Crown prosecutor Kevin Glubb picked one up with his long fingers and waved it in the air. It caught the light, and there was a flash of silver in the courtroom. It was the hunting knife that belonged to Wang. ‘It’s a very beautiful knife,’ Wang had said in his police interview.
It was a heavy weapon, with a ridged blade, and an image of a baying wolf on it — it was referred to in court exhibits as WILD WOLF KNIFE. A fingerprint expert, a heavy black man from Durban, said the last person to hold the knife was Chris Wang. Wang kept it in a bedroom drawer. It was plunged with such force into Zhong’s back that it broke through two ribs and pierced his right lung. It killed him; he coughed blood on the stairwell walls, and died curled up against a fence, frothing at the mouth.
But all eyes at the trial were fixed on the other knife — a Galaxy knife with a stainless-steel blade. In essence, the trial was about the mystery of the second knife. A tenant at Stilwell Road had bought it for $3 at the Made In Japan bargain shop on Queen Street. (The knife was actually made in China.) It was kept in the kitchen at Stilwell Road. The night before the killings, it was used in the kitchen to slice a pizza.
‘How did it get upstairs?’ Glubb asked, turning to the jury. His answer was vague. Somehow, he said, it was placed next to the hunting knife. Its presence was staged.
‘How did it get upstairs?’ Wang’s lawyer, Tom Sutcliffe, asked the jury. ‘Who put it there, and why?’ Sutcliffe, an earnest, thoughtful Mormon from Hamilton, supplied an exact answer. ‘Michael brought it. He upped the ante. They had visited before. They knew where the kitchen was. This was a premeditated plan to locate and confront him.’
With the knife came Wang’s plea of self-defence. He told police that the two men came at him with the knife, and he did everything he could to protect himself. His actions included scampering into his bedroom and unsheathing his own knife, the WILD WOLF. The three men rolled on the floor. Wang told police that Michael Wu got hold of the hunting knife, but he managed to turn it around, and point it at his attacker. Tom Zhong, he said, pressed Wu onto the knife — in effect impaling his own friend, and causing the fatal wounds. Then, Wang said, he grabbed Zhong and used him as a human shield; as far as he could tell, in the confusion and tumult, Wu stabbed his own friend in the back.
‘Ridiculous . . . Bizarre . . . Outlandish,’ Glubb told the jury. ‘If we’re to believe this, it’s not just one of the most ineffectual attacks ever mounted, it was suicidal.’ He said that Wang simply went at Wu, and then stabbed Zhong in the back, while he was trying to run away.
Sutcliffe told the jury: ‘Chris Wang believed he was going to die. He used every ounce of his physical strength and mental will to survive.’
The fatal struggle had lasted three or four minutes. Wang walked down the stairs and called 111. The despatcher wanted to know where he lived. The call was played in court.
Wang screeched, ‘People want come and kill me!’
She said, ‘Can you stop talking when I’m talking? I need your address, mate.’
He shouted, ‘Ambah-lance! Hurry up!’
‘Tell me,’ sighed the despatcher, ‘your address.’
4
Barrie Cardon lived at 23 Stilwell Road until his mysterious death in 2005, when he fell off the upstairs balcony. He was a happy, lively property developer who owned a row of buildings at the sex-trade end of Karangahape Road. His tenants ran massage parlours and strip clubs. Cardon collected their rents in cash.
‘I was married at Stilwell Road,’ said his daughter Deena. ‘I got into my bridal dress, came down the front steps and hopped in the Mustang — we had Mustangs for the wedding cars. Dad collected Mustangs. He loved classic cars in general, but he had five Mustangs.’
She said the house was run-down when her father bought it from Sir David Henry’s widow. ‘I remember a huge renovation going on. He gutted it completely and put in the flash kitchen and the wonderful stairs out the front. Dad just absolutely loved his garden, and he was quite obsessive about his roses. There was a massive garden — most of the property was manicured garden beds, just little circular garden beds.
‘And there were servants’ quarters! Dad made it into the spa room. It had a tongue-and-groove ceiling like an upturned boat’s hull. It had the Axminster carpet as well, and mirrors . . . It was just beautiful, the spa room.
‘He absolutely loved the house. There was no expense spared when he did things to it. He was excited when, for example, the carpet he selected was the same as in Westminster Abbey. It’s got a really intricate design woven into it.’
Her memories of the house were of its charm and elegance, and the enjoyment it gave her father. But it ended in tragedy.
In about 2002, her father began to develop Alzheimer’s. ‘He went downhill very quickly, and we realised he was going to need live-in care.’ He’d already hired a Tongan woman to live at the address as his housekeeper. ‘Funnily enough, she used to be his tenant many years ago. They bumped into each other at the shops one day. He wasn’t sick at the time, but he realised that he was getting older and was looking at getting someone to look after the house. It was becoming
