The ear in the freezer and the high-stakes inheritance battle

The Age

4 days ago

A Sydney man who cut off part of his late brother's ear before the funeral in the hope of using DNA evidence in a bitter inheritance battle has lost a court bid to obtain the human tissue from police for testing.
Jian Zhong Li was charged with improperly interfering with a corpse after he surreptitiously cut off part of his brother Jian Ming's ear with pliers before his cremation in March 2022. Li kept the samples in two glass jars in his freezer.
'The coffin lid was then shut. The funeral ceremony began later without others, including the funeral director, knowing what had happened,' NSW Supreme Court Justice Michael Slattery said in a decision on Tuesday.
'The deceased's body was cremated the following day.'
Li's brother had died of complications from COVID-19 and did not leave a will. Li had hoped DNA testing would prove his brother did not have a biological child.
Under NSW succession laws that apply when a person dies without a will, his brother's only son, Cheng, stood to inherit his entire estate because the deceased did not have a spouse.
But if his brother had no children, the family matriarch would have been entitled to the estate, which reportedly included a million-dollar property in Petersham in Sydney's inner west.
In May this year, Li and the brothers' mother, Quin, applied to the Supreme Court for an order that the samples taken by Li be released to him by NSW Police to enable DNA testing to be conducted.