A Simon Fraser University criminologist says the alleged murder of a woman by her 25-year-old son is “extremely unusual,” particularly because it is suspected that Yuan Xi “Will” Tang plotted to kill his mother.
RCMP announced on Friday that Tang has been charged with first-degree murder after his mother, Lianjie Guo’s badly decomposed body was found in a suitcase on Harwood Island off the Sunshine Coast in late July.
Guo, 47, had been missing since June, when she and her husband were in Vancouver from China to visit their son. Shortly after her disappearance in Richmond, Tang, who was in Vancouver on a student visa, appealed to the public to contact the police if they have information about his mother’s whereabouts.
“That of course is a bluff, a game of bluff, where you’ve got the sense police are on to you,” speculated Rob Gordon, a criminologist at SFU. “One way of trying to divert attention away from you, remove suspicion, is to cooperate fully with police in the investigation. If you’re sticking to a story, then a component of the story would be to appeal to people who might have information.”
Gordon says matricides are rare, but not unheard of.
“They usually are cases that pop up where they occur on a spur of the moment, so it’s an assault gone wrong, or some other event like that that suddenly escalated and resulted in someone being killed,” he said. “To actually sit down and figure out you want to get rid of your mother or father is quite unusual.”
The Integrated Homicide Investigation Team deemed the case a homicide one month after Guo disappeared. Police have not disclosed how Guo died, or why she was killed.
Sgt. Jennifer Pound told reporters on Friday that Tang may have been planning to kill his father, too.
Tang will appear in court next week to face not only a first-degree murder charge, but a charge on counseling to commit an indictable offence as well.
With files from CTV British Columbia’s Bhinder Sajan
