Chinese mother who hired killer to strangle her son, 9, so she could have a second child is sentenced to death

Chinese mother who hired killer to strangle her son, 9, so she could have a second child is sentenced to death

By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 4:47 PM on 16th January 2009


Chinese children pictured at the Olympic Games welcoming ceremony (file photo). The country's strict population laws regarding children played a part in the mother's decision to have her son strangled

A Chinese woman who hired a man to strangle her nine-year-old son so she could have another child with her second husband has been sentenced to death.

Former bank clerk Li Yingfang wanted to avoid breaking strict population laws, which limit most couples to only one child.

A court official said Li, 36, gave custody of her son from her first marriage to the boy's grandmother after her first husband died.

She remarried, but her second husband also had a daughter from his first marriage, so the couple could not legally have another child, it said.

The report said Li first paid 70,000 yuan (about $10,000) to have a man named Wang Ruijie kill her second husband's daughter, but the girl resisted and escaped.

Li then took her son to a meeting with Wang, who strangled the boy and left him by a rural road.

Li initially received a death sentence suspended for two years because she had suffered from depression after having two abortions due to the rules against her bearing another child, the reports said.

Such sentences are often commuted to life in prison.

But the higher court found that her depression was not directly related to her crime.

Wang also was given a suspended death sentence, which the higher court upheld. Both were ordered to pay compensation to the bereaved grandmother.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1119402/Chinese-woman-hired-man-strangle-son-9-second-child-sentenced-death.html