Nai Yin Xue's lawyer says he didn't know his wife was dead when he abandoned his daughter at a Melbourne railway station.
Chris Comeskey told jurors that Xue was leaving New Zealand because he thought his relationship was over and his Chinese Times publication was losing money and not because he was trying to flee after murdering his wife, as prosecutors allege.
Xue, 55, is on trial in the High Court in Auckland for the murder of his wife An An Liu, whose body was found in the boot of Xue's Chinese Times car in September 2007.
The crown says Xue strangled Ms Liu with a neck tie, probably on the night of September 11, 2007. They say he then fled to Australia with his three-year-old daughter Qian Xun two days later, and then abandoned her at a Melbourne railway station on September 15 before flying to the United States.
Mr Comeskey said Xue denied killing his wife, and that much effort had gone into painting him as a bad man for abandoning Qian Xun, known in New Zealand as Claire, in Melbourne.
He said the abandonment could be seen as reprehensible but it didn't follow that he killed his wife.
Xue's business was losing money and he knew his wife didn't want to be with him and had thought she had gone again to Wellington, Mr Comeskey said.
Xue had gone overseas before and knew he could teach tai chi again and thus made plans to go overseas when he thought his wife had left him.
"All of the imagery you see is of a man who doesn't know where his wife is, I would suggest," he said.
Mr Comeskey said there was no evidence at the couple's Keystone Ave address which suggested a death occurred there, and it wasn't clear she died on September 11.
He also said there was not enough evidence suggesting that Xue strangled her.
"If you're not happy about the when, where and how, I'd be very reluctant to accept the who."
Mr Comeskey also said DNA evidence from the tie found wrapped around Ms Liu's eyes and neck and from a pair of female underpants found next to Ms Liu's body was important.
Analysts found miniscule traces of DNA of two men other than Xue on Ms Liu's underpants, and one man other than Xue on the tie. An analyst said it was likely but not certain the DNA from the unknown man on the tie and one of the unknown men on the underpants was from the same man.
Mr Comeskey said there was evidence from a computer message to suggest Ms Liu had discovered "a new peak of sexuality" and it was not unreasonable that she might have been looking at some form of sexual experimentation.
It was possible she died somewhere other than her home as a result of a sexual asphyxiation practice gone wrong involving one or two other men, who then put her in the boot of Mr Xue's car with her clothes and drove back to her house, he said.
Earlier, prosecutor Aaron Perkins rejected the suggestion Ms Liu died as the result of a sex act gone wrong as "nothing short of a bizarre explanation - that's because there's no one else to point the finger at".
Mr Perkins said Xue had previously threatened to kill her and had previously travelled to Wellington, to where she had moved, with an axe prepared to kill her if she didn't return with him.
He said the landlord Weihong Song gave evidence of a torch being shone in his room about 2.30am, after which he chased the man away with a gun, and Xue's colleague Guiquing Jia had told the court Xue told her he went to Wellington with an axe and that it was lucky he didn't find her.
"Is it any wonder that a man who makes that trip with an axe with that mindset, ie, you come back otherwise I'm going to use an axe, is it any wonder that a few weeks later she's dead," Mr Perkins said.
Justice Hugh Williams will sum up the case tomorrow morning before the all-woman jury retires to consider its verdict.
- NZPA
Xue says someone else killed his wife, court told
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