China scientist claims Neil Heywood was murdered over 'unspeakable' secret
British businessman Neil Heywood was murdered to prevent him revealing an "unspeakable" and "complicated" secret, one of China's top forensic scientists has claimed.
(L-R): British businessman Neil Heywood and and Gu Kailai, wife of China's former Chongqing Municipality Communist Party Secretary Bo Xilai Photo: REUTERS
By Tom Phillips, Shanghai10:16PM GMT 02 Nov 2012
Wang Xuemei is the first and so far only senior establishment figure to speak out over Mr Heywood's mysterious death in a Chinese hotel room last November, telling The Daily Telegraph that official accounts of the motive behind the murder are "absurd".
The official narrative says Mr Heywood was murdered by Gu Kailai, wife of fallen political heavyweight Bo Xilai, after a business dispute led him to threaten the couple's son.
In August, Ms Gu was convicted of using cyanide to poison an already-intoxicated Mr Heywood inside a hotel room in Chongqing, the Chinese megacity where her husband was party chief. According to the official version, Ms Gu, who was subsequently handed a suspended death sentence, did not contest that version of events at trial.
But on Friday Ms Wang, who is one of the most senior forensic experts at China's Supreme People's Procuratorate, the top government body in charge of serious criminal investigations and prosecutions, rejected that version and said her "conscience" had led her to tell speak out.
Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, Ms Wang - who also is the vice-chairman of the Chinese Forensic Medicine Association - claimed it "was not possible that Gu did it just because someone had threatened her son". She also discarded the idea that a rumoured romance between Ms Gu and Mr Heywood had triggered the murder.
"I believe it was [a] killing to stop someone from disclosing a secret and that secret is not a sexual relationship, but bigger and more complicated, unspeakable," she said. Ms Wang said she believed the true reasons behind Mr Heywood's murder would be traced back to the city of Dalian, where Bo Xilai was mayor between 1993 and 2000 and where Mr Heywood lived for a period in the 1990s, apparently working initially as an English teacher.
"The root is in northeast China," she said, where "they met and became good friends."
Ms Wang, who first questioned evidence in the case on her blog in September, admitted she had not had access to new or hidden evidence but said she had analysed and compared public documents relating to Ms Gu's trial and that of Chongqing's former police chief, Wang Lijun, who in September was convicted of attempting to cover up Mr Heywood's murder.
Analysts now expect Mr Bo to be put on trial after the 18th Party Congress, which should start on November 8 and will see China's new leadership unveiled.
