By Stephen Stirling
A Flushing man was convicted of first-degree murder last Thursday for stabbing a brother and sister to death with a butcher knife 59 times three years ago and now faces life in prison, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said.
The DA said 26-year-old Jin Lin of 59-12 155th St. was convicted of first-degree murder, burglary and robbery in Queens Supreme Court after a four-week trial and will be sentenced June 4, when he faces the maximum sentence of life in prison without parole.
“The defendant rightfully faces a sentence of life in prison without parole as these murders were particularly brutal,” Brown said. “A brother and sister were stabbed a combined 59 times in their own home. These murders warrant the imposition of a maximum sentence to punish him and to protect society.”
Brown said Lin went to the home of his former girlfriend, Cho Man Ng, at about 3 p.m. on May 12, 2005, where he was let in by her brother, Sek Man Ng.
Sgt. Michael Breidenbach, then head of the 107th Precinct Detectives Squad, said Sek Man wrote in an electronic journal that evening how “uncomfortable” he was having let Lin in the apartment. Lin had arrived at the door saying he was there to retrieve a fishing pole from Cho Man Ng and asked the Queens College freshman if he could wait for her to return from work, Breidenbach said.
A few hours later Lin bound Ng's brother with tape and placed a butcher knife to his neck before searching the apartment for cash while he waited for Cho to return home. When Cho returned home several hours later, Brown said Lin used the butcher knife to stab the siblings nearly five dozen times in the neck and body.
Confronted with the evidence, Lin soon confessed to tying up and fatally stabbing first Sek and then Cho as she came through the door, claiming he was trying to steal money to buy a plane ticket back to Hong Kong, according to Breidenbach.
But police were dubious about the motive after they recovered such a ticket already purchased by Lin.
“I believe it was more a crime of passion,” Breidenbach told the TimesLedger in 2005.
Reach reporter Stephen Stirling by e-mail at Sstirling@timesledger.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 138.
