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More than 20 women have contacted police to say they fear they may have been attacked by the serial rapist Zhenhao Zou, with detectives fearing there may be even more victims to come.
Zou, 28, was convicted last month of raping three women in London and seven in China between 2019 and 2024.
He was a PhD student in London, and a senior police officer said that a second criminal trial was now likely.
Zou filmed many of his rapes, and the videos provided key evidence leading to his convictions.
He drugged most of his victims, who had little or no memory of his attacks.
Detectives recovered 58 videos, which they believe show Zou attacking women. When he was convicted, most of the victims were still to be identified by police.
On Zou’s conviction, the Met appealed for women to contact them and said 23 had come forward in little more than four weeks describing the same method of attack by Zou.
One is believed to be a woman Zou has already been convicted of attacking, with 22 of the women believed to be previously unknown to police.
Some of the attacks outlined to police in initial accounts were not caught on video and were unknown to the force. This is increasing police fears that Zou, who outwardly appeared to be a charming man and who was from a wealthy Chinese family, could have attacked more than 60 women.
Just over half of the women who have come forward in the past month allege attacks in London; Zou was a master’s and then PhD student in engineering at University College London.
A Met commander, Kevin Southworth, said police fears about the scale of Zou’s offending are being borne out by the number of women who contacted them in the month since he was found guilty.
Detectives fear he may be one of the worst attackers of women in British criminal history.
Southworth said: “This particular one seems to be stacking up in exactly the way we were concerned that it would. It tells you something that 23 victims have come forward in a month since we did the appeal. That’s quite a strike rate.”
Further charges and a long jail term when Zou is sentenced on 19 June may further encourage other victims to contact the Met, Southworth said.
He said police were in the “middle” of establishing the extent of the engineering student’s offending, with months, perhaps years of work to come. He said the case was being transferred to the Met’s complex case work unit: “The potential for a second or even third trial is there. We’re still now working to build a case.”
The most recent female complainants are believed, like Zou’s other victims, to be of Chinese heritage and allege attacks in London or China. They live all over the world, with some in North and South America and Europe.
Most of Zou’s victims in the videos played at his trial were unconscious or stupefied because of the drugs he had given them. He ignored their pleas to stop his attacks as they lost consciousness after being drugged, with videos played in court leaving some jurors in tears.
In court Zou claimed to be sleeping with five women a month.
He came to Britain to study in 2017 at Queen’s University Belfast. He began his studies at UCL two years later, which continued until his arrest in January 2024.
He stayed in London in the vicinity of Woburn Place and later had a flat in the Elephant and Castle area.
He would invite women for drinks at his home, which he would spike.
Reports by victims or witnesses about Zou can be made online. Police can also be contacted via [email protected] or by phoning 101 within the UK and quoting reference 2904/04FEB25.
