CHINA: MAN SENTENCED TO DEATH FOR PUSHING WIFE INTO SEA, USING INSURANCE PAYOUT ON PROSTITUTES

December 2, 2024:

A man in China was sentenced to death after pushing his wife into the sea from a ferry and attempting to claim her life insurance compensation to pay off debts and finance the use of prostitutes.
The case of the husband, 47, surnamed Li, was reported by China’s state broadcaster CCTV on November 21. He received the capital punishment for intentional homicide from the Liaoning Higher People’s Court in December last year. However, it remains unclear whether the sentence has been carried out.
On May 5, 2021, while travelling on a ferry from Dalian in northeastern China’s Liaoning province to Yantai in eastern China’s Shandong province, his wife, also surnamed Li, fell over the railing into the sea.
The police discovered her body after a 45-minute search. Upon hearing of his wife’s death, the husband appeared paralysed, sitting on the ground in shock.
Although he claimed the incident was accidental, police grew suspicious because the location where the victim fell was in a blind spot of the ferry’s surveillance system, which consists of over 200 cameras.
Moreover, Li was eager to obtain his wife’s death certificate from the police, insisting that local customs required cremation within three days of death.
The police invited Li to Dalian, promising to provide him with the certificate, while secretly dispatching officers to Shanghai, where he lived, to investigate him.
It was revealed that Li operated a restaurant in Shanghai but frequently owed money to his staff and suppliers. He remained single until marrying Li, a 46-year-old two-time divorcee with two children, in October 2020, six months before her death. The woman had been working at his restaurant since 2016.
The police discovered that the restaurant staff was unaware of their marriage, and neighbours noted that the couple did not appear to be in a relationship.
During the investigation, officers tracked down a 19-year-old girlfriend of the husband.
Li solicited a prostitute just half a month after his wife’s death in the hotel room arranged by the police, an act that was caught by their surveillance.
The police later found that Li, who owed over one million yuan (US$140,000), had bought four life insurance policies for his wife two months after their marriage, naming himself as the sole beneficiary.
If his wife died in a transport-related incident, the combined compensation from all four policies could total up to 12 million yuan (US$1.6 million).
Li was arrested, but he continued to assert his innocence.
The police sought help from forensic experts to examine footage captured by surveillance cameras positioned farther from the site of the fall on the ferry.
The experts determined that the manner in which the victim’s body fell indicated that she was pushed rather than having fallen accidentally.
They also enhanced the footage and identified another person’s arm in black – Li had been wearing a black suit that day.
Li was sentenced to death for murder in the first trial in July 2022, and a higher court upheld the verdict following his appeal.