The body of the 70-year-old was found wrapped in plastic bags in Gulf Harbour in March 2024, and the police took about half a year to confirm her identity.<\/p>\n
Four family members \u2013 Kaixiao Liu, his wife Lanyue Xiao and parents Xiuyun Li and Jingui Liu \u2013 are on trial, charged with Wang’s kidnapping and manslaughter.<\/p>\n
The Crown’s case is that Wang came to New Zealand from China’s Hainan province to receive religious instructions from Liu and later died after an unsuccessful escape.<\/p>\n
‘Family of 12’<\/p>\n
Detective Sha Lin, a mandarin speaker, visited Qionghai, Hainan in August 2024 with detective Beth Bates and observed the Chinese police’s interview with Wang’s family members.<\/p>\n
The Crown identified Wang’s husband Yanyun Wu and youngest son Wu as part of “family 12”, one of the at least 37 families devoted to Liu’s religious group.<\/p>\n
Lin said Wu explained that Wang was his mother, and he knew about her situation, finding that out from Liu.<\/p>\n
Wu claimed that he’d known Liu for more than 10 years, and they were very good friends.<\/p>\n
He said his mother died of natural causes \u2013 “heart disease or failure” \u2013 that she went to New Zealand because she wanted to be buried at sea.<\/p>\n
The court heard earlier that a recording showed that Wu was asked to say that Liu was entrusted to fulfil his mother’s wishes.<\/p>\n
It’s also mentioned during Wu’s police interview that Wang didn’t go to the doctors and there were no medical records with her “heart disease”.<\/p>\n
Wu said that he met Liu when Liu visited Hainan, and his mother contacted him often using Liu’s phone in audio and video calls.<\/p>\n
![\"Shulai](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1781299151_452_gulfharbourtrial-3HG2TEUDQBHIHDYGHEUH37ERU4.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Shulai Wang. (Source: rnz.co.nz)<\/p>\n
He also said his brothers had an argument with his parents, and they disowned the parents.<\/p>\n
He didn’t have a record of communications with Liu because he’s changed a few cell phones.<\/p>\n
“She jumped over the wall to the neighbour’s with no injuries. She was brought back by others,” Crown prosecutor Henry Steele referred to what Wu said.<\/p>\n
“He has video-called his mum. She looked fine and she’d waved at him.<\/p>\n
“Gave food. The next day, found out she was dead on 7 March morning.”<\/p>\n
Her heart couldn’t bear the jump and she had fallen over, Steele referred to what Wu said.<\/p>\n
“She said to him on the phone that she was fine, don’t worry about her, and she was lying in bed.”<\/p>\n
He had last spoken to Liu about 5pm the day prior, he was not being told what to say to police nor receive any money to give a false statement, Steele said.<\/p>\n
Earlier in court on Friday, more conversations recorded by police surveillance devices at the defendants’ home in \u014crewa, North Auckland, were also played out.<\/p>\n
Wu was told by Liu to require New Zealand authorities to release Wang’s body and help him come to New Zealand.<\/p>\n
Wu was also told to say that he felt guilty for the family that he entrusted for his mother’s sea burial and that he wanted to apologise to them in person.<\/p>\n
The police didn’t speak to Wang’s husband because he had a shrunken brain and needed to go to hospital, Lin said.<\/p>\n
Bates, the other New Zealand police officer who went to China, earlier told court that Wang’s two older sons Yingfen Wu and Yingzhi Wu said they were estranged with their parents and did not want to know about the repatriation of his mother’s body but leave it to “the third born”, Wu.<\/p>\n
The two sons had not had any contact with their mother since 2020.<\/p>\n
Bates explained that the police still contacted Yingfen Wu for the repatriation of his mother\u2019s body because they knew by that stage that the third son was friends with Liu.<\/p>\n
During the cross-examination, Liu questioned if the officers understand that giving false statements is a serious issue in China to which an officer answered it’s a serious issue anywhere in the world.<\/p>\n
Xiao also questioned if the officers know that religion is a sensitive topic in China, to which Bates said she’s emphasised to her Chinese counterpart that Liu’s group isn’t politically motivated.<\/p>\n
The trial continues at the Auckland High Court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The court has heard that Shulai Wang’s son Chunhong Wu explained his mother’s death to the police, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2300,51,67,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-474347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-asia","tag-auckland","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}