A Chinese couple was executed for murdering the man’s two children from a previous marriage so they could establish a new family together.
Zhang Bo and his girlfriend Ye Chengchen are likely to have died by fatal injection on Wednesday, Jan. 31, after China’s top court accepted their death sentences, according to China Daily.
Zhang was found guilty of tossing his two children out a high-rise apartment window from the 15th level of a residential tower in southwest China’s Chongqing in 2020.
Ye was also convicted when the court decided that she compelled Zhang to kill the small children, a 2-year-old girl and a 1-year-old boy because she saw them as an “obstacle” and assisted in staging their deaths as an “accidental” fall, according to the Independent.
Zhang and Ye were sentenced to death in 2021 but were killed this week after a protracted appeals procedure that ended in a second trial, according to China Daily.
The Chongqing High People’s Court upheld the initial verdict and determined that Zhang and Ye’s punishments were appropriate.
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Its decision was submitted for approval to the Supreme People’s Court, which determined that their positions and total influence were equal, with each playing a key role and being the chief offender.
According to local media, the court decided that their intent was “despicable” and the techniques were “brutal,” resulting in severe legal penalties.
It was unclear how they were executed, but lethal injection is the most prevalent procedure in China, according to the Daily Mail.
Zhang had started an illicit affair with Ye without telling her he was married with two children. But when he divorced his then-wife, Chen Meilin, in February 2020, Ye asked Zhang to kill his two children, whom she “regarded as obstacles” to their marriage and a “burden on their future life together,” according to the court record.
After tossing his daughter, Zhang Ruixue, and son, Zhang Yangrui, to their deaths in November 2020, videos of Zhang appear to show him devastated about what he had done. He was reportedly observed slamming his head against the wall and sobbing excessively, according to the Express.
Zhang claimed he was asleep when the children “fell” and awoke to people shouting below.
Zhang’s mother claimed that on the day he killed them both, he requested her to look after his daughter.
“The moment I heard my kids were actually thrown out of the 15th floor by their father and the mistress, I couldn’t find any words to describe my feelings,” she said.
“I couldn’t imagine what my kids had experienced from the 15th floor to the ground. Were they desperate? Were they afraid?”
Zhang and Ye’s crime shocked the Chinese with its “cold-blooded” premeditation and the victims’ ages.
On Wednesday, their executions immediately surged to the top of a list of popular topics on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform.
