Killer's bid for earlier release rejected

A Cairns man convicted of killing his wife and dissolving her body in acid, has had his bid for an earlier release rejected.

In December 2013 Klaus Julius Andres was found guilty of murdering 42-year-old Li Ping Cao, then disposing of her body by putting it in a wheelie bin and filling it with 20 litres of hydrochloric acid.

As a result, the exact circumstances of the death of Li Ping Cao, whose sister and son described as being "warm" and "loving", will never be known.

After the verdict was handed down, Andres appealed his conviction but was dismissed in 2015.

Last month he made a second bid, this time aiming to appeal against his life sentence, and subsequent parole eligibility date.

The 83-year-old applied for an extension of time to submit the appeal, citing he was "not a lawyer" and it had taken him "many years to find out he could make an application", after receiving some help from a fellow prisoner.

He argued 754 days he had spent in pre-sentence custody should have been reconsidered after a number of other charges against him were dropped in 2016.

Andres said if so, his parole eligibility date would have been 2026, instead of in two years' time.

'Premeditated' murder

At the time of his trial in 2013, Andres denied intentionally killing his wife, instead claiming it was an accident in an act of self-defence, but pleaded guilty to interfering with her corpse.

The then 70-year-old claimed he accidentally knocked Li Ping Cao unconscious in October 2011, after she learned he had been having an affair and tried to attack him with a fork.

At a media press conference following her disappearance, Andres suggested she may have run off with another man before looking directly at a TV camera and pleading for her to come home.

All of his accounts were ultimately rejected by the jury, after police told the murder trial Andres had given them conflicting accounts of his wife's whereabouts, had been caught purchasing hydrochloric acid on video, and put her mobile in an urn holding the ashes of his previous wife Monica Andres.

The urn was found in a room which had been turned into a shrine, with flowers and photos of his former wife.

The trial also heard evidence about a letter that had been sent to Centrelink, requesting for Li Ping Cao's payments to be transferred into his bank account, and testimony from the 35-year-old mistress who Andres had planned to marry.

During sentencing, Justice Jim Henry told the court the murder had been premeditated, with Klaus Andres showing no remorse, demonstrated further by his detached actions afterwards.

Appeal had 'no prospects of success'

On Thursday, the Court of Appeal judgement was published online, refusing Andres' extension, and stating that his proposed appeal "has no prospects of success".

"The sentence imposed on 12 December 2013 was in accordance with the law," Justice Debra Mullins AO, Chief Justice Helen Bowskill and Justice Christopher Johnstone wrote.

Klaus Julius Andres will be eligible to apply for parole in 2028, when he is 85.