Xiangjin Zheng (55) found strangled in the entrance hall of her home on Nova Zemblastraat

On the evening of Sunday 27 December 2015, at around eleven, neighbours heard noise in a flat on Nova Zemblastraat in the Spaarndammerbuurt. At five the following morning they heard stumbling on the stairs. At quarter past seven passers-by found the 55-year-old Xiangjin Zheng in the entrance hall of the building. Emergency workers spent at least twenty minutes trying to resuscitate her, without success. According to a witness she had bruises on her neck and blood on her body. Police could not initially say how long she had lain there, what the cause of death was, or where she had sustained her injuries; investigation established that she had been killed by a crime. She had been strangled. On 29 December her partner Yibaiao L. was arrested, and the examining magistrate ordered him held. He confessed. At the heart of the case lay a debt. L. had borrowed 10,000 euros from Zheng and had promised to repay it on 27 December, because she wanted to return to China. For the same reason he had to leave her home. He did not want to — and according to experts he was not able to. At the trial he stated that they had argued and that she had slapped him in the face with the flat of her hand. Behavioural experts described L. as someone with a weak sense of identity, limited self-reliance, poor social skills and little resilience, easily influenced and with fragile impulse control under stress. He was sentenced to eight years in prison.