A Chinese PhD student who drugged and raped 10 women could have abused more than 50 other victims in the UK and China, police fear.
Zhenhao Zou, aged 28, has been identified as one of the most active sex offenders in the UK, with authorities revealing that numerous new victims have been identified from the disturbing home videos he recorded during his assaults.
The perpetrator, Zou, who is the offspring of a well-off member of the Chinese Communist Party, drugged and sexually assaulted three women in London and another seven in China between 2019 and 2023, while he was pursuing his studies at University College London.
Of the 50 new victims, Zou is believed to have carried out half the attacks in London and the other half in China.
The shocking disclosures come after the sexual predator was convicted of 11 counts of rape, with two of the offences relating to one victim.
Furthermore, Zou has been found guilty of three charges of voyeurism, ten counts of possessing extremely pornographic material, one of unlawful detention, and three of having a controlled substance with the intention of committing a sexual offense, specifically butanediol.
He was cleared of two counts of possession of an extreme pornographic image, one count of possession of MDMA with intent to commit a sexual offence and four counts of possession of ketamine with intent to commit a sexual offence.
Zou lured the Chinese women back to his plush properties and stupefied them with drink and drugs before attacking them and filming it on hidden spy cameras.
The identity of many of the women in Zou’s footage is unknown, with police having so far identified just two of the 10 victims that were part of the trial.
Officers began investigating Zou in November 2023 after a woman – who was not included in the trial – reported him for rape.
Police have now revealed another woman has recently contacted them after reading press reports of the case.
During the four-week trial, jurors were reduced to tears when they were shown a harrowing video of a semi-conscious unknown woman begging Zou to stop raping her, but the predator chillingly sneered: ‘Don’t push me, it’s pointless… the sound insulation here is very good’.
One of the two female victims identified by police told the trial how she went out drinking with Zou in Chinatown, central London, in September 2021 after a meal with friends.
She said her last memory was vomiting in the street and losing her bank cards before she woke up to find Zou raping her.
On May 18, 2023, Zou raped the other woman identified by police after a drinking party at his flat in Elephant and Castle.
The ‘screaming and crying’ woman told the trial how she felt drunk and ‘out of control’ and had begged Zou’s female friend to help her get home.
But Zou persuaded his friend to leave, arguing he couldn’t let the drunken woman go home alone, so she would stay with him. He kept her at the flat and later raped her.
When police raided his flat at the Uncle building, in Elephant and Castle, southeast London, in January 2024, they seized pipettes, glass vials and bottles of Butanediol.
Prosecutors previously said Zou filmed nine of the alleged victims, footage of which was played in court.
Asked by Mr Cotter why that particular genre appealed to him, Zou said: ‘I like it because the girl appears to be still and quiet when they are having sex.’
Mr Cotter then asked Zou: ‘What about being asleep?’
The student replied: ‘Yes, that’s my favourite type. But I could not find that.’
Ms Farrelly said: ‘The police reviewed over 700,000 artefacts which included 1,277 videos.
‘The police found absolutely no trace whatsoever of such an interest (in timestop pornography) when they went through that material.’
In his closing speech, Mr Cotter told jurors on Tuesday that Zou says he has insomnia and has ‘an interest in sleep sex’.
‘He thinks there may be a connection,’ Mr Cotter said.
Mr Cotter told jurors Zou is ‘a young man with money who can pay to exercise his fantasies’.
Earlier in the trial, jurors heard how the student kept a ‘lost property box’ full of women’s belongings.
One woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said she was raped by Zou on May 18, 2023.
Ms Farrelly told jurors: ‘She says when she woke up the following morning she searched high and low for her underwear, and eventually he (Zou) found it in his wardrobe.
‘You now know, although the woman never did, that in fact he had a box in his wardrobe that was full of women’s belongings.
‘He calls it a lost property box, we say it is his trophy box. Why is it that every single item belongs to a woman?’
The horrifying scale of Zou’s crimes was uncovered during a complex and ‘painstaking’ investigation by the Metropolitan Police’s Public Protection Team, which reviewed six-a-half-trillion bytes of data on Zou’s digital devices, including hundreds of videos and more than nine million WeChat messages.
But as officers launched a nationwide victims appeal, top cops warned the overall figure of 60 victims could be just the tip of the iceberg.
Commander Kevin Southworth, of the Met’s Public Protection Team, said: ‘We’re fully open-minded that it may well be higher than that, which [means] Zou is the most substantial and most prolific offender that we’ve come across in recent times.
‘When you consider the scale, the deceitful nature, the calculating, predatory nature of what Zou has done here…it’s fairly unprecedented.
‘It’s certainly not something that I’ve experienced in my 28 years of policing, to see a man who has plainly gone out of his way to deceive, to drug, to incapacitate his victims…where many of them may have no recollection of what occurred…[and to then] commit these horrific sexual assaults.’
Unveiling the Met’s appeal to victims and witnesses, Detective Chief Inspector Richard Mackenzie said: ‘We are keeping an open mind currently about the identities of the victims.
‘However, we are particularly keen to hear from women from the Chinese student communities who may have met Zou and were living in and around London between 2019 and 2024.
‘We would also like to speak to potential victims who may have met Zou while he was living in China.’
He also appealed to women who may have spoken to him on dating apps or on Chinese social media sites like WeChat or Little Red Book.
He added: ‘Due to the nature of his offending, we believe some women may not, in fact, know that they are a victim, and we do not underestimate how distressing and difficult it may be to read or hear about his crimes following his verdict.
‘We want to reassure those women that reports will be fully investigated and dealt with the utmost sensitivity, care and compassion.’
In an unusual and controversial move, police did not publicise the charges against Zou in the year the case was in the criminal justice system.
Asked why police did not launch a victims appeal sooner, DCI Mackenzie said it was a ‘deliberate operational decision made to ensure we could protect the integrity of the ongoing trial’ and future legal cases.
He said investigators did not want to ‘taint’ the evidence prior to court proceedings and that a ‘phased approach’ was taken to approaching women who may have no memory or knowledge they are victims.
Asked if there would be a parallel appeal in China, Detective Superintendent Vanessa Britton told reporters police are ‘working through’ this ‘in negotiation with the Chinese authorities’.
Despite the scale of Zou’s offending in China, British police were never given permission to raid the home of the sexual deviant, with their investigation limited solely to England and Wales.
Quizzed on ‘how confident’ UK police are that the Chinese will help with the appeal, Commander Southworth said they haven’t been ‘unhelpful’.
He added: ‘We’ve nothing to suggest that they won’t respond, and they’ve been responding constructively to everything we’ve asked them so far.’
He also thanked the Chinese Ministry of Justice for enabling officers to visit China to directly support one of the two victims as she gave evidence via video link during the trial.
Zou is thought to be among some of Britain’s most prolific sex offenders including Reynhard Sinaga and Black cab rapist John Worboys.
As the world’s worst rapist, Sinaga, now 42, was convicted of 159 sex attacks on 48 heterosexual men in Manchester between 2015 and 2017.
It was later revealed that Sinaga – who incapacitated victims with the date rape drug GHB – had preyed on at least 195 different men after police found footage he filmed of the attacks.
Worboys, now 67, was convicted of 19 sex attacks against 12 women between 2006 and 2008.
Worboys – who gave victims drug-laced champagne before attacking them in his cab – is believed to have raped or sexually assaulted more than 100 women before he was caught.
If you wish to speak to Met detectives or make a report relating to Zou, you can also contact police via email on [email protected]
You can also make a report to police by calling 101 from within the UK, quoting reference 2904/04FEB25.
