CHINA: DEATH SENTENCE FOR MAN WHO THREW CHILDREN OUT WINDOW AND GIRLFRIEND WHO INSTIGATED THE MURDERS

December 29, 2021:

A couple from western China’s Chongqing municipality were both sentenced to death on 28 December 2021 for conspiring to kill the man’s two young children from a previous marriage so they could start a new family.
The father, Zhang Bo, started a romantic relationship with Ye Chengchen when he was still married. After divorcing his wife, Zhang threw his one-year-old son and two-year-old daughter out of the window of his high-rise flat in November last year, killing them both.
Ye was also convicted of murder and sentenced to death because she pressured Zhang to commit the crime. She did not want her future husband to have children with another woman, said the Chongqing No. 5 Intermediate People’s Court in its verdict on 28 December.
The evidence was presented during a hearing July, and it is unclear if they would appeal the decision.
Zhang and his ex-wife, Chen Meilin, both lived in Chongqing and raised one child respectively after they divorced in February 2020.
During this time, Zhang and Ye, who began dating in 2019, planned to murder his kids.
Ye had asked Zhang to kill the kids on multiple occasions because neither she nor her parents would agree to let her marry a man who had children from another woman.
“When the kids are gone, I will marry you … Why don’t you kill both since you will be killing anyway?” said Ye, according to Zhang’s former wife Chen, who revealed the conversation in legal documents.
Zhang organised a gathering of the siblings on 2 November 2020, at his home on the 14th floor of a residential building. He threw both of his children out of a window while alone with them.
He was seen by neighbours racing down the building’s stairs without shoes and crying beside the children, one of whom died at the scene. The other died in hospital.
The case was initially thought to be an accident as the man claimed he was asleep while the children fell out of the window, but he later confessed to police that he and Ye had plotted the murder.
“When Zhang Bo hesitated, Ye forced him to commit the crime, and finally he followed through with the murder,” read the verdict.
The court said that what they did has “violated both the law and moral limits” and caused “a terrible social influence”.