The son Huajiao Zhuang secretly gave birth to in a pigpen because of China’s one-child policy no longer wants anything to do with her after she brutally murdered his wife, a court has heard.
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Zhuang, 50, who had little formal education and could speak almost no English, travelled from China to Australia in 2010 to be with her son, Peter, and his pregnant wife, Dan ‘‘Selina’’ Lin, because she believed it was her duty to look after them.
Zhuang appeared in the Supreme Court on Friday for a pre-sentence hearing after a jury found her guilty in May of murdering Ms Lin, 21, by hitting her at least 33 times in the head with a hammer.
Her son, Peter, and two daughters, who have also settled in Australia, were not in court to support her.
Defence barrister Shane Gardner said Zhuang faced being deported to China after serving her jail sentence when her family, including her husband and children and grandchildren, were living in Australia.
Mr Gardner said Zhuang deserved a shorter jail sentence because the threat of deportation would weigh heavily on her mind while she was in prison.
A psychiatric report revealed Zhuang was isolated in prison, suffered from a chronic major depressive disorder and continued to deny her guilt.
Crown prosecutor Justin Lewis said the murder could not be described as the worst of its kind as it was not premeditated, but it had been a brutal killing carried out in front of Ms Lin’s two-year-old son.
The jury had been told Zhuang complained that Ms Lin did not show her or her family enough respect. She would complain about her daughter-in-law's attitude, thought her son and his wife lived too far away from her, and felt she didn't get to spend enough time with her grandson. She believed Peter should never have married Ms Lin.
In turn, Ms Lin thought her mother-in-law was uneducated and rude, and she disliked her playing with, or touching, her grandson. The women's relationship had deteriorated markedly by the time Zhuang attacked her daughter-in-law with a hammer in the bathroom of her home after an argument on May 3, 2012, at Bundoora.
Ms Lin died from repeated blunt force trauma to the head.
Zhuang, who was not injured in the confrontation, later told police she had acted in self-defence and grabbed the hammer from her daughter-in-law believing she was in a kill-or-be-killed situation.
After killing Ms Lin, Zhuang dragged her body out of the bath, where she had fallen, and put it in a large travel bag before placing it in a wheelie bin, which she left in the backyard.
Zhuang later retrieved the wheelie bin and rolled it about 700 metres to the Darebin Creek where she tipped Ms Lin’s body into the water.
The pre-sentence hearing before Justice Stephen Kaye was adjourned to August 8 to get more information as to whether Zhuang would be deported after she had served her jail sentence.
