Whig Standard Staff Writer
March 17, 2001
Lu has been at the centre of a deportation controversy since November, when she refused to follow an order to leave the country.
Though she has steadfastly maintained her innocence, Lu is classed as "undesirable" by Immigration standards because she signed a plea bargain that says she attacked her husband with a meat cleaver in an argument over sex.
Police constructed a convincing theory around the 1985 death of He Zhang Zhao. Their theory had Lu ambushing her husband as he slept - fracturing his skull with a blow to the forehead and inflicting 14 wounds - before carting his limp body through the house and out to the snow-covered back yard of their Chinatown house where he eventually died of exposure.
Police had nothing more than circumstantial evidence on which to send Lu to trial, but with little command of the English language, no friends or family in this country and no real understanding of what she was doing, Lu pleaded guilty to manslaughter. In doing so, she left herself open to deportation.
In a candid interview this week, Lu spoke for the first time with The Whig-Standard about the circumstances surrounding the death of Zhao.
From the beginning, Lu's life has had its share of tragedy. When Lu was 12, she said, her father and uncle were failed over allegations the uncle was involved in anti-communist activities in China.
Her father was tortured and subjected to slave labour until he admitted publicly, that he was guilty of grievous wrongs against the state.
From being class monitor - a position that guaranteed respect, friendship and praise - Lu became an outcast. She and the rest of her family bore the labels of traitor and criminal.
Less than a year after coming to Canada, Lu says she found herself in a situation similar to that of her father. She says after two mistrials, she finally pleaded guilty in the hope that by doing prison time, she could get on with her life.
In the late afternoon of March 13, 1985, Lu arrived home from her job at a sewing machine factory to find her dilapidated Chinatown apartment building swarming with police and strangers. "I was unsure whether to go in or not," Lu says, "I remember I went upstairs and saw a lot of people. I have no idea who they are."
Her father-in-law, who lived in the couple's two-room apartment, was home when the body was found. The two of them were taken to the police station, where officers made Lu take off her jacket. "They looked at my arms and looked at my fingernails very closely for a long time." she says.
The horror of the ordeal was that in their unfamiliarity with her culture, police forced her to take off her jacket. In Chinese custom, she said, taking off one's jacket is comparable to removing all one's clothing. "It was so embarrassing," she said. "In China you do not take off your clothes in front of people. Here, I was supposed to do it in front on men."
It was almost a month later when, after tearing up the floorboards in the bedroom she shared with Zhao, police found blood stains and laid charges of murder.
Lu was arrested on her way home from work and she was surprised to find, through a Chinese-speaking police officer, that police had accused her of trying to evade arrest.
"[Police] were waiting for me outside the factory after work. They said they lost me. I have no idea they were out there," she said. Lu ran a couple of errands, walked to the bus stop and headed home. She was arrested a few blocks from the apartment.
At the police station, Lu was questioned without a lawyer. A Chinese-speaking police officer acted as interpreter. She was charged and moved to a provincial detention centre, armed with only a Chinese-English dictionary.
Using the dictionary, fellow inmates helped Lu understand she must contact a lawyer. Then they helped her make the call.
"I remember [police] sent a lady police officer dressed as an inmate into my cell," Lu said. "The people in the jail pulled me away from her and used the dictionary to point to the word 'police'."