A Chinese father and his mistress who conspired and killed his two young children were recently executed in a case that drew nationwide outrage.
According to local authorities of China’s Chongqing Municipality, the death penalty review for Zhang Bo and Ye Chengchen, the defendants in an intentional homicide case, was approved, and the two were executed on the morning of Jan. 31.
In August 2017, Zhang Bo married Chen Meilin, and Ms. Chen gave birth to a daughter and a son.
In April 2019, Mr. Zhang hid that he was married with two children to pursue his internet friend, Ye Chengchen, and proposed a divorce to Ms. Chen. In August 2019, Mr. Zhang and Ms. Ye established a romantic relationship. Later, Ms. Ye learned that Mr. Zhang was married with children but continued her relationship with Mr. Zhang.
In February 2020, Mr. Zhang and Ms. Chen formally agreed to divorce, with the divorce agreement stipulating that Ms. Chen would raise their daughter and their son would be raised by Mr. Zhang until age six and by Ms. Chen after that age.
After Mr. Zhang’s divorce, Ms. Ye said that she and her parents could not accept the fact that Mr.Zhang had children and demanded that the children be killed. Mr. Zhang and Ms. Ye conspired several times and finally agreed to kill the children by faking an accidental fall from a building.
In February 2020, the two planned to kill the two children. On Nov. 1, 2020, Mr. Zhang asked Ms. Chen to bring their daughter to his home and stay overnight. At 3:30 p.m. on Nov. 2, 2020, Mr. Zhang took advantage of the fact that no one else was in the home, and threw his daughter and son, who were playing in the bedroom, out of the window.
The two kids died on the spot. The daughter was two years old, and the son was one year old.
The incident was initially considered an accident, as Mr. Zhang, the children’s father, rushed downstairs with no shoes right after the fall. Seeing his son and daughter lying on the ground, Mr. Zhang bawled and kept banging his head against the wall. He even scratched his own face with a big gash.
The police later discovered that Mr. Zhang had been abetted and forced by his mistress, Ms. Ye, to murder his own children.
On Dec. 28, 2021, both were sentenced to death. The two defendants appealed against the verdict.
On April 6, 2023, a second trial was held. On May 11, 2023, the verdict was pronounced and upheld.
According to Ms. Chen, the children’s mother, in the first trial, more than 17,000 chat records of Mr. Zhang and Ms. Ye discussing killing the children were found. It was revealed that the two initially planned two ways for the murder: one was to fake a car accident in which Mr. Zhang drives his car into the river and escapes; the other was to create the illusion of a fall from a height. In the end, they chose the second one, taking into account the fact that the car was not insured.
The mother of Ms. Chen, the grandmother of the murdered children, said that the evidence presented at the first trial was sufficient to prove that the two defendants were inhuman.
“After the 2-year-old Xuexue [the daughter] was killed, her family could not close her eyes no matter how much they wiped them, and she was finally cremated with her eyes open,” she said.
During the second trial, many people came to wait for the final verdict, hoping to meet Ms. Chen, the mother of the two murdered children, and show their support for her face-to-face.
According to local media, a Chongqing businessman, Mr. Zhang, came to learn about the progress of the second trial. Since he was not qualified to sit in on the trial, he sat on the stone steps in front of the courthouse.
“Zhang Bo deserved the death penalty,” Mr. Zhang said. “Others told him to kill people, and he just did so? That’s his own children!”
The execution attracted wide attention in Chinese society, with netizens commenting that the two “deserved” to be executed.
“Even a vicious tiger will not eat its cub. Zhang Jian’s approach has completely lost the bottom line as a human being. [Even] irrelevant passers-by will have some compassion seeing the children, not to mention the children’s biological father. They had divorced, and the girl had been living with her mother, yet this man tried to trick his daughter into his home to kill her. Human nature is despicable to this point,” said science and technology blogger Yao Lingyu.
“Finally it’s the time! They deserve it!” “These two people must be executed. How could they have such a heartless thought in their heads?” “It’s only right to pay for what you have done,” read some comments.
“Poor kids. Rest in peace.” “At last, the two children can rest in peace! Poor babies!” read others.
