Overview
- Police in Hunan said a 34-year-old mother drowned her three-year-old daughter and four-year-old son before killing herself three weeks after her husband’s reported death.
- Investigators later learned the husband had staged his death by sinking a rented car, with no body recovered at the time.
- The husband had accumulated over 100,000 yuan in online loans for his daughter’s severe epilepsy treatment and had taken out a reported one million yuan life insurance policy naming his wife as beneficiary.
- He surrendered to authorities a day after the deaths and posted a tearful video stating he had intended to hide temporarily and later reunite the family, with his wife unaware of the plan.
- Authorities charged him with insurance fraud and intentional property damage as the story went viral on Chinese social media, drawing tens of millions of views on Weibo.