A Chinese couple has been executed for murdering the man’s two children from his previous marriage so they could start a new family together.
Zhang Bo and his girlfriend Ye Chengchen are believed to have died by lethal injection on Wednesday, Jan. 31, after China’s top court recently approved their death sentences, China Daily reports.
Zhang was convicted of throwing his two children out a high-rise apartment window from the 15th floor of a residential tower in southwest China’s Chongqing in 2020.
Ye was also convicted after the court determined she forced Zhang to kill the young children, a 2-year-old girl and a 1-year-old boy, as she saw them as an “obstacle” and helped stage their deaths as an “accidental” fall, the Independent reports.
The pair were sentenced to death in 2021 but were only executed this week following a lengthy appeals process that resulted in a second trial for Zhang and Ye, China Daily states.
The Chongqing High People’s Court upheld the original ruling and said the sentences handed down to Zhang and Ye were appropriate.
Its ruling was submitted for approval to the Supreme People’s Court, which found both their roles and overall influence were equivalent, with each playing a primary role and being principal offenders.
The court determined their motive was “despicable” and the means “brutal,” warranting severe consequences by the law, according to local media.
It was not clear how they were put to death but the most common method in China is lethal injection, according to the Daily Mail.
Zhang had begun an extramarital affair with Ye without telling her he was married and had two kids. But after he divorced his then-wife, Chen Meilin, in February 2020, Ye urged Zhang to kill his two children, whom she “regarded as obstacles” to their getting married and a “burden on their future life together,” the court heard.
After throwing his daughter, Zhang Ruixue, and son, Zhang Yangrui, to their deaths in November 2020, videos of Zhang after the incident appear to show him grief-stricken at what he had just done. He was also seen banging his head on the wall and sobbing uncontrollably, the Express reports.
At the time, Zhang claimed he was asleep when the children “fell” and said he woke up to people shouting downstairs.
The children’s mother said Zhang had asked to take care of his daughter on the day he killed them both.
“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 sent shockwaves across China for its “cold-blooded” premeditation, as well as the age of the victims.
Their executions quickly rose to the top of a list of trending topics on the Chinese social media site Weibo on Wednesday.
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