The families of the victims had gone pale with shock. They had to be helped out of the courtroom.
Justice Venning thanked the jury, and told them they could leave. He waited until the door to the jury room closed behind them, and then he said, ‘Well.’ His smile was bemused.
Kevin Glubb said, ‘Remarkable.’
Tom Sutcliffe left to talk with his client.
It was as though the verdicts were a wager each way. You can get rid of the monk, but you still will not get rid of the temple. The jury had accepted self-defence in the killing of Michael Wu, that there was a second knife, that Wang was just trying to save his life. But the implication was that they rejected Wang’s claim that Michael had accidentally stabbed Tom in the back. Their verdict identified Wang as the killer — but that he had lacked murderous intent when he had plunged the knife 13 centimetres into Tom’s back. How you lack murderous intent when you do that is very curious indeed.
What really happened that morning on the house on the hill? The final answer — the legally binding one — was given by Justice Venning at sentencing in a cramped downstairs courtroom. It was the final reunion of the prosecution and defence teams, of the nice old gent from Victim Support, of the petite translator who sat at Wang’s side, of that small, blessed survivor, Chis Wang. He appeared in the familiar collarless tunic, the old tan shoes. Jurors from all three trials came, too.
The judge got down to business. He said Michael Wu came to Stilwell Road with a knife. There it was, stated out loud, as fact — the second knife did exist, was taken upstairs in a home invasion. He said he did not accept that Tom Zhong had his back to him and was trying to run away when Wang killed him with the hunting knife. The fatal wound, he said, was most likely inflicted in the confusion of the violent struggle between the three men. ‘I accept you acted in self-defence,’ he told Wang, ‘but that you went too far.’
It felt like a minor chastisement. He then set about the terms of sentencing. He said that he’d observed Wang throughout the trial, and didn’t see any evidence of remorse. He noted that Wang had offered to pay $30,000 to the families of the victims, but the offer was rejected. He sentenced him to four years. He should be out around about the time this book is published in late 2015.
18
Partly because there was blood everywhere, the house got snapped up at a mortgagee sale in November 2011 for $1,641,000 — an absolute bargain, $700,000 less than it fetched when the Wangs had bought it.
There is the balcony from where Barrie Cardon plunged to his death; there are the grand front steps where Michael Wu and Tom Zhong walked towards their horrible, bloody end. But the great ship of 23 Stilwell Road has sailed into calm waters, taking onboard a good Catholic family, pillars of Auckland’s establishment. It was bought by Kevin Ryan. His father was the celebrated criminal defence lawyer, Kevin Ryan QC; his sister is Judge Claire Ryan. He and his wife, Bernadette, have five children.
‘Kevin’s done a lot of work on the house,’ observed former neighbour Michael Bassett. ‘He’s very proud of the renovations.’
Chapter 15
Mark Lundy: The trial
There it was again, the sentimental fantasy of love as a condition of simple benevolence, a tranquil, sunlit region in which we are safe from our destructive urges.
— Helen Garner, This House of Grief
1
Too bad they challenged the guy who looked as though he was about to have a nervous breakdown unless someone gave him his medication, quick. Too bad they challenged the nice old duck who was plainly as deaf as A POST. Too bad they woke up the sleepy individual who came to court wearing his pyjamas, and challenged him. There were even stranger candidates among the 60 potential jurors who showed up at the Wellington High Court on a Monday morning in the summer of 2015, the day after the Waitangi holiday weekend, to see if they would be selected for duty in the trial of Mark Edward Lundy. Their names were pulled out of a green metal box. The nice old deaf duck had her name roared out twice before she got up, but she had barely risen to her feet before she was challenged, and excused. She might have made a difference. Pyjama guy and the dude needing his meds might have made a difference to the verdict reached more than six weeks later by the chosen 12.
I stood among the mob of 60 in a queue outside the courthouse that Monday morning. I thought they were freaks wanting to watch the trial from the public gallery, and that I’d better wait with them for the doors to open. Mike White from North & South magazine was inside the court and spotted me through the glass. He raced out and grabbed my arm. ‘They’re jurors,’ he whispered. ‘You can’t be seen anywhere near them.’ He dragged me inside. I walked into Courtroom 1 — Ewen McDonald wuz here, 2012 — for the first time. I liked it at once. It was a portrait gallery, the walls decorated with dark oil paintings of judges of old, who variously expressed states of calm, wisdom, despair, constipation, lasciviousness, prudence, vigour, severity, brutality, kindness and madness. The courtroom was windowless and white-ceilinged. It would be not so much my office for the next two months as my home. It was where I felt happy, where the sum of every moment was precious, where I ate, rested, slept. I liked being there and missed it when I was away at weekends, back in Auckland, with my family in my real home. The courthouse was
