Lu did get a lawyer - the first in a succession of eight who would defend her at three separate trials. She says they made little effort to ensure that she fully understood what was going on around her.
Considering she was charged with first-degree murder, Lu thought it odd that a judge would allow her to walk out the courtroom on her own recognizance just two weeks after she was arrested.
Bail was set at $500. Though Lu didn't have the money to post the bond, the judge freed her on nothing more than a promise to appear in court.
When she was released from custody, Lu found her in-laws preparing to move to Hamilton to be near their daughter. Despite accusations that she brutally murdered their son, the Zhao family helped Lu find a new apartment and move her belongings.
Police and prosecutors remained firmly attached to their theory of Zhao's death: Lu attacked him with a meat cleaver while he slept; his body lay on the floor next to their bed for several hours; she carried him to the snowbank in the back yard of 125 Westminster, where he died.
A mop with bloodstains on it was found in the building. A drop of blood was found on the apartment building stairwell. A smudge of blood was found on the wall beside the stairs. A blood stain was found on a blanket in the basement. A meat cleaver was discovered in the shared kitchen down the hall.
Arguments between the couple had escalated in the months before Zhao's death, mostly over her unwillingness to have sex, police said. They said she feared her immigration status would be in jeopardy if she divorced Zhao. Lu did seek information on divorce and she allegedly told a co-worker she wished her husband was dead.
Zhao took to disappearing for days and weeks at a time. On the evening of March 5, 1985, more than a week before his body was found in the back yard, Zhao left the apartment for the last time. Lu says she never say him again.
After two trials and a suicide attempt, Lu's eighth court-appointed lawyer struck a guilty plea, marrying her to a set of circumstances that led straight to mandatory deportation.
According to transcripts of Lu's first and third trials, there were clues that pointed to someone else as the culprit.
There was a letter, for example, in the dead man's pocket that warned him to repay a debt or suffer an undetermined consequence. There was a letter sent to Lu's lawyer, protesting her innocence, which police accused Lu of writing herself.
The note and Zhao's behaviour suggested, to some people, ties to organized crime.
Bill Lai, one of Lu's interpreters and a former police officer, is among those who believe Zhao was a gambler involved in organized crime. Lai told The Whig-Standard that the circumstances suggest more than one person was involved in the murder and it is possible that witnesses to the crime were silenced with a warning.
Lu says she knows nothing about where her husband went or what he did during his long absences from home, their marriage was not nearly as bad as it was portrayed by police and prosecutors.
For starters, she says Zhao never pressured her for sex. The two had a mutual understanding that they would wait two years before having children, she says.
Zhao argued constantly with his father. Because Lu is Cantonese, she did not understand their Mandarin dialogue. "They always argue a lot, but they always use their own language, their own dialect, so I have no idea what they are saying," Lu says.
She knows she was a disappointment as a daughter-in-law, to the extent that her husband's family talked of sending her back to China, yet Lu is empathetic. "My husband was the youngest and I think parents, well, they always want to protect their kids."
She did go to a local agency seeking information on divorce. Contrary to what police said, Lu says she never considered divorce a threat to her immigration status.
"I just wanted to find out the information, so I spoke to somebody at the agency," she said, adding that a co-worker translated for her. "I was never told I would be deported."
Lu told a friend she wished her husband was dead. "I don't know how to explain to you the dialect differences," she says today. "I speak Cantonese; my co-worker speaks Mandarin. I say "I wish he wasn't here," she takes it to mean something else.
"People always say in Canada, you can say whatever you wish," Lu remarks, wryly. "If you don't have any trouble, you can say whatever you wish, but if you have trouble, you be very careful what you say."
Lu says she knows no more about how Zhao died than did her father-in-law, who would have been in the next room when her husband was killed.
