Chinese prostitute Qu Mei Na, known as 'Tina', died a violent death at the hands of her Snakehead Triad 'boyfriend' who had forced her into prostitution after she was trafficked into Ireland.

Sunday Life can now reveal that the young woman with the model good looks had been abandoned by her natural parents when she was just weeks old.

The little girl was a victim of China's harsh one-child policy.

The harrowing background to the 'Body in the Boot' victim was pieced together by detectives who underwent a painstaking three-month hunt for clues to the identity of the mysterious woman after her murder in June 2004.

They eventually identified Qu Mei Na from dental records as the 22-year-old had dental work done before leaving Dalian City and travelling to Ireland.

However, their investigation had been made more difficult by the child having been adopted - one of tens of thousands of baby girls dumped by their parents because of China's one-child policy.

Sunday Life understands that when Qu Mei Na was just weeks old her natural parents abandoned the infant on a train in the Liaoning province in north-eastern China.

The tot was found by the train's driver, and then sold on to the childless couple she called her parents.

The elderly couple who raised Qu Mei Na as their own were unable to travel to Belfast last week to see their daughter's "slave master" Chang Hai Zhang locked up for life for her brutal murder.

The evil killer strangled the hooker at his Skegoneil Avenue flat in June 2004 following a violent row as she tried to escape her life as a £100-a-trick hooker, servicing the Chinese community in Dublin.

It's understood that she refused to continue to work as a prostitute in Belfast and was strangled by Zhang who demanded that she repay the rest of her "debt".

With the help of his Triad cousin Pan Yang, Zhang wrapped her body in a bin bag and put her in the boot of their Ford Escort car.

Cops, alerted by an eagle-eyed neighbour, swooped as they filled a petrol canister at a service station in the shadow of Antrim Road police station.

They had been plotting to torch their victim's body and remove all trace that the woman had even been in Ireland.

Qu Mei Na arrived in Ireland in late 2002, supposedly to attend a language school in Dublin.

The language school was simply a front for human-trafficking, a route for illegal immigrants to enter the Republic and into Northern Ireland - a scam highlighted by Sunday Life just weeks before she arrived in Ireland.

One detective told Sunday Life: "As far as the language school, it was just a plaque on a wall, there were no lessons.

"In the months before Qu Mei Na slipped into Ireland, there was a rash of such schools.

"Even genuine schools were being targeted by gangs making thousands off the back of desperate people looking for a better life.

"When they arrived they were still in the grip of these gangs, and often forced into prostitution."

The former chief executive of the Chinese Welfare Association, Alliance MLA Anna Lo, believes Qu Mei Na was just one of up to 5,000 illegal Chinese workers in Ireland.

"People told us they pay up to £20,000 - half before they leave China and the rest after they arrive. They may spend several years paying this off, " she said.

"Only a small number would be involved in the sex trade. A lot of these women come over thinking they are getting a job.

"Qu Mei Na went to Dublin and then was taken to Belfast. I heard she did not want to be a prostitute, was trying to leave them and was killed as an example to other women who wished to leave prostitution.

"It is very much an underground problem. They are really under the control of gangsters who take their passports."

Illegal immigrant Chang Hai Zhang will be handed a minimum tariff he must serve on his life sentence later this year.

Fellow 'alien' Yang, who was jailed for five years for helping Zhang, is now facing deportation.

cmcguigan@belfasttelegraph.co.uk