‘Panic’ led to death, trial told
A tourist who strangled his wife in a Nelson hotel later told a tour guide that he ‘‘finished her off’’, a court has heard.
Bin Jiang, 64, is on trial for the murder of Yanyan Meng, 62, who was found dead at the Rutherford Hotel last April.
The Crown says Jiang murdered his wife during an argument, to stop her from telling his family about an affair. But the defence says he was in a ‘‘state of panic’’ and did not have the intent to kill his wife.
The jury in the High Court at Nelson heard opening statements from the Crown and defence on Monday and from witnesses, including the dead woman’s brother, yesterday.
The court heard that the couple had been married for 36 years. They were Chinese-born Swiss nationals who were a week into a 12-day tour of New Zealand when Meng died.
The Crown said that during a trip to Kaiteriteri the day before her death, Meng learned of her husband’s contact with another woman in China, after she found messages on his phone.
She told Jiang that she had discovered he was having an affair, and felt there was no way the marriage could continue.
Yesterday, Yanyan Meng’s brother Ming Meng told the court through an interpreter that he received a flurry of messages from his older sister in the early hours of April 27. She told him Jiang was having an affair with another woman, and she asked her brother to tell Jiang’s mother and sister about it.
Yanyan Meng sent photos of the woman and screen grabs of the messages between Jiang and the woman. Ming Meng said that in the voice recordings, his sister was speaking in a hurry, her voice was low, and she sounded frightened and grumpy.
‘‘I told her to calm down. I told her it’s quite normal to have problems with your partner.
‘‘I told her, ‘Being angry will make you lose your judgment’.’’
In cross-examination, defence lawyer Tony Bamford put it to Ming Meng that when he learned of his sister’s distress over the affair, he told her she would lose face if she didn’t stay calm, and that the messages didn’t prove anything.
‘‘At the moment it is just flirting over WeChat,’’ one of the final messages read. Another read: ‘‘If you want a divorce, wouldn’t it be to their benefit?’’
Ming Meng hadn’t realised the time difference between China and New Zealand, and that his sister was messaging him at 2am, until the next day.
‘‘I would have made a call and the tragedy could have been prevented,’’ he said.
In his opening address on Monday, Crown prosecutor Sefton Revell said the exchanges made it clear that Yanyan Meng was upset and distressed. ‘‘She said Bin Jiang was shameless, and there was no way of them carrying on.
‘‘By the time it came to board the tour bus the next morning, the defendant had taken matters into his own hands, and Yanyan Meng was lying dead in room 603 of the Rutherford Hotel.’’
Revell said Meng’s marriage to Jiang was ‘‘no fairy tale’’, and at times during their decades together, she had been ‘‘very unhappy’’.
During the argument, Jiang squeezed Meng’s neck with significant sustained pressure until she stopped fighting back, then continued squeezing until she lost consciousness and died, Revell said.
‘‘He must surely have realised that in strangling his wife to the point of unconsciousness, she could well die.’’
Bamford said in his opening address that the situation was tragic, and Jiang accepted that he caused Meng’s death while in a ‘‘state of panic’’ arising out of a ‘‘personal crisis’’.
Jiang wanted to put a stop to Meng telling his family about the perceived affair, and it led to a struggle to access Meng’s phone, Bamford said. It was what occurred during that physical encounter that was disputed.
‘‘To find him guilty, you have to be sure he intended to kill his wife,’’ Bamford told the jury.
Tour guide Yvonne Girmens told the court that when the couple failed to appear at the scheduled departure time, she spoke with Jiang on the phone. He sounded upset, and asked her to come up to the couple’s room.
Girmens said she walked into the room and noticed that a sheet was pulled up over the double bed. It looked like a body was underneath, and she assumed the worst.
‘‘I knew there was a body under that sheet, and I looked straight away at the chest, but the whole body was covered, even the face, and I could tell there was no more movement of the chest.’’
Girmens said she asked Jiang if it was his wife lying there, and he told her: ‘‘She’s dead.’’
When she asked him what happened, Jiang told her the couple had an argument and ‘‘I finished her off’’.
He later said he had taken a lot of tablets and he wanted to die.
In cross-examination, Bamford questioned the German phrase which was translated as ‘‘I finished her off’’, as it had several meanings. He asked if Jiang had perhaps said ‘‘I finished it’’. Girmens maintained that what Jiang said, translated into English, was ‘‘I have finished her off’’.
The trial is being presided over by Justice Jan-Marie Doogue and a jury of six men and six women and is set down for two weeks.