A screenshot from one of Kaixiao Liu's videos. Photo: Youtube
Multiple videos of a man charged in relation to a homicide investigation - sparked by a body found in Auckland's Gulf Harbour - have been uploaded to YouTube, showing the man singing what appears to be Christian worship music.
The remains of a woman inside a plastic bag were fished out of the sea in North Auckland's Gulf Harbour in March.
Kaixiao Liu, 37 and Lanyue Xiao, 36, were arrested in July after being stopped at Auckland Airport, and each face a charge of performing an indignity to a dead human body.
The identity of the victim - whom police believed to be a middle-aged Chinese woman of small stature - remains a mystery as the homicide investigation continues.
Police conducted a 12-day scene examination of a house in Orewa in connection to the case
The pair charged in relation to the woman's body have pleaded not guilty and are both on bail.
Since Thursday, a YouTube account by the name of "Kaixiao Liu" has uploaded multiple videos of original worship songs by Liu in Mandarin, in which he sings about salvation, God and Jesus.
In one video, Kaixiao Liu is seen dressed in a suit, performing a song named 'Real Salvation', as he paces around a beachfront area in Orewa.
Two of the videos showed Liu singing, and the rest were accompanied by photos and short clips of the Christian cross and generic images of the universe and natural scenery.
The YouTube account was created in October 2023 and has the description in Chinese: "Here are my original worship songs, you're welcome to communicate with me."
A history of music
Meanwhile, a classical musician, who does not want to be named, told RNZ that they were among about 20 musicians hired by Liu as freelancers to perform orchestral music Liu had composed in the 2020/21 summer.
The musician said late in 2020, they and other musicians - some were music students and others were from Auckland Philharmonia - were contacted by former Auckland Symphony Orchestra conductor Peter Thomas, about an opportunity to help Liu to record an album.
The musician told RNZ the initial request for a few hours of playing turned into a few months of weekly sessions and hundreds of hours of playing music for Liu's project. They said the musicians were each paid a couple of hundreds of dollars for each session.
They said the recording took place at a studio in an Auckland CBD building with "top of the line microphones, top of the line recording systems", and multiple people hired by Liu to take videos of them playing.
"It was this kind of ethereal, god-like music, that he kind of wrote to, in his words 'to connect people' and connect people across the universe," they said.
They said they did not think much of the arrangement, other than that it was strange.
"Every week, it slowly unravelled and got a bit stranger and stranger, he would always be there in a kind of a nice looking suit, always had sunglasses on, always had a mask on, and Michelle, who was the other person accused, was always there," they said.
They said they only saw Liu remove his mask twice when he drank water.
Liu would often gather the musicians around after each session, treat them with food and sing them songs, and offer them wine in "crystal goblets", they recalled.
They said the collaboration ended when Liu requested them to make recordings of themselves playing music when one of the Covid lockdowns hit and the musicians were not comfortable with that.
They said all the musicians were asked by Liu to write paragraph long statements about why they loved to work with him for Liu's website for his music project - to which they obliged as they felt it was required in order to be hired for more work.
They said they felt that Liu "wasn't much of a musician", but used a method where he would humm a tune and record it in his phone, then send it to a man in Austria who would turn the audio into a cohesive three minute piece of music.
They said Liu claimed to have millions of dollars available for promoting his music and was looking for excellent expert teams to promote it - however they were under the impression that the hundreds of hours of music they recorded was never released.
