Murder accused took car trip with dead ex-girlfriend

By ELIZABETH BINNING

Jun Jie Ying put a seatbelt around his dead ex-girlfriend so it looked as though she was sleeping as he drove her from Hamilton to Auckland.

It wasn't until blood started coming out of 20-year-old Jia Ye's nose and mouth that Ying decided he should take her body out of the back seat and put it in the boot.

Yesterday, in the Hamilton District Court, the 22-year-old was committed to trial for the murder of Ms Ye and her boyfriend, Wenbin Sun.

The English language student was arrested in May after police found Ms Ye's body in the boot of his Toyota Curren.

Constable Raymond Sunkel said in evidence that he stopped Ying's car on May 23 after seeing it driven erratically along State Highway 1, near Ngaruawahia.

Mr Sunkel said that when he approached the driver's window, Ying told him: "Please, please, I just killed two people." Ying had a handwritten note saying he wanted to be taken to the Hamilton police station.

Three days earlier, police had found Mr Sun stabbed to death on a mattress in the Clarkin Rd flat he shared with Ms Ye.

Mr Sun, who was also known as Ben, and Ms Ye, also known as Kathy, had been together for a couple of months.

Before that, Ms Ye dated Ying, also known as Jesse, for two years in China.

They moved to New Zealand and lived in Hamilton, where friends and former flatmates frequently saw them fighting.

"Jesse lost his temper and got angry over very little things," one former flatmate said in his written evidence produced at yesterday's depositions hearing.

"Jesse used to pick things up and throw them at Kathy and he used to slap her. Kathy would show me the bruises on her arms."

Ying took Ms Ye's personal belongings and passport so she could not leave him.

In April, Ms Ye decided to leave Ying for good and a group of friends came to collect her. One of them was 20-year-old Mr Sun.

"Ben told him, 'No real man would beat a lady'," the flatmate recalled in his evidence.

He said Ying pulled out a meat cleaver, held it to the head of a flatmate and then plunged it into a table as he told Ms Ye, "I'm not going to let you go".

Ms Ye moved out of that flat and into the Clarkin Rd house with Mr Sun. Friends at Clarkin Rd said a jealous Ying would often come around and try to talk to her.

Once he turned up yelling that he wanted to see Ms Ye and plunged a knife into his thigh "to prove his love to her".

Another time, a trip to the bank ended with Mr Sun and Ying fighting in a supermarket carpark, while a frightened and sobbing Ms Ye stood nearby with friends.

The police were called and Ying was served with a trespass notice.

Flatmates at Clarkin Rd said they last saw Ms Ye and Mr Sun alive early on May 18. They had gone out for dinner the previous night, then to the casino and came back home with takeaways about 2am.

The flatmates thought nothing of it when they did not see them on Sunday night or the next morning.

Some of the flatmates tried to text Mr Sun on the Monday for his birthday, but he did not reply. They tried texting Ms Ye and got a reply that the couple were in Auckland because they had "lost lots of money".

By Tuesday night, the concerned flatmates went into the basement flat to check on the couple. They found blood spattered on the wall above the bed, next to the mattress and on the television screen. The bed itself was covered in clothes and a duvet.

They called the police and Constable John Staples found Mr Sun's body under the duvet.

"I lifted the bed covers and found a large amount of blood soaked into a blue bed sheet," he said. "I lifted the covers further and saw the signs of a blood covered body."

Detective Sergeant Edward Carr said there were no signs of a struggle in the couple's bedroom. It appeared Mr Sun had been killed in the room. He had 35 cuts and six lesions which had entered his chest, fracturing and separating his ribs on entry.

Ying told police after being arrested that he was driving to Auckland with his girlfriend.

Asked when Ms Ye died he replied, "before we go to Auckland". He then said her body had been in the boot since the previous afternoon.

"I put her in the back seat and put seatbelt on. It looked like she just asleep. Then she just [bled a little] so I put her in the back of the car."

Ying will be tried in the High Court at Hamilton on two counts of murder, one of kidnapping and two of burglary. He has been remanded in custody.