The family of a 25-year-old international student who was brutally murdered and dumped in a notorious ocean blowhole has been thrown into a fresh nightmare after police uncovered a hidden USB stick containing horrific footage of her final hours, leading to a new wave of charges against her killer.
Mengmeng Leng, known to friends as Michelle, was a promising student from Chengdu, China, who had moved to Sydney in 2011 to pursue her studies. She was described by her devoted mother, May, as a compassionate young woman who always put others before herself, sending money home whenever she could. In April 2016, after five years of building a new life in Australia, Michelle vanished without a trace, leaving a void that would soon reveal a depraved and unfathomable crime.
The 25-year-old was last seen alive on the afternoon of Thursday, April 21st, 2016, when she boarded a train from St James station in Sydney’s CBD, arriving at Campsie station around 4:30 p. m. She had been shopping at the Pitt Street Mall and was seen on CCTV carrying a red bag, appearing calm and unbothered.
Her friends received messages from her late that evening, but then her phone went silent, her social media went dark, and she failed to show up for classes the next morning.
It took four agonizing days for anyone to report Michelle missing, a delay that would prove critical. Her aunt, with whom she was living in the Sydney suburb of Campsie, returned from a weekend away and raised the alarm, filing a missing person report with police. The initial investigation found no obvious signs of foul play, but the case took a sinister turn when a tourist made a gruesome discovery at Snapper Point, a scenic but dangerous blowhole on the New South Wales Central Coast, over 60 miles from the city.
At 10:30 a. m. on Sunday, April 24th, a passerby spotted a body floating face down in the churning water of the blowhole.
A paramedic was lowered by helicopter to retrieve the victim, who was found completely naked and covered in stab wounds. The young Asian woman had been stabbed almost 40 times, with the fatal wound inflicted to her throat. Police immediately determined this was no accident; it was a violent, targeted killing, and the victim was dubbed the “Snapper Point blowhole Jane Doe” as detectives worked to identify her.
The discovery sent shockwaves through the community, and within days, DNA testing confirmed the worst fears of Michelle’s loved ones: the body was hers. Her mother, May, who had flown to Australia, was devastated beyond words, describing her daughter as an “angel” and her only reason for living. The investigation quickly zeroed in on a suspect, and just a day after the identification, police arrested 27-year-old Derek Barrett, Michelle’s own uncle, the man who had helped report her missing and who lived in the same Campsie household.
Barrett, an unemployed former IT worker who had married Michelle’s aunt years earlier, was charged with murder after police tracked his car heading into the national park hours before the body was found. A search of his phone revealed disturbing images of Michelle bound and gagged with duct tape and a white cloth, her face frozen in terror. Investigators later pieced together a timeline showing that Michelle was attacked almost immediately after arriving home that Thursday, restrained in her bedroom, and subjected to a brutal sexual assault while her cousin was unknowingly in the house.
The case took another dark turn when Barrett was charged with 27 offenses, including detaining a person for advantage and indecent assault, as police uncovered evidence of a growing sexual obsession with his niece. He pleaded guilty to murder in December 2017, admitting to binding and gagging Michelle before killing her and dumping her body, but he claimed he had no memory of the events due to methamphetamine and synthetic cannabis use. The judge rejected this defense, calling his distress “contrived” and his actions “highly suggestive of sexual deviancy.”
Barrett was sentenced to 46 years in prison with a non-parole period of 34 years, a punishment that seemed to close the case for good. But in November 2019, a bizarre twist emerged when an elderly woman with dementia, living miles from Barrett’s former home, handed her daughter a heavy-duty weather-proof USB stick she had found at her kitchen table. The daughter plugged it into a computer and found nine video files and 13 pictures so disturbing that she immediately called police.
The USB contained footage of Barrett raping and torturing Michelle while she was held captive, showing her hands so tightly bound they were swollen and turning purple. In one video, he cut the tape off with a large hunting knife, retied her hands, and said, “Now, where were we?” before continuing his vicious assault.
The footage also showed Barrett filming his own stepdaughter and Michelle over a period of time, including videos of them showering and sleeping, with Barrett touching himself as he watched them.
Police matched some of the photos to ones Barrett had deleted from his phone just days before his arrest, confirming the USB’s authenticity. The discovery led to 17 new charges against Barrett, including multiple counts of aggravated sexual assault and indecent assault. Michelle’s mother, May, said she nearly fainted when police told her about the videos, and her own mother, Michelle’s grandmother, passed away shortly after hearing the news, overwhelmed by grief.
Barrett pleaded guilty to the new charges, but in a devastating blow to the family, the judge ruled that the additional sentence would run concurrently with his existing murder sentence. While the judge stated that if the full extent of his crimes had been known in 2017, Barrett would have been jailed for life, the law prevented revisiting the original sentence. He received an additional 20 years, but his overall 46-year term remained unchanged, with only two years added to his minimum non-parole period, now set for 2052.
The case has left a lasting scar on the community, highlighting the dangers faced by international students living far from home. Michelle’s mother, May, has spoken publicly of her shattered life, saying, “We even today still cannot accept the fact that she has left us and we are still in great suffering. The time will never turn back to when Mengmeng and I were living happily together.
Now that my child is gone, my whole life is shattered.”
Detectives involved in the case have expressed their horror at the depravity of Barrett’s actions, noting that Michelle was killed in a place that should have been a sanctuary. The investigation revealed that Barrett had been filming Michelle for sexual gratification for months before the murder, and his obsession with her was a driving factor in the crime. The judge, Justice Helen Wilson, described the murder as “a despicable crime of extreme brutality and great wickedness,” committed by a man in a position of trust.
Barrett, who sat staring at the floor during his sentencing, will remain behind bars until at least 2052, when he will be in his 70s. The case has also raised questions about how a USB containing such graphic evidence could go undetected for years, and police are still investigating how the device ended up in the hands of an elderly woman with no discernible connection to Barrett. The mystery surrounding the USB remains unsolved, but its discovery has ensured that Michelle’s memory will not be forgotten.
For the Leng family, the pain is unending. May, who lost her husband in 2008 and then her only child, has become a symbol of resilience in the face of unimaginable tragedy. A fund was set up to help pay for Michelle’s funeral and support her mother, and the Chinese community in Australia has rallied around her.
But as the years pass, the family continues to grapple with the knowledge that Michelle’s final moments were filled with terror and suffering, a reality that no sentence can ever truly address.
