WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
The interrogation and murder of meth cook Ricky Wang, accused of betraying Auckland crime boss Brother Six, was initially planned to be a team effort. But when it came time to carry out the bloodiest part of the half-baked plan, all but two of the men found excuses to step outside the Massey clan lab where Wang met his violent end.
That was the testimony over the past two days from culinary arts student turned henchman Gordon Yu, who said he was one of the men left behind to carry out the nearly botched mafia-like hit six years ago.
Yu - who was also known by the Chinese nickname Pangzi or its English translation, Fatty - pleaded guilty to Wang’s murder last month and was sentenced just days before his joint trial with fellow henchman Michael Gu had been set to begin.
As part of his sentencing agreement, he agreed to testify at Gu’s murder trial, which is ongoing.
The courtroom in the High Court at Auckland was silent except for Gu’s and a translator’s voices for several minutes as he was allowed to give a vivid and disturbing narrative description of how the murder transpired.
Wang, also known as Dabao, had been accused of plotting to kidnap, rob and kill syndicate boss Brother Six, whose real name is Jian Qi Zhao. The interrogation had just ended but he remained tied to a chair inside a Massey clan lab, Fatty recalled, saying he had just held a meth pipe to Wang’s mouth to help him calm his nerves.
“After he finished, I put the pipe down on the kitchen table and picked up the towel,” Fatty said, explaining that his job was going to be to cover Wang’s face with the towel to muffle his screams. “I was standing behind Dabao and Michael was just chatting to Dabao casually one or two sentences, and then he just shouted, ‘Gordon, go!’
“After I heard that, I took the towel and covered Dabao’s mouth and held his head towards my body. Immediately, Dabao starts to move.”
At that point, the witness said, Gu tried to stab but the knife missed Wang’s chest and instead went into the victim’s wrist area.
“I felt [the wild stabbing motion] was almost towards me, and also Dabao was fighting quite bad so I released my hand.”
As Wang struggled, he managed to free both hands and he was holding Gu’s wrists, Yu said.
“So the two people they started to fight and Michael called me to help, but I saw that knife, I got scared, so I kind of froze and did not help.”
As the two continued to struggle, Wang tried to stand up but his legs were still tied to the chair and he fell to the ground, with the defendant falling to the ground as well, the witness recalled.
“At that time Michael was on top of Dabao and wanting to put the knife down [into his chest],” Fatty testified. “However Dabao got a hold of his wrists again.
“Michael was shouting to ask me to hold his mouth. I was holding the towel in my hand. I held the towel out but I didn’t have the bravery to cover his mouth. Finally Michael’s knife, it comes down.”
Wang continued to struggle through the first couple stabs to his chest but he stopped moving around the time of the third or fourth stab, Yu said.
“Sorry”, he recalled Michael saying “in kind of a quiet voice” as the victim died.
“I just eventually could not see it so I said to Michael, ‘I’ve had enough,” he testified. “Michael at that time took the knife out and threw it on the side ... At that time Dabao already can’t talk and out of his throat there’s like a strange noise coming out.
“His right hand was slowly rising, and then it kind of went down slowly and his voice, it became smaller as well.
“That’s when he died.”
By that point, he said, Gu was sitting in the corner and mumbling, “sorry, sorry”, over and over.
The two of them sat there, in shock and not talking, when they heard someone entering a key code to enter the home and saw another henchman called Kang Kang quietly step into the room, he said. Kang Kang and Uncle Six were initially supposed to help with the killing but the two had left shortly before it happened.
“He said, ‘I’m just coming in to get a phone’, and he grabbed [Uncle Six’s phone] and walked out,” Yu said.
Yu and Gu took turns taking showers that night then slept in the same bed, still in shock and each needing company, as Wang’s corpse remained in an adjoining room, the witness recalled.
During cross-examination today, defence lawyer Julie-Anne Kincade, KC, suggested that Yu’s story had elements of truth but had been altered in a major way. Fatty was the person with the knife that day and Uncle Six was the other person in the room, she suggested, insisting that her client was nowhere near the murder scene that night.
Yu, who is serving a 15-year sentence for the murder with a minimum term of imprisonment of eight years, has already been in prison for nearly five years. He was initially sentenced on drugs and firearms charges related to his activities with the syndicate.
Then after Wang’s body was discovered encased in concrete in a shallow grave near the Desert Rd in 2020, he pleaded guilty to helping dispose of the body. At that time, authorities thought that was the extent of his involvement.
But last year, as he was released on parole and was one day from being deported to China, police arrested him for murder. Uncle Six had decided to flip, pleading guilty to murder himself and giving a lengthy statement that identified Yu and Gu as the two hands-on killers working under his instructions.
Gu had moved to New Zealand under a student visa in 2015 to study culinary arts before dropping out due to a hand injury that required surgery.
He at first went to work as a driver for Wang, often accompanying him to gang pads where drug deals were struck, before switching allegiances to Brother Six, he said. With Brother Six’s syndicate he was given the position of salesman, developing relationships with many of the gang members he had met via Wang.
Following Yu today was testimony from Clive Zhang, a close friend and roommate of Kang Kang’s who was sentenced to home detention in 2020 for helping to dispose of Wang’s body. He had no involvement in the syndicate prior to the murder but somehow found himself in the inner circle in the hours that followed it, he said.
Jurors were shown Google searches from his phone indicating just how naive he had been.
The searches, translated from Mandarin, included:
Police would uncover the searches years later, during their cold case homicide investigation.
The trial continues on Monday before Justice Simon Moore and a jury.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
The guard was lured from his office and then attacked by the prisoner.