The living hell of Jian Huang

The desperate plight of an immigrant Chinese woman murdered by her jealous gambler of a husband is brought vividly to light in her own words. TONY WALL reports.

The killing of Jian Huang began well before her jealous estranged husband butchered her with a kitchen knife.

The young mother's soul began to die soon after her arrival in New Zealand from China in 1996, when she made the ultimate sacrifice for her family.

Jian had worked as a doctor in a hospital after studying at a Shanghai university for six years - but her qualifications were not recognised here.

So the intelligent, attractive young woman, who had arrived in New Zealand looking for a better life, began working as a prostitute to support her husband, Jia-Chun Hu, and their small son, Meijie. She called it her blood money.

It was the start of a spiral into darkness that would end with her murder at the age of 34, her former husband serving a life sentence, and her boy, the love of her life, effectively orphaned.

Jian's life and violent death opened a window on the rarely seen struggle of some immigrant families and the dark shadow domestic violence casts on women and children.

Jian left her husband in December last year because he was beating her and gambling away the money she had sold her soul to earn.

She seemed to have blind faith in New Zealand's system of law and order, believing stoically that a protection order and the police would protect her from her increasingly erratic former husband.

"I have a court protection order," she proclaimed in an emotional, revealing letter to Hu sent soon after she plucked up the courage to leave him.

"If you try and find Meijie and use him to achieve your aim of threatening me, you will have broken the law. I will call the police. You know the consequence," it reads in translation.

But the system did not protect Jian. The protection order was not worth the paper it was written on - she was murdered while fetching it - and the police were unable to save her, although two officers were with her minutes before she died.

Jian Huang's descent into a nightmare began in 1992 when she married Hu, a restaurateur who also had a small air-conditioning installation business and was moderately wealthy by Chinese standards.

Meijie was born around 1995, and the family came to New Zealand the following year at Jian's suggestion.

In Auckland, Jian worked part-time at a rest-home while studying for a bachelor of nursing degree at Unitec polytechnic in Mt Albert.

Hu did not bother to learn English, choosing instead to laze around the new townhouse the couple had bought in Ambrico Place, New Lynn.

He worked occasionally, including as a painter and in a bakery.

It is not clear whose idea it was for Jian to turn to prostitution. She began working in a massage parlour, and is understood to have later worked from a rented apartment in Newmarket. One of her clients was a married Hong Kong man living in Auckland with his two adult sons. The man would later become her lover.

Selling her body obviously ate at Jian's soul, and she received no sympathy from her layabout husband.

"If you have a conscience, you should know that I earned every single penny of this - it was my blood money," she wrote to him.

"For the sake of our son and wanting to give him a warm and caring family, I have to sacrifice so much. I am too tired, I have such a heavy load to carry on my shoulders. I do not have any freedom at all.

"When we saw each other, the first thing you asked about was money. You know how hard it is for me to earn a living. Not only did you not say a few words to comfort me, on the contrary, you took the money to buy a Rolex watch and that sort of luxury item.

"You are not a human being ... You are not a man. You do not deserve a wife like me.

"You hang on to me so that you can depend your living on me. But you will drag me to my doom."

Jian's despair deepened when her husband verbally and physically abused her and gambled continually. The more he lost at the Auckland casino, the more he took it out on his wife.

In her letter she put it this way: "All the sins became ingrained when you started gambling."

Eventually, Jian decided enough was enough.

"I can no longer tolerate this," she wrote.

"This time, I have made up my mind - I have to leave you."

She went to the Henderson District Court to get a protection order, which required Hu to keep away from her and Meijie and stop using violence against them.

It also required him to undergo an anti-violence course, which he failed to do.

"You hit me to such a degree that I would rather die than live," she wrote. "You threatened me at every turn ... If another violent behaviour should occur, do you want to kill me? The child will then have no mother. You will return to China to be in a prison, with no money."

On December 16, 1999, the couple signed a separation agreement. Hu did not want to break up, and in an attempt to placate his wife agreed to transfer his half of the townhouse to her. He came to regret that, and began demanding $30,000 - his estimate of his share.

Hu began flatting with the owner of a townhouse in the same complex so he could be close to his son - Jian had agreed to give him access - and to enhance his chances of winning back his wife.

But Jian had made up her mind.

"Jia-Chun Hu - you should start to get to know the new me. I will do what I say. This time, give up your thought of me coming back. You thought that I was a bottomless hole you can keep digging. NO," she wrote.

And she reminded him of what the protection order meant, advising him to get it translated if he did not understand.

"I am the legal custodian of Meijie. You have no right to come near me. So long as I am still alive, I will report to the police 100 per cent."

Perhaps Hu thought himself immune to the long arm of the law, for Jian added: "As to what you have said about no matter how developed the country is in terms of law and order, it still cannot defeat the rascal, then you should wait and see."

By February this year, Jian was seeing her new lover frequently, which enraged Hu. Once, when he saw the man's car parked outside Jian's unit, he scratched it and broke its wing mirror.

Perhaps trying to soothe his anger, Jian made an application to the court to have the protection order discharged.

In an affidavit, she said Hu realised he had to obey New Zealand law and not harm her. She said Hu was looking for a job "to make him a more useful person."

The order was not discharged.

By late February, Hu had become desperate. He had lost all his money gambling and could no longer rely on his wife for cash.

In the week leading up to the murder, the pair fought. On one occasion Hu assaulted her and police were called.

On Saturday, February 26, Hu had Meijie with him for the day. Things were coming to a head.

In a desperate phone call to a friend, he said he had lost everything - his wife, his house, his money, his son.

He could not go back to China because of the shame.

As he and Meijie were driving along, they spotted Jian in a car with her lover. This enraged Hu further. He called Jian on her cellphone and threatened to kill Meijie if he did not get his $30,000.

He went back to Ambrico Place and used Meijie to reach through a mail slot to break into Jian's townhouse. He took a hammer with him, and lay in wait.

Jian fetched police, who followed her home to get her protection order. Instead of waiting outside as the officers had instructed, Jian entered the townhouse.

With disastrous timing, her cellphone rang just as she was walking up the stairs and about to encounter Hu. It was her lover calling.

Hu exploded in a jealous rage. Jian tried to tried to run off, and he stabbed her in the back and shoulder.

When he caught up with her, he stabbed her repeatedly in the face, arms and chest. The knife sliced through her heart and a lung.

When the police officers arrived, they found Hu straddling Jian. They handcuffed him and laid him face-down in the kitchen.

He continued to stare at Jian as she lay dying, and seemed to be saying something nasty to her in Chinese.

Later Meijie appeared at the top of the stairs and sat staring at his mother with a bewildered look.

(He still lives in the same house with his uncle, aunt and grandmother, who have come from China to care for him. He attends primary school.)

Paramedics tried valiantly to save Jian, whose pulse had "flatlined."

She was taken into surgery at Auckland Hospital, but died that night.

The killing of Jian Huang - a woman who had foreseen her own death - was complete.