Sad trial begins in Qian Liu slaying
Brian Dickson faces murder in death of Chinese York U student
TORONTO — What a strange, sad trial it is going to be.
Brian Dickson, accused in the slaying of York University student Qian Liu three years ago, is pleading not guilty to first-degree murder, but earlier tried to plead guilty to manslaughter, an offer to which prosecutors said thanks but no thanks.
Effectively, this means that Dickson, a boyish 32, is acknowledging causing Liu’s death but is denying it was intentional.
Such are the fine distinctions of Canadian law that Dickson also could admit either to sexually assaulting the young woman, but without intending that she die, or to sexually assaulting her and causing her death unintentionally after the assault was over — and still be legally guilty only of manslaughter.
In her opening statement to Ontario Superior Court Judge Anne Molloy and the jury Monday, prosecutor Christine Pirraglia said Dickson’s DNA was found on Liu’s breasts, in material recovered from under her fingernails and from semen in stains on her abdomen and groin — all matches Pirraglia described as having “a high degree of probability” with odds ranging from one in 25 trillion to one in 2.7 quintillion to one in 140 quadrillion that the DNA belonged to anyone else.
As Dickson’s lawyer, Rob Nuttall, put it in an unusual and brief opening of his own, “This is not a case about who did it; this is a what-happened case.”
Liu was discovered face down on the floor of her bedroom, her nightgown bunched up and most of her body nude. There was blood beside her head.
But as Pirraglia told the jurors, there was no knife or bullet wound to the young woman, and even the experts she will call “don’t know exactly by what physical means her death was caused,” though she said the forensic pathologist formed the opinion that the cause of death was “mechanical asphyxia involving some form of neck compression.”
The “mechanism of death is very significant evidence in deciding whether the Crown has proved its case” that this was murder beyond a reasonable doubt, Nuttall told the jurors. “At the end of the trial, I will be inviting you to return a verdict of guilty of manslaughter.”
Twenty-three at the time of her death, Liu came to Toronto from Beijing in the fall of 2010 and enrolled in a preparatory course at York University in the north end of the city.
She was living in the small basement unit of a townhouse shared with other students not far from the campus.
On the evening of April 14 and into the early morning of April 15, 2011, Liu was talking to her former boyfriend in Beijing, Xian Chao Meng, both through a Skype program and a messenger service like MSN.
Meng, now 27, will testify and, according to the prosecutor’s opening, has a harrowing story to tell.
Sometime after 1 a.m., she said, Meng watched Liu “open the door and engage in a brief conversation with the man at the door. After a short time, Mr. Meng observed the man make an attempt to hug Ms. Liu.”
She tried to push him out the door, Pirraglia said, but he overpowered her, shut the door behind him, and shoved her — ultimately off camera.
Meng now could only hear her, and what he heard was Liu saying “No” in both English and Mandarin.
He never heard another sound from her.
Meng, the prosecutor said, sat “helplessly in front of his computer in Beijing.”
He watched the man return to the door, lock it, and turn off the lights — and then go off screen.
“The next, and last time the man appeared on the screen,” Pirraglia said, “he was naked from the waist down. He approached the computer and turned it off.”
Despite a plethora of computer wires, a power cord and a computer mouse on Liu’s desk, no computer was ever found.
The resourceful Meng, meantime, figured out Liu’s password for the messenger service, logged onto her online chat group and began “to frantically send messages to the chat group, asking for help.”
But Beijing is 12 hours ahead of Toronto, and there was only one person online at that time, a young woman who was a former classmate of Liu’s. Meng told her what he’d seen and she called 911, but all she had by way of an address for Liu was an old one.
Only as the sun rose in Canada did other friends and classmates of Liu wake up to find the plea from Meng, asking them to check on her.
Eventually, the information made its way to another tenant in the townhouse, who got the landlord to open Liu’s door with a master key.
At the sight of her lifeless body, they called 911, but only after enlisting the help of another tenant and York U student, Sohan Joshi, who could speak English, was the operator able to get enough information to send police and ambulance.
Joshi testified and, as part of his evidence, the tape of the panicked 911 call was played.
At one point, he told the operator, “We need to help her.”
Liu’s dignified parents, father Jian Hui Liu and mom Ya Ru Zheng, sat quietly in the front row, an interpreter translating for them.
At the first glimpse of her daughter’s slender body on the big screens in court, Zheng discreetly wiped her eyes.
For all that the courts have become sensitive, sometimes even deferential, to the families of victims, there is no way to whitewash the facts: How that pink fuzzy blanket in the corner, the books on the single bed, the kettle on the bathroom sink, the toothbrush in the big Canada flag mug, the black and white purse, all of it, each ordinary thing, would have spoken to those parents.
The trial continues.