'The system failed': Ricky Kwok speaks out three years after parents' murders

Three years after his parents were murdered in their Auckland home, Ricky Kwok speaks for the first time about their deaths and why he believes the system failed them. National Crime Correspondent Sam Sherwood reports.Ricky Kwok was worried. His parents hadn't turned up at his home in Hamilton as planned to celebrate his father's birthday before they would all return to Auckland and then head to Hong Kong together a few days later.His numerous messages to them weren't being delivered and his calls weren't being returned.For hours he wrestled with whether to make the 90-minute drive to his parents' home in Ellerslie, risking missing them "like two ships passing in the night", or to wait.Eventually, he decided to head to their home. But when he arrived, their car wasn't there. He thought he must've missed them.He decided to go inside and prepare dinner."We'll just have a good laugh about all of it and how we missed each other," he recalls thinking.He opened the door and looked inside. The house was dark, with only the fading sunlight making anything visible.As he looked around he noticed what appeared to be a "heap of clothes" in the middle of the room. It wasn't until a second glance that he realised it was actually his father Fuk-Fu Joseph Kwok. He was dead, and Kwok's mother, Mei Han Chong was missing.Four days later, Chong's body was found in a bush on the North Shore.Three years on from their killings, Kwok speaks for the first time about their deaths, his quest for answers and how the system "failed".Supplied / NZ police'Follow your dream'Fuk-Fu Joseph Kwok and his wife Mei Han Chong immigrated from Hong Kong to New Zealand in 1988 with their three-year-old son, Ricky.Ricky says his father, an orthopaedic nurse, "worked his backside off to support our family".Following his death, several orthopaedic registrars and junior consultants told Kwok how much his father supported them in their careers."He was the cool, calm head. You'd see him and know things would be right somehow, one way or another. He's that kind of guy."Chong had been a nurse and a midwife in Hong Kong. Once in New Zealand she felt the language barrier would make it difficult to be a nurse, and decided to focus on her family.Ricky says his mother "wouldn't hurt a fly".While living in Australia for his training he called his mother one evening. He was unwell, and he was homesick."I said, 'Mum, I miss you, I need someone'."She was on the next flight and stayed with him for six months.Ricky, who followed his parents by becoming a vascular surgeon, says his parents never pushed him into medicine."They didn't want me to go into medicine," he says. "They knew that this career was not going to be easy. This career has a lot of ups and downs. There's a lot of pressure in this career…"They always said to me, 'Just follow your heart, follow your dream, and as long as you do something you enjoy we're happy. We just want you to turn out to be a good person,' and at the end of the day, that's all it was for them. It's about being a good person."RNZ / Nick Monro'What's going on?'In November 2023, Ricky was living in Hamilton. His parents visited about once a fortnight, usually on a Monday, and the family would catch up for lunch.On 6 November 2023, his parents were supposed to drive to Hamilton to have lunch with him to celebrate his father's birthday a day earlier. They would then all return to Auckland ahead of a family trip to Hong Kong.The couple were like "clockwork", he says. Normally, the couple would arrive in Hamilton by 11am, and he'd receive a message to say they're in town and they would do their own thing until he'd finished work and then they would catch up.But when he finished work about 12.30pm, there were no messages."I was like, 'What's going on? Maybe, they're just running late, maybe they're packing.'"An hour later there was still nothing. He tried messaging them on WhatsApp. His phone showed only one tick - the message had been sent, but it hadn't been delivered for some reason, and it hadn't been read.He thought it was possible his father had forgotten to charge his phone, but it was unlike his mother to let her phone go flat."Something felt off," he says. "I wondered if something catastrophic had happened, maybe a car accident on the Waikato Expressway - but that doesn't make sense. Why would their phones not be working? Nothing made sense."Ricky says he sat in his Hamilton home for hours deciding what to do, struggling between staying or going to Auckland and potentially missing them."I didn't want to leave, 'Surely they'll be alright, maybe if I go up now we will be ships passing in the night and I will miss them,' that's why I didn't move."By about 4.30pm, still with no word from his parents, he called 105 and asked for a welfare check. He says the call taker suggested he go to Auckland to check on them.He then drove to his parents' home.Detective Inspector Scott Beard led the investigation.RNZ / Nick MonroWhen he arrived outside their Celtic Crescent home, he noticed their car wasn't there."I've missed them," he thought. "The ships passing in the night, exactly as I feared."He decided that given he was there he may as well go inside and prepare dinner for the family."There will be some story as to why this all happened. Mum or Dad forgot something, or Dad got lost."As he drove into the driveway he noticed the gate was askew, which was unusual. As he got closer, he saw that one of the two locks to the front door was unlocked. He didn't think much of it and presumed one of his parents had forgotten to lock it."I need to mention it," he recalls thinking.He entered the home. It was dark, with the only light in the house coming from the fading sunlight."At first, I was like, 'Why is there a heap of clothes in the middle of the room?' Even when Mum is packing, it wouldn't be so untidy."Then I look for a second time, and I realise it's not a pile of dirty clothes. This is actually a person."Then it struck him: "That's Dad. That's his clothes. His head was covered, but I knew."There were no signs of breathing, no pulse; his father was dead. He recalls an "indescribable smell of death".His mind then switched focus to his mum."I'm frantically running around the house checking everywhere, I need to know what's going on - maybe if I find Mum then it will make sense, but I need to find her first."As he ran downstairs, it dawned on him that she wasn't there. He then called 111. The operator asked if he needed an ambulance, and his medical training kicked in."I suddenly realised that I had only checked a lack of pulse, a lack of response, but I hadn't checked pupils."I carefully lifted the coat covering Dad's head to be able to expose his head, and then I saw the blood-soaked towels. That was the point; there's no point even checking for capillary response. That amount of blood is fatal."I said, 'We need police, Dad is dead, Mum's missing. I don't know where she is.'"Ricky was on autopilot. There was no time to take in the reality of what was happening.While waiting for the police, he noticed a note on the front door. He ran next door and spoke to his parents' new neighbours, hoping they might know something about the note."I said, 'Dad's dead, Mum's missing, car's missing, do you know anything about this note?"The note had been left by the neighbours, who were hoping to speak to his parents about a shared wall."I broke down. I was still on the phone to 111, they were on the way and I just broke down."The neighbours invited him inside and made him a hot chocolate as he waited for the police to arrive.Four police cars arrived, about seven minutes after they were called.Ricky was taken to the College Hill police station. While there he was told they needed to take a statement from him, but it could wait if he wanted."I was like, 'No, we do it now, whatever I can tell you, because I know that the sooner you start the better the chance you can find her and hopefully find her alive'."He left the station at about 3am and went to a friend's house. He struggled to sleep, and then he had to call relatives in New Zealand and Hong Kong to tell them what had happened.He was trying to process the death of his father while still not knowing what had happened to his mother."Inside, I knew she was dead. There was no other rational reason why I wouldn't have heard from her. It just made no sense."You've got to hold out hope, but I was very aware it was false hope."Then, four days after finding his father, police visited Ricky at his friend's home."I remember them saying, 'We've had a significant development. We found your mum, she's passed.'"Lok Fung Lorrence Li.Nick MonroThe reviewPolice would arrest two men - Lok Fung Lorrence Li and Shu Man Poon - and charge them with murdering the couple as well as plotting to murder Li's former landlord.Poon would plead guilty to the charges on the morning they were due to go to trial in May 2025. It would be more than a year later that Li would go on trial, with a jury finding him guilty of all charges.A police review carried out after the killings, obtained by RNZ, says Li and Fuk-Fu Joseph Kwok were involved in a crash in late December 2022.Kwok's insurer later sought resolution via the Disputes Tribunal. As part of the process, his insurer passed on to the tribunal that Kwok did not want his address disclosed to Li.However, his request was declined by the tribunal due to "insufficient safety reasons". Disputes Tribunal correspondence with both parties listed their home address.The review said it appeared the disclosure of Kwok's address to Li "has been a significant factor in Li and Poon's preparations for the murders".The review also examined Poon's visit to police in September 2023, where he told them he was being pressured to take part in the murder of Li's former landlord.While at the station, Poon appeared to be in "increasing psychological distress" and was crying in pain and clutching his head and said he wanted to kill himself.The review said mental health and an ambulance were called. However, due to delay, it was agreed with Poon and his associates that they would travel to Auckland Hospital for treatment themselves, and they left the station.The staffer who spoke to Poon sought advice from a police officer who advised her to report it, which she did, linking Li, Poon and other information to the file.Lok Fung Lorrence Li on the night he first met Fuk-Fu Joseph Kwok.SuppliedA staff member, whose name is redacted but is referred to as frontline station support team leader, was on leave at the time. When she returned to work on 9 September, she reviewed the file and electronically filed it.The review said police "missed an opportunity to investigate the matter further"."Critically, had police acted on the original information presented by Poon in September 2023, it could have alerted police to and possibly prevented the homicide."Disputes Tribunal 'gave them the weapon'Ricky was informed of Poon's visit to police not long after it was uncovered during the investigation. He says he was "disappointed", but understood what had happened at the police station."The police are inundated by people who come with a lot of mental health problems, and in their judgement they made a call that he was having a mental health problem and they did the right thing and sent him on his way to receive medical care."However, what he didn't understand was why the matter wasn't followed up on.Police have since made changes, including requirements initiated for front-counter staff handling reports of serious or potential crime."When dealing with information that relates to violence or threat to property, this will immediately be assigned to the appropriate Criminal Investigation Branch team," Detective Inspector Scott Beard earlier told RNZ.In relation to the crash, Ricky said he didn't know anything about it until several months afterwards when his mum briefly mentioned it in passing.He was unaware of the Disputes Tribunal process."Knowing my parents, they would have just thought this is something the insurance company is tackling."He says the staff involved in declining his father's request for confidentiality were "just following the systems and policies" and doesn't fault them."But who thought this was a good idea? Who designed that system?" he says. "The Disputes Tribunal basically gave them the weapon."In response to questions from RNZ, Ministry of Justice chief operating officer Carl Crafar earlier said Kwok's request for confidentiality was not granted as it did not meet the threshold under the Disputes Tribunal rules."Specifically, he did not raise any safety concerns, and the statutory threshold was not met."As a result of the couple's killings, changes had been made to how personal information was shared."Physical and postal addresses are now kept confidential and are not shared with other parties. Only email addresses and telephone numbers are shared between parties."Ricky says he received a call from Crafar on Monday morning, after RNZ's article on the police review was published. He says it was the first time he had been contacted by them since his parents' killings.Ricky made a complaint to the Ministry of Justice during Li's trial about the disclosure of his parents' address. He said Crafar told him they weren't allowed to speak to him until after the court process was finished, hence why they had not contacted him sooner.He believes the Ministry of Justice should have contacted him earlier and explained that to him, rather than waiting three years."There was nothing to stop them from actually being a little bit compassionate about this."He's also "dubious" about whether they have made "meaningful changes" since his parents' deaths and looks forward to meeting with them in the future. He wants them to take accountability.A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said Crafar called Ricky to ensure he was aware of RNZ's article, and advised him of what he had said in the statement to RNZ."He also expressed his condolences for the tragic loss of his parents."Crafar also took the opportunity to acknowledge a complaint Kwok has made, and apologised for the delay in responding, and that no contact had been made in the meantime. We will contact Kwok again when there is an outcome to his complaint."'I miss them every day'Looking back at the lead up to his parents killings, Ricky says "the system failed"."I came back to work in New Zealand to give back to the community that raised me, that looked after me. I feel I have been failed."It's life-shattering. It's devastating. I will never get my parents back."He admits he's "conflicted" when it comes to how he feels about Poon and Li. He says that before his parents' murders he was not a regular churchgoer, but he has started going back in the last three years."It's helped to colour my perspective on things. But they talk about forgiveness in church. How do you forgive someone for this? I don't know."In relation to Poon, Ricky says he saw his tears at sentencing as the details of his parents' killings were read out, and hopes that if he is released from prison one day he can turn his life around and become a "good person striving to help society".He's unsure about Li, but says that may change after sentencing next month.Asked about the toll of the last three years, Ricky talks about the anxiety of the first few months every time he heard a knock on the door, and the worry walking down the street of who might be behind him while also struggling with flashbacks to the night he found his father.He says he still finds it hard driving along the motorway in Auckland."It feels like you're an inch away from an accident with the way people drive. And I'm always thinking… If there's an accident, am I going to be the next victim?"Ricky says he misses his parents every day."There are little things on a day-to-day and a week-to-week basis that I just think to myself, 'What would Dad say? What would Mum say?'"Thursday marks three years since his parents' death. It's also his father's birthday.Ricky tries to fight back the tears as he talks about a tradition his father had of visiting a bakery near their home and picking up some cakes for the family to share every birthday.He will do the same."I still do that just to remember them. You just got to keep these little traditions alive. They're the little memories that make everything."