Man’s ‘horrific’ killing of lover’s family

A man who tortured and murdered his lover’s wife before shooting his two children for financial gain will die behind bars after he lost his appeal against his three life sentences.

In February 2003, Crespin Adanguidi invited his lover of three years, Raymond Shen, to his home in Rockdale with the intention of attacking and robbing him.

Court documents show the couple were involved in “intimate touching” before Adanguidi violently attacked Mr Shen while he was getting dressed.

The then 27-year-old used a pistol to hit his lover on the back of the head and then gagged him while he was lying on the ground injured.

Adanguidi bound Mr Shen with adhesive tape and demanded money from him over the course of the next few hours.

After stealing the cash and valuables his lover had on him at the time, he drove to Mr Shen’s apartment just before 3am.

Adanguidi pocketed “substantial amounts of cash” and valuable electronics before he was interrupted by Mr Shen’s son Pin, who was wielding a tennis racket.

Adanguidi shot the man through the head at close range, killing him instantly.

He then set upon Mr Shen’s daughter Christie Bo, who was trying to call triple-0, and shot her in the back of the head.

Continuing his bloody rampage, Adanguidi used his pistol to torture Mr Shen’s wife Shiquin Zhu by injuring her breast and hands before bludgeoning her to death.

During the hour his lover was in the apartment committing the three cold-blooded murders, Mr Shen managed to free himself and alert the police.

When sentencing Adanguidi in 2005, NSW Supreme Court Justice Graham Barr condemned his actions as “ruthless”, “horrific” and “of great heinousness”.

He accepted the murderer was developing a mental illness but concluded he had been aware of his actions that night.

“Everything the offender did was done out of greed,” Justice Barr said.

He sentenced Adanguidi to life behind bars for each of the three murders.

On Friday, the triple murderer appeared before the Court of Criminal Appeal to learn the outcome of his second appeal against his sentence.

He had appealed on the grounds that a miscarriage of justice had occurred due to an absence of relevant psychiatric evidence at his trial and sentencing.

Justices Peter Garling, Desmond Fagan, and Sarah McNaughton unanimously ordered his appeal be dismissed on both grounds.

“Notwithstanding the existence of fresh evidence which is credible or plausible, there is no possibility (let alone any significant possibility) that the sentencing Judge, acting reasonably, would have imposed a different and lesser sentence for each of the offences,” they concluded.

“We have not been persuaded by the appellant that we should quash his three convictions, nor that the three life sentences which were imposed ought also be quashed”.

It was the second appeal Adanguidi had lost since he was sentenced in 2005.

In 2006, his appeal against his “manifestly excessive” life sentence was thrown out after the Court of Criminal Appeal found a lesser sentence was not warranted.