Man who killed mother, left her body in a suitcase claims murder was spur of the moment

 

Crown urges jury to reject man's claims

 

BY KEITH FRASER, POSTMEDIA NEWS OCTOBER 30, 2015

 

 

Lianjie Guo, went missing June 7. Her remains were found in July on Harwood Island.

Photograph by: IHIT , Handout

The Crown has urged a jury to reject the claims by a man that he only decided to murder his mother on the spur of the moment, while striking her over the head with a hammer.

Yuan Xi Tang, 28, has pleaded not guilty to the June 2012 first-degree murder of Lianjie Guo, 47, in the accused’s Richmond rooming house.

His parents, who had forced him to break up with his girlfriend in China and then forced him to come to Canada to study, were visiting Tang at the time.

Tang’s lawyer admitted that his client was guilty of murder in that he intended to kill his mother but argued that Tang was therefore only guilty of the lesser and included offence of second-degree murder, pointing out that first-degree murder requires planning and deliberation.

Tang had testified that he only intended to kill the mom after he’d first struck her over the head and she had not been rendered unconscious. He covered her face and then struck her two more times. He claims that only at the moment of the second assault with the hammer did he intend to kill her.

After killing his mom, he stuffed her body in a suitcase and disposed of it in the Fraser River. Six weeks later the suitcase washed up on a beach near Powell River.

Crown counsel Jeremy Hermanson argued there was strong evidence of planning and deliberation and that Tang’s story was unbelievable.

“The accused has testified to a murder that happened in a moment. I expect that that does not ring true to you.”

Hermanson said that over time, Tang’s resentment towards his parents, who were verbally and physically abusive to him growing up in China, only grew.

“He’d grown tired of being told who to date, where to live and how to live,” said the prosecutor. “This is not a murder born in a moment. It was a murder decades in the making. It was a murder motivated by a list of resentments that the accused continued to recite.”

Hermanson pointed to the confessions Tang made to undercover police officers posing as gangsters, to an undercover police officer posing as a fellow inmate in Tang’s prison cell and to a police officer interviewing him after his arrest.

“Look no further than the accused’s own words. Every time he sits down with somebody new, he takes out his laundry list. Mr. Tang despite himself keeps telling us why he killed his mother.”

Tang told the jury that he killed his mom because he became fearful that she would discover he had rented a vehicle instead of purchasing it and wanted to grab the rental documents from her.

But Hermanson said that claim should be rejected.

“This explanation relies on the claim that he was more inclined to strike her over the head with a hammer than to merely take something out of her hands. It is an incredible claim.”

The accused carried out the plan to murder his mom, even though it was not a sophisticated or well-executed plan, said Hermanson.

“We are asking you to return a verdict of guilty to first-degree murder. The accused did calculate when he decided to kill his mother, he did calculate when he decided to tell the undercover officers the truth.”

B.C. Supreme Court Justice William Ehrcke is expected to charge the jury Monday, after which the jury will begin their deliberations.