When Chinese authorities announced Gu Kailai’s (谷開來) detention on suspicion of killing British businessman Neil Heywood, her conviction was all but inevitable. On Thursday, she stood trial for premeditated murder and — according to state media — she confessed.
“I will accept and calmly face any sentence and I also expect a fair and just court decision,” she said in her first reported comments on the case.
Gu’s position as wife of a powerful but divisive leader, Bo Xilai (薄熙來), has driven fascination with the scandal. However, it has also ensured that the British businessman’s death remains as opaque as ever.
Perry Link of Princeton University compared the case to the mysterious 1971 death of the senior communist leader Lin Biao (林彪) in a plane crash.
“Something dramatic happened in the high levels of the mafia and we still, today, don’t know exactly what. For the party then, the official narrative was a much more important thing than the truth, and the same will be true for the Gu Kailai story today,” Link said.
The official version appears calibrated to justify the trial of a disgraced yet still popular leader’s wife, while defending the reputation of the Chinese Communist Party.
“I suffered a mental breakdown after learning that my son was in jeopardy,” Gu said, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
Heywood and Gu were once so close that she was godmother to one of his children.
Yet Gu and her employee Zhang Xiaojun (張曉軍) are said to have poisoned the Briton because he had threatened and even imprisoned her only son, Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), over a business row.
One of those who knew Heywood described it as “a piece of party theater” with the courts shifting blame on to the foreign victim “when he is in no position to speak up.”
Emerging accounts of the closed-door hearing at Hefei intermediate people’s court also include apparently implausible claims and contradictions.
Heywood had moved to China in the 1990s, marrying a local woman but remained very much an old-fashioned patriot, taking pride in his Harrow education and playing croquet.
“He was a very, very nice man — a classic English gentleman. Men liked him; women liked him,” said a person who knew him well.
He told friends he met Bo Xilai while living in the northeastern city of Dalian, after writing to the then-mayor to introduce himself.
The link appears to have been useful for Heywood, who introduced foreign firms to key officials, but was also useful to the family. He helped them manage affairs in Britain, where Bo Guagua studied at Harrow, getting on so well with him that one friend even thought their closeness might have made Gu jealous.
How far he depended on his ties to the family is unclear. He also worked for the Beijing Aston Martin dealership and for Hakluyt, the business intelligence firm formed by former MI6 (British secret intelligence service) operatives, although the British government explicitly denied he was a spy.
One friend said Heywood was “cagey” about work.
Another said there was an unclear economic link, but thought it insubstantial. In any case, the relationship turned sour about four years ago.
“He felt hard done by,” a friend said.
The official court statement said simply that Gu believed Heywood was a threat to her son’s safety after an economic row. A more detailed account has surfaced on the Internet, purportedly from someone who was in court.
The court heard Gu had introduced Heywood to a major deal that fell through. He demanded compensation and bickered with Guagua over the money — locking the young man up at a house in the UK. Fearful for her son, Gu took matters into her own hands.
For Heywood to threaten the son of one of China’s most powerful men would have been astoundingly foolish.
“He was not vindictive; he was a nice guy,” a friend said. “He was neither crass enough nor stupid enough to threaten them.”
In any case, the incident appeared to have taken place well before Heywood’s death. Some wonder if Gu wanted to ensure he could not disclose what he knew about the family; her husband, the Chongqing party secretary, was a polarizing figure under scrutiny ahead of this year’s leadership transition.
In October, Heywood told another friend: “I’ve had a bit of trouble with a Mr Bo,” but added that it was over.
Then came November’s last-minute invitation to travel to Chongqing, with Gu’s family aide, Zhang. It is not clear why Heywood agreed to go, but on arrival he felt it was a “menacing situation,” a friend said.
Court accounts suggest Gu arrived at Heywood’s hotel on the evening of Nov. 13 with a bottle of whiskey. While three family employees waited outside, she drank with Heywood until he was so inebriated he vomited.
When Zhang brought in the poison Gu had previously prepared, she poured it into the incapacitated Briton’s mouth. Once confident he was dead, she told Wang Lijun (王立軍), the city’s police chief and her husband’s ally, what she had done.
What happened next is unclear, but four police officers from Chongqing went on trial in Hefei yesterday for covering up her crime.
The body was not found for two days. Heywood’s family accepted the official verdict of death due to excessive alcohol, UK authorities raised no concerns and he was cremated a few days later. Though friends were suspicious, the matter would have rested there — but for the police chief.
The court reportedly heard that Wang recorded Gu’s admission she had killed Heywood. It is thought he was already concerned about an internal party investigation; it is possible he was seeking leverage over Bo Xilai.
The defense claimed Wang took two blood samples yet found no traces of poison, according to a person in court. A third sample, taken by Wang and tested four months later, found low levels of a toxin — not enough, it seemed, to kill. More curiously, according to the same courtroom source, the defense claimed Heywood’s body, which Gu had left on its back, was found sprawled face down — suggesting a third party had entered the room.
Wang confronted Bo Xilai with his allegations against Gu in late January or February. He was demoted almost immediately and fled to the US consulate in Chengdu. That unleashed the train of events, which culminated in Gu’s trial this week. She awaits the verdict and sentencing, which many now suspect will be a suspended death penalty.
Whether she will be followed into court by her husband remains to be seen. He is under party investigation for disciplinary offenses, but some suspect he may yet face criminal charges.
Whatever happens, the story now seems set in the world’s imagination. Elements of it read like a bad airport novel: the upper-class Englishman with links to former spies, the Dragon Lady armed with poison, the charismatic but ruthless leader and the maverick police chief.
However, its wider arc has the moral force of a Shakespearean tale of ambition and betrayal. If Gu did indeed kill a former friend to protect her family, her actions appear to have instead ensured its destruction.
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