Nai Yin Xue

Auckland, June 4 NZPA - Accused murderer Nai Yin Xue turned up at Auckland Airport the day his then-estranged wife An An Liu had originally been due to fly to China with a former housemate, a court has been told.

Rui Zhang said Ms Liu left her husband following an incident on September 2006 and moved her flight forward four weeks because she was fearful Xue would be at the airport,

Ms Zhang was giving evidence at the trial of Xue, 55, who is in the High Court at Auckland charged with the murder of Ms Liu in September 2007.

Ms Zhang lived with Xue, Ms Liu and the couple's daughter Qian Xun Xue at Margan Ave, New Lynn in 2006.

She said she talked frequently with Ms Liu in her bedroom on topics that included the state of the marriage.

Ms Zhang said she left the house a week after Ms Liu had left following the September incident, in which Ms Liu said Xue punched her and then threatened to kill her with a knife.

Ms Liu went first to a women's refuge and then a separate address. She obtained a protection order against Xue but said she saw him outside her new address.

Ms Zhang said she and Ms Liu arranged to fly back to China on November 30 before the September incident but Ms Liu changed the date following that incident to November 2.

"She was afraid that Nai Yin Xue would find her at the airport," Ms Zhang said.

She said she and her boyfriend retained their flight date of November 30, and saw Xue at the airport that day. They exchanged greetings and little more.

Ms Zhang said Ms Liu had earlier told her that Xue said he would kill her if she left him.

Earlier, a woman whom Ms Liu stayed with briefly said Xue offered to marry Ms Liu so she could stay in New Zealand.

Ms Liu had stayed in a house owned by Jian Zhang's brother-in-law for a month after she fled Xue's house to a women's refuge, following the September 2006 incident.

She then moved into Ms Zhang's house after the alleged protection order breach.

Ms Zhang said Ms Liu told her she met Xue when she moved into his place as a tenant on a deal which meant she paid no rent if she did work around the house.

Eventually she had problems with staying in New Zealand, and Xue said she should look at marrying somebody.

When she wondered who she could marry, Xue told her "what about me" and she accepted, Ms Zhang told the court.

Later, the trial judge, Justice Hugh Williams, told the jury that the prosecutors would not rely on Ms Zhang's evidence that Xue pointed a gun at Ms Liu at some time after their 2003 marriage.

Justice Williams said he was likely to make statements about what use could be made of the evidence, which was not in her original brief of evidence, when he sums up the case at the end of the trial.

The Crown alleges Xue strangled Ms Liu in September 2007 and then fled to Australia, where he abandoned Qian Xun at a Melbourne railway station before heading to the United States.

The trial is expected to last three weeks.