The woman had worked at the mental-health unit at Carrington. With the onset of his Alzheimer’s, it was decided that she would become his caregiver.
Deena: ‘And then Dad fell off the balcony onto the concrete pavement down below. I use the word “fell” loosely. Nothing was ever proven. Nobody knows for a fact what happened that night because he was found in the early hours of the morning.’
His caregiver discovered him. ‘She was sleeping in the bed with him at the time. Apparently, she heard his cries for help.’
He died in hospital about eight weeks later. The day of the funeral, she said, legal papers were filed which excluded his family from the house. The caregiver claimed matrimonial property rights, and asserted that she had been in a relationship with Cardon.
‘My sister and I were excluded from the home for 18 months. We weren’t even allowed to take a photo or a T-shirt or anything that belonged to Dad. By the time we finally got in, most of his stuff was gone. We did get photos and stuff, but as far as his furniture, his clothing, all his personal belongings were pretty much gone.’
Her father, she said, was an extraordinary man. ‘Definitely eccentric. He walked around in a singlet and shorts and bare feet 24 hours a day, summer or winter. You’d see a guy you’d think was homeless step out of a Mustang — that was Dad to a T. Extremely generous, caring, would often take people into the home that might be going through a rough patch and help them get on their feet.’
The last time she saw 23 Stilwell was on the TV news on the night of the murders. ‘The way it was portrayed was like “A house marred with tragedy.” It instantly took us back to what happened with Dad. He would’ve been horrified to know what had happened in his beautiful house.’
5
In his police interview on the afternoon of the killings, Wang drew stick figures to illustrate what happened at the house that morning. He gave them names. His spoken English came and went; his written English was hit and miss. Next to his drawing of Michael Wu, he wrote, Maccl. He identified another figure: Gall. He meant ‘girl’ — Soo Jin Ahn, a young Korean woman who had met Wang that week, and was a witness to the killings.
A tall, slender woman with black nail polish, she appeared in court as a prosecution witness. She described a kind of summer romance. It lasted less than a week. Wang took her to a restaurant on a Tuesday night, and she stayed the night at Stilwell Road. He made porridge in the morning and brought it to her in bed. They met again on Thursday night. They ate pizza in his downstairs kitchen. She sliced it with the Galaxy knife.
Wang went night-fishing in Waiwera with friends. She went to bed. He came back at about 4.30am. She woke at 7am, had a shower, and read the paper in the lounge. Wang woke up, and she opened the balcony doors. ‘It’s my habit,’ she told the court. ‘When I get up I want to bring fresh air in.’
The gorgeous summer morning, the curtains of the balcony moving in a light breeze. Ahn was barefoot, and wore a pink tracksuit. She sat on a couch and opened her laptop.
Glubb asked her, ‘While you were sitting there, what happened?’
She said, ‘I felt some indication of human being so I lift my head.’
Michael Wu and Tom Zhong were at the top of the stairs.
They asked for Wang. She went into the bedroom, and said to him, ‘You have visitors.’
6
Michael Wu was a friendly, laid-back kind of guy. He’d married a pretty young nurse, who gave birth to their son in 2010. He spoke good English, unlike Tom Zhong. Tom had worked for 30 years in China as a pharmacist, restaurant manager and prison guard, and had qualified for a pension. He took his family to live in Auckland. Like Michael, he became friends with Chris Wang.
Michael and Tom went into business with Wang and got burnt. Both said they’d lent Wang money — $125,000 from Michael, $30,000 from Tom — and he hadn’t paid it back.
Their frustrations led them to Wang’s ex-wife, Michelle. All three had grievances. The question on their lips was: what do you do with a problem called Chris? She told them that Wang had taken over her four properties in Auckland — 75 College Road in Northcote, 55 and 57 Morningside Drive in St Lukes, and the Stilwell Road mansion — and ordered the tenants to pay rent to him, in cash. Her mortgage payments fell behind. She was under increasing pressure from the banks. In an effort to hold off on mortgagee sales, she engaged Michael to act as her representative. He travelled to see her at her home town in China to discuss a plan of action.
Michael and Tom met with a lawyer, David Snedden, who prepared trespass notices against Wang, and documents authorising them to divert rents back to Michelle’s account. The two men went to Stilwell Road that Friday morning to advise the other tenants that their rent had to be paid to Michelle.
They took documents. Police photos show the papers where the men left them: in the back seat of their car. Why didn’t they take them to the house? Why did they simply walk in the door and traipse up the stairs? ‘Whether they knocked,’ Glubb told the jury, ‘we will never know.’
What had they discussed when they met at Tom’s house the previous night? Or did they decide on a course of action that morning in the car? Sutcliffe reminded the jury that the documents were left in the car, and said, ‘They weren’t going there to serve papers. There was something else going on here.’
It was a compelling argument. The prosecution felt that the hung jury in the second trial prevented a
