Lawyers hunt for Pumpkin

Carolyne Meng-Yee

Kiwi lawyers are desperately trying to get in touch with the young Chinese girl, nicknamed Pumpkin, who was abandoned by her father at a Melbourne train station after he’d murdered her mother in Auckland.

Forty thousand dollars is sitting in a trust account for Qian Xun Xue - set up after the case hit the headlines in 2007 - and risks being returned to the Inland Revenue Department.

The Herald on Sunday tracked the girl, now 15, to Changsha, the capital of central China’s Hunan province. She lives with her grandmother, Liu Xiao Ping.

Auckland publisher and self-professed martial arts expert Nai Yin Xue abandoned her when she was 3 years old at Southern Cross station and fled to Los Angeles on September 15, 2007.

Grainy images of her were shared by police in an attempt to identify her. She was nicknamed Pumpkin by police due to the Pumpkin Patch brand of clothing she was wearing.

They learned her identity two days later and that her mother Anan Liu, 27, was missing. Her body was found in the boot of Xue’s car, parked outside the couple’s home on Keystone Ave in Mt Roskill, but not before police, media and members of the public walked past and even leaned on it over two days. It led the media to dub the police “Keystone Cops”.

Xue’s Auckland-based adult daughter from a previous relationship, Grace Xue, discovered what had happened after recognising her father in the news and later connected with Qian, who she had never met.

In February 2008, a group of Chinese immigrants in Atlanta, Georgia, recognised Xue from America’s Most Wanted. They hog-tied him, notified the police and he was deported to New Zealand.

He was found guilty of his wife’s murder and in June that year was sentenced to serve a minimum non-parole period of 12 years. He remains at Spring Hill prison in Te Kauwhata and will make his first parole appearance in April.

A friend of Pumpkin’s grandmother told the Herald on Sunday she is “tall and beautiful like her mother”.

The teenager leads a very “comfortable life” and attends a private school but has no contact with Grace.

“Qian’s grandma is a wealthy director of a luxurious hotel in Changsha. She doesn’t want the girl to know what’s happened because she is ashamed. But Qian does know... She has read all the stories on the internet.”

Grace helped to set up The Little Pumpkin Trust to secure the financial future of her sister, who she had also wanted to adopt.

It raised $40,000 and 12 years later the money is still in the trust account.

In 2008, Qian’s grandmother rejected the money but it was thought it would be kept for Qian’s future. But 11 years later it risks being given to the IRD if it is not claimed, said trustee, Auckland solicitor John Gray.

“We have been trying to find Grace. We still have the funds held and nobody’s claiming them for the support and wellbeing of the child. We’ve had no contact with Pumpkin’s grandmother either. My message to her is ‘Take the money off us’, otherwise it will be surrendered to the IRD.”

Liu Xiao Ping was told by the Herald on Sunday, through an intermediary, that the money was still in the account.

She said she wanted to thank New Zealanders for “still caring” about her granddaughter.

Continues p20