Family of Murdered Briton Silent on China Sentencing

Neil Heywood was found dead
 in Chongqing on Nov. 15.

LONDON — Relatives of Neil Heywood, the British businessman whose murder in China is at the center of a huge political scandal there, remained silent Monday on the news that Gu Kailai, the wife of a disgraced Communist Party leader, had received a suspended death sentence after being convicted of poisoning him.

But friends of Mr. Heywood’s have publicly challenged Ms. Gu’s explanations during her trial that she had acted partly out of motherly instinct to protect her son, Bo Guagua, from blackmail by Mr. Heywood, whom they described in glowing terms as Bo’s adviser and protector.

Ann Heywood, the murder victim’s mother, wrote 10 days ago to Britain’s newspaper watchdog, the Press Complaints Commission, asking it to remind British newspapers that she, and her daughter Leonie Summers, had resolved not to respond to media inquiries about the case.

“Neither Leonie nor I will ever comment on Neil’s death,” she said.

The letter was written after Ms. Gu, who is married to Bo Xilai, a deposed former member of the Communist Party hierarchy, had pleaded guilty to Mr. Heywood’s murder in a one-day court appearance. Through her lawyers, Ms. Gu said that she had acted after her mind became unhinged, in part by what they described as threats Mr. Heywood had made against Bo Guagua, who studied at Oxford before moving on to Harvard.

The defense lawyers said Mr. Heywood had attempted to extort $22 million from her son, saying he was owed it after a joint real estate venture had failed. At one point, the defense team said, Mr. Heywood had briefly detained Bo Guagua inside his home in England and had sent a threatening e-mail to Ms. Gu demanding the money, courtroom witnesses said.

The e-mail, displayed at trial, threatened to “destroy” Bo Guagua. It appeared to have played an important part in the court’s decision not to hand down an immediate death sentence common in Chinese murder cases, which often lead to summary execution by a pistol shot to the head. Under the Chinese justice system, a suspended death sentence is usually commuted to life in prison.Since the trial, friends of the Heywood family have told reporters that the family, and others who knew Mr. Heywood from his school and college days, have dismissed the accusations against him as absurd.

The truth, they said, was that Mr. Heywood had been a conscientious mentor to the young man during his years in England, playing an important role in smoothing Bo Guagua’s acceptance by the elite Harrow boarding school in London, Mr. Heywood’s alma mater, and in making connections that later helped him win a place at Oxford.

“I would eat my hat if he threatened the well-being of Madame Gu’s son,” one of those friends said, asking not to be named because of the sensitivities involved.

The friends said that it appeared that the Chinese authorities had relied on the allegation in making Mr. Heywood in some ways a “scapegoat” for his own death. Nevertheless, the family, in remaining silent, appears to have made a priority of their concern for Mr. Heywood’s Chinese-born wife, LuLu, and their two children.

In April, when Chinese officials announced Ms. Gu’s arrest in the Heywood killing, family friends and British diplomats pointed to the plight of Mr. Heywood’s family in China as a powerful reason for the family remaining silent on the case.

At that time, the family remained sequestered at their home in an upscale expatriates’ community in Beijing, and diplomats said they had sought consular assistance from the British Embassy in gaining the exit visas they needed to leave China.