Desert Rd murder trial: Trial begins for Zhicheng ‘Michael’ Gu, accused of stabbing Ricky Wang to death

Although well familiar with navigating Auckland’s criminal underworld, “Ricky” Wang had recently made two critical mistakes - owing too many people money and being suspected of plotting to kidnap and kill his meth syndicate boss - which is how he found himself tied to a chair and subjected to a gunpoint interrogation inside a home doubling as a clandestine lab.

That was the Tarantino movie-esque scene painted for jurors again today in the High Court at Auckland as the murder trial began for Zhicheng “Michael” Gu, a fellow syndicate underling who is accused of having stabbed Wang to death at the direction of meth boss “Uncle Six” while another man held a towel over Wang’s head to muffle his screams.

Wang was found encased in concrete in a remote, shallow grave near Tongariro National Park in March 2020, three years after his frenzied last moments of life.

“Great care was needed to be taken when excavating the remains,” Crown prosecutor Matthew Nathan said during today’s opening address, which was a repeat of what he said yesterday.

The trial got off to a false start after a juror realised yesterday afternoon that he knew one of the upcoming witnesses. That jury panel was dismissed this morning by Justice Simon Moore, who then oversaw the selection of a new group.

During both opening addresses, Nathan described a “meticulous and pain-staking” excavation process over the course of three days as layers of soil and earth were “slowly brushed away to reveal more and more of what was underneath”.

“It’s a fitting analogy or metaphor for this case and for the evidence you will hear,” he said. “It’s a story of how police over three years ... carefully, methodically and effectively investigated the disappearance and then the murder of Ricky Wang.”

Gu is one of five people who have been charged in the three years since the discovery of Wang’s grave with either murder or helping to dispose of the body. However, all other co-defendants have since pleaded guilty and will testify against Gu at the trial, which is slated to last four weeks.

Zhicheng Gu appears in the Auckland District Court for sentencing in August 2019. Photo / Jason Oxenham

Among the co-defendants turned witnesses is syndicate boss Jian Qi Zhao - also known as “Uncle Six”, “Brother Six” or “Leo” - who pleaded guilty last year to having ordered the murder, and Gaoxiang Yu, who told police earlier this year that he was the only other person in the room, holding the towel over Wang’s face, as the defendant allegedly started stabbing with a hunting knife that had been purchased that day.

This week marks the first time the media has been allowed to report that Zhao and Yu agreed to testify as part of their guilty pleas.

Jurors should carefully consider the co-defendants’ motives in agreeing to testify, defence lawyer Julie-Anne Kincade, KC, said during her brief opening statement today. The Crown case rests entirely on their testimony, she said.

“None of the [former co-defendants turned witnesses] can be relied upon in the way in which the Crown wishes you to do so,” she said, suggesting that each of them only spoke to police with an eye towards sentence reductions. “They all seek to minimise the role that they have played and push blame on other people as much as they can.”

As the last remaining defendant, Gu became the easiest target for false claims as the others scrambled to get good deals, she said.

The body of Bao Chang "Ricky" Wang was found in 2020, three years after he vanished. Photo / Supplied

“The biggest lie of all is when they said Michael Gu is the one responsible for stabbing Mr Ricky Wang,” she said. “Mr Gu does not know how Mr Wang died because he was not there.

“They are only interested in saving themselves. They don’t care one jot for the truth.”

Kincade’s client did help dispose of the body, she acknowledged. But that, she said, was only because he was one of the many syndicate members fearful and under the control of “Uncle Six”, who she described as “the head of the snake”.

For several years, police didn’t realise that Wang was even missing, much less murdered, prosecutors said today.

The case first began to unravel in 2018, after many of the same co-defendants were arrested on methamphetamine distribution charges. Yanglong “Tony” Piao asked to meet with police in prison in September 2019 after pleading guilty to his drugs charges. Racked with guilt, he revealed the killing to them and confessed to having helped clean up the crime scene and dispose of his former friend’s body.

After being brought to the Massey home where the interrogation took place, he recalled seeing Wang’s lifeless, bloody body still on the floor. The defendant was sleeping in another room of the house when he arrived, he is expected to testify.

While Piao couldn’t give police an exact location where the body was buried, detectives went back to his mobile phone, which had been confiscated during the drug investigation, and looked at its location data. They then compared the data to satellite imagery and found a spot that looked to have been cleared, Nathan told jurors.

Zhicheng Gu (left) and Jian Qi Zhao (right) appear in court via audio-video feed after their arrests over the death of Ricky Wang. Photos / Sam Hurley

Police next cast an eye towards Yuzhen “Clive” Zhang, another associate who was mentioned by Piao, and obtained a warrant to look at his phone data as well. The examination showed that on the day after Wang’s death, his phone was used for Google searches that included “New Zealand kills someone” and “New Zealand help dispose of a body”. Police decided they needed to talk to him, too.

“He confirmed much of what Tony had said,” Nathan said, explaining that shortly thereafter police arrested Zhang, Piao, Zhao, Yu and Gu.

Like other members of the syndicate, Ricky Wang, whose full name was Bao Chang Wang, was a Chinese national who had immigrated to New Zealand. He had formerly worked at Sky City, where he met his wife, with whom he had two children.

But the two split in 2016 after Wang admitted to problems with gambling, prostitutes and drugs, she is expected to testify later in the trial.

The drug problems led to borrowing money that he was unable to pay back, prosecutors said today. But the final straw for the syndicate came when Wang was suspected by his criminal colleagues of approaching the group’s drug ingredients supplier, possibly in an effort to cut boss Uncle Six out of the picture. It led to a rumour that he wanted to kill Zhao and install himself at the top of the syndicate hierarchy.

That unsubstantiated rumour, Nathan said, “effectively sealed Ricky Wang’s fate”.