Trial begins in Merced case of man accused of murdering woman, leaving body in dumpster
Testimony began this week in the brutal 2017 homicide case of a San Francisco man accused of murdering a woman and leaving her body in a Merced dumpster.
Defendant William Li was taken into custody after the body of 30-year-old Lijun Wang was found wrapped in three bags in the garbage bin in the 3100 block of G Street, not far from East Olive Avenue in central Merced.
Li, 56, has pleaded not guilty to one count of murder, and faces a maximum of life in prison without parole if convicted.
Merced police hadn’t previously elaborated on a motive in the case, although they testified cell phone and geolocation records connected Li to the killing.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Matthew Serratto, the prosecutor in the case, told jurors during his Thursday opening statement other evidence against Li includes records showing the defendant searched for information about how to delete documents or data from an iPhone.
Serratto said the evidence also includes a file labeled with a single teardrop icon containing a map of Merced with and a newspaper article published after Wang’s body was found. “Li dumped her body in the alley,” Serratto told jurors.
“There is evidence of a relationship and evidence of frequent contact. He did this. He did what he was charged with.”
In contrast, defense attorney Jeffrey Tenenbaum told the jury on Thursday that while Li moved the body, he didn’t, in fact, actually kill Wang. “I will ask you to find him not guilty based on that,” Tenenbaum said.
Tenenbaum also said that he plans to cross-examine relatives of Li’s who can testify to his client’s passive nature. “Li is a quiet man,” Tenenbaum said. “He keeps to himself and does his job. You’ll hear that he’s not a violent person at all. It’s not who he is.”
An investigation by Merced police revealed that Wang was a citizen of China who came to the U.S. in 2016 . Police said they believed Wang worked as a sex worker to pay off debts related to travel to this country.
She is said to have become connected to Li after they met in a massage parlor and eventually became friends, according to Serratto.
They became so close, in fact, that when she applied for political asylum in the U.S., he went with her to see an attorney and paid for the lawyer’s services, Serratto said. He also kept her passport at her request when she was identified as a prostitute by Bay Area law enforcement when they started investigating a brothel she worked in.
Friend received odd text messages
During the second day of the trial on Friday, Dr. Mark Super, a forensic pathologist for the Merced County Coroner’s Office, said during his examination of Wang’s body, he observed what looked to be small flecks of white paint chips stuck to her back above the waistband of her jeans and below the hem of her ski jacket.
That’s key to the case. During a preliminary hearing in 2018, forensic experts testified chips the chips of paint found on Wang’s body matched at least two paint samples from the San Mateo auto body shop where Li worked. The chips were also in the trunk of Li’s car.
Super also detailed the symptoms of asphyxiation that led him to determine her official cause of death — asphyxia by neck compression. “An assailant clearly rendered her unconscious,” Super said. “This is clearly a homicide.”
A friend of Wang’s, an older man who met Wang at a dinner with friends in New York in 2014 or 2015, said they maintained a friendship for a few years mostly via text messaging apps like WeChat or WhatsApp.
The Sun-Star is not identifying the witness, as the defense said he fears for his life.
The man testified that on the day before her body was found, he and Wang texted each other about what they were doing that day, which was Superbowl Sunday. The day she was found in the dumpster, he texted her several times asking her what she ended up doing on the day of the game. She never replied.
“I am very worried about you,” he texted her. “Please let me know if you are OK.”
Before Wang’s friend found out she had been killed, he continued to receive messages from her account until late February 2017. The messages said she had gotten married, had a new cell phone that didn’t work, and that she was very busy. The messages also said she had been targeted by the U.S. government and had to escape to Canada.
“I just didn’t understand what she did that she got in trouble with the U.S. government,” he said during testimony on Friday. “That’s when I started to suspect something isn’t right.”
After getting in touch with Wang’s sister, she found the initial Sun-Star story about Wang’s body being found in the dumpster.
The sister sent Wang’s friend the story and he believed it might be her. After getting in touch with the Merced police detective investigating the case, it was confirmed that the body found in Merced was his friend Wang.
“So someone else sent me those messages,” the witness said of his friend’s posthumous texts. “I don’t know who.”
Li remains free on bail. Testimony is scheduled to resume in the trial Tuesday.
