Indians, Sri Lankans and Koreans also living among the Anglo-Australians - and it is about the most "socially cohesive community you would find … quiet, tranquil, friendly".
McKew was at a community gathering of 200 at the local All Saints Anglican Church on Tuesday night. "There were teachers in tears - teachers who had taught all three Lin children at Epping North," she said. She has been touched by the residents' impulse to rally together, to offer support, to be a community.
"You can imagine the usual conversation on a Monday morning: how the local North Epping Rangers soccer team did on the weekend; how the kids are going at the school. And then these murders. It is as different as you can possibly imagine. This just doesn't happen here."
The trauma has had tentacles to the broader community through the networks of the children's three schools: Terry at Epping North Primary, Henry at Epping Boys High and Brenda at Cheltenham Girls High.
Henry played table tennis, badminton and tennis. He won a badminton tournament a week or so before the murders. His father, too, played some tennis. Min Lin was a busy man, not always at the front of the shop.
ON WEDNESDAY NIGHT THIS WEEK, the Lin family's washing was still hanging on the line as forensic experts scoured the backyard. It was a load mainly of whites, clothing, some boys' socks. It was a snapshot from an ordinary, quintessentially middle-class home. "This is one of the things no one can understand," says Garrard. "Who would want to kill such an excellent family?"
The family was engaged with the community, though not through the local churches. They had attended the Chinese evangelical Christian church in their street only a few times. Lillie had been to one event at All Saints. Its pastor, Reverend Roger Green, says two of his four children were in composite classes with Terry and Brenda Lin. "The comment of my own son was, 'This is just around the corner. This is where I ride my bike.' It's not just on the TV or in the papers; it's where we live."
Terry's best friend, 10-year-old Benjamin Lu, went to his mother, Aiqi Lu, on Wednesday night. "Mummy," he said, "I dreamt about Terry last night and he spoke to me."
Without a suspect, there remain so many unanswered questions. Where does the strike force of 18 detectives on this case begin? First, investigators have ruled out some red herrings.
Police do not believe the motive was to shut up Min Lin, who witnessed an armoured van robbery across the road from his shop in May. The thieves in this raid had worn balaclavas, and Min was among numerous witnesses. Last month, Lillie Lin was held at knifepoint during a robbery at the newsagency. Again, police do not believe this is related to the massacre of the family.
Soon after the crime, police towed away Shu Lin and Lian Bin Xie's red car. Police said this was routine because the car had been used after Shu had been inside her brother's house, potentially transferring evidence from the scene to the car. Police forensic experts spent Thursday afternoon and night at a home bordering her and her husband's house, around the corner from Boundary Road. After a tip-off from their neighbour, police investigated a stain on the fence and removed a wheelie bin and, reportedly, a leaf from a tree. The stain, they said, was not blood, and Beresford said they were satisfied that "the house is in no way associated with the crime".
There are many other questions. How could so many be killed, so violently, without waking or alerting at least one of the victims? Why did none escape? This point is still baffling police. They have not revealed whether the front door of the house was locked or unlocked when Min's sister entered last Saturday morning.
What was used to kill the victims? Beresford conceded this week that this may never be known. In murders with heavy, blunt instruments, the weapon can be very difficult to identify.
Was it racially motivated? Yesterday Detective Superintendent Beresford said: "I can reassure the public that while we can't rule out anything, at this stage it seems this was not a racially motivated attack. However, it would appear the family was targeted."
Was it someone linked to Irene, Lillie's sister, who had been studying for a master of commerce at Macquarie University for 12 months? Police are appealing for any information about her university contacts.
Was it one or more killers? Police have not committed an answer to this question. Associate Professor Wayne Petherick, a criminal profiler from Bond University, is torn. Two or more people could have executed the killings more easily, but this crime did not evince the modus operandi of professional assassins. It involved "extreme anger" and a determination to extract revenge.
Does that mean the killer knew the Lins intimately? Quite likely, but not necessarily, Petherick says. The key ingredient is that the killer feels aggrieved in some way. "If you exclude drugs or alcohol, what you're generally talking about with these sorts of crimes is something that is personal. Bashing somebody is different from shooting them. It involves a very close-range attack, and you are going to wear blood splatter. You are going to feel the weapon strike the victims. You are going to hear the weapon strike the victims."
Who is capable of that? "Many people may be capable of it," says Petherick, "but the question is, would they carry it out? They are two very different things. Who could proceed with the murders, then rationalise it some way, and be prepared to live with the consequences?"
Brenda Lin is living with the consequences. So are the people of Epping and North Epping. A 15-year-old girl has taken to sleeping with a hammer. Children are reporting nightmares, and so are grown-ups. Among them is a local woman who was a partner in the newsagency before the Lins took over in 2002. On Thursday she walked past the shop for the first time since the murders.
"It really rocked me," she said. "The number of flowers and messages - halfway across the footpath - it just demonstrates how liked they were."
On Tuesday last week, she said, her son and his wife had a baby. "On the Wednesday, I went into the shop and told Lillie. She went and got a card to wish them well. She was that kind. On the Saturday they were gone."
Children return to school on Tuesday, after midyear holidays. The local schools have prepared counsellors for teachers and students. They will have to deal with rumours, whispers in the playground, anything that will compound the trauma.
"The most important thing that came out of the community meeting is to do things that are practical and positive," says Garrard. "We are going to ask our boys what they would like to do. It could be fund-raising to help Brenda Lin. It could be some kind of permanent memorial."
A neighbour of the Lins, Anne Mulherin, said a street usually filled with playing children was almost deserted. "They just haven't found anything, you know - that's the thing that's really unnerving."
In a small playground in the park across from the Lins' home, parents discussed the murders while their children played on the swings and plastic slides. "Has your little girl been told about it yet?" one parent asked. The reply: "She's been told but she doesn't understand it. It's just too gruesome."
Another mother, whose two children had gone through school with Terry, told the Herald how the tragedy had changed her. "I try not to get so angry, kiss the kids a bit more, hug them a bit more - try to appreciate what we have, because suddenly everything else seems so frivolous."
with Jonathan Dart and Ellie Harvey
[ 本帖最后由 一炷香 于 2009-7-26 16:43 编辑 ] |
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大头家常菜 -- 蒜子烧海参 (2009-8-23) datou2z 
如诗如梦新西兰 (2009-1-14) tonyy 
楼主:radar
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发表于 2009-7-25 23:01
妈呀，
不让人活了。
