Steve Braunias: Found guilty of manslaughter and kidnapping, the Lord is sentenced

Kaixiao Liu, pictured, was sentenced to 10 years and five months in prison. Photo / Jane Ussher K walked into the courtroom looking like he owned the joint. His upper body had bulked up and was bursting against the confines of his suit. His haircut had changed; his fringe had grown out, and it touched his eyebrows with little black fingers of hair. He looked confident, happy to be there, and I had the sense he thought things were finally going to be sorted out and he would return home, get his life back on track, go about his strange business. It was good to see him. I winked at him and he smiled back. 'Call me K,' he said, when we first met, earlier this year at his home, where he was bailed during his trial for manslaughter, kidnapping, interfering with human remains and perverting the course of justice. His name was Kaixiao Liu. K and his wife Lanyue were found guilty of all charges at the High Court at Auckland in June. The jury agreed with the police case that the pair caused the death of Shulai Wang, 70, in cruel and abnormal circumstances – stuffing a towel in her mouth to stop her screaming, placing her inside a box or suitcase, and denying her food, water and medical help – then dumped her body in a creek. The jury had little cause to think any different. The defendants refused to allow their court-appointed lawyers to argue their case. Certainly, they had strayed into that dark territory known as after-death contact by dumping the body, but I still wonder whether they kidnapped or killed the woman. These doubts are only partly due to spending a lot of time with them at their Ōrewa home every Sunday afternoon during the trial. I got embedded. I formed sympathies. But other than that I thought the evidence thin. K was sentenced late last month. I hadn't seen him since he was taken away after the verdict although I got a call from Mt Eden Corrections Facility, asking if I would give permission for him to put me on a list of approved calls. I said yes. He hasn't called. Even though he had talked so much patently false nonsense on those Sunday visits, I thought about him quite a lot and wondered how he was getting on in prison. He has hired a new lawyer, gone top-shelf, in the shape of famed advocate Ron Mansfield KC; at sentencing, Mansfield said his client had been beaten up in prison, and hospitalised. I turned and took another look at him, and I think I saw bruising on his face. K was told by Justice Mathew Downs, 'You may be seated.' He replied, 'Thank you, lord.' Interesting honorific. At his trial, evidence was presented that he was the head of a religious cult, and that his followers called him Lord. He denied that was the case and at sentencing, Mansfield said, 'There are a few things that I need to say on his behalf. One is that Mr Liu had people who followed him as a result of his music, not as a result of his preaching or him being head of what has been portrayed as a cult, but through his music, which was spread through the Chinese equivalent of Facebook. As a result, he had followers, people who wanted to invest in his music.' I sighed. This amazing new claim had never come up once in the four Sundays I interviewed him. He had a talent for saying really stupid things and this was only the latest but likely not the last. He has appealed the convictions. K was sentenced to 10 years and five months. 'You should feel ashamed,' said the judge, who added it was likely he'd be deported. I turned again and looked at him. He was in shock and crying. Deluded to the end, he had instructed Mansfield to ask for a sentence of home detention. 'Obviously, I'm bound to follow Mr Liu's instructions,' Mansfield said, virtually apologising for such an absurd request. The couple have five children. The four eldest were uplifted by Oranga Tamariki two years ago and placed in what I gather was a wildly inappropriate home. The baby was uplifted in June, taken from the grandmother's arms. It has been a rotten case and not all of it is K's making. Bureaucrats & politicians continue to show uncanny ability to escape blame for blunders.