Sydney
It is a brutal and humiliating attack. Two young lovers are held hostage in their apartment by a psychotic, knife-wielding stranger. The couple and two visiting friends are subjected to an hour-long nightmare of sexual degradation and assault. The girl plunges naked to her death from the apartment; her boyfriend suffers massive injuries as he, too, attempts to escape.
But this was no Hollywood drama. The attack was real and took place on a quiet Sunday afternoon in Waterloo, a nondescript Sydney suburb. The story of 18-year-old Liao 'Elva' Wei and her 19-year-old Korean boyfriend has captivated and horrified Sydney for the past 10 days.
If any good can come of such a tragedy, it may be in a legacy of improved awareness among young foreign students of the potential dangers of life in Sydney - no matter how rare such an attack may be.
Public support for the pair was galvanised with the arrival of Wu Leping, the dead girl's mother, from Shanghai. Grainy newspaper images showed a grief-stricken Ms Wu, 43, visiting her daughter's empty apartment - and collapsing in tears as she touched flowers placed near the spot where the pretty student had died.
One of Ms Wu's first acts was to visit her daughter's boyfriend in hospital, thanking him for trying to protect her daughter. 'Although my daughter passed away, we understand that he did his best,' she said. 'We never blamed him.'
Like the police, she praised the two teenagers for trying to fight off their attacker: 'People might misunderstand and think they were not strong enough, but actually they tried their best and both were brave children.'