▲On the day of the trial of Wu Xieyu's appeal case, a man took a trial announcement on a display screen at the door of the court. Photo: Southern Weekend reporter Chai Huiqun
Editor's note: On May 30, 2023, the Fujian Provincial Higher People's Court publicly pronounced its judgment in the second instance of Wu Xieyu's appeal case of intentional homicide, fraud, and buying and selling identity documents, ruling to reject the appeal and uphold the original judgment.
In the judgment of the first instance of Wu Xieyu's mother-in-law case, the court held that Wu Xieyu had been premeditated and planned for a long time in order to commit the crime of intentional homicide, and his subjective malignancy was extremely deep, and the criminal methods were cruel.
However, his motives have always been a mystery. The verdict of the first instance reads: "Wu Xieyu was pessimistic and world-weary, and had thoughts of suicide, and after his father died, he thought that his mother Xie Tianqin's life had lost its meaning, and in the first half of 2015, he had the idea of killing Xie Tianqin." ”
However, why is a Peking University student with a great future "pessimistic and tired of the world"? Why do you think that a mother's life has no meaning? There was no explanation in the judgement.
The one who knows Wu Xieyu's motive for committing the crime is perhaps Wu Xieyu himself. During his two years in detention, he wrote hundreds of pages of self-narrative detailing his personal upbringing and the path of killing his mother, and said he used himself as a negative teaching material to warn the world. In addition, he wrote letters totaling more than 50,000 words to relatives and friends.
It is undeniable that the readme has the color of defending itself, and there have been doubts about whether it may excuse itself. But in any case, these materials to a certain extent reflect the little-known inner experience of a bright-looking scholar, leaving a rare psychological file for this mother-killer case that caused a sensation in the country.
The Southern Weekend reporter obtained self-report materials, as well as some of Xie Tianqin's diaries and letters, witness testimony related to Wu Xieyu's mother-killer case, first-instance verdicts and other materials, and sought evidence by interviewing Wu Xieyu's classmates, relatives and neighbors, trying to leave a record for the doubtful part of this cruel crime case.
This article was first published at Southern Weekend
Text / Southern Weekend Reporter Chai Hui Qun
Southern Weekend Intern Xie Ziyi Zheng Jiani
Editor / He Haining
On May 19, 2023, the Fujian Provincial High Court heard Wu Xieyu's appeal.
Seven years ago, this junior student at Peking University's School of Economics killed his biological mother Xie Tianqin, and then defrauded relatives and friends of more than 1.44 million yuan in the name of studying abroad. Until he was arrested at Chongqing Airport in 2019. During this period, he took the initiative to guide relatives to discover the murder scene, and also went to Hong Kong with his girlfriend to play.
In August 2021, Wu Xieyu was sentenced to death in the first instance and executed immediately, and he subsequently appealed. After more than a year of suspension, the Fujian High Court recently resumed the trial.
A person who observed the second-instance trial told Southern Weekend that just like in the first-instance trial, Wu Xieyu cried during the second-instance trial. He asked the court to give him a chance to spend the rest of his life atoning for his sins.
Compared with the first instance, the biggest change in the second instance is that the lawyer applied for a psychiatric evaluation for Wu Xieyu. It is reported that during the first instance, the lawyer also tried to apply for a psychiatric evaluation for Wu Xieyu, but Wu himself refused.
According to the above-mentioned observers, the basis for the lawyer's application for psychiatric evaluation included Wu Xieyu's family history of mental illness, ambiguous motives, and abnormal behavior. The prosecution did not agree to conduct a psychiatric evaluation for Wu Xieyu, believing that he was carefully planning and premeditating murder, and there was obviously no problem with his spirit, and there was no need for a psychiatric evaluation.
The court did not decide in court whether Wu was conducting a psychiatric evaluation.
Since childhood, Wu Xieyu has suffered from skin diseases, asthma, irregular heart rate and other diseases, because of the disease, he performed abnormally in the college entrance examination, and was hospitalized after the college entrance examination. During his studies at Peking University, he twice got up in the middle of the night to seek medical attention.
According to Wu Xieyu's own account, the experience of illness in his childhood seriously affected his psychology, and the insurmountable habit of masturbation and the early death of his father led to his further negative mentality. Before the incident, he was paranoid that he was about to die, and if he died, his mother could not live, so he planned to kill his mother and commit suicide. However, after starting, he suddenly "had an epiphany" and lost the courage to commit suicide.
Father, mother, family
On October 7, 1994, Wu Xieyu was born in Xianyou County, Fujian Province. Mother Xie Tianqin recorded in her diary that day:
"Nearly sixteen hours of labor pains finally came to an end, and at six o'clock in the evening, the doctor allowed the delivery bed, and at 7:20 the baby was born, and his cry announced the successful end of the October pregnancy. The baby is cute and healthy, has just arrived and can't see who he looks like, but unfortunately his nose resembles a replica of his mother's nose. Dear he sucked on the nipple, his movements were very standard, but unfortunately the milk did not arrive. ”
According to Wu Xieyu, his parents' relationship is "very good": "I have never seen them quarrel, and in my cognition, they are the same as Yang Guo and Xiaolongnu." Wu Xieyu said in the court of first instance.
Wu Zhijian and Xie Tianqin were both born in 1967 and are both from Fujian Xianyou. Wu Zhijian was born in a rural area, his biological father and biological mother had four children, he ranked second, he has an older sister and two younger sisters, the second of which Wu Zhimei suffered from schizophrenia in her 20s, never married, and still lives in a psychiatric hospital.
When Wu Zhijian was 8 years old, his father died of liver cancer at the age of 39. Unable to support the family on her own, her mother recruited a man and later gave birth to twin daughters. According to neighbors, one of them gave it away. The other suffered from intellectual disability since childhood, and it was difficult to take care of himself, and he recruited Du Minghai, a Sichuan native, to join him as an adult. Wu Zhijian's stepfather became insane in his twilight years and repeatedly left home.
Xie Tianqin was born in Xianyou County, but his family was also not good. Both parents are blind, Xie Tianqin is the eldest in the family, and there is a sister and a brother below.
Wu Zhijian and Xie Tianqin are the only college students in their respective families. Xie is the eldest and Wu is the only son, which means that after they start a family, they have to take care of the old family.
After graduating from university, Wu and Xie were assigned to work in Nanping City, Fujian Province, Wu at Nanping Aluminum Factory and Xie at Nanping Railway Middle School. They met through introductions, fell in love and got married.
As Xie Tianqin's colleague and friend, Ma Lihua (pseudonym) did not approve of the marriage from the beginning. In her opinion, since she was introduced to find a partner, Xie Tianqin should find someone with better family conditions, "and the result is that she found one that is not as good as hers."
The Southern Weekend reporter noticed that as early as the beginning of the marriage, when Wu Xieyu was not yet born, Xie Tianqin expressed concern in his letter to her husband. For example, in her letter of 14 January 1994, she wrote:
"You may leave me for a long time, I am so helpless, there is too much helplessness in life, who knows clearly? Resignation is everyone's choice. ”
Once, because Wu Zhijian had not returned home at 10 p.m., Xie Tianqin wrote a letter angrily denouncing him.
In fact, the diary of the day his son was born was almost the only one that Xie Tianqin showed joy, and the rest was full of negative emotions. When her husband was alive, she was anxious; After her husband's death, she grieved.
In 1995, Wu Zhijian was transferred to the branch of Nanping Aluminum Plant in Mawei, Fuzhou, and in the same year, Nanping Railway Middle School was abolished, and Xie Tianqin was transferred to Fuzhou Railway Middle School (renamed the Second Affiliated Middle School of Fuzhou Institute of Education in 2003) as a history teacher. The family moved from Nanping to Fuzhou and lived in the tube building of Xie Tianqin's unit. In 2000, he moved from the tube building to the new staff building of the school, and due to his low qualifications, Xie Tianqin was only assigned a two-bedroom living room on the first floor. Later, in this house, the mother and son lived until the crime.
Ma Lihua still remembers that when Wu Xieyu was a child, his aunt, who later suffered from mental illness, came to Fuzhou to take care of him for a while, and this aunt was still normal at that time.
In April 2023, a reporter from Southern Weekend went to a private psychiatric hospital in Xianyou and saw Wu Zhimei, who had been hospitalized here for many years, through surveillance video.
▲The building where Wu Xieyu's family lives is located on the first floor on the left. Photo: Southern Weekend reporter Chai Hui Qun
"Unreasonable hypochondriasis"
As a neighbor of the same doorway, Ma Lihua grew up watching Wu Xieyu. According to her, Wu Xieyu was a "medicine jar" when he was a child, and he first suffered from a skin disease and then asthma. Once the school organized a trip, Wu Xieyu was triggered by asthma by the carpet of the hotel room, and Xie Tianqin carried him for the night.
In a letter to his uncle written by the detention center, Wu Xieyu mentioned that when he was a child, he had a "very dirty and ugly" thing on his neck, and "my deepest memory in kindergarten was that I was ridiculed, alienated, and looked down upon because of this thing that grew on my neck."
When he was in elementary school, Wu Xieyu's skin disease improved, and asthma followed. In the letter, he told his uncle that he was "tortured by asthma" and believed that this had a profound impact on his later attitude towards life: "The deep-rooted pessimism, negativity, and despair of negative factors in my personality are probably the ones that asthma planted in my heart." ”
Ma Lihua said that whether it was skin disease or asthma, Xie Tianqin gave Wu Xieyu traditional Chinese medicine, and when he walked by his door, he often smelled Chinese medicine.
According to the recollection of a dormitory classmate of Wu Xieyu Peking University, Wu Xieyu's body was "not very good", and he did push-ups in the dormitory, "he gasped very badly after the first stroke".
In Ma Lihua's view, Xie Tianqin is not a "control freak" mother as rumored. On the contrary, she believes that Xie Tianqin, as a teacher, is very cultivated and knows how to take care of her son's inner feelings. She gave an example: once, Xie Tianqin bought pigeons to feed her son, she did not dare to kill, so she asked the biology teacher to help her kill, "After the biology teacher came, she said you wait, I went to ask my son, the son agreed, she let the kill."
However, the above-mentioned observer told Southern Weekend that Wu Xieyu mentioned an incident in the court of second instance when he was a child: his mother did not like people to come to his house, and once, he secretly took a classmate home to play games, but was bumped into by his mother, who was very angry, but did not scold him, just pulled his hair and slapped himself. He felt horrible at the time and remembered it for the rest of his life.
According to the testimony of Liu Hong (pseudonym), Wu Xieyu's girlfriend during the escape, during her stay with Wu Xieyu, she once found that Wu Xieyu once hit her leg with a stick, "It was quite heavy, I asked him what was wrong, he said that when he was a child, his father would beat him like this to exercise his ability to resist blows." He also had a small scar on his leg that he said was burned by his dad when he did something wrong as a child."
According to the above-mentioned observers, in the court of second instance, Wu Xieyu also mentioned that he was burned by his father when he was a child, because of the scars on his legs, he did not dare to wear shorts to go outside.
Ma Lihua doubted the authenticity of the above two things Wu Xieyu said, and with her understanding of Xie Tianqin and Wu Zhijian, she thought that neither of them would do anything like that.
On January 3, 2010, Wu Zhijian died in his hometown at the age of 42. Like his father, he also suffered from liver cancer, and it took only two years from the time he was diagnosed to his death. Ma Lihua told Southern Weekend that Xie Tianqin had told her that Wu Zhijian lived past the age of 40 "trembling".
Wu Xieyu wrote to his uncle that due to asthma, he developed "unreasonable hypochondriasis": "As long as there is a little problem in my body, there is a little discomfort, I will immediately alarm and be nervous, is it that I have some serious illness, now the signs are just appearing, soon my body will completely collapse, I will die like my father?" ”
Ma Lihua told Southern Weekend that during Wu Zhijian's illness, Wu Xieyu "became sensible" and studied harder. His talent for learning was also quickly realized.
However, Wu Xieyu's inferiority complex was not eliminated by good academic performance. In his letter to his uncle, he considered himself just an "exam machine" that was "good for anything but knowing how to take it," and that even for the exams he was best at, he thought that "others can surpass me if they want to take the test."
But Wu Xieyu also believes that the exam is his only meaning to his parents: "Fortunately, I live in the exam-oriented education system, and I happen to be very good at reading exams, in this system, I took the first place in the exam and everything was fine, classmates envied the teacher like my parents to be proud of me, I use this first place is enough to be meaningful to my parents, enough to win glory for my parents, enough to get all kinds of honors, enough to cover up my other problems..."
In 2009, Wu Xieyu was admitted to Fuzhou No. 1 Middle School, one of the best high schools in Fujian Province, with the second highest place in Fuzhou City. In the court of first instance, Wu Xieyu himself mentioned the incident, saying that his father was very proud at that time. "This is when I am happiest," he cried, "and then six months later he died." After he died, I took first place in the midterm exam, but it didn't work - it didn't matter how many first places I had. ”
In the testimony of many students, Xie Yu was said to be an extrovert. Ma Lihua said that when Wu Xieyu participated in the independent enrollment interview of Peking University, Xie Tianqin took leave because he was not good, and he accompanied Wu Xieyu to Beijing. She remembers that once when she went to eat at a restaurant, Wu Xieyu chatted with the waiter after a short time.
Two words from the aunt
In his first self-statement, Mr. Wu described his father's death as a "pivotal turning point" that affected him and his mother, and that since then he has "embarked on a path of self-destruction."
More than a month before Wu Zhijian's death, his mother found that there was no way to return to heaven and decided to take him back to Xianyou's hometown to die. It was a two-hour drive from Fuzhou to Xianyou, and during that month, every weekend, Xie Tianqin would take her son to visit her husband.
During the New Year's Day holiday in 2010, Xie Tianqin and Wu Xieyu returned to Xianyou for two days. On the third day, when they returned home, they were told to return to their hometown - Wu Zhijian died at about 5 p.m. that day.
Not seeing his father for the last time became Wu Xieyu's "eternal regret". This is largely due to the two words that his aunt told him. One sentence is: "Your dad is walking in pain, he keeps shouting pain", and the other is: "Your dad has been calling your name before leaving, Xiaoyu Xiaoyu".
Wu Xieyu therefore believes that he caused his father to "die without blindness", and regretted that when he returned to his hometown on New Year's Day, he only knew "memorizing history books to prepare for the midterm (final) exam", and did not talk to his father more.
After the first-instance verdict, facing the surging news reporter, Aunt Wu Xieyu admitted that she had said the above to Wu Xieyu that year.
In the letter to his aunt, Wu Xieyu also mentioned this detail. According to what he wrote, the aunt said those two words in the presence of his mother after he returned to his hometown. After hearing this, he wrote, his brain "immediately began to function on its own"—and when he thought of his father "not blinding," he felt an unimaginable sense of guilt.
In a letter to his aunt, Wu Xieyu said that the two sentences of his aunt made him "feel that my life is over at that moment and died with my father."
In the self-report materials written during the first trial, Wu Xieyu also said that in the past, he was only imagining "death", but after witnessing his father's "death", death has become "materialized" for him. He constantly convinced himself that "Dad is there waiting for me", because only then would he not lose all hope.
He collected all the depictions of "the world where man goes after death" and came to believe that death is not the end, but the journey to another world. "Death is not terrible, it's just going home."
In a letter to his aunt, Wu Xieyu once described the scene when his father was buried:
“...... Do you remember, that day outside the fire, grandma and aunt, you cried and shouted in fairy dialect: 'Ah Jian, run, run, don't stay inside, run back to Fuzhou, run back to Ponytail, run back to Duwei, don't be inside, it's hot inside...' You shouted over and over again, I listened dumbly, at that time I seemed to really hallucinate, I seemed to really see from the high and gloomy furnace with a rumble, it seemed that there was really an invisible and incomparably familiar breath rising into the air, retreating into the invisible, at that moment I said to myself: 'Yes, my dad didn't die, my dad escaped, he'll come back again, I'll see him again', since that day, I've been waiting for him to come back every day, and I'm looking forward to my dad coming back to me and my mom every day..."
Du Minghai confirmed to Southern Weekend that Wu Zhijian did have the situation described by Wu Xieyu when he was cremated, which is a local funeral custom.
Ma Lihua remembers that shortly after Wu Zhijian's death, when she was comforting Xie Tianqin, Xie said that her son told her, "Dad is not dead, watching us where we can't see." Ma Lihua was stunned at the time, "I said if he was possessed by some kind of demon."
"I don't feel like I'm going to live anymore"
According to Wu Xieyu in his self-statement, his father's death was a "devastating" blow to his mother. Xie Tianqin often asked him in dismay: "Is it that I did not do well enough, is it that I did something wrong?" Shouldn't that Dr. Hu Yong be allowed to operate on your father, and shouldn't he be sent back to his hometown later? ”
Xie Tianqin's diary shows that at least two years after Wu Zhijian's death, she has not been able to get out of her grief, and even had thoughts of suicide for a while, including the following in her diary on September 27, 2011:
“...... Zhijian, your death shocked me too much, losing my lover, a woman's survival has become so difficult, especially spiritual, that no material thing can make up for... It's just that I have worries and don't worry about our son, so that I won't give up my life soon..."
Wu Xieyu mentioned in his self-report that after his father's death, in addition to being pessimistic, his mother also fell into self-isolation and avoided friends:
“...... When Teacher Ma knocked on the door, my mother would turn down the TV all of a sudden, and then make a boo gesture to tell me not to make a noise, pretending that there was no one at home... She often complained to me that those people were so annoying that they knocked on the door all day to disturb us. She will also talk about some unpleasant past events that happened with them before. All this made me feel that she didn't seem to regard their old acquaintances of more than ten or twenty years as friends. ”
Ma Lihua confirmed to Southern Weekend that Xie Tianqin did have the above situation. She said that because Xie Tianqin does not like to answer the phone, if she has something, she usually goes directly to her at home, sometimes the light is bright, but she can't open the door. In addition, even if the door was opened, Xie Tianqin would never let her into the house, just stood at the door and said.
Xie Tianqin has a serious "cleanliness". According to what Aunt Wu Xieyu said in an interview with The Paper reporter, when Wu Zhijian was sick, she went to take care of her, but Xie Tianqin did not let her live at home, and she could only live upstairs at Teacher Zhu's house. In addition, Wu Zhijian's house has three seats, and everyone is seated in the right place. Aunt Wu Xieyu didn't know at the time, and was just about to sit down, but was stopped by Wu Xieyu, who was still a child at the time, saying that she couldn't sit. She believes that Wu Xieyu must have been influenced by Xie Tianqin.
Ma Lihua told Southern Weekend that Xie Tianqin was very strong, and Wu Zhijian was sick, and she never said anything to the outside world. After Ma Lihua found out, she went to visit with her husband, but they all went to the hospital, but Xie Tianqin did not tell them which ward and let them go back.
Xie Tianqin mentioned in a diary that because she didn't want to owe favors, she once struggled with a New Year red envelope that Ma Lihua gave to Wu Xieyu, and asked her dead husband how to deal with it.
Xie Tianqin's diary also recorded some incomprehensible psychological activities:
"I was really depressed: three cars were parked under the window today, including Mr. Ma's car, and it seemed that this day could not be passed. I hate everyone, everyone is going to bully us orphans and widows. So, the whole day was spent in high tension..."
In another diary, Xie Tianqin admitted that he was "not psychologically normal" and once again revealed his thoughts of suicide:
"Without you (referring to Wu Zhijian), I feel that I will not live. ...... I simply couldn't do anything well, and I had lost all confidence in myself. ...... Hesitate long before doing everything and regret it after doing it.
"Zhijian, I also know that I am not psychologically normal and need to see a psychologist, but I know that the cause of these conditions lies in your departure.
"Zhijian, you know how much I need you! Now I can't be normal unless I follow you. Zhijian, I'm confused, should I go to you, will you wait for me? ”
It is worth mentioning that, contrary to pointing out in the self-report that my mother was sad because of her father's death, when asked by his own lawyer at the beginning of the first trial what blow his father's death had to your mother, Wu Xieyu denied this, "She is just a little sad, and all my mother's performance is completely normal", "I over-interpreted it myself".
Wu Xieyu even said in his self-report that he wrote the "deepest, most fundamental and strongest motivation in his heart" in order to "tell everyone 'My mother is the best mother and the best teacher in the world...'" and "My mother must not be blamed, not the slightest!" ”
"A person who falls into water but can't swim"
Wu Xieyu said in his memoir that after his father's death, he "vowed to put all his energy and attention on his mother and do everything I could to give her happiness."
He said that when he was at home, he talked to his mother more and more; When I was not at home, I would call my mother every day for at least ten minutes at a time.
Several high school and college classmates confirmed that Mr. Wu often spoke with his mother on the phone, often at night. Southern People Weekly quoted a high school classmate of Wu Xieyu as saying that he had seen Wu cry more than once when he called his mother.
Ma Lihua told Southern Weekend that Wu Xieyu had told her that if she went out to play in the future, she would be asked to bring her mother. Xie Tianqin also told her before his death that his son was very sensible and often enlightened himself.
However, enlightening his mother seems to be a difficult task for Wu Xieyu. In a letter to his aunt, Wu Xieyu said that after his father's death, he felt "unable to say anything to his mother" because "no matter what I said, I was afraid of making my mother sad", and "the more I didn't say it, the more I didn't know how to open my mouth", and "a thicker and thicker wall of heart was built between him and his mother".
Another way Wu Xieyu enlightens his mother is to study harder and make her happy by getting good grades.
According to Wu Xieyu in his self-report materials, until the first semester of his third year of high school, his academic performance was basically the first in his grade. However, when it came to the sprint stage of the college entrance examination, his body had a "fatal problem". He wrote:
"I started to have palpitations, palpitations, angina, and even a 'near-death feeling', and I felt like I was about to die suddenly again and again. My mother took me to the hospital for a check-up and it turned out to be 'left atrial sinus arrhythmia', the doctor said it was not a big problem, but I didn't believe it, I felt 'my heart is about to die, I may die suddenly'. ”
"After the heart problem, my energy was not as good as before, I would get dizzy on the exam, tinnitus, it was difficult to concentrate, and the ranking began to decline. I only scored 670 points in the college entrance examination, and I ranked 114th in the province, but fortunately I had already enrolled 60 points in my own before entering Peking University. The college entrance examination was smashed, I was extremely disappointed in myself, and I felt that I had lost the biggest battle of my life. ”
A high school friend of Wu Xieyu's told Southern Weekend that after going to college, Wu Xieyu once told him that he did not do well in the college entrance examination, and if he had performed normally, he could have gone to Peking University Guanghua School of Management.
Wu Xieyu wrote to his aunt that it was not until he read his mother's diary after killing his mother that he learned that his mother was very proud of his admission to Peking University.
After the college entrance examination, Wu Xieyu was hospitalized, and his aunt went to take care of him. Years later, Wu Xieyu wrote to his aunt that in fact, there was no major problem with his heart that year, he had "hypochondriasis" and reached the point of "incorrigibility".
After being admitted to Peking University, Wu Xieyu's academic performance is still very good, and his university class teacher said when cooperating with the police investigation that Wu Xieyu's academic performance ranked second in the class from the first semester of his freshman year to the first semester of his junior year. Even in the eyes of his classmates at Peking University, he is also a "top student".
However, Wu Xieyu was very dissatisfied with his results, he believed that if he did not win the first place, his mother would be disappointed.
During college, Wu Xieyu still talked to his mother on the phone every day, as he did in high school, telling her about various things that happened in school, hoping to make her happy. But his mother's reaction made his heart ache, and he wrote in his memoir:
I could clearly feel her interest in all this, hidden behind the forced smile. Sometimes I even say: 'You don't have to worry about me, I don't want you to retire in the future, you have to be a ruthless and unrighteous person, you look at your father, it's because he worries about the ruins of his hometown all day, the psychological burden is too heavy, and the illness is not good.' Hearing this, to be honest, my heart hurts very much, and the most painful thing is that the person you love the most teaches you to stop caring about her and love her again..."
“...... Constantly trying like this, to be honest, I also gradually got tired, and I felt fatigue from the depths in my heart, I was not a person with rich energy... The more tired I felt, the more panicked I felt, and I felt that my mother and I were like people who fell into the water but couldn't swim, desperately trying to save each other, but they were struggling hopelessly, sinking deeper and deeper, and finally taking the next step to a dead end. ”
Wu Xieyu said in a letter to his uncle that he did not know how to communicate with people since he was a child, and he has always had many confusions and questions, but he has never known how to ask relatives and friends, "always going to books, novels and movies alone to find answers, and then holding it in his heart alone."
In a letter to his aunt, Wu Xieyu also said that he was "completely immersed in a fictional world, even to the point where there is no distinction between fiction and reality, true and false." In his letter, Wu Xieyu mentioned many fictional works, such as the movie "Deadly Magic", the novel "Notes on Tomb Robbery", the drama "Peony Pavilion", the Greek mythological story Pygmalion, and the novel "The Brothers Karamazov".
After his father's death, Wu Xieyu became more autistic. In a letter to his uncle, he stated:
"I am always suspicious, other people's families have fathers, and my father is dead, everyone looks down on us orphans and widows, so I dare not ask even if I have more doubts in my heart, even if there is a lot of pain in my heart, I dare not go to anyone to try to talk to even a word, because I always suspect and fear: 'As long as I show the slightest vulnerability and not strength, not only will everyone not sympathize with us to help us, but will only look down on me, my father, and my mother.'"
Wu Xieyu also wrote: "My mother is probably too strong and afraid of being looked down upon like me, after all, we don't have a father now, we are now orphans and widows." ”
In Xie Tianqin's diary on October 9, 2011, he mentioned that he wanted to ask Ma Lihua a question:
“...... I still can't know, should someone like me live? Just now at 19 o'clock, on the way home from the office, I met Teacher Ma and them for a walk, so I took a walk with them and chatted a little, but I never dared to ask the answer to the question 'should I live', so that the unanswered questions will always surround me and make me unhappy. ”
More than ten years later, when she saw Xie Tianqin's diary, Ma Lihua froze, saying that she did not expect Xie Tianqin to be so pessimistic, let alone that it would be so difficult for Xie Tianqin to ask friends for help.
"Quitting color" failed
According to Wu Xieyu's self-reported materials, after entering college, the "near-death feeling" he had in his third year of high school reappeared, which led him to suicidal thoughts. According to the testimony of Wu's college roommate, Wu Xieyu went to the university hospital twice in the middle of the night, once due to asthma and once due to heart problems.
In the court of first instance, Wu Xieyu mentioned the relationship between his father's death and his suicidal thoughts:
"If he (father) could know when he would die and would keep us (referring to keeping Wu Xieyu's mother and son in their hometown), we wouldn't be like this." So I think I need to know when I'm going to die, and if I don't know, then I'm going to do it myself. So I decided to kill myself. ”
According to Wu Xieyu's self-statement, he had suicidal thoughts, which was also related to the failure of "quitting color". He confessed to the police that in the third grade of primary school, he contracted the "masturbation habit" after seeing a pornographic movie on his father's laptop.
Wu Xieyu said that he had repeatedly tried to overcome masturbation, but failed again and again, which made his pursuit of perfection miserable, and he felt that he was "not worthy of any clean girl", and even thought about "self-palace".
Wu Xieyu confessed that in his sophomore year, he once contacted a "quit color bar" on the Internet to learn "how to get rid of masturbation in a systematic way", and he insisted on it for a total of more than forty days, but in the end he still fell short:
"This failure made me feel that my own willpower was so weak, I felt that I had no cure, and this failure also had a key impact on me, which was the trigger for my later suicidal thoughts."
According to Wu Xieyu's self-reported book, after going to college, due to some "key events", his friendship with four high school friends also went wrong, resulting in "never going back to the past." Among them, the "key incident" in which he and his classmates surnamed Huang became estranged was that the other party had come to the school to find him in college, and the two had "long conversations all night" on the balcony of the dormitory. After that, Wu Xieyu felt that he could not "communicate in depth" with him.
Huang confirmed to Southern Weekend that he had indeed gone to Peking University to find Wu Xieyu during the National Day holiday, and that was the last time the two met, when he lived in Wu Xieyu's dormitory, and the two did talk late. However, Huang does not remember anything important about that conversation, and it is even difficult to recall what was discussed. He also did not feel estranged from Wu Xieyu after that meeting. In his opinion, after graduating from high school, it is normal for friends to be uncontacted because they are not in the same university.
However, Mr. Wu seems to feel something completely different, saying in his memoir that after estrangement from his friends, he "fell into boundless loneliness and despair."
Wu Xieyu said in his self-report that in the first semester of his junior year, five years after his father's death, he finally forced himself to a "critical point":
"The 'joy of life, the motivation of life, and the meaning of life' in my heart have dropped to an extremely low level, while the 'reason for death, the thought of death, and the urge to die' have grown to an extremely strong level, and the 'power of life' has been completely overwhelmed by the 'power of death'. Since childhood, I have asked myself Hamlet's heavy question every day: Survival or destruction? At this point, I told myself: 'It's time'. ”
According to "Sanlian Life Weekly", Wu Xieyu's college classmates said that Wu Xieyu, who was originally very self-disciplined, read online novels in his bedroom every day for a period of time in his junior year, did not sleep at night, and did not get up in the morning.
According to the testimony of the university class teacher and dormitory classmates, by the second semester of his junior year, Wu Xieyu had various abnormal behaviors:
He put a curtain around the bed, "When I go back to the dormitory, I like to hide alone in bed and pull up the curtain, and no one knows what he is doing inside."
He missed several courses during the midterm exam, and the college issued him an "academic warning notice" for this, which Wu Xieyu had never done before.
For more than a month before the accident, Wu Xieyu rarely lived in the school dormitory, claiming that his father went to Beijing to work and he went to live with his father.
In addition, when Wu Xieyu returned home from vacation in early July, he packed up his personal belongings and even the bedding, "giving the impression that he did not plan to come back to live."
"What if my mother dies?"
According to Wu Xieyu's self-statement, in the second half of 2014, during the first semester of his junior year, he would run to the 18th floor of a building in Beijing every week because Leslie Cheung jumped from the 18th floor of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Hong Kong, and he wanted to "step out like his brother... You can go to that world to find Dad."
He didn't step out in the end, as explained in his statement:
"Every time I stood in front of the window for a long time, I still didn't step out, because since my father left, I have called my mother every night at ten o'clock in school, and this phone call is the most important thing of my day, 10,000 times more important than the book exam. Now the time is up, I'm going to call my mom, so I can't die yet, what if my mom dies? ”
In his statement, he also said that he had thought about committing suicide with his mother, but if he did, he would have to tell her what he thought:
"If I tell my mother: Mom, let's leave this world together and go to that world to find my father, I think my mother will be extremely painful and guilty, she will feel that she did not teach Xiaoyu well, did not bring Xiaoyu well, so that I have such negative, dark, extreme suicide thoughts, she will feel sorry for Dad, she will also be extremely disappointed in me, I don't want her to suffer, I never want her to be disappointed in me!" I didn't know how to open my mouth to say all this to her. ”
In his self-statement, Wu Xieyu repeatedly mentioned that he was afraid that his mother would be disappointed in him. At the pre-trial meeting of the first instance, he said that before the incident, he wanted to go to the school's psychological counseling room for help, but gave up because he was afraid that his mother would be disappointed.
In a self-report written during the first trial, Wu Xieyu said that in early 2015, he was convinced of three things: that he was about to die, die suddenly, or commit suicide; If he dies, Mom will also commit suicide; Mom is about to commit suicide.
Wu Xieyu said that these three things are "hopeless, irreparable, and irrevocable." He speculated that there were only three paths in front of himself and his mother: he died before his mother; He died with his mother; He died behind his mother.
Mr. Wu said there were three stories going through his mind at the time, telling him that only the third way was the last option. The first story is in the movie "Inception", the heroine and the male protagonist return to the real world by committing suicide by lying on the rail in a dream; The second story is the novel "The Dedication of Suspect X", in which the male protagonist decides to kill the woman he loves so much; The third story is that the mother of an autistic child with cancer suffocates her child with a pillow and hangs herself because she fears that her child will not be cared for when she dies.
"Since my mother and I can't live in this world, we just want to go to that world to find my father, then, let me do it, I let my mother go first, and then I will go." Wu Xieyu said, "As soon as this thought came up, I was terrified, but I thought about it over and over again from beginning to end, 'deriving' over and over again, only feeling that we had nowhere to go, we had only a dead end." ”
"The last test of life"
After deciding to kill his mother, Wu Xieyu began to prepare. According to his account during his interrogation on the day he was arrested, he searched the Internet for ways to prevent his mother from physical suffering.
The interrogation transcript states:
"At the beginning, I looked for poison, because I had read in the novel that some poisons could kill people at once, but through the information on the Internet, I found that there was no such poison at all; After that, I went to find that the 'hand knife' similar to the martial arts can also make people instantly lose consciousness after hitting the neck of the human body, but later I found that this is also nonsense. ”
Later, Wu Xieyu consulted a large number of materials and believed that there were a large number of nerves in the back of the human brain, and through a strong blow, one time was enough to make people lose consciousness. He eventually decided to kill his mother in this way. In addition, he purchased a complete set of knives online with the aim of killing his mother and then cutting off her head. "At that time, I thought that after death, there is a soul, and the soul of a person is concentrated in the most important part of the person's head, so I said at that time that I would leave my mother's head after killing her. So that my mother's soul can follow me. ”
In the judgment of first instance, the court held that Wu Xieyu committed the crime of intentional homicide, after a long period of premeditation and planning, the subjective malignancy was extremely deep, the criminal methods were cruel, and his act of killing his mother seriously violated family ethics and trampled on the normal emotions of human society, and the crime was extremely serious.
On July 10, 2015, Wu Xieyu ushered in his "last big test of his life" - killing his mother.
According to his statement in court, this date was carefully chosen by him, not only because his mother officially began summer vacation, but also because it was a reverse date of his birthday (October 7).
On the afternoon of July 10, Xie Tianqin went to the school to attend the closing ceremony, and Wu Xieyu went to the "firewood room (storage room)" to take the "tools" purchased in advance and put them in the room. According to Wu Xieyu's self-report written during the trial, until this moment, he was still expecting his father to "appear" to stop him.
"I sat there, waiting for my dad to stop me, and I yelled at my dad at the craziest in my heart: 'Dad, do you see that? It's the last minute! It's really too late! ...... Only you can stop me, only you can save me and my mother! I'm running out of time, Dad! ”
Wu Xieyu said his father did not "manifest". He waited blankly until the sound of his mother coming upstairs sounded downstairs.
"Now, it's really too late, it's all over. I have no choice, I have no way back, I can only do this, I can only take my mother with me. ”
At about 17 o'clock on July 10, Wu Xieyu smashed the back of Xie Tianqin's head with a dumbbell pole when she turned to change her shoes.
After his mother fell to the ground, he was facing Wu Xieyu, he was afraid that his mother would know that he did this, and in a panic, he continued to take the dumbbell pole and smash it his mother's head seven or eight times.
Because he did not dare to look at Xie Tianqin's eyes, Wu Xieyu tied her head with transparent glue purchased in advance to block her gaze. According to the records of the on-site investigation, Wu Xieyu also put a pot lid on Xie Tianqin's face.
Mr. Wu also bought three cameras and an infrared alarm, which were installed in his room, his mother's room and at the entrance door.
Wu Xieyu told interrogators that the cameras and alarms installed at the entrance of the house were so that he could know whether anyone had found out at the first time and facilitate his planning of his next step.
At the beginning of the first trial, the prosecutor specifically asked Wu Xieyu why he installed cameras and alarms at the entrance to the house, and Wu Xieyu confirmed that he was trying to observe if and when the crime scene could be discovered, and that he planned to end his life when he found out. However, the prosecutor did not ask Mr. Wu about the purpose of installing the other two cameras.
According to Wu Xieyu when he was interrogated by the police, the camera installed in his bedroom was to see his mother's body "dissolve and go to heaven." In addition, he wanted to observe whether his mother's body "moved" and "if the height is lowered, it may feather". However, he admitted that he "did not see any change".
As for the camera installed in his mother's room, according to Wu Xieyu during his interrogation, the purpose was to "see if my mother and my father's souls would come home."
Some media have reported that Wu Xieyu wrapped his mother's body layer by layer to make a "mummy". However, according to the interrogation transcript and the first-instance verdict, Wu Xieyu did not wrap the body, but moved the body to the bed in his bedroom, and covered the body with sheets, quilt covers, clothes, plastic film, etc., a total of 75 layers. Activated carbon packets, refrigerator deodorant, dehumidifier, etc. are also placed in the middle of the cover to prevent the body from decaying.
On the night of the killing of his mother, Wu Xieyu checked into a hotel about two kilometers from his home. Staying at the hotel at night and returning home during the day to clean up the site lasted for more than 20 days.
"What will you do if I die"
After killing his mother, Wu Xieyu did not commit suicide, but chose to flee. In the self-report material, he said that from the moment his mother died, he had an "epiphany":
"That world doesn't exist! This world is the only real world! When people die, they are gone, they disappear forever, and they will not go to that world at all! Dad didn't show up, he didn't show up to stop me, it's not at all what I thought 'Dad acquiesced to me doing this'!" ”
When interrogated at the beginning of his arrest, Wu Xieyu said that after killing his mother, he had three plans:
"The first is to turn yourself in, but the probability of turning yourself in is only 20%; The second is suicide, accounting for (about) 40%; Third, because I haven't experienced love yet, I want to fall in love with a girl before committing suicide, but because of the limited time, I think of feeling sexual pleasure through prostitution, and this idea also accounts for 40%. ”
Wu Xieyu said that the second and third ideas fought in his mind, and finally the third idea prevailed.
According to the first-instance verdict, from December 2015 to late January 2016, six sex workers provided services to Wu Xieyu. According to the testimony of a sex worker, she felt that when Wu Xieyu had sex with him, he did not enjoy sex, but "that feeling of conquest"; Another sex worker said he felt Wu Xieyu was violent.
After arriving in Shanghai, Wu Xieyu fell in love with a sex worker named Liu Hong. According to Liu Hong's testimony, after establishing a boyfriend and girlfriend relationship, Wu Xieyu treated her very well, and they got along well. Liu Hong also said that Wu Xieyu was bored and hardly went out. She remembered that once at about 23 o'clock, when they were lying in bed together, Wu Xieyu suddenly cried, and cried very sadly. Wu Xieyu told her that he was a pessimist and would think of things in the worst ways.
Also according to Liu Hong's testimony, on February 3, 2016, the 25th day of the lunar month, she returned to her hometown in Yongcheng, Henan Province from Zhengzhou to prepare for the Chinese New Year. At 23 o'clock that day, Wu Xieyu called Liu Hong, saying that he wanted to go to Yongcheng to find Liu Hong. Liu Hong was surprised and persuaded him not to come, but Wu insisted on going, and his voice became choked.
The next day, Wu Xieyu rushed to Henan. Liu Hong recalled that on February 5, 2016, she and Wu Xieyu stayed in the Yongcheng Oriental Pearl Hotel, and Wu Xieyu seemed very excited that day, saying several times that he would take her to the "happiest place" and "live the happiest life", and asked with tears choked: "If I die, what will you do?"
On February 7, 2016, when Liu Hong arrived at the hotel again, she found that Wu Xieyu had said goodbye, and the ground was littered with debris smashed by digital products such as computers and mobile phones.
According to Wu Xieyu during the first-instance trial, the reason why he smashed the computer was because it stored a large amount of yellow films, and he did not want the world to see those "dirty things". Afterwards, he also thought that his idea was "very ridiculous".
When asked by the lawyer whether he was preparing to flee or commit suicide by destroying these things, Wu Xieyu replied: "Yes, I haven't decided yet, but the premise is that I destroy them first, my thoughts are like Daiyu funeral flowers, Daiyu burning poetry, everything I do is to immediately find a person from novels and movies." ”
On February 6, 2016, the 28th day of the lunar month, my uncle received a short message from Wu Xieyu, saying that he and his mother would go home and asked his uncle to pick them up at the train station. However, after the uncle and the others went, they were empty, and they could not contact Wu Xieyu.
Ma Lihua said that at about 10 o'clock that night, Wu Xieyu's uncle and aunt knocked on her door and asked if she had heard about Xie Tianqin studying with her son in the United States.
After the Spring Festival, several relatives called the police and entered Xie Tianqin's residence to confirm that she died at home.
According to the first-instance verdict, after Wu Xieyu killed his mother, he defrauded relatives and father and friends of a total of more than 1.44 million yuan in the name of his mother and studying in the United States.
In the process of "borrowing money" from relatives and friends, Wu Xieyu showed his high intelligence, he played two roles by himself, and communicated with relatives and friends through social software, one moment is Wu Xieyu, the other is Xie Tianqin. He only used his mother's mobile phone to send text messages, never answered the calls of relatives and friends, and because Xie Tianqin usually did not answer the phone, it did not arouse the suspicion of relatives and friends.
In a letter to his aunt, Wu Xieyu said that he lied that his mother and son had gone to the United States, but in fact he had lied to himself. Wu Xieyu said that during that time, he tried his best to brainwash himself: "Yes, my mother and I are living a new life in the United States, and what I and my aunt said is not fake, it really happened!" ”
From January 3 to 6, 2016, Wu Xieyu and Liu Hong also went to Hong Kong for three days. A colleague of Wu Zhijian, who had lent Wu Xieyu money, believed that Wu Xieyu did not really intend to escape after killing his mother, otherwise he would not have returned after going to Hong Kong.
In fact, the reason why the murder of Xie Tianqin was solved was precisely because Wu Xieyu took the initiative to send text messages to relatives and friends.
Wu Xieyu said in his statement that before leaving Liu Hong, he tried to give the last 80,000 yuan on his body to the other party. He said that if Liu Hong took it, he would not be able to continue to escape, and there were only two ways to turn himself in or commit suicide. But Liu Hong did not accept the money, so he reconsidered continuing to escape.
Interrogation transcripts show that Wu Xieyu fled to Hengyang, Hunan Province, where he met Cai, a sex worker. After learning that Cai's child could not go to kindergarten because he had no money, he gave Cai 15,000 yuan. Around September 2016, Wu Xieyu fled to Chongqing, worked as a "male model" in three KTVs, and made a new girlfriend. On April 20, 2019, Wu Xieyu was arrested by the police while dropping off a friend at the airport.
Wu Xieyu said in his self-report that during the days of escape, he was like a "walking dead" -
"I let myself forget 'who I am and what I did,' I let myself think 'I'm not Wu Xieyu.'" I hid, and I walked and muddled day after day until I was caught by my police uncle. ”
Mr. Wu said he later realized that his mother was actually slowly coming out when he fell into despair.
Ma Lihua said that before the accident, she actually felt that Xie Tianqin's state was improving, "When I chatted with her, the whole person's spirit has changed, and the tone of speech is relatively relaxed."
At the end of June 2015, less than a week before the incident, Ma Lihua was walking in the playground when she met Xie Tianqin, who had just finished graduating from a graduating class. Ma Lihua recalled that Xie Tianqin also said that when he returned to Xianyou a few days ago, he bought a pair of shoes for Wu Xieyu, considering that Wu Xieyu would come back in a few days, and he would definitely go to Xianyou to visit his grandmother and grandmother, so he did not bring the shoes back.
However, Wu Xieyu never had the opportunity to wear the shoes his mother bought him.