Protection orders – but two wives die
MEI FAN was the first of two Wellington women murdered just weeks apart after seeking protection orders against their estranged husbands.
Fan’s husband, Michael Preston, was found guilty yesterday of murdering the Miramar mother of two, and of breaching a protection order.
The 60-year-old stood silently as the verdict was read by the jury foreman in the High Court at Wellington.
The prosecution’s case was that Preston was upset about the protection order served on him on November 7, 2013, and killed Fan the next day, stabbing her repeatedly and leaving the knife embedded in her neck.
Two weeks after Fan was slain, Sarwan Lata barricaded herself into her home in the northern suburb of Woodridge to protect herself from her estranged husband, Rajeshwar Singh. He broke in and stabbed her to death.
Lata had a protection order against Singh, but she did not report many of his breaches of the order.
The period immediately after the serving of a protection order was often the most dangerous time for victims of violence, national harm reduction prevention manager Detective Inspector Dave Greig said.
Police had made changes in recent years in the way they dealt with such orders, and a trial was under way in which officers now served them, instead of court staff.
A new recording system made it easier for police to see immediately if a person had a protection order against their name, and victims who had taken out multiple ones.
Greig said people should not lose confidence in the orders, which continued to be ‘‘valuable’’. ‘‘We encourage reporting, even if it may seem trivial, or at a lower level, or people think police wouldn’t want to know about it.
‘‘There is no breach too trivial . . . the message to [police] staff is that they must be investigated.’’
Preston’s trial revealed that his descent into obsession and murder began with the breakdown of his marriage to Fan after she joined him in New Zealand in September 2011.
The couple met in her native China in 2003, had two children, and married in 2006.
But there was violence in their relationship. At least twice, Preston was seen to hold a knife on Fan, and once tried to dangle her from a fifth-floor balcony.
With his mother unwell in 2010, Preston wanted to return to New Zealand. By the time he did, bringing the children with him, his mother had died and his father’s death followed soon after.
At the same time, Fan met Tani Hoyhtya, a Finn, and the pair had a relationship. However, unable to bear being away from her children, she wanted to follow them to New Zealand.
Preston held off agreeing for some months before supporting her application. When she arrived in 2011 she moved in with him.
But the marriage broke down soon after, when Fan admitted she had been seeing someone, and Preston kicked her out of the house.
That seemed to start his obsession with getting her deported, and a fear that she would take the children away from him. The obsession became all-consuming, with long-term friends losing patience with him as every conversation became about Fan.
He began a campaign that included writing to members of Parliament, government departments, and police, and telling anyone who would listen about her infidelity and lies, even telling a pastor that she was a helper of Satan because there were three sixes in the birth date on her passport.
The protection order was served on November 7, and police believe it was that which triggered the murder.
They believe he used rubber gloves and carried a witch’s hat taken from one of his children’s Halloween costumes to hide the knife as he approached Fan on the morning of November 8.
He stabbed her in the face, neck and arms and left her bleeding uncontrollably on her floor.
Preston is in custody and will be sentenced next month.
The couple’s children are now living with a family member, whose identity is suppressed.
The detective in charge of the case welcomed the verdict.
‘‘Our thoughts are with the children now who must grow up knowing their father murdered their mother,’’ Detective Senior Sergeant John van den Heuvel said. ‘‘That’s going to be difficult for them but they are surrounded by people, like Mei, who love and care for them.’’
Hoyhtya said last night that he felt satisfied by the verdict. ‘‘Justice has been served.’’