Parole denied: Triad assassin Wan Yee Chow is still an undue risk to the public

Tam Yam Ah was killed by Wan Yee Chow in 2005. Photo / Supplied

A 71-year-old Triad assassin who shot a man outside a karaoke bar in central Auckland is still considered to be too much of a risk to the public to be released from prison.

Wan Yee Chow was convicted of the murder of another Triad gang enforcer, Yam Ah Tam, in 2006 and was jailed for life with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years in 2007.

At the trial Crown prosecutor Kieran Raftery described the killing as “a textbook television-type murder” and a “simple cold-blooded act of killing”.

Chow pleaded not guilty but a jury convicted him of the murder after a trial at the High Court at Auckland.

Chow unsuccessfully challenged his sentence in the Court of Appeal after serving six years in prison on the basis that he had low IQ and had limited understanding of what happened at his trial.

He first became eligible for parole in February last year after serving his minimum period of imprisonment, but as he speaks almost no English there have been issues with communication between Chow and the New Zealand Parole Board with him speaking an uncommon dialect of Cantonese.

Last month, the board met with Chow again with the aid of an interpreter for his fourth bid for an early release from life in prison.

Since being imprisoned, Chow has done work with a psychologist and was assessed as being at a medium risk of reoffending.

“While we appreciate that categorisation we also note, as previously advised, that Mr Chow has had a number of extremely serious violent offences in his past, but we appreciate now at 71 years of age his likely risk has reduced,” the board’s ruling, released to NZME, notes.

Police on the street side of Top Karaoke Bar on Symonds St where Tam was gunned down. Photo / Richard Robinson

The board said that it had hoped his one-on-one sessions with a psychologist would have been completed by now but he still has a number of sessions to do before he can be considered for release.

Those sessions would look at what other rehabilitative work he needs and how he might start to be reintegrated back into the community.

“In the meantime, he remains an undue risk,” the board said.

At his trial the jury found that Chow had travelled from Wellington to Auckland and after visiting a number of places frequented by Tam, and eventually waited for him outside a karaoke bar on Symonds St.

Tam part-owned the karaoke bar, a former brothel, and lived above the business.

Tam – already out of the car – is understood to have seen Wan approaching him, and hurriedly locked his car to protect a woman who was still inside.

Chow then shot him in the chest with a pistol in the early hours of July 7, 2005.

Both Tam, who was 37, and Chow, 54, were “enforcers” with Tam belonging to the Triad offshoot 14 K, while police said at the time that Chow had connections to a number of criminal organisations.

Chow was known as “Tall Man” which is the English translation of his Cantonese nickname “Gao Lo”.

It was the Crown’s case that Chow was hired as an assassin to kill Tam for $10,000 and relied in part on a notebook found at his house which had a sketch of a handgun above which was written “10,000″.

Chow’s fingerprints were later found on a shopping bag used to hold the bullets for the gun, which were matched to the bullet taken from Tam’s body.

Jeremy Wilkinson is an Open Justice reporter based in Manawatū covering courts and justice issues with an interest in tribunals. He has been a journalist for nearly a decade and has worked for NZME since 2022.