Cassandra Lin, an orofacial myologist, penned an open letter on Wednesday, trying to come to terms with the two sides of the man she thought she would grow old with. Her words, released just weeks after her ex-husband's death, offer a raw glimpse into a marriage fractured by betrayal and secrets.
Cassandra wrote that when she first met Lin "something in me settled. For the first time in my life, I felt like I had found peace… like l had finally found home." "You weren't just the man I loved — I thought you were my soulmate, the person I believed I would walk beside for the rest of my life. Together we built a life. We built a legacy."
The contrast between that imagined future and the reality Cassandra discovered could not have been sharper. In her letter, she wrote: "I discovered the life you had been living behind my back." According to the Daily Telegraph, Lin, who had six children, had fathered a child in secret. That discovery, she implied, triggered the unravelling of everything they had built together.
The man Cassandra thought she knew had presented a carefully curated public image. At the peak of his career, Lin owned two successful dental practices on the NSW Central Coast and published The Dental Diet, a book about eating to strengthen teeth and help prevent oral disease. Cutting a clean image, Lin had a significant social media following, offering health advice to his Instagram followers. His website boasted he was a "world-leading functional dentist, speaker, and best-selling author"." That polished reputation masked a darker reality below the surface.
According to his family, Lin started a methamphetamine-induced downward spiral mid 2024. In 2024, Lin reportedly became addicted to methamphetamines after his marriage ended following revelations that Lin had fathered a child with another woman. What followed was a cascade of legal troubles and violent incidents.
Days before his death, Dr Lin faced Wollongong Local Court charged over allegations he choked and assaulted a sex worker and stole $2000 from her in March 2025. He was due to face court on several charges this year, including for breaches of an apprehended domestic violence order in March.
Dr Steven Lin, 41, was fatally shot by officers on 3 March 2026 in Potts Point after they responded to reports of violent assaults inside the complex. Police allege Lin attacked two women at random before barricading himself inside the St Neot Avenue building at 10:50am while armed with a knife. Officers first attempted to subdue him using a taser, but when that failed, and Lin allegedly advanced towards police, an officer fired a single shot.
The second woman, 48-year-old Chloe Paul, a mother of three and celebrity photographer, was attacked after Lin entered her ground-floor apartment. Paul, who was working from home, suffered a broken nose and head trauma and was later taken to the hospital for surgery. Paul's friends said her boxing background helped her to fend off the attacker long enough to call the police.
Cassandra's letter marks a significant moment in a story that has shaken Sydney's eastern suburbs. In releasing it, she has chosen to speak about the man she married rather than the stranger who emerged years later. Her words suggest a woman grappling not with his death in a police shooting, but with the painful recognition that the life they built together had been built on lies. The letter offers no answers to what drove him to violence in those final hours. Instead, it speaks to a more personal tragedy: a marriage and a family fractured beyond repair.