At first glance, it appears to be a typical student advert.
‘I want an apartment with good soundproofing, because I have social needs and would like to have a party,’ Zhenhao Zou wrote.
But in reality, the UCL student’s desire for ‘good soundproofing’ had a darker significance.
For behind the wealthy and charming façade, lay a predatory rapist described in court as ‘every woman’s nightmare’ and ‘a wolf in sheep’s clothing’ who was prepared to take every step to silence his victims’ screams.
Today he was convicted of 11 rapes against ten women, but police fear he may have attacked a further 50 – with around half this number in London and the other half in his native China.
He was also found guilty of three counts of voyeurism, 10 of possession of an extreme pornographic image, one of false imprisonment, three counts of possession of drugs with intent to commit a sexual offence, namely 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.
The extent of Zou’s depravity was only revealed by sick ‘souvenir’ videos he filmed of his stupefied victims after luring them back to his plush apartments and plying them with drink and drugs, before raping them.
Zou – who is the son of a wealthy Chinese Communist Party member – raped women while recording footage on a hidden camera. Pictured is his Bumble dating profile
A photo shared on WeChat where Zou shows himself posing with a luxury watch
In one video, which reduced jurors to tears, a semi-conscious woman begged him to stop, but he chillingly sneered: ‘Don’t push me, it’s pointless…the sound insulation here is very good’.
The identity of many of the women in the footage is unknown, with police having so far identified just two of the 10 victims included in his trial.
Police say a third woman recently contacted them having read reports about the case.
In addition, the Mail has spoken to two women who claim Zou tried to attack them in Britain and China.
But astonishingly – despite so much of his offending feared to have taken place in China – investigators have never been granted permission to raid the home of the sexual deviant, whose father is a Chinese Communist Party officer and wealthy industrialist and whose mother is a schoolteacher.
Nor have any charges been brought in his homeland, where Zou bragged of his sexual prowess, once boasting that he had slept with over 100 women in a year and proudly appearing on an online dating show with influencers.
Raised in the city of Dongguan, in Guangdong province, southern China, Zou and his younger brother enjoyed a privileged upbringing thanks to his influential father, who was the director of a state-owned business in Songshan Lake, a leading science and innovation zone in the city known as the ‘factory of the world’ due to its booming manufacturing industry.
His family live in the picturesque Songshan Lake Park area and have multiple homes in China, including a detached property Zou stayed in alone during the pandemic.
He described himself as a 28-year-old PhD researcher who ‘works out often’ – a fact he was keen to flaunt with topless mirror selfies
Zou boasted of his sexual prowess and appeared on a dating show in China
Zou attended the Guangdong University of Technology (GDUT), a specialist engineering university described by one source as an international school for ‘rich kids’.
He completed his mechanical design and manufacturing course in 2015, before moving to Belfast two years later to study an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering at Queen’s University.
In 2019, Zou – who went by the nickname ‘Pakho’ – moved to University College London, (UCL) where he obtained a master’s degree before beginning a PhD in 2021.
But Zou appears to have had little interest in his studies and spent more time obsessing over his looks and status, showing off his Rolex watches, which a classmate believes were fake.
He set up a series of online dating profiles under different names, describing himself as a 28-year-old PhD researcher who ‘works out often’ – a fact he was keen to flaunt with topless mirror selfies.
However, Zou’s physical transformation wasn’t solely achieved in the gym.
Hooked on plastic surgery, he admitted in court to having a hair transplant, surgery on his eyelids, fat injections under his chin and ‘adjustments’ on his teeth and wearing make-up ‘to look better’.
On his Bumble profile, Zou told potential dates: ‘Let’s go drinking and have fun’.
A Tinder profile where the student appears under a different name
Zou appears to have had little interest in his studies and spent more time obsessing over his looks and flaunting his wealth
The reality was far more sinister.
Some students became concerned about his behaviour towards women, with one classmate revealing to the Mail that he and others had to intervene when Zou tried to get girls on their own.
The classmate, who did not want to be named, said Zou was a regular at student drinking sessions: ‘When he was at karaoke, he would try to take our [female] classmate outside. We would stop him, worried that something may happen.’
Another classmate said he met Zou at drinking events at a UCL student function room, where he made ‘disrespectful’ jokes about women.
He said Zou would ‘force girls to drink’ if they lost in a game, and that he was ‘very strict’ about how much they should drink.
‘He would mix two kinds of alcohol together; the ratio is up to him.
‘I recall that compared to other drinking events, at his events, the girls get drunk faster.’
Zou had also become familiar with hard drugs, including ketamine and ecstasy.
In this photo, he is seen posing in the window of St Dunstan in the East, a ruined church in London
A number of other illicit substances were also recovered by police
When police raided his flat at the Uncle building, in Elephant and Castle, southeast London, in January 2024 they seized pipettes, glass vials, two bottles of Butanediol, Xanax tablets, viagra 7 11 thailand, ketamine and MDMA.
Unbeknownst to his peers, Zou had begun attacking women in 2019 at his student flat in Bloomsbury.
One of the two women 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 having sex with her.
The following September, Zou tried to attack another woman in China. She has bravely shared her story with the Mail, but has yet to speak to police.
The woman said she was almost raped after meeting Zou for dinner and returning to his quiet waterside apartment in Zhupingsha, a boutique village, in Dongguan.
She recalled: ‘[We] had some drinks, he almost raped me. I screamed immediately [when he exposed himself].
‘He was afraid that neighbours may hear so he let me go.’
A photo of Zou where he poses as a diligent student
Zou targeted Chinese women, who he brought back to his flat
The woman said she was ‘traumatised’ after the incident but ‘felt relieved’ on seeing Zou being prosecuted in the UK.
Another Chinese woman called ‘Siobhan’, a pseudonym, said she met Zou on Intel Cupid, a Chinese dating app, before he invited her to a Halloween party at his flat in November 2023.
Siobhan, a 26-year-old student, who has since returned to China, went to the party at Zou’s two-bedroom rented flat in southeast London, where he lived with a female housemate.
When Siobhan arrived, Zou said his male friend had cancelled, so it would just be him and five women he met online.
Recalling how Zou had a lot of alcohol in his flat, she said he mixed his guests’ drinks and they played drinking games like Truth or Dare.
Siobhan remembers a ‘good-looking young girl’ got ‘pretty drunk’ and asked her to take her home from the party.
‘I was also a bit drunk when she said that, but I didn’t want to go home yet, so I said “in a bit”‘, Siobhan said.
She fell asleep and when she awoke, the other guests were leaving. But the young girl – whose name she doesn’t recall – was still sprawled on the sofa.
Zou was branded a ‘persistent sexual predator’ who lured young Chinese women back to his flat before drugging and raping them
The rapist seen on police bodycam when he was being arrested in his flat
‘I was leaving, Zou escorted me downstairs, at that moment only the young girl remained. I think she drank too much, she can’t walk, just laid on the sofa.’
She said Zou claimed it was too ‘dangerous’ for the inebriated young woman to leave immediately, so she could rest at his flat and they would call a taxi later.
Although Siobhan does not know what happened to that young woman, six months earlier Zou had given an almost identical tale before he raped the other woman identified by police after a drinking party at his flat.
The ‘screaming and crying’ woman, who cannot be named, 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.
Another woman called ‘Xixi’, also a pseudonym, said when she met Zou to talk about studying, he tried to kiss her and lure her back to his flat for drinks.
The 28-year-old student said she met Zou in 2021 after she initially connected with him online.
But the meeting at a cheap Vietnamese restaurant near Zou’s Bloomsbury flat soon turned to his sex life.
The bedroom in Zou’s flat, where he chillingly boasted that ‘the sound insulation is very good’
Officers seized items including a ‘graduated dropper pipette’ and two brown bottles containing 500ml of clear liquid labelled ‘1,4 – Butanediol.’
A host of different drugs in pill form were also discovered by police at Zou’s residence
His ‘phone was filled with girls’, Xixi recalled, adding that he showed her pictures of previous ‘girlfriends’ who in reality appeared to be online models selling sex.
Xixi described Zou as ‘a serious sex addict’ who had boasted that he slept with more than 100 girls in a year.
During their meeting, Zou, who wore designer clothes and had a Louis Vuitton bag, boasted that he was generous to women and would buy them luxury gifts.
‘He invited me to come to his place to drink wine, I don’t drink alcohol, so I didn’t go’, she said.
It was to be a lucky escape, but others were not so fortunate.
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