conspiring to murder<\/a> his former landlord.<\/p>\nThe landlord, who has name suppression, gave evidence at his trial on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
She told the court through an interpreter she rented a single room to Li in March 2023.<\/p>\n
Li was a polite tenant, she said.<\/p>\n
While there, Li had asked his landlord if his mother could stay in the room with him.<\/p>\n
“I said ‘the room is very small, and you can find a bigger room’,” the landlord said.<\/p>\n
Li agreed, and moved out in June.<\/p>\n
When his landlord was late to the property change-over, Li began to text her, growing increasingly frustrated.<\/p>\n
“The message I can clearly remember said ‘if you don’t pick up the phone I’ll report to the police’,” she said.<\/p>\n
The texts had made her uneasy, she said.<\/p>\n
The change-over continued without anything more, but with Li, the landlord said, was an older man, introduced to her as Li’s older brother.<\/p>\n
She said his surname was Pan.<\/p>\n
The landlord said the two seemed very close.<\/p>\n
“The feeling I got at the moment when he said he’s the big brother, I felt like he’s the one who can protect him,” she said.<\/p>\n
“He didn’t mention he had a brother, so I thought he’s not his biological brother.”<\/p>\n
Li’s alleged co-conspirator, Shu Man Poon, pleaded guilty to his role in the killings last year.<\/p>\n
He is expected to give evidence later in the trial.<\/p>\n
![\"Fuk-Fu](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/fuk-fu-joseph-kwok-and-his-wife-mei-han-chong-with-their-son-M2C7HSQVERFVFIGGWNVS7BQYZU.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Fuk-Fu Joseph Kwok and his wife Mei Han Chong with their son. (Source: rnz.co.nz)<\/p>\n
In the following months, Li asked to return to the rental to look for a suitcase.<\/p>\n
The landlord said the small room Li rented had been left empty.<\/p>\n
She eventually went to meet with Li in late August but was greeted instead by his “big brother Pan”.<\/p>\n
They searched for the suitcase, with Li arriving later, but could not find it.<\/p>\n
Months later in early November, the landlord woke one morning and found paint on the ground at her home.<\/p>\n
She followed it to find her CCTV cameras and sensor lights had been painted over.<\/p>\n
The cameras themselves hadn’t been recording at the time.<\/p>\n
She thought someone had tried to steal a car parked in the drive, the landlord said, cleaning the cameras and turning them back on.<\/p>\n
Between 10pm and 11pm that night, the newly restored cameras captured two people wearing caps and masks going past the door.<\/p>\n
The camera made a sound and the two spotted the camera and proceeded to leave.<\/p>\n
The camera incident in November happened days before the Kwoks were killed, she said.<\/p>\n
The landlord would later recognise the pair as Li and his “big brother”.<\/p>\n
She recognised “Pan” by his body, and Li by his walk, the landlord said.<\/p>\n
The trial before Justice Anderson continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The would-be victim of an alleged murder plot has described waking up to find the security cameras painted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":587722,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[51,67,111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-587721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-auckland","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587721","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=587721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/587722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}