For killing a Chinese student who was his casual lover, an American student at a university in London was sentenced to life in prison on Friday, with a minimum sentence of 16 years.
Joshua Michals, 26, was sentenced at London’s Old Bailey criminal court for stabbing and killing Zhe Wang, 31, a fellow student at Goldsmiths, University of London, in March 2024.
The two master’s degree students met in 2023 and started a casual relationship, and had a sexual encounter in February 2024.
However, Wang, who was described as “germophobic”, grew increasingly agitated after discovering she had a rash after they slept together, and became “convinced” she had a sexually transmitted disease.
Despite Wang insisting that Michals get tested for a sexually transmitted disease, he refused.
Judge Richard Marks Michals delivered the sentence, saying, “In my judgment, your unwillingness to do so showed a real lack of sensitivity… on your part.”
On March 20, 2024, Michals went to Wang’s home to “calm her” down, the court heard. He left her to perish after stabbing and strangling her for the next fifty minutes.
The judge said Michals “became enraged by the whole situation” and killed Wang, delivering two stab wounds to her face and strangling her.
“In a fury, you lost complete control of your temper and senses,” said Marks.
Michals defended himself by claiming that Wang had approached him with a knife at the start of the incident and that he was acting in self-defense.
However, the judge said he was “quite unable to accept” the defendant’s account of how the incident began.
Wang, who was a creative writing student at Goldsmiths, was described in court as “gentle”, “positive” and a “talented writer”.
In a letter to the court, her family said that studying overseas, particularly in the UK, was a “dream” of hers and that one of her “great passions in life was languages.”
