'That smell of death': Surgeon son recalls parents' double-homicide scene

Almost immediately after arriving at his childhood home in Auckland, vascular surgeon Chi-Ho “Ricky” Kwok sensed something wasn’t right.

A tiny gate custom-built by his father to keep cats off his porch was uncharacteristically askew, their tiny blue Kia wasn’t parked out front and one of the door locks was not engaged. And then, as he stepped into the foyer, he saw it - the unmistakable lump of a body.

The midriff was exposed, rubbish bags were pulled over the feet up to about shin-height and a bloody towel and a jacket covered the corpse’s head, but Kwok could tell by the clothes that it was probably his father. And he could tell by the smell that, although he was a doctor, he was too late to help.

“Medically, I would describe the smell as melena - essentially, the smell of rotting blood, fermenting blood,” he told jurors today as he entered the witness box at the Auckland High Court trial of Lok Fung Lorrence Li, accused of murdering both of his parents.

“He had that smell of death that, working in the profession, you know when someone’s been dead for at least a couple of hours.”

With a steady voice that had only an undertone of a quiver, Kwok recalled his initial decision not to lift the items covering the body’s face.

“My training in the hospital is that when there is a death - and also, I guess, from watching too many CSI dramas - it was a case of don’t touch the body ... to preserve the crime scene,” he said, explaining that he did check the outstretched wrist for a pulse and later lifted the towel to confirm death for the 111 operator.

“At that point, my first fear was, ‘Dad’s gone, but where’s Mum?’ Especially because there was no reply when I was calling out for her. My medical instinct was that he was dead already but my mum was missing, and she was hopefully still alive but perhaps unconscious for whatever reason.

“You can’t save the dead, but you can save the living.”

Lok Fung Lorrence Li, 27, is on trial in the High Court at Auckland, accused of the double murder in November 2023 of Ellerslie residents Fuk-Fu Joseph Kwok, 66, and his wife Mei Han Chong, 67. Photo / Michael Craig

So he frantically went through every room in the house, flicking on lights as he looked for her. When he couldn’t find her, he dialled 111.

Her body would be discovered by police days later, dumped in a bush area in Greenhithe.

Prosecutors say Li, 29, and former co-defendant Shu Man Poon, 45, had shown up at the house with weapons one day earlier - just after 1am on Sunday, November 5, 2023.

The duo shot surgical theatre nurse Fuk-Fu Joseph Kwok, 66, in the head with an airgun and stabbed him repeatedly in the chest and neck. It had been his birthday. His wife, 67-year-old Mei Han Chong, appears to have been beaten to death.

Poon pleaded guilty to murder but is expected to testify later in the trial that he was only reluctantly following Li’s lead because he owed the younger man money. As Li’s trial began yesterday, he pleaded not guilty to murder but admitted he had been involved in the double-homicide and asked to be found guilty of manslaughter.

It is alleged Li hatched a revenge plot against Joseph Kwok following a minor accident a year earlier on the Southern Motorway that resulted in a case before the Disputes Tribunal. Just days earlier, the tribunal had emailed Joseph Kwok’s address to Li against Kwok’s wishes.

Li is also accused of conspiring with Poon to murder his former landlord in a similar revenge plot that was never realised.

Homicide victims Mei Han Chong and Fuk-Fu Joseph Kwok, with their son, surgeon Ricky Kwok. Photo / NZ Police

The younger Kwok, who now lives in Dunedin, told jurors today he had been expecting his parents to visit his then-home in Hamilton on the day he discovered the body. They were due to arrive for a belated birthday lunch for his father. They were then going to all drive back to Auckland together to catch an early flight to Hong Kong the next day for a family holiday.

Ricky Kwok recalled getting worried when his parents hadn’t arrived by 1pm. He spent the next few hours calling them and sending messages, none of which were answered. It was “extraordinarily unusual” that his mother didn’t answer, he recalled.

Worried that his parents might have crashed on the drive to Hamilton, he called police and asked if there were any major accidents. He also asked police to conduct a welfare check at his parents’ Ellerslie home but was told they couldn’t.

“That is when I decided that I would drive up myself,” he said. “I grabbed all my luggage [for Hong Kong], hoping that it was just a misunderstanding. Maybe it was some phone problem. Maybe there was some change in plan I had missed.”

He arrived at about 7.45pm, and it was getting dark, he recalled. The first thing he noticed was their missing car.

“Oh damn, like ships passing in the night I’ve missed them,” he recalled thinking to himself. “Maybe they’re down in Hamilton and I’m up here in Auckland.”

But it wasn’t too much later that he would discover the horror scene.

Prosecutors also called to testify today Zhihui Zhong, who was in the car with Li during the minor crash with Joseph Kwok in December 2022. He had employed Li for some time as his driver - tasked with taking him to snooker bars, a table tennis club and to his aunty’s house.

“My understanding [is] it was not a big issue,” he said of the crash through a Mandarin interpreter, explaining that Li did not seem mad.

In an interview with police after the Kwoks were kill, Zhong described Li as “a very kind person” who was always willing to help with anything.

“He was a nice person and would never get mad about anything,” he said.

The trial continues before Justice Jane Anderson and the jury.

Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.