Yanfei Bao’s body was found on a Greenpark farm. Photo: RNZ/ Nathan McKinnon
About a year before Christchurch real estate agent Yanfei Bao’s body was found on a Greenpark farm, police searched the area and discovered nothing of interest, a court has heard.
Bao, 44, vanished on 19 July 2023, and her remains were found in a shallow grave in farmland on the outskirts of Christchurch in July this year.
Chinese national Tingjun Cao, 53, is charged with her murder.
Cao sacked his lawyers and is now representing himself at his High Court trial.
On Thursday, the court heard from Senior Constable Dean Stevenson, who was involved in searching the Greenpark farmland six days after Bao was last seen because tyre tracks had been seen on a paddock.
“We searched the boundaries of that farm area on Clarks [Road] Hudsons Road… the boundaries of that property down to an entry place into a paddock and then through some of that paddock area,” Stevenson said.
“Nothing of interest was located on that occasion?” Crown prosecutor Pip Currie asked.
“Not that I am aware of,” Stevenson said.
Cao, via an interpreter, asked a number of questions of the witness during cross-examination.
He asked if, during the search of the farm where Bao’s remains were later found, Stevenson ever “smelled any scent around that area”.
Stevenson said there was plenty of scent around that area from trees and such, but the search team did not pick up any scent of a decaying body.
On Wednesday, Justice Lisa Preston told the jury Cao planned to conduct his own defence and that she believed it was in the interests of justice to proceed with the trial.
She said there was no change in Cao’s position from the beginning of his trial – that he said the evidence did not prove his guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
The Crown case was that Cao killed Bao on the day she vanished, after arranging to meet her at a home for sale in Hornby.