Elizabeth Zhong homicide: Witnesses recall man ‘disguised’ in women’s clothes and wig

As Sunnyhills resident Andrea Paley rushed her teenage son to a football game one morning in November 2020, the two saw a person walking through their East Auckland neighborhood who looked so out of place that Paley n couldn’t get it out of his head for the rest of the morning.

When she returned that afternoon to find police looking for Elizabeth Zhong, another Sunnyhills resident, she knew it had to be connected, she told jurors today during the Fang Sun murder trial.

‘It was Saturday morning and this person appeared to be dressed as if they were going out on the town,’ she testified during her appearance via audiovisual link at the Auckland High Court today. “It was all black clothes.

“The person was a man with a wig and was obviously trying to disguise himself to look like a woman.”

Authorities charged Sun, who also lived in the neighborhood, with breaking into Zhong’s home on the night of November 27, 2020 and fatally attacking her in her room. The two were former friends and business partners who had argued over the past year over control of their struggling business. Sun, 48, accused Zhong of losing him and his family more than $25 million in investments.

Zhong, 55, was found dead the next day in the trunk of her Land Rover, which had been parked on the side of the road in the same neighborhood.

But hours before the grisly discovery that day – even before Zhong was reported missing – Paley and his son saw the strange pedestrian in the same area.

The wig was shoulder-length and tousled and the pedestrian wore stylish ankle boots, “pretty glamorous for a Saturday morning,” Paley recalled.

“My son and I looked at each other and we both said, forgive my French, ‘What the fuck?'” Paley said. “Going through my head, I was trying to figure out what the person was doing there that looked like that and what they had done.

“My head was pounding, trying to figure out what was going on.”

While she only saw the person for about 30 seconds, she assumed it was a dark-skinned male, likely of Asian descent and appearing to be between 40 and 60 years old.

“I basically couldn’t let this go all morning,” she said. “I knew I had seen something and I couldn’t figure out what it was or what it related to. So it played in my head all morning.

“As soon as I got home the police were on Roadley Ave and I knew everything I had seen in relation to what they were looking for.”

Police showed her a photo book several months later, but they could not identify anyone as the person they saw that morning.

Testifying directly after his mother, Paley’s son said he couldn’t see the pedestrian’s face, but agreed the person appeared to be a man and was wearing a wig.

“He was looking down the whole time, trying to hide his face,” the teen said, explaining he was initially looking at his phone in the car when they passed the person. “I turned around and looked…because we found it very unusual.”