The case in which a Chinese man, who murdered and dismembered his wife but reported to the police the “missing” of the woman in Hangzhou of East China’s Zhejiang Province in July 2020, was recently handed over to the city’s procuratorate for review and prosecution, the authority in Zhejiang said on Thursday.
On July 5, 2020, the man, 55, surnamed Xu, killed his 51-year-old wife over a family dispute while she was sleeping in the early morning. He dismembered her and threw her body parts into the residential community’s septic tank, according to an announcement by the local police on July 25.
On July 6, Xu reported to the local police that his wife, surnamed Lai, has gone missing. The police carried out a blanket search of the compound and neighborhood. It wasn’t until 18 days later that the police found Lai’s body tissues in the compound’s septic tank.
DNA tests later showed that the tissue was from Lai, the police said. Xu confessed on July 23 that he had killed his wife.
The case resulted in public outrage on the internet in China, with people stunned by Xu’s cruelty and how he managed to maintain a “calm” appearance while receiving media interviews in which he appealed for his wife to come back home.
The People’s Procuratorate in Hangzhou on August 6 officially approved the arrest of Xu as a suspect of intentional homicide.
The murder suspect surnamed Xu is seized by Hangzhou police. Photo: screenshot from video released by Hangzhou police on July 25
