(Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn)
The Shanghai Higher People's Court on Friday sentenced a man to death for killing his wife. He hid her body in a freezer at home for 106 days and spent nearly 150,000 yuan ($21,800) from the woman's credit card on traveling and hotels with another woman.
The man Zhu Xiaodong appealed the death sentence handed down by the Shanghai No 2 Intermediate People's Court in August.
Zhu, 30, was convicted of strangling the woman, Yang Liping, 30, during an argument on Oct 17, 2016, at their home in Hongkou district 10 months after they tied the knot, the court said.
After killing her, Zhu, a clerk at a clothing store, hid the body of the woman, a former primary school teacher, in a freezer in the balcony for 106 days. During the period, he assumed the identity as his wife on her social networking accounts and replied to text messages she received from her parents and friends, according to the court.
Zhu finally surrendered himself to police accompanied by his parents on Feb 1 after realizing he could no longer hide the truth as the couple was asked to attend the father-in-law's birthday dinner that evening. Yang was the only child of her parents.
Zhu purchased the freezer, which was used to contain his wife's body, online on Sept 22. He claimed that he bought it to store meat for his pet snakes, lizards and frogs. But Yang's family believed it was a premeditated murder.
After Yang's death, Zhu traveled to Hainan province, Nanjing and Xuzhou cities in Jiangsu province and South Korea to "trying to forget about the killing". He used her credit cards for luxury goods and daily expenses. He used Yang's ID card to check into hotels rooms with a woman surnamed.
