For months, Qiong's mum thought she was texting her from Brisbane. The reality was tragic.

For months, Qiong Yan's family and friends in China kept receiving texts from her, filled with updates about her new life in Brisbane.

Qiong said she was "too ashamed" to come home. She needed money. But something didn't sound quite right.

In a devastating turn of events, it wasn't Qiong sending those messages.

She was already dead — her body hidden inside a "body box" on the balcony of her apartment.

At 29 years old, Qiong was living on a bridging visa and sharing an apartment in Hamilton, inner-Brisbane, with another Chinese national, Yang Zhao, then 26, who was studying here.

For months, Qiong's loved ones had been suspicious. The texts didn't sound like her. The tone felt strange.

And then there was the bizarre video her mother received: just a woman's hand, petting a cat.

Eventually, one of her friends had had enough. In April 2021, they filed a missing persons report with police.

When officers couldn't find Qiong, they tried reaching out to her on WeChat.

It didn't take long to get a reply: "Hi, I'm sorry to waste your time and resources, I'm fine."

But by then, police say, it was already too late.

The "body box" on the balcony.

On July 19, 2021, police turned up to the Hamilton apartment and made a devastating discovery.

Qiong's decomposed body was found stuffed inside a large toolbox on the balcony (which Zhao would later refer to as a "body box"), hidden under a black sheet. She'd been there for 10 months.

Police say the box drew their attention because the locks were covered in what they thought were "little incense bags". They were actually prayer notes.

When they opened the box, they were hit by an unmistakable smell: death.

Police say Zhao was behind the texts and video, pretending Qiong was still alive after murdering her.

They claim her housemate Zhao killed her with "a blow or a number of blows to the head", then strangled her.

What followed, they say, was a calculated cover-up: Zhao sent 2400 fake messages from Qiong's phone to keep the illusion alive.

Because at the end of the day, prosecutors say, it came down to money.

They claim Zhao told police he didn't regret his actions — and even asked how convincing he'd been at pretending to be Qiong.

A luxury lifestyle funded by fraud.

In Queensland's Supreme Court this month, prosecutors said Zhao murdered his former housemate to get access to her bank accounts.

They told the jury Zhao loved the high life and loved to gamble. He lost up to $100,000 at a time on poker and the stock market, despite being unemployed and heavily in debt.

Meanwhile, Qiong had just come into "a significant settlement" from the sale of her late father's estate in Shanghai.

According to prosecutors, that windfall made her a target.

Zhao spent three days giving evidence at the trial, claiming Qiong died accidentally after they had both spent up to four hours in the apartment inhaling nitrous oxide, which he referred to as "nangs" or "laughing gas".

Zhao testified Qiong passed out on the floor and stopped breathing while he was asleep on a nearby couch.

He claimed he hid her body because he was afraid of being charged with supplying drugs.

After her death, Zhao took control of her phone, taping over the cameras so no one could see who was actually sending the messages.

He swindled more than $700,000 from Qiong's mother, withdrawing huge sums of cash from her accounts and selling off her belongings — including her MacBook and her $300,000 Porsche Panamera SUV.

At the same time, prosecutors say Zhao was cancelling Qiong's gym membership and falling behind on rent.

They say he never had a job. Never filed a tax return. And, they claim, he was desperate.

A not guilty plea.

Zhao pled not guilty to Qiong's murder — but guilty to interfering with her corpse.

In court, the jury was shown part of Zhao's police interview recorded after officers discovered Qiong's body.

In the video, he admits: "I sat in front of her and hit her on her head three times. I think I go crazy. I ask her why she wouldn't die."

He continued: "I choked her for about half an hour or an hour. I can't remember."

Zhao claimed there had been a suicide pact — that Qiong had asked him to kill her. But police say there's no evidence of that.

They say Zhao made those claims after "months of lying" about his housemate's whereabouts.

Instead, he bought a giant toolbox, duct tape and gloves with cash, placed Qiong's body inside, and left it on the balcony for nearly a year.

The jury was shown a confronting image: Qiong curled up in the toolbox, a black sheet thrown over her, one foot exposed.

It's the last image her family ever wanted to see.

A mother's grief.

Qiong's mother Rongmei Yan wept as she took the witness stand, having travelled from Shanghai to be there.

"We had this arrangement (via the WeChat smartphone app). Every day Qiong would tell me she was safe," she told the court.

But after September 2020, the calls stopped. Only text messages came through.

"I tried to call her but she always said the signal was not good. She kept saying that and would not take my call," Rongmei said.

Then the eerie cat video arrived — a woman's hand stroking Anchun, Qiong's cat. No voice. No face. And a text: "I am fine. I have Anchun taking care of me."

Rongmei had desperately tried to believe the messages. She wanted to believe her daughter was still alive.

But Qiong wasn't.

She had been dead for months, hidden on the balcony of her own home, prosecutors say.

More details were revealed to the jury.

Some of the text messages sent by Zhao were read aloud in court. One, sent three days after Qiong's murder, simply read: "Goodnight mum."

Another message said she was "busy preparing to move to Melbourne."

There were photos too — images of countryside landscapes sent to convince Qiong's mother her daughter was living off-grid, staying on a rural property with bad reception.

Prosecutors say Zhao even went as far as wishing Rongmei a happy birthday, more than two months after Qiong had died.

On Tuesday, Rongmei wept as Zhao was found guilty of murder.

The Supreme Court jury spent two hours deliberating following the two-week trial.

Murder carries a mandatory life sentence in Queensland with a non-parole period of 20 years.

Zhao will be sentenced at a later date.

This article was first published on April 29, 2025 and has since been updated.

— with AAP.

Feature image: Queensland Police.