Wife kills self, drowns children after husband's fake death

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A happy family collapsed in Loudi City, central China's Hunan Province, after a man faked his own death to commit insurance fraud but didn't inform his family of his plan in advance, leading to his wife's suicide and the deaths of their two children.

The details of the tragedy, a trending topic on Chinese social media since Monday, surfaced on October 12 when the 34-year-old husband, surnamed He, turned himself in to authorities after learning the bodies of his three beloved were retrieved.

Dai was seen on surveillance camera walking with her two kids to a pond. /Beijing Youth Daily

On October 10, his 31-year-old wife, surnamed Dai, drowned herself along with their 4-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter after posting a suicide note on messaging app WeChat. Police in Xinhua County found them in a pond near their home the next day.

In the note, the wife, a homemaker, said she was accused of causing her husband's death by He's family, who, she claimed, also blamed her for not having a job and spending too much money.

Dai also wrote that she and her husband had been happily married and that she loved and missed him, explaining that she was taking her children because she didn't want them suffer without both their parents and the family could all be together again.

The pond where the bodies were retrieved. /Beijing Youth Daily

Three weeks earlier on September 19, He rented a car from his employer and drove it into a river, disguising it as a traffic accident before fleeing to southwest China's Guizhou Province.

The man confessed he was more than 100,000 yuan (about 14,400 US dollars) in debt after taking out an online loan and thereby bought a life insurance policy worth 1 million yuan (about 144,000 US dollars) on September 7, days before faking the crash. He named his wife as the beneficiary but didn't let her know.

Overwhelmed with sorrow, He apologized to his dead family in a video clip he shared on social media, crying that he just wanted the money to pay for his daughter's epilepsy treatment and his car loans and never thought his wife's love for him was so strong that she would commit suicide.

Statement released by local police. /WeChat Photo

He has been detained by local police for intentional destruction of property and insurance fraud. Ironically, it is unlikely that He will be convicted of fraud because his wife didn't file an insurance claim after his disappearance, which will be regarded as attempted insurance fraud by Chinese legal experts.

“He's deception was not the direct cause of the deaths of his wife and children, so he is not criminally responsible for their deaths and it would be hard to determine his civil liability,” said Xu Hao, a senior researcher of Central University of Finance and Economics in Beijing.

According to the Beijing News, Dai's family has pointed the finger at He's family as the cause for this tragedy, retaining the right to file a lawsuit.

(Top image: A selfie of Dai and He.)