Pumpkin's dad Nai Yin Xue guilty

Nai Yin Xue photo gallery

1 of 8

GRAEME COX/Sunday News Zoom

COURTROOM SCENE: Nai Yin Xue reacts angrily after he was found guilty of the murder of his wife An An Liu.

Lawyer Chris Comesky on the Xue verdict

Related Links

The Nai Yin Xue story Xue's sex defence to murder Nai Yin Xue murder timeline Nai Yin Xue photo gallery

Relevant offers

Crime

All in a morning's work for drug-busters Driver haunted by memory of death Murder accused was on bail 'No miscarriage' in Jhia conviction Woman hospitalised after Ponsonby hit and run Driver sentenced over death of top policeman Murder trial jury hears taped conversations Claiming to be physiotherapist leads to fine Police raid sees 34 people arrested Attacker 'deserves better chance at life' - victim

An all-woman jury has found Nai Yin Xue guilty of strangling his young wife to death today, concluding one of the country's more dramatic crime sagas.

Xue, 55, had to be hauled from the dock at the High Court Auckland screaming and punching the air, yelling "unfair, unfair".

"I am innocent," he called as two security guards took him away.

He killed his 28-year-old wife An An Liu on September 11, 2007 and then took their three year old daughter Qian Xun Xue to Australia, abandoning her on a Melbourne railway concourse.

Eight days later Ms Liu's naked body was found in the boot of Xue's car.

She was wearing white cotton gloves and a tie was loosely around her neck and covering her eyes.

The verdict came at the end of at the end of a gruelling three week trial in which Xue's defence lawyer Chris Comeskey argued that he had not killed Ms Liu but that she had died in a bizarre bondage sex ritual with two unknown men.

Outside court Mr Comeskey said they were looking to at appeal options but he said he did not know who the other men might have been.

"Previous lovers don't scramble to come forward," he said.

Also outside court "Operation Patch" inquiry head Detective Senior Sergeant Simon Scott said Qian Xun was "happy, healthy and thriving" with her grandmother Xiaoping Liu in China. He would not talk about the trial.

During the trial Justice Hugh Williams, in a video evidence session with Madame Liu, had asked about the state of the child. Her reply was ordered suppressed and the jury was told to dismiss it. Media today applied for the suppression to be lifted, but this was denied.

Mr Comeskey said outside court that the images of his client abandoning the child at the train station had not helped.

"That was the mountain of prejudice that we had to overcome, it was huge," he said.

As to Xue's behaviour today, Mr Comeskey said he had never seen anything like it in court before.

"I think he was saying it was unfair and he was reiterating he was innocent."

He defended his decision to mount a sexual defence argument, claiming Ms Liu has strangled when erotic asphyxiation went wrong. The trial environment meant he could not be concerned about offending her family.

"She was trussed up in a very very unusual way, she was naked, she had gloves on, there was DNA, not only on her underpants and also on her tie.

"That has got to be a huge huge coincidence and there was no scene."

During the trial the crown was unable to produce evidence of where Ms Liu was murdered as at their home, 26 Keystone Avenue, there was no sign of blood or a struggle.

He was not critical of the police investigation which saw them take eight days to open the boot of the car and find Ms Liu's body in the boot.

There should have been other suspects however.

"There has been a focus on Xue, exclusively, probably to the exclusion of others because he was the obvious suspect."

Asked if he now accepted Xue was the killer, he replied: "I personally have very grave reservations, simply because of the evidence that was there.

"There was more evidence that points away from him, the evidence that seems to indicate he is the killer is what happened afterwards, that he took off."

Mr Comeskey said Xue had had no further contact with Qian Xun but an adult daughter by an earlier marriage, Grace, had visited him in prison. She was now in China.