Suicide can be murder to set up

By Li Xinran  |   2008-7-23  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

IT was a case to make even the most experienced prosecutor dive for the dustiest of legal books where, almost certainly, no precedents would be forthcoming.

It seemed an open-and-shut murder case ... a man and his wife found in their car with their throats cut.

Now, it starts to get really complicated, so bear with us.

The two had formed a suicide pact after amassing huge gambling-related debts they couldn't afford to pay.

They didn't want to leave their family in poverty and hired a "broker," the woman's brother, to organize a team of killers to make it look like murder while they were on a business trip to the Chinese mainland.

The tangled case unraveled in a Zhuhai court in south China's Guangdong Province, Guangzhou Daily reported.

The two victims, the woman a senior clerk at a Macau casino, and her husband, a popular regular at the gambling establishment, even selected their own method of dying.

Zhou Ruohong, the clerk at Stanley Ho's Casino Lisboa, was found dead with her husband in the car on August 18, 2006.

Zhou Ruohong owed the money as she had tried her hand at being a loan shark and failed miserably.

She asked her younger brother to orchestrate the "hit."

Zhou's brother selected four men - surnamed Chen, Li, Pan and Yang - for the job.

Zhou's plan was that the men should shoot her and her husband.

Then another complication arose. None of the four hired assassins owned a gun.

The ever-cooperative Zhou agreed to a change of plan: they could cut her and her husband's throats with razors.

On the date that the couple said goodbye to the world and, hopefully, their debts, they parked their car on a street in Zhuhai City and were joined by two of the killers, Pan and Yang, who tied them to the front seats.

Zhou and her husband asked for a quick, clean death and held hands as the killers cut their throats.