Body in the bag manslaughter trial: Auckland sect leader Kaixiao Liu’s sermons played for jurors

Two days after discussing with his father the merits of restraining a “traitor” with handcuffs versus metal wire, Auckland sect leader Kaixiao Liu held a meeting with everyone in his extended household to gather a new set of opinions.

Shulai Wang, a 70-year-old described as a “defector” whose evil thoughts had caused their vegetable garden to wither, had since died at the property after being locked in a tent. Now they were all in the same boat, the man known as “Lord” or “Master” emphasised to the group of family members and Chinese overstayers who had moved into his home to receive religious instruction.

He asked each person – including children – to take turns standing up and giving a one-sentence opinion about how they should dispose of the body.

“Burn her,” suggested the first person.

“Go bury,” said the next person.

The sect leader’s father agreed: “Find a place inside a forest, somewhere with no people around, primaeval forest.”

But as the votes kept coming in, Liu didn’t seem satisfied until the final suggestion: “Throw into the sea.” That, he confirmed, fitted God’s plan.

The discussion, mostly in Mandarin but translated by authorities into English, was played for jurors in the High Court at Auckland this week as prosecutors began wrapping up evidence in the ongoing kidnapping and manslaughter trial of Liu, his wife Lanyue Xiao and both of his parents.

Wang’s body would be found by a fisherman in Gulf Harbour, near the Whangaparāoa Peninsula, four days after the discussion. Her body had been folded in half and bound with tape before it was stuffed in black rubbish bags. Also packed inside the rubbish bags were large rice bags filled with stones, intended to weigh the body down.

The gruesome discovery launched a months-long, international police investigation as police tried to identify Wang and solve the mystery of her death. The first break came when police traced serial numbers on the rice bags back to Liu. But he and his wife weren’t arrested until three months later, after they arrived at Auckland Airport for a short trip to China.

‘All bad guys have their hands tied’

During that arrest, police confiscated Liu’s laptop, which contained six recordings of group discussions or sermons in which Wang was mentioned in the days before and after her death.

“A traitor escaped and wanted to destroy God’s house,” noted one written document on Liu’s laptop dated March 5.

It matched other documents recovered by police suggesting that Wang had tried to climb a fence and run into a neighbour’s yard that day, before other sect members caught up to her and pulled her inside.

“The wicked are bullying the honest people,” read a note on Liu’s laptop from the next day. “If someone wants to destroy God’s house, we should beat him to death. What happened to Shulai was actually ... she killed herself.

“I hope to control myself. I hope that when I am rational, I can give her more mercy and let her live. Remind her: Don’t pee or poop on the bed, otherwise you will sleep in your shit and feel uncomfortable. If you want to kill members of God’s family, you want to defect, you want to destroy God’s house, your hands and feet must be controlled to prevent you from doing evil. Your mouth is still open so that you can eat. If your mouth screams, it will be sealed immediately.”

Another note added: “At night, we need to tie it tighter and reinforce it. Lock the garage from the inside. The neighbour is too close, in case screams, get something metal ... Hands must be tied tightly, all bad guys have their hands tied.”

‘I see evil’

In a recording from that same day, Liu said Wang’s “case is a result of long-term listening to the dark side of the inner world and not listening to God’s way”.

“I saw her evil thoughts a long time ago,” Liu said. “Of course, I can see the evil opinions in everyone.”

He suggested Wang had tried to push another member of the household off the roof of their Ōrewa home so that it would be easier for her to escape.

“Don’t blame the devil, this evil thought is the thought of a human,” Liu went on to explain. “The demons outside cannot enter our yard. God has blocked the demons outside, do you understand? God’s gate has a protective layer around our house. Therefore, it is to say, if there are evil thoughts, I tell you the truth, it is the evil within the person himself.”

He ordered that her food be withheld.

“Anyway, she is just lying there without moving [so] will not consume energy, right?” Liu explained. “If a person doesn’t consume anything, going a few days without eating or drinking wouldn’t cause any problems at all. Unless the evil thoughts inside her are too large and kill herself.”

It is then that his father suggested putting Wang in handcuffs, but Liu responded that they were difficult to get in New Zealand.

“Find some metal wire or something, or steel wire,” he instructed his father, before adding: “Both hands and feet, reinforce both hands and feet. Just to hold her in place.”

Liu’s father, who speaks in a different dialect, was translated as having suggested: “There is a type that gets tighter whenever [it] moves, and once it’s tight, she doesn’t dare to move.”

‘Still screaming’

Hours later, just after midnight, Liu was recorded talking in whispered tones to others in the house.

“The key point is justifiable defence, do you know?” he said, seemingly in reference to Wang. “It was not like this in the beginning. She was testing us step by step and violating us step by step, wants more destruction step by step.

“She was supposed to be on the bed originally, right? Step by step. Didn’t tape her mouth. Reminded her not to cry/scream. As she kept crying/screaming, stick on her mouth then. She is still crying/screaming with a sealed mouth, stuff a towel then. If she is still crying/screaming after stuffing a towel, then have to put into the box/suitcase. This is more fixed, more soundproof. But we are completely forced to defend and protect God’s home.”

That recording ended with Liu inviting the group to quietly sing together.

On March 8, Liu held the house meeting in which he solicited suggestions for disposing of the body. He repeated suggestions that Wang “acted out evil thoughts” by “trying to kill a person in the divine family”, which he described as attempted murder. But she had killed herself, he insisted, by rupturing internal organs as she jumped over a wall while trying to escape.

“If she repented, God would save her,” Liu explained to his followers. “So, giving her some quiet time is to let her repent, but she did not repent ... All the resentment and curses she sent out made her die faster.”

He insisted to the group that the restraints were for Wang’s benefit, both to stop her from “doing evil again” and to keep her still so that her organs wouldn’t rupture.

“We wanted to help her, to help her stay quiet,” he said. “Everything we did is justifiable defence.”

‘A troublesome thing’

Thinking back, Liu said, he now realised that the vegetables they grew on the roof of the home had been “deliberately destroyed” by Wang with her “evil thoughts”.

“You see, Shulai, who didn’t obey the way of the God, didn’t obey the rules, she is dead now – in the garage, already dead,” Liu told his followers. “The body will become stinky and rot ... Now we are going to deal with this body.

“What are your opinions? What do you think we should do with the body, the thing left behind by this evil person? How do you see it? Everyone give your opinions in one sentence.”

Liu encouraged the group immediately afterwards, saying each suggestion had been good.

“But putting it in a forest, it would be far too easy to be discovered by others, do you understand?” he said. “If discovered by others, it will be a troublesome thing. Do you know?”

A crematorium was also not an option, he said, because one would require a death certificate.

“We also can’t find a place to burn it by ourselves,” he continued. “There will be too much smoke, it will be very eye-catching. People might even call the police and have the fire service come, thinking a house is on fire.

“... It takes a long time, and people will obviously smell the burning meat ... The smell is different from burning wood, you know?”

Throwing her body in the ocean, preferably off a cliff into deep water, would be both in accordance with the Bible and the quickest option, he concluded.

“As long as we find an opportunity, when no one is around, we can get this done properly, do you understand?” he asked. “Okay, now it’s time to take action.”

Liu outlined a detailed plan for how to prepare the body and then how the group would divide – choosing which adults would help dump the body, with children to accompany them so they would look less suspicious.

‘Parasite’

In the days that followed, Liu would continue to give sermons emphasising that Wang was responsible for her own death. He described her as a lazy “slug” or a “parasite” who pretended to be sick or tired and thought she could live off the group’s charity for the next decade or so.

They were better off without her – the whole group feeling renewed energy as if the whole experience had been a vaccination against evil, he said.

Liu also began to strategise what members of the household should do if police ever came to them asking questions.

“We don’t need to say how long she had lived afterwards, just say that she fell to her death,” he said. “We carried her back, and after carrying her back, we wrapped her up and buried at sea. Do you understand?”

But he also emphasised that followers should keep their mouths shut – not talking about the incident with each other and especially not with police.

“If anyone asks you questions, some of you should not talk, just smile instead, you know?” he explained. “Just a silly smile ... The more you say, the more likely you slip up. Just smiling. [With] smiling, there is no aggression, right?

“Just put your hands together and smile like this. Oh, this is a friendly, friendly, sending out friendly energy, understand? There is no aggression at all. He won’t take you away, understand? But if you don’t smile there, look weird, or say one or two words that make people feel suspicion, they will definitely arrest you, understand? Whether they judge you as mentally ill or an illegal immigrant, [they] will definitely lock you up in jail.”

After Liu’s arrest, his followers did exactly that. They were eventually deported after police deemed them of no use to the investigation.

‘Lock the tent’

In a follow-up meeting on March 27, about two weeks after Wang’s body was discovered, Liu addressed a select group of people for what he called a “special training camp for Kingdom of God generals”. The subject was again Wang’s perceived transgressions.

One follower noted that she had seen Wang digging through rubbish bins in the house looking for food in the days before her death. Her corpse weighed just 27kg when it was examined by a pathologist.

“A few days before the traitor escaped, I gave the order to lock the tent,” Liu noted. “Why? If the tent was not locked, when you woke up in the morning, the traitor might be gone, and [other followers] might be dead ... She could strangle you two to death in any way she wants when you are asleep or hide a knife on her body and cut you.

“She could quietly climb over the wall and escape at night. Right? But locking the tent stopped her from thinking about it.”

He had made it perfectly clear to Wang, he said, that if there were any major violations then food would be withheld. It was a fortuitous decision, he suggested.

Had she eaten that morning, he said, she might have had enough strength to run away more quickly, and other followers might not have caught her.

Liu, who is on bail, has not been in court for the past two days as the recordings were played. His absence has been excused, Justice Mathew Downs told the jury.

Testimony is expected to resume tomorrow.

Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.

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