Jigsaw of evidence led to arrest for brutal killing
In January 2016 Jaden Lee Stroobant murdered his neighbour Cunxiu Tian. He initially denied the crime, spinning a web of lies to cover his murderous tracks. Today the Weekend Herald can reveal exactly how police got their man. reports. Anna Leask
When Cunxiu Tian was murdered and sexually violated in her West Auckland home police quickly tightened the screws on one man — Jaden Lee Stroobant.
Within hours of the battered and bloodied body of the 69-year-old being found by her daughter and son-inlaw, police were hunting her 19-yearold neighbour.
What led them to Stroobant? And how did they get their man?
For the first time police have been able to reveal the inner workings of the investigation — from the moment Stroobant was brought to their attention by his own mother to the jigsaw of forensic and CCTV evidence that detectives wove together to bring the killer to justice.
Detective Sergeant Kelly Farrant took the Weekend Herald through the evidence in the case against Stroobant, offering a fascinating insight into criminal investigations and an offender who seemingly thought he could get away with murder.
Tian was found dead in the Te Atatu home she shared with her family on January 15, 2016.
Five days after her murder Stroobant was arrested and, after being questioned by police, charged with a crime that would later be described in court as “callous and depraved”.
In May last year Stroobant was jailed for life for murder and handed down a sentence of preventive detention for his sex crimes.
His appeal against the sentence was firmly rejected.
Now, police can finally speak about their investigation into Tian’s death, dubbed Operation Nepal.
Stroobant’s fingerprints were found in the house during the early scene examination but that was not enough to convict him of murder and multiple sexual violations.
That came after Tian’s blood was found on his shoe and T-shirt, his semen on her underwear and evidence that he tried to cover up his crimes.
Farrant also revealed that Stroobant had been living over the back fence with his mother Kristen and when she saw police she questioned them about what was happening at the neighbour’s.
“What’s my son done now?” she asked an officer.
From that moment, police knew there was a good chance Stroobant was their man.
The body of Cunxiu Tian lies at the foot of the stairs in her family home in West Auckland. Battered, bloody, defiled.
She’s been struck with such force that her black plastic headband and glasses have flown of her head, landing on the carpet nearby as her attacker continues to punch and stomp her to death. When police arrive, summoned after Tian’s daughter and son-in-law return home from work to find her lifeless body lying in heart of their home, the person who subjected the petite Chinese woman to this brutal attack is long gone. There are no obvious answers. Parts of the house are in disarray. Drawers emptied of their contents suggest Tian disturbed an intruder and was killed as a result.
For a few moments after police arrive the crime has the look of a whodunnit. But when an officer ventures into the back yard and speaks to a nosy neighbour, the picture becomes patently clear.
“What’s my son done now?” Kristen Stroobant, asks the officer. “Who’s your son?” he responds. “Jaden Lee Stroobant.”
The officer knows this name. “I know him, where is he?” the officer, who helped lock Stroobant up for burglaries in the past, says to the woman.
“I haven’t seen him,” she claims. When this conversation and Stroobant’s criminal history is relayed to Detective Senior Sergeant Roger Small, the head of the investigation into Tian’s death, he makes a call. “Let’s try and find Jaden Stroobant.”
A KNOWN burglar released from prison just 38 days before Tian was murdered, Stroobant quickly became a suspect.
In mid-2015 he was jailed on a raft of charges including burglary. He was released on December 8, 2015 and moved into a boarding house in Te Atatu where his mother was living. But shortly before the murder, the pair moved into a flat at 11 Kotuku St, over the back fence from Tian’s house.
After Stroobant pleaded guilty to murder and sexual violation in the High Court at Auckland in 2017 it was revealed that forensic evidence placed him at the scene of the crime.
His semen was in Tian’s underwear, a fingerprint on a bottle of dishwashing liquid found next to the body.
Now the Weekend Herald can reveal the full evidence against Stroobant, how police gathered it, and what it proved.
SHORTLY AFTER Kristen Stroobant effectively fingered her son as a suspect, police started hunting the 19-year-old. They visited relatives, friends, associates — but could not find him.
They tracked his cellphone and found he’d been in the Candia Rd area. Stroobant lived there for a time when he was younger, so police went to his old house.
The tenants had no idea who Stroobant was, no connection to him.
Police obtained a list of recent calls Stroobant had made and found he’d been in contact with a woman named Lisa Borrett. She lived next door to Stroobant’s old home and when police visited her property they found the teenager inside.
In fact, as they walked up the driveway, they could see Stroobant peeking out of the window at them.
It would later be revealed in court documents that Borrett, a married woman with children, had been having a sexual relationship with Stroobant for some time.
Stroobant agreed to accompany police to the Henderson police station and as he walked out of Borrett’s house, he picked up a green and white jacket.
He probably had no idea at the time, but it was a major strike against him in the evidence stakes.
At the station Stroobant was asked about where he was the day before, what he did, and who with. During the
150-minute interview, Stroobant gave a detailed account of his day that placed him well away from Tian’s home.
He was confident as he explained that he’d spent the Thursday night at his girlfriend’s place and at Burger King on Lincoln Rd. On Friday morning he went to a Kiwibank ATM in Orakei and withdrew several hundred dollars before going with his mother to South Auckland to get quotes for a car windscreen.
So, he was nowhere near Te Atatu when Tian was killed — suspected to be sometime between 10am and
11am.
Stroobant volunteered a DNA sample and police seized his clothing including a pair of trainers and the green and white jacket.
Farrant said Stroobant gave a credible account.
“He was co-operative and easy going,” she said.
“He happily provided police his clothing and DNA. He underwent a medical exam.”
Stroobant was released without being arrested and police set about confirming his alibis.
Over the next four days surveillance teams monitored
Stroobant’s movements and detectives checked out his story.
Farrant said Stroobant’s story was “credible” and he was “easy going” — volunteering a DNA sample and medical exam.
But police would later establish through CCTV footage at the Kiwibank and Burger King that Stroobant had not visited either place — and the fact there were no withdrawals from his account, let alone any money in it, was another lie he was caught in.
Police spoke to countless windscreen retailers and suppliers in South Auckland and — not surprisingly — none remembered Stroobant.
They were closing in, but still needed hard evidence.
At the same time, an extensive scene examination began at Tian’s home. Through power consumption records they established she was killed at or around 10am. Graphs of the property’s power usage on the day show a flat line from just after 10am, yet on other days when Tian was home — and sticking firmly to her daily routine — the pattern was consistent.
The consumption graph for Stroobant’s home also flatlines just after 10am.
Police believe that just after 10am, when he was sure Tian was home alone, Stroobant dragged a stool to his back fence, climbed into her property and waited for his chance to strike. About that time another neighbour was outside and heard a dragging noise, a thud and saw the fence shudder — like someone had jumped it. All roads were leading to Stroobant.
THE FORENSIC
examination was meticulous. Those tasked with finding the clues were highly motivated, having seen the violence and denigration Tian had suffered in a place she was supposed to be safe.
They worked around the clock, inching through the house and finding a raft of evidence that would connect Stroobant to the scene. A clear, partial handprint on the banister of the stairs near Tian’s body; a fingerprint on a Samsung phone box on a dresser in the living room; another on a bottle of dishwashing liquid next to her body.
That liquid and a cloth had been used by the killer to try to clean up Tian, remove DNA, hide his identity. “With the fingerprints, we could say he had been there — but what was his role in the murder?” Farrant said. They were close — but they needed more. A shoe print was lifted from the kitchen and it didn’t match any of the soles of the family’s footwear. But it did match a shoe police had access to — one seized from Stroobant after his first interview. The size was right, the style was right, the wear pattern was bang-on. And it had blood on it — a minute amount on the sole and side of the shoe.
On Wednesday January 20 at 5pm the team at ESR — who had been working tirelessly to process the results — confirmed the blood on Stroobant’s shoe was Tian’s.
“It was an incredible relief, that we finally had confirmation of Stroobant’s involvement. The team at ESR we as affected by her death as police were. Everyone was motivated to identify the murderer as quickly as possible,” Farrant said.
At 8pm that night police returned to Kotuku St and arrested Stroobant.
“As soon as that blood was confirmed, we felt there was enough evidence and a reasonable belief that he had committed the murder,” Farrant said.
Again, Stroobant volunteered to give an interview. Again, he was confident. Until police put to him that they had forensic evidence linking him to the crime. Then Stroobant got angry.
He demanded the interview stop, swore at the detective questioning him and moved across the table between them to turn off the recording equipment himself.
Stroobant was then charged with murdering and sexually violating Tian.
“Several days later we confirmed that it was Stroobants semen in Madam Tian’s underpants,” Farrant said.
Luminol testing carried out later in the scene examination would also show how Stroobant traipsed his victim’s blood through her house as he ransacked drawers and cupboards in an attempt to make the killing look like a burglary gone wrong.
They were all really motivated to identify the murderer as quickly as possible, Her death touched everyone on the investigation. Detective Sergeant Kelly Farrant
STROOBANT CONTINUED to deny the crime. But CCTV footage would add to the weight of evidence against him.
He was captured on camera outside the Waitakere District Court at 1.15pm on the day of the murder, wearing his green and white jacket.
From there, police tracked him through the nearby West City Mall where he bought himself a drink and changed Chinese currency stolen from the Tian house at Flight Centre.
In the footage an object can be seen in Stroobant’s right shorts pocket — something large, flat and rectangle. Police believe this was the iPad stolen from Tian’s house the day of the murder.
It has never been found, but Farrant is confident Stroobant was carrying with him in the mall.
He’s seen leaving the mall and getting into the front passenger side of Borrett’s car, which drives off.
The CCTV footage shows Stroobant wearing the jacket and a white T-shirt with a black diamondshape on the front.
Both items had been seized by police and the T-shirt tested positive for traces of Tian’s blood.
The jacket would be another huge strike against Stroobant.
Shortly before he was filmed wearing it outside the court building, one of Tian’s neighbours spotted a man standing at the top of her driveway. He stood there for a while, peering down towards the house, then he walked off. He was wearing a green and white jacket.
“The thought is that he went back to Madam Tian’s house see whether she had been found, if the police were there yet,” Farrant said.
“That from there he made his way into Henderson and was seen outside the court.”
Despite his denials, his web of lies and poorly fabricated alibis, Stroobant’s game was up.
Police had caught their killer.