A Death in the Lucky Holiday Hotel (28 page)

But Zhao also noted that he had overheard the sigh of a lawyer, who had originally been hired by Gu Kailai’s mother to defend her
daughter. The lawyer complained that the defense attorneys were not allowed to do their jobs properly.

D
ESPITE THE GOVERNMENT’s meticulous efforts to convince the public at the trial that the cases of Gu Kailai and Wang Lijun were criminal in nature, rather than politically motivated, the lack of due process and transparency failed to change the minds of skeptics.

Gao Guanjun, a US-based attorney who graduated from the Southeast University of Politics and Law in Sichuan, specializes in criminal investigations. He taught the subject for several years at the Chinese People’s Public Security University in Beijing. I consulted him about the Gu Kailai trial and interviewed four journalists and legal experts. After combing through the official indictments against Gu Kailai, we have found a dozen important legal issues, which might have resulted in either a dismissal of charges or an acquittal if the defense had been allowed to address them properly.

1. Gu Kailai had been officially diagnosed by court-designated medical experts as suffering from bipolar disorder and moderate schizophrenia. People close to the Bo Xilai family told the overseas Chinese media in April that she suffered from anxiety, paranoia, and depression after the “lead poisoning incident” and that the doctor had prescribed medication for her deteriorating mental condition. Gu sometimes refused to take the medicine due to its debilitating side effects. Moreover, on October 4, 2011, she walked into a conference on how writers should promote the “Smashing Black” campaign in Chongqing wearing a major general insignia that belonged to her father. “First she said that she was under secret orders from the Ministry of Public Security to effectively protect Comrade Wang Lijun’s personal safety in Chongqing,” a source told Reuters. “It was a mess. She was incoherent and I reached the conclusion that she would be trouble.” At Gu’s trial, the defense also brought up the
issue of her mental illness. The forensic examination institute under the Shanghai Mental Health Center had given Gu a psychiatric evaluation and concluded that she had been treated for chronic insomnia, anxiety, depression, and paranoia in the past:

       
She used to take anxiolytics, antidepressants, and sedative hypnotic drugs, and she also received combined treatment by taking antipsychotic drugs, but the curative effect was not enduring. She developed a certain degree of physical and psychological dependence on sedative hypnotic drugs, which resulted in mental disorders.

Because the indictment is largely based on her confession and in the absence of any corroborating witness accounts, one has to wonder how reliable her memory was, especially relating to the criminal process. Did her mental illness affect criminal intent or capacity?

2. The motivation was not clear. The prosecution stated that Gu Kailai hatched the plot to kill Heywood when she learned that he had detained her son in Britain. Evidence shown to the court only included e-mail exchanges between Heywood and Bo Guagua. However, Guo Weiguo, the deputy police chief in Chongqing who had been briefed on the threats by Gu Kailai (before Heywood’s death), examined all the e-mails and said in his testimony that he did not detect any serious threats made on Bo Guagua’s life.

3. The indictment said Gu Kailai had illegally obtained the poison from local drug dealers, but no proof was offered that she actually did so. Who were the drug dealers? With the government’s tight control over highly toxic materials, where did they get the poison? The indictment failed to clarify such critical issues. According to a police officer in Chongqing, the former district party chief, Xia Zeliang, provided Gu with rat poison he had obtained from a private pest control source. Under normal circumstances rat poison contains cyanide but only a tiny amount—not enough to kill a person. If such questions surrounding the murder tools are unclear, how reliable was the rest of the investigative work?

4. Did Heywood die of natural causes? Gu Kailai admitted getting Heywood drunk and then giving him tea laced with cyanide. However, the initial forensic report displayed no primary signs of cyanide poisoning. A CT scan performed on the victim’s body before it was cremated and an initial blood test found no traces of cyanide. All the tests, according to Wang Lijun’s testimony, were conducted prior to police knowledge of Gu Kailai’s involvement and should be considered objective.

5. From Gu Kailai’s description, Heywood’s death seemed to have occurred peacefully. He rested his head against the headboard while Gu Kailai fed him poisoned tea. Attorney Gao Guanjun did not believe it was cyanide poison, which normally causes a violent physical reaction—struggling for air, spasms, and incontinence. Because Heywood had a family history of cardiovascular disease and he was not a heavy drinker, could it be possible that he died naturally of a heart attack induced by a bout of atypical excessive drinking?

6. Was Heywood really dead before Gu Kailai left the room? The indictment stated that Gu felt for Heywood’s pulse and there was no blood pressure. She was not sure if Heywood was dead or not. By then, Heywood lay in bed, his head resting against the headboard. When the police discovered Heywood’s body two days later, however, he was lying flat on the bed, and the mattress showed signs of having been rolled on. Considering this evidence, Heywood was probably not killed by cyanide, which tends to kill quickly, or there was not sufficient poison to kill him right away.

7. According to the defense, strangers’ footprints were found on the balcony, left between the time Gu Kailai committed the murder and police discovered Heywood’s body, but there were no signs of a break-in. Wang Lijun confessed in his testimony that he had installed bugging devices in Heywood’s room. Why did the court not investigate where the footprints came from and to whom they belonged?

8. The prosecution said Wang Lijun took a second blood sample secretly from Heywood’s body before it was cremated (the first blood
sample showed no traces of cyanide) and ordered his staff member to transfer the sample to Beijing and hide it in a friend’s refrigerator. Four months later, tests on the second blood sample showed cyanide, but this time in an exact amount needed to kill a person. There is no chain of custody to prove the integrity of this second sample.

9. One assumes that as an experienced lawyer, Gu Kailai would have taken a class on criminal investigation, a mandatory course for law students in China. Gu Kailai seemed to act like someone who had no education in this area, let alone legal training. Based on the indictment, Gu Kailai did not wear gloves and left her fingerprints on the water cup and bottle caps. In addition, Gu Kailai spread drug capsules on the floor. With her criminal training, how could she not know cyanide or drugs would be detected in blood tests?

10. During Gu Kailai’s trial, the prosecution claimed to have collected 394 witness testimonies and 212 written statements, but there was no direct participation or cross-examination of key witnesses throughout the trial, not even Wang Lijun, the Chongqing police chief, who was asked to cover up the crime and later revealed all after visiting the US Consulate in Chengdu. Gu’s son, Bo Guagua, was also considered a key witness. According to CNN, Bo Guagua had submitted a copy of his written testimony to the court, but there is nothing to confirm it was actually accepted.

11. The Chinese government assigned Gu Kailai two defense lawyers a month before the trial. The lawyers, who have been said to have delivered as good a defense as was possible under the circumstances, met Gu Kailai only ten times and had to review 1,468 pages of documents within a short time. Moreover, Gu’s lawyers were not even given the chance to question key witnesses during the trial. Even so, the defense identified several discrepancies in the investigation and raised questions regarding Gu’s mental competence and the final conclusions surrounding Heywood’s death. But the court did not deliberate on any of the issues presented by Gu’s lawyers. Lastly, Gu repeatedly called Wang Lijun an “insidious” man and discredited his
accusations. Many saw it as an indication that Gu felt the murder charges had been forced on her. The court ignored her statements. Obviously, Gu’s guilty verdict had been predetermined. The presence of the defense lawyers was largely symbolic.

12. Throughout the trial, there was no mention of Bo Xilai, who was the husband of the accused and the boss of police officers charged with covering up the murder. Did he participate? Did he know in advance what was going to happen? Did he order the police to cover up for his wife? Murdering a foreign citizen is normally considered a serious offense because of the likelihood it can explode into an international incident. Therefore, it is inconceivable that Wang Lijun, the police chief, and other investigators did not notify Bo Xilai of the incident until January 28, 2012. As the mayor in Dalian and the party chief of Chongqing, Bo Xilai was known as a hands-on manager, controlling every decision made by his administration that could affect his political future. Story has it that he would even supervise the repair of a leaky bathroom pipe that he had accidentally encountered one night. It would seem preposterous that he did not suspect anything.

Six weeks after the Gu Kailai trial, Wang Xuemei, a top forensic expert in China, brought up similar issues about what she called “glaring inconsistencies” in the theory that the British businessman was killed from cyanide poisoning. Wang rose to fame as the first female forensic scientist to sit on China’s highest prosecution body, and her frequent television appearances have made her a household name. In her blog, she said the account of the murder accepted by the Chinese justice system was “seriously lacking in fact and scientific basis.”

From the secret recording of Gu’s confession to the murder and the court testimony provided by Gu and her assistant Zhang, Wang Xuemei said there was no indication that the perpetrators witnessed a death that “involved the characteristics of cyanide poisoning.” According to Wang Xuemei, the symptoms normally include scream reflex that would have occurred during “lightning-fast” suffocation, convulsions that would have been apparent as the cyanide reached Heywood’s central nervous system, stupor that would have followed, and eventual cardiopulmonary arrest just prior to his death.

Based on her professional knowledge, Wang pointed out that basic investigative observation and blood work would have ruled out that theory very quickly because of the obvious discoloration of the corpse or the bright red color of the blood samples.

       
I believe that the death involving a foreigner at a luxury hotel would have been no small case in Chongqing around that time. The Chongqing Public Security Bureau would have followed the necessary procedure to check the crime scene and conduct forensic tests. They would have invited a relatively senior-level forensic expert to examine the body of the deceased. The blood test result presented in court showed that the Public Security Bureau did conduct its routine procedure. If that was the case, how could the forensic expert fail to detect the obvious hypostasis and blood as an unusually bright red color? If the forensic expert ignored the signs to cover up for the criminal, he or she should be held responsible for listing Heywood’s death as “excessive drinking” after the criminal acts were exposed. Four policemen have been convicted for the cover-up, but I don’t see the name of the forensic expert on the list of the convicted. In other words, the initial forensic report was correct and there was no signs of cyanide poisoning. . . . I seriously doubt the sudden appearance of cyanide in the blood sample that was under the control of Wang Lijun for three months.

Wang Xuemei did not doubt the conclusion that Gu Kailai possessed a clear murder motive and the murder had been premeditated. But she wondered if the poison that Gu Kailai used was lethal and if Heywood had, in fact, died of cyanide poisoning. Wang Xuemei suggested another possible cause of death: a different person might have caused Heywood’s death by placing soft materials around his neck and rendering mechanical asphyxia death. “Such supplemental killing would display signs that are similar to cyanide poisoning, without leaving any bruises around the neck,” she said.

Wang Xuemei was not the only dissenter. Back in April 2012, Wang Lulu, Heywood’s widow, was also said to disagree that Gu Kailai had killed her husband. She conveyed her skepticism to a few of her
friends, but the next day, Wang Lulu received stern warnings from Chinese authorities. The threats were such that Wang Lulu ran to the British Embassy on April 12, seeking permits to live in the UK on the grounds that her safety and that of her children were endangered. The news further fueled the speculation that there was a government cover-up.

These unresolved issues during Gu’s trial boosted the argument by skeptics that the murder was part of a wider political conspiracy by senior leaders in Beijing to stop Bo Xilai from seizing power at the Politburo Standing Committee. In addition, new and credible details and analyses that emerged after Gu’s trial lead one to believe that the Chongqing police chief, Wang Lijun, was a highly probable suspect.

A
T HIS TRIAL on September 18, 2012, Wang Lijun—a former police chief who used to claim a number of titles such as “professor of law,” “legal expert,” and “specialist forensic investigator”—was in his element. He appeared in good health at his trial, and dressed not in the standard orange boiler suit of Chinese prisoners but in a crisp white shirt. While giving his testimony, attendees said, he maintained his usual arrogance and smugness.

Wang had every reason to feel triumphant. By delivering to the US Consulate allegations and evidence that Bo Xilai’s wife had murdered Neil Heywood, Wang had exacted vengeance on one of the most influential figures in Chinese politics. Wang’s actions also almost derailed the party’s leadership transition.

Since Wang Lijun’s conviction in September 2012, many police officers and government officials have opened up to overseas Chinese media with startling stories about Wang Lijun, who, they say, personified unbridled ambitions, egoism, brutality, and deception. An official in Chongqing disclosed to me that more than 800 people were executed as a result of Wang Lijun’s anti-crime initiatives between 1992 and 2011, and that he had a history of planting and falsifying evidence on those who were accused of having mafia connections.
Nandu
Weekly
, a Guangzhou-based newspaper famous for its investigative reporting, spent a year interviewing Wang Lijun’s former colleagues and researching previously-undisclosed court records of Wang Lijun’s trial. In December 2012, the paper published a five-part feature examining Wang’s life and career. The government banned the article three days later because the paper had cast doubt on the government’s handling of the Gu Kailai murder case. More analysts and members of the public are becoming convinced that Wang was the real murderer who, along with anti-Bo forces in Beijing, schemed against Bo Xilai, the former Chongqing party chief.