I must see you die at all costs: grieving Chinese mother whose children, 1 and 2, were murdere

A Chinese woman – whose ex-husband killed their two children at the behest of his girlfriend – has said she will never forgive him despite letters he sent her begging for forgiveness while on death row.

The man, Zhang Bo, threw his one-year-old son, Ruirui, and two-year-old daughter, Xuexue, out of the window of his 15th-floor flat in southwestern China’s Chongqing Municipality in November 2020.

He committed the horrific crime so he could marry his girlfriend, Ye Chengchen, who had an affair with Zhang before his divorce. She pressured him to commit the crime because she could not put up with marrying a man with children from previous marriage.

Both Zhang and Ye were sentenced to death in December 2021. They have both appealed to the higher court to review the verdict.

Prior to the appeal trial, the date of which has not yet been set, Zhang sent his ex-wife, Chen Meilin, who is also from Chongqing, three letters in January alone to ask for her forgiveness.

Chen, 31, said Zhang was pretending to regret his crime in a bid for the courts to show him mercy and asked him to stop playing tricks to delay the trial.

“The best way for you and Ye to atone for your crime is to accept the sentence of the first trial, and die quietly,” Chen wrote in a letter of reply to Zhang on February 8.

“If people who committed such an atrocious crime don’t receive the death sentence, no child will be safe anymore,” she wrote.

Chen said Zhang had not written her any letters during the 13 months between the killing of her two children and the first trial, or since they began dating in 2017.

In the three letters dated January 1, 14 and 27, posted by Chen along with her reply in her Douyin video, Zhang offered to give Chen his mortgaged house as compensation and wrote at length about how he was filled with regret.

Insisting that she would never forgive her ex-husband, Chen wrote at the end of the letter: “For the sake of my two children, I must see you die at all costs.”

Chinese online observers expressed firm support for Chen’s decision. One pointed out that Zhang’s letters “are full of excuses and mentioned the children very little”.

“He didn’t mean it when he said he was sorry,” the person added.

According to the verdict of the first trial by the Chongqing No. 5 Intermediate People’s Court, Zhang and Ye conspired to kill the two children from May to November 2020, and attempted murder a week before he actually committed the crime on November 2.

Zhang only had custody of Ruirui before the age of six, and Xuexue lived with Chen’s family after their divorce. Chen said Zhang had been ignoring Xuexue, and suddenly offered to look after her in October that year.

“When I asked Xuexue who she likes better, daddy or mummy,” Chen remembered the conversation with her daughter after she returned from Zhang’s place, “she said daddy.”

Chen described the agony she and her parents had gone through since the tragedy, adding that seeing justice for her loved ones is what keeps her going.

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