A court has heard that, a year before Yanfei Bao’s body was found on a rural property in Christchurch, the owner of the land had followed strange car tracks across his yard to the exact same spot.
Farm owner Craig Eggleston has given evidence at the murder trial of Tingjun Cao, that he saw an unknown vehicle leaving his property just after 5pm on July 19 last year.
Speaking at the High Court in Christchurch, he said was working on his digger at the time.
He admitted he couldn’t see the occupants of the car, the make or model, but described it as a fairly modern, silver sedan with a roundish shape.
That description was in line with a car the jury has been told was registered to Cao.
It’s alleged the 53-year-old drove to the farm in south Christchurch with Bao in his car boot, and buried her there.
Eggleston said he found the sighting of the sedan “suspicious”.
He told the court, “[It’s] not the type of vehicle that would usually be on the farm. Anybody that would come on the farm would normally call or meet rather than just drive in.”
He called his wife, after watching it slowly drive away and she saw it too.
A year before the real estate agent’s body was recovered from a rural property in Christchurch, the owner of the land followed strange car tracks. (Source: 1News)
Finding out where the car had been on his land was “obvious”, Eggleston said.
“Because at that stage of the years, cows are off farm grazing for the winter. So we really hadn’t used that track at all for weeks.”
Referring to a map, he showed the court where the tyre tracks led to.
“I’ve followed them through the farm right through to where they came from,” he recalled.
In cross examination, defence lawyer Colin Eason asked, “I take it there was no disturbance in the grass, that would indicate any kind of activity, human actitivity?”
“Not by following the tracks, no,” Eggleston replied.
He was then shown a photo taken by police in the area where officers eventually uncovered the remains of the 44-year-old.
He said, “that’s the end of the track that I followed.”
Eggleston told the court he got in touch with police a few days after the sighting and they later came to his property.
Eason asked him, “Do you recall approximately how many times the police would have visited your farm?”
“Quite a few,” the witness replied.
“There was a dog man, they did an extensive search on the Monday morning with quite a big crew, then they went through the effluent pond a number of occasions.”
The farmer said police also put drones up over his property. “Then they came back for another look.”
Defence lawyer Joshua MacLeod asked Lynn Eggleston about a statement she made to police in 2023 about the condition of the car she’d seen.
She confirmed she told them it was in a reasonable condition and not “excessively dirty”.
The defendant was not in court today, but could access the Mandarin translation of proceedings through headphones.
Dog handler searched farm four times
The court heard from a police dog handler this afternoon who had searched the farm on four occasions last year.
Constable Josh Yeoman spoke about retracing steps on multiple days.
“There was so much rain, there was a lot of surface water, so we were just trying to go back multiple times once those water levels had dropped that might have either exposed something that we were looking for or opened up more areas to search. Obviously, the dog can’t search under water,” he said.
He explained there were many variables for police dogs when searching for scent.
“Weather, temperatures, all of those in part speed up or slow down the decomposition of a body. Therefore, there may be more or less odour available to the dog. Also, things like if a body has been buried for example, a lot of water coming down will sort of seal up for a certain amount of time air pockets that would have allowed odour to escape early on.”
Yeoman was asked about the weather conditions at the times of searches.
“Initially, terrible. Torrential downpour and then, as a result of that, the heavily sodden ground there was a lot of surface flooding that was quite deep up to knee level in some points — not just limited to the farm, it was all the other search areas we searched as well,” he said.
He was also asked about his police dog not discovering Bao’s body in the days after her disappearance.
“I think the biggest challenge we faced is we don’t have the luxury, I suppose, of being able to train on a buried body, so to speak,” Yeoman said.
He spoke about different training provided to police dogs overseas.
Defence Lawyer Joshua MacLeod asked whether it would have been impossible for the dog to pick up a scent as he hadn’t had that overseas training.
“No, absolutely not. I had all confidence in him to find her,” Yeoman said.
The trial is continuing.
By Katie Stevenson and Laura James
