Rice bags filled with stones and reports of "very thin" women at an Auckland house were evidence and scenes presented to a jury in the kidnapping and manslaughter trial of Shulai Wang.
By Lucy Xia of RNZ
The house is where the Crown believes 70-year-old Wang spent her last days before her body was found in Auckland's Gulf Harbour.
The Crown said Wang travelled to New Zealand from Hainan Island in China to seek religious instructions from Kaixiao Liu in August 2023, and that she was one of six women who stayed with Liu's family.
Eight months later, her body was found wrapped in rubbish bags, with two SunRice rice bags tied to her which contained more than 15kg of garden stones.
Kaixiao Liu, his wife Lanyue Xiao and his parents Xiuyun Li and Jingui Liu have each denied the kidnapping and manslaughter of Wang.
Today, the jury of 12 was also reduced to 11. One member of the jury has been discharged by Justice Mathew Downs for reasons that were suppressed by the judge.
Jury sees evidence exhibited
Wang's body was unidentified for months, but "Operation Parade" eventually traced serial numbers on the rice bags on her to a purchase of more than 18 bags of rice by Kaixiao Liu and the house he paid rates for on Harvest Ave, Orewa.
The jury at Auckland's High Court was taken through images of the house which was first searched by police on July 1, 2024, a day after Kaixiao Liu and his wife Xiao were arrested at the airport.
On Wednesday, Justice Downs declined all media applications to publish images from the exhibits.
Evidence from Detective David Sanders, who was the first to oversee the search of the house, showed bags of SunRice rice bags filled with stones, similar to the rice bags and stones found on Wang.
'Concern' for women at house
Further evidence from Detective Beth Bates, who took over from Sanders, showed images of a rooftop garden, a walk-in closet with recording equipment, and sleeping arrangements in the five-bedroom house which police believed had housed 14 people – including the defendants' four children.
Bates said upon arriving, she saw that three of the adult women in the house looked "very thin" and were wearing multiple layers of clothing.
She said they looked tired and a bit dirty.
Bates told the jury she was concerned for these women, and arranged for a Mandarin-speaking doctor to examine them, but the women declined.
She said one of the women she tried to talk to through an interpreter just "smiled and rocked back and forth".
This woman later told another detective that she had come to New Zealand with someone "who is no longer here".
Based on this woman's arrival date in New Zealand, Bates said she had contacted Customs to find out who had accompanied that woman to New Zealand – and that was confirmed to be Wang.
Bates confirmed this was the first time police became aware of this name and that this may have been the identity of the person they had been seeking to identify since the discovery at Gulf Harbour.
She said the other women in the house, including Kaixiao Liu's mother Xiuyun Li, all refused to engage with police.
Earlier, the jury heard that the five women in the house who followed Liu's teachings had all overstayed their visas by more than 42 days, and were deported in August 2024.
Photos of the house showed a room where three of the five women slept, and Bates said two of the women slept in the lounge on camp beds.
The trial continues.
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