DgcityA court in Sichuan province has sentenced a woman to death for a murder committed nearly three decades ago, after construction workers accidentally uncovered the victim’s remains in a rooftop flower bed. The Luzhou Intermediate People’s Court announced the verdict Tuesday against a defendant identified only as Chen, who was also convicted of identity fraud and illegally crossing the border.
The killing dated to the spring festival season of 1997. Chen had borrowed 40,000 yuan from a woman named Wu and, rather than repay it, persuaded her then-husband Yang that the two should murder the creditor. Chen lured Wu to a warehouse on the pretext of settling the debt, and Yang strangled her while she counted the cash. That night they buried her in a flower bed on a building rooftop.
The secret held for 28 years. In June 2025, workers carrying out drainage repairs found human bones along with shoes and clothing, and DNA testing matched them to Wu. Police traced Chen and Yang, arresting both in Shanghai the following October. Investigators discovered Chen had repeatedly obtained fake identity documents between 2004 and 2025, using them to acquire passports, travel to South Korea and the United States, book flights and hotels, and buy apartments.
Yang, who carried out the strangulation, received a death sentence with a two-year reprieve, a punishment typically commuted to life imprisonment if he commits no further offense. The court cited his frank confession and cooperation. Chen, described as the planner with what judges called extremely vile motives, showed no genuine remorse and was sentenced to immediate death, subject to mandatory review by the Supreme People’s Court. Their families paid 120,000 yuan in compensation to Wu’s relatives, a gesture the court said did not justify leniency for Chen.
The case is one of a growing number in which DNA testing and routine construction work have combined to resolve long-buried killings. Chinese police have expanded national criminal DNA databases since the 2010s, and investigators sometimes break cold cases after relatives’ profiles surface incidental matches, or as in Luzhou, after the body itself is found. For Wu’s family, the discovery brought answers nearly three decades after she vanished, a span in which they had no body, no formal explanation and no one to hold responsible. The trial record, read aloud in court, finally gave a precise account of her final hours.
