Zhenhao Zou: How the Metropolitan Police caught UCL student who drugged and raped 10 women

TW: Rape, drugs

Zhenhao Zou, a 28-year-old former UCL student was convicted on Wednesday (5th March) of raping and drugging 10 women.

In an investigation spanning over a year, police combed through evidence to put together a strong case against the Chinese national.

After Zou was arrested in January last year, the Metropolitan Police gathered a plethora of evidence from the former PhD student’s £4,000 per month flat in Bloomsbury, central London.

When police arrested Zou for the first time, officers only knew about one rape but upon searching through the evidence found at his flat, it would later turn out that there were nine more victims.

The most damning evidence officers found were 1,277 videos stored on hard drives. Some of these videos showed Zou raping his victims. They also found a number of secret cameras, used to film the assaults.

In interview footage provided by the Metropolitan Police, a few days after Zou was arrested, a detective can be heard telling him that they’d checked his mobile phone and watched a “fraction” of the footage.

According to the BBC, in the footage found in Zou’s possession, police found seven videos of him raping women in China. These women were identified to the court as Females B, C, D, E, F, G, H. Five of the aforementioned women were said to be unconscious in the videos, with one appearing to be snoring.

Female G woke up during the attack but soon drifted back out of consciousness.

Inner London Crown Court was told how another one of the victims, Female D, woke up during her attack and begged Zou to stop, saying “please, no” whilst she tried to fight him off.

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Due to the nature of these videos, Judge Rosina Cottage KC made it so the jurors watched as little of them as possible.

However, the Met Police also found that Zou also raped women in London.

Female A was said to be involved in one of the case’s most distressing videos. She was raped by the 28-year-old at his flat in Bloomsbury. They have not been able to identify her.

At the start of the video, she is unconscious but wakes up during her attack, telling him: “I hate you”, but Zou replied saying to her: “It’s pointless. The sound insulation here is very good.”

Another similar video was recorded at his flat using a spy cam the size of a thumb.

One of the spy cameras officers found at Zou’s residence via Met Police

Detectives said at first they could not extract the sound from the videos, with Zou telling them that the women had consented, but just before the trial they were able to recover the audio. By doing this, they could confirm that Female A was under the influence of alcohol or drugs, and that she was begging him to stop.

This is where Zou told the court she had been acting as he likes “rape role play”.

Although some of the now-convicted rapist’s victims were not identified, two women did give evidence to police.

One woman, Ms N, who was a student at the time, was raped by Zou after they met at a party in Elephant and Castle. After chatting at the party, they went back to his flat where he plied her with alcohol, dragged her into his bedroom, and sexually assaulted her.

In footage obtained by the police, jurors heard how Zou continuously said to her: “Finish the drink. It should not be wasted.”

The woman came forward to police but after saying she had a bad experience with its translation service during a 999 call, did not pursue the report any further.

The Metropolitan Police has apologised for Ms N’s experience, saying: “There is undoubtedly some learning from the first response that these victims received.”

However, she did later post on Red Note, a Chinese social media app, warning women about Zou. This then led to Ms L coming forward with a similar story.

Ms L told police that she’d had sex with Zou previously consensually but after one night out with friends, she ended up at his flat, not knowing how she got there.

She said: “When I woke up I found him on top of me having sex.”

‘Trophies’ Zou kept from his victims via Met Police

In total, police found four spy cameras at Zou’s home as well as a Fendi box filled with “trophies” from the women he raped.

Zou was convicted of 35 offences with 11 of those being rapes against his 10 victims. The police have noted however, that before coming to London, Zou studied in Belfast but officers did not find any devices dating back to his time there so cannot confirm if these attacks started whilst he was in Northern Ireland.

Featured image via Met Police