On August 27, 2010, in the early morning, a murder case occurred in Bin County, Heilongjiang Province. The crime scene was in a remote urban village. The deceased was named Wang Chunbo, a grain trader. His wife was named Jing Shaoqin, who was seriously injured after the incident and was taken to the hospital by a neighbor.

Police investigation of the scene revealed that the deceased had likely been attacked while sleeping. He was shirtless and had been slashed about twenty to thirty times, with a very large amount of bleeding. The scene was gruesome.

Items in the home were scattered all over the floor, and drawers and cabinets were all open, clearly having been rummaged through. Based on this, the police initially believed that this might have been a case of a home invasion robbery that escalated into murder.

However, as the investigation deepened, the police discovered many suspicious points. The person who called the police at the time was the deceased’s wife, Jing Shaoqin.

The deceased Wang Chunbo had been killed at home after being slashed multiple times, while his wife Jing Shaoqin, aside from two knife wounds on her back, had no other injuries. The police found it highly unreasonable that she could escape from a vicious criminal and call the police, and judged that Wang Chunbo’s death must have been related to Jing Shaoqin.

The police believed that the perpetrator should have had a certain kinship relationship with Jing Shaoqin, because Jing Shaoqin’s injuries were relatively minor. Even if the perpetrator had purely entered the home to rob for financial gain, there should still have been some kind of relationship with her.

To verify their speculation, the police began conducting a secret investigation from the periphery. When questioning Jing Shaoqin’s third sister, she told the police that after Jing Shaoqin regained consciousness in the hospital, she had said to her, “I just wanted to hire someone to scare Wang Chunbo.” Upon hearing this, the police once again found Jing Shaoqin and questioned her indirectly. At first, Jing Shaoqin absolutely refused to admit it, but before long she actually turned herself in.

After turning herself in, Jing Shaoqin confessed that she had hired someone to kill her husband. She had arranged in advance with the killer Jing Hongda and his accomplice to directly come to the house and hack Wang Chunbo to death, with a reward of 40,000 yuan. This Jing Hongda was precisely Jing Shaoqin’s own nephew. Where were the murderers now? According to Jing Shaoqin’s confession, Jing Hongda had fled to Shandong and hidden there. Without delay, the police immediately rushed to Zibo City, Shandong Province, and captured Jing Hongda and his accomplice. At this point, all criminal suspects had been arrested.

Jing Shaoqin told the police that the reason she did this was that she could no longer endure her husband’s years of abuse.

In 1992, Jing Shaoqin, then only 17 years old, met Wang Chunbo, a man from the same village one year older than her. At that time, Jing Shaoqin’s whole family opposed their marriage because they all felt that Wang Chunbo was unreliable. But Jing Shaoqin was blinded by love and obstinately eloped with Wang Chunbo. Although life alone in a foreign place was hard, Jing Shaoqin felt very happy. She hoped she had not misjudged him and wanted to live a happy life with Wang Chunbo for everyone to see.

Jing Shaoqin had a very strong character. In order to earn money and live a good life, she worked almost day and night desperately. As long as she could make money, she was willing to do even the hardest and most tiring work.

Later, Jing Shaoqin and Wang Chunbo saved some money and started a small business, working from dawn to dusk, and their days gradually improved.

But no one expected that after the family’s financial situation improved day by day, conflicts between Wang Chunbo and Jing Shaoqin also arose.

Jing Shaoqin said, “From the time he had his first affair, our marriage began to become discordant. This may have had something to do with the environment around us. Many people we knew were like this, so Wang Chunbo may have been influenced by them.”

Jing Shaoqin said that after their lives became better off day by day, Wang Chunbo began to philander outside, which Jing Shaoqin could not accept, because she felt that even if everyone around them did this, Wang Chunbo still could not betray her.

Jing Shaoqin: “I kept urging him not to fool around with women. I said it I don’t know how many times, but he insisted on doing it right under my nose, as if deliberately trying to anger me, making me endure all of it.”

Jing Shaoqin no longer remembered when Wang Chunbo had his first affair. She only remembered that after that, she was often beaten and scolded by Wang Chunbo over this matter, and she never dared to tell her family or friends, until one time she was so frightened of being beaten that she ran to a neighbor’s house.

Neighbor: “Her face was swollen from being beaten. I didn’t know what they were fighting about, but Jing Shaoqin was beaten into a disheveled state. When she combed her hair, a lot of it fell out.”

Jing Shaoqin: “Every time he hurt me, I never felt that he had the slightest regret. Every time he just looked at me with those hateful eyes, without any sign of regret, never. So I felt especially disappointed and desperate. No matter how you tried to calm his violent emotions, it was useless. My son also once tried to persuade him to stop, and it was equally useless.”

Jing Shaoqin said she had too much grievance in her heart and did not dare to tell anyone. She endured and endured, until she discovered that her son’s personality was changing day by day, and he even said in front of her that one day he would kill Wang Chunbo. Her son’s idea made Jing Shaoqin break out in a cold sweat. She felt that she could not wait until the day her son got into trouble. She could not lose her son. So she found her nephew and his companion and together planned this case of home invasion robbery and murder.

Jing Shaoqin: “In this world, of all the things I have done, not one makes me regret. It is choosing him that I regret for my whole life. If there is a next life, I will regret it in the next life too.”

Jing Shaoqin was ultimately sentenced to life imprisonment.

According to surveys by China’s prison system, being unable to escape from domestic violence and then angrily killing one’s husband has always been one of the main reasons for violent crimes by Chinese women, accounting for 60% of female criminal offenses. According to statistics from the Shaanxi Provincial Women’s Prison, since 2005, the number of female inmates convicted of crimes of resisting violence with violence has increased by 20%-30% every year. In the Shaanxi Provincial Women’s Prison, in 2007 alone, there were 171 women serving sentences for violent crimes caused by marital and family conflicts, accounting for 30.35% of the total number of various intentional homicide cases in that prison. Among the 171 homicide cases, there were 163 cases in which wives killed their husbands with violence because they had suffered domestic violence for a long time, accounting for 95.32%.