Wife killed with 80 blows from meat cleaver, hammer and knife

A man who bashed and stabbed his wife nearly 80 times with a meat cleaver, a hammer and a knife has been jailed for 17 years.

Shunlian Huang was alive for 11 minutes after the attack began, knowing that she was likely to die an agonising death at the hands of her husband Zeshen Zhou, the High Court at Auckland heard today.

Justice Judith Potter said Zhou moved his wife's body halfway through the attack from the kitchen to the bathroom of their south Auckland home, where he put her in the shower to minimise the mess.

The judge said the dead woman had 36 chopping blows to her head, six or seven stab wounds to her neck which severed her windpipe and right carotid artery, and another six stab wounds to her left breast which penetrated her lung.

She also had defensive wounds to both arms where she had been hit by the meat cleaver.

Zhou, 35, was told the murder was particularly violent and brutal and he did not qualify for anything less than a minimum term of 17 years in prison.

Shunlian Huang was murdered at her home in Papatoetoe in September last year.

Crown Prosecutor John Dixon said said at an earlier hearing that in the weeks leading up to her death the couple had spoken of separating and the day she died they had talked to a real estate agent about selling their house.

Zhou had pleaded not guilty to murder before his conviction.

- NZPA