The crazed Chinese man who murdered his cousin’s wife and her four children with a meat cleaver in their Sunset Park home will be imprisoned for the rest of his life after admitting to the slaughter Wednesday.
Mingdong Chen, 27, pleaded guilty to three counts of second-degree murder and two counts of first-degree manslaughter for the gruesome stabbing spree nearly two years ago of Qiao Zhen Li, 37, and her kids Linda, 9, Kevin, 5, Amy, 7, and William, 1.
“Are you pleading guilty because you are in fact guilty?” Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Vincent DelGiudice asked.
“Correct,” Chen answered, through a Mandarin interpreter.
Dressed in an orange jumpsuit, Chen sported a shaggy, unkempt ‘do for his brief appearance and looked dazed as officers brought him into the courtroom.
The father of the slain children Yilin Zhuo and his crying sister Hong Jin Zhuo were overhead asking prosecutor Mark Hale outside the courtroom why Chen went on the murderous rampage.
Hale wasn’t able to answer them.
But a police source previously told The Post that he butchered the family with a meat cleaver on Oct. 26, 2013 because he was jealous of their way of life.
“The family had too much,” the source quoted Chen as saying. “He meant that the family had better income and a better lifestyle than him … He was jealous and just killed them.”
Chen will receive 125 years to life in prison – 25 years to life on each of the murder counts and 25 years on each manslaughter charge – when he’s sentenced Oct. 20.
The hefty terms will run consecutively.
Chen, an illegal alien who had been living with the family in the days before the attack, originally faced life without parole.
“Today’s outcome guarantees that this dangerous defendant will never be on the streets again,” said Brooklyn DA Ken Thompson. “It also brings some peace to a devastated family and spares them from reliving this horrific tragedy at trial.”
Defense attorney Danielle Eaddy had no comment.