The family of a woman murdered more than two decades ago are “repulsed” by the decision to slash her killer’s sentence by four years.
Zhi Min Chen, 44, was convicted of the 1997 murder of 21-year-old Tracey Wylde earlier this year and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
But the killer this week won an appeal against his sentence at the High Court in Glasgow and saw the punishment part slashed to 16 years.
Tracey’s sister Bernadette McCash, 34, yesterday said she was “gutted” by the decision.
She said: “We were gutted with the 20-year-sentence but to have it reduced even further is heartwrenching.
“It almost makes you feel like you’re back to the very beginning.”
Chen, who came to Scotland illegally in the 90s, choked the mum-of-one to death at her flat in Barmulloch, Glasgow, in November 1997, when she was working as a sex worker.
The takeaway boss went free until his DNA was collected in relation to another alleged offence last year.
Bernadette said: “He could have handed himself in at any point and he never bothered doing that. He lived a normal life for 20 years with his wife and kids.
“The pain will never go away for us and we’ll never get Tracey back but this has been a kick in the teeth and it feels like justice has not been done for her now.”
Chen’s appeal heard he had feared he would be sent back to China to face corrupt police officers if he confessed to his crime.
Donald Findlay QC argued that people in similar positions to Chen, who has no previous convictions, didn’t receive as lengthy a punishment part as his client had.
Tracey’s uncle James McCash said: “We are repulsed by the fact that man can have four years taken off his sentence.
“The fact he’s a first time offender doesn’t hold a lot of water with me. He didn’t have so much as a parking ticket but in nine minutes of pure madness he was able to kill a young girl.”
