Wife killer appeals death penalty in Shanghai
A man in Shanghai who killed his wife, hid her body in a freezer for three months and ran up a debt of nearly 200,000 yuan ($29,100) on her credit card while traveling alone and checking into hotel rooms with another woman, has lodged an appeal after receiving a death sentence on Thursday.
Zhu Songnian, the attorney for convicted killer Zhu Xiaodong, 30, confirmed the appeal and told Shanghai Law Journal: “Whatever the final court verdict will be, Zhu Xiaodong’s family will apologize and financially compensate the woman’s family.”
Phone calls to the attorney by China Daily went unanswered on Thursday. Shanghai No 2 Intermediate People’s Court, where the defendant was sentenced earlier on Thursday, also did not respond.
Zhu Xiaodong was convicted of strangling his wife, Yang Liping, 30, during an argument in October 2016 at their home in Shanghai’s Hongkou district. They had only been married for 10 months.
The defendant, a clerk at a clothing store, said at the trial in November that Yang, a Chinese language teacher, had started the argument by complaining about a trip the couple had made to Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, over the previous two days.
After killing her, he hid her body in a freezer for 106 days. During that time, he assumed his wife’s identity on her social networking accounts and replied to text messages she received from her parents and friends, according to the court.
Zhu Xiaodong surrendered to police, accompanied by his parents, on Feb 1 after realizing he could no longer hide the truth. The couple had been invited to attend his father-in-law’s birthday dinner that evening. Yang was her parents’ only child.
Yang resigned from her job at a primary school in September, saying she would go to Hong Kong with her husband, whose job had been transferred there, Zhu Xiaodong told police. But during the hearing, he said going to Hong Kong was only an excuse. Yang was in fact bored with her job, which she left on Oct 14.
Zhu Xiaodong purchased the freezer online on Sept 22 and placed it on the balcony. He said during the hearing that he bought it to store meat for his pet snakes, lizards and frogs. But Yang’s family believed it was a premeditated murder.
After Yang’s death, the defendant traveled to Hainan
province, Nanjing and Xuzhou in Jiangsu province and to South Korea to “try to forget about the killing”. He used his dead wife’s credit cards for luxury goods and daily expenses. He also used Yang’s ID card to check into hotels with a woman surnamed Lu.
During the hearing in November, Zhu Xiaodong admitted to having two affairs, one when he was dating Yang, and the other with Lu after he and Yang got married.
The court said that although he had confessed, he had attempted to hide the victim’s body for months and indulged in extravagance and enjoyment after Yang’s death, showing no remorse.
The court decided against a lesser punishment due to Zhu’s “extremely serious crime and great harm to society”.