Zhenhao Zou thought, acted and offended as if he was untouchable. When detectives searched the south London flat he rented for thousands of pounds a month, they found the trappings of a comfortable, if not lavish, lifestyle.
DCI Richard Mackenzie said of the search in January 2024: “There were designer bags, jewellery, a Rolex, designer clothes, some in the wardrobe with the tags still on.”
The world Zou enjoyed, financed largely by his Chinese parents, came crashing down because of the bravery of one woman. She went to police in London in November 2023 saying Zou had raped her in his flat in Elephant and Castle.
Two days after she went to the police, Zou flew to China. On his return to London in January 2024, the Metropolitan police arrested him.
Amid that victim’s pain and confusion, she found and clung to her courage. If not for her, Zou might have remained undetected.
Zou was studying at University College London for a PhD in mechanical engineering, having first come to Britain to study in 2017. Despite the appearance of comfort, Zou’s flat concealed a digital house of horrors, captured on secret cameras and stored on his phone for his warped pleasure.
In all, there were 1,270 videos, 1,660 hours of footage, and 58 videos of Zou raping women. There was also an array of drugs, including those used for stupefying his victims.
Zou has now been convicted of attacks on 10 women, with the recovered videos being the key reason for the guilty verdicts. Police fear his offending against women in London, and in China, may have been much more widespread.
Det Supt Vanessa Britton said the scale and complexity of the investigation was unprecedented. “It could be an extraordinary amount of time before we have an idea of the scale of his offending,” she said.
The videos show a male, whom police believe to be Zou, attacking a series of women who are under the influence of drugs administered into drinks. Barely any of the women have yet been identified, and some of the videos do not show the victims’ faces.
Britton said usually detectives investigating rape had a victim, and their hunt was for a suspect. This investigation is the reverse.
The videos provided the best evidence against Zou and the scale of his offending, with Mackenzie saying his team was having to scour videos for clues as to which country the attacks took place in.
“One of the things we noticed was there was an English plug socket in the video,” he said. “In some of the videos you can see the internal elements of the [London] flat.”
Mackenzie said some videos clearly showed Zou attacking women who were “drugged or under the influence of something”. That may have been enough to convict him and overcome the defence he offered in this trial, that the woman consented to making a rape roleplay video.
Videos recovered show victims’ speech “slurred”, with some clearly “upset” but unable to do anything because of the drugs. In one, Zou looks at the camera while his victim can be seen with bruising around her left eye and cheekbone. Audio from the video, in Mandarin, shows Zou ignoring pleas for mercy, taunting one victim after she complains of his attack: “It really hurts.”
Other videos are more complicated. The effect of the drugs can render a victim unconscious, but they can also experience bouts of euphoria.
Zou’s electronic devices held huge numbers of messages between him and those women with whom he came into contact, all believed to be of Chinese heritage.
The Met had computer experts devise code so they could handle and examine more than 9m messages in Mandarin on the Chinese social media app WeChat.
Zou told the jury he had been a high-flying student in China, that his father worked in a state-owned enterprise and that his mother was a teacher. He said that during his education in China he studied hard and while at school he received an education in politics, but no sex education.
He came to Britain in 2017 to study at Queen’s University in Belfast, then in 2019 he started studying for a master’s in mechanical engineering at University College London.
Zou said it was in London that he started using drugs, including ketamine, cocaine and ecstasy. His social life revolved around nightclubs and London’s Chinese community, and he would also go on dates after meeting women on apps such as Bumble.
He grew up in Guangdong province and said that in 2020, when the Covid lockdown struck Britain, he returned to China. He lived in one of his parents’ homes, and said he did not know how many they owned. He told the court he surfed the internet for extreme pornography.
Zou said he liked videos showing sex with sleeping women, that most would call that rape, and that it was the lack of a response from a woman that made him excited. Some of these he downloaded from a Chinese app called Potato.
Questioned about video material he watched, Zou said he liked “time-stop” pornography, in which “the females are passive and unresponsive during sex”. Asked in court why he preferred that type of sexually explicit material, Zou replied: “I like it because the girl appears to be still and quiet when they are having sex.”
His barrister, Mark Cotter KC, asked: “What about being asleep?” Zou, testifying in his own defence, replied: “Yes, that’s my favourite type. But I could not find that.”
Bespectacled and wearing a suit while giving evidence over five days, he appeared mild-mannered and outwardly anything but the dangerous predator that he is. While in the dock he had minimal security, just one guard. One detective who interviewed Zou over the allegations of serial rape said he appeared “charming”, while one victim said he had at first appeared to be a gentleman.
He had the money to have had several cosmetic procedures, including hair transplants after his hair fell out due to chronic insomnia, as well as work on his eyelids and chin.
Mackenzie said Zou’s method of offending was strikingly similar over what he believes were 60 attacks. He would persuade women to come to his flat, to study or for drinks, and drug them.
One known victim may have been drugged while in Chinatown in London while part of a group of young people, including Zou, having food and drinks.
During the first police investigation, triggered when the woman came forward in November 2023, detectives revisited another woman who had first approached them in 2023. She had alleged Zou raped her in London but then dropped her allegation.
She posted on Chinese social media warning others of the dangers of Zou. Her post led to another young woman contacting her and saying she, too, had suffered and been attacked after meeting him.
Of the videos believed to have been made in China, Zou said one woman was a master’s student, another an online influencer, another an escort, and the others were undergraduates. He persisted to the end with the fiction that the videos showed consensual sex with the women “roleplaying”.
British police were not able to travel to China to further their inquiries. The Met said the Chinese authorities had been otherwise helpful and they hoped for more cooperation.
The Chinese embassy in London did not respond to a request for comment.
The Met hopes the publicity generated by Zou’s conviction will spur women to come forward, and believe some may not even know they were attacked because of the effects on memory of the date rape drugs he used.
Zou’s case comes months after that of Gisèle Pelicot, who was drugged in France by her husband who then allowed at least 50 men to rape her while she was sedated.
British police do not keep data about how often drugs are used to facilitate sexual violence. There were 6,732 reports to police of spiking in the year ending April 2023. Police estimate one in six of these type of incidents are linked to a further crimes, of any type.
There have been previous cases in Britain of serial rapists using drugs to carry out their crimes. In 2020, Reynhard Sinaga was convicted of 136 counts of rape, eight counts of attempted rape, 14 counts of sexual assault and one count of assault by penetration, against 48 victims. Police believe he committed many more offences and at the time of his conviction they could not identify a further 70 victims.
Sinaga’s offending, making him the worst recorded rapist in British criminal history, was against men and was aided by drugging his victims.
The black-cab rapist John Worboys was jailed in 2009 for attacks on 16 women, using drugs to facilitate his offending. Police privately feared he had attacked many more.
• Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html
