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Red-faced authorities have admitted the man who fled New Zealand after allegedly murdering his wife and dumping his 3-year-old daughter "Pumpkin" at a Melbourne railway station was right under their noses in Auckland later the same day.
Until now it was widely believed that murder suspect Nai Yin Xue, 54, had made his escape on a direct flight from Melbourne to Los Angeles, but the Herald on Sunday can reveal that nine hours after abandoning his daughter, Xue was back in Auckland, sitting at the airport.
The self-proclaimed martial arts expert spent nearly two hours in a transit lounge at Auckland International Airport on September 15 last year, drinking coffee and chatting with other passengers while just 20km away his wife's badly beaten body lay decomposing in the boot of his car.
Back in Australia, Victorian police were scrambling to confirm the identity of young Qian Xue Xue, clueless to the fact her father had already slipped out of the country and was about to make his escape to Los Angeles.
At 6.30pm, two hours after arriving in Auckland. Xue casually boarded Qantas flight QF25 for an 11-hour flight to Los Angeles where he spent five months on the run.
Police, already facing claims of incompetence over the time they took to find the body of Xue's wife Anan Liu, yesterday played down the significance of Xue returning to Auckland just days after he had allegedly murdered his wife.
The officer heading the inquiry, Detective Senior Sergeant Simon Scott, said police were only alerted to the identity of the abandoned girl on Sunday night, 24 hours after Xue's two-hour stopover in Auckland.
The difficulty was the fact there was nothing on young Qian Xue to give police any clue as to her identity, Scott said.
It was only after studying CCTV footage taken at Southern Cross Station in Melbourne that police were able to ascertain she was the daughter of Xue. By that time 24 hours had lapsed and Xue had already arrived in Los Angeles.
Police did contact Melbourne Airport and were able to confirm on Sunday night Xue had flown out of the country. Checks with Los Angeles Airport later turned up security footage which showed a smiling Xue offering a double thumbs-up as he passed through security.
"It took hours and hours and hours to identify him. Initially they [Victorian police] had very little to go on," Scott said.
"They did all they could. The simple fact was that the poor little girl was left by herself. It just took time to work out who she was."
Once his identity was confirmed police went to work trying to locate his estranged wife and Qian's 27-year-old mother, cordoning off Xue's battered white weatherboard house in Mt Roskill.
Forty-five hours later they decided to check the boot of a silver Honda parked outside the house. Inside the boot was Liu's body.
Embarrassed police later defended their decision not to make an earlier search of the car, claiming they did not have the proper warrants.
Scott accepted that had police been able to identify Qian Xue earlier they may well have apprehended her father in Auckland, avoiding what became an expensive, five-month manhunt through the United States.
But he defended the actions of police saying they had acted as swiftly as they could under the circumstances.
"I think police did a great job. They did all they could," Scott said.
Xue was captured in Georgia in March after a dramatic citizens' arrest by members of the local Chinese community recognised him from coverage they had seen on TV show America's Most Wanted.
He will appear in September in Auckland for a depositions hearing.
