A Chinese man who beat his mother to death with a hammer and then disposed of her body in a suitcase will have to spend 17 years in jail before he can apply for parole.
Last month Yuan Xi William Tang, 28, was found guilty of the June 2012 second-degree murder of Lianjie Guo, 47.
Second-degree murder carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison with no parole eligibility of between 10 and 25 years. The only issue in sentencing Tang was his parole ineligibility period.
In imposing the life sentence with no parole for 17 years, B.C. Supreme Court Justice William Ehrcke found Tang’s expressions of remorse to the court rang “hollow” when contrasted with the attitude he displayed during his confession to the undercover police officers.
The judge said it was apparent to anyone watching the video of the confession that Tang was “gleeful and flippant” about the death of his mother.
He said the brutal nature of the attack would have resulted in “prolonged terror and suffering” for the mom.
The judge described the treatment of the body as a “defilement” and found that he threw the suitcase with her body inside into the Fraser River with the intention that the body would never be found.
Tang told undercover police posing as gangsters that he resented the amount of control his mother exerted over him, including forcing him to break up with his girlfriend in China. His parents forced him to come to Canada and study; at the time of the slaying, he was living in Richmond.
Tang confessed to the crime after undercover cops showed him photos of his mother’s body in the suitcase, which had been recovered from a beach near Powell River seven weeks after the murder.
In surveillance video played for the jury, Tang said he used a hammer to strike his mom once over the head. When he saw that she was still struggling, he tried to smother her by putting some bedding over her head.
Then he struck her two more times in the head, fracturing her skull.
He placed the body in a suitcase and then took the suitcase and the murder weapon to the No. 2 Road Bridge in Richmond. He threw the hammer into the Fraser River from the middle of the bridge and then waded into the water from underneath the bridge and pushed the suitcase out into the water.
After the murder, Tang lied to his father and to police and filed a missing person’s report.
The verdict by the jury came after 11 days of deliberations.
The issue at trial was whether he was guilty as charged of first-degree murder, which requires planning and deliberation, or guilty of second-degree murder as his lawyer claimed.
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