A woman killed her children and herself after her husband faked his own death as part of an insurance con – and failed to tell her.
Dai Guihua, 31, left a 1,000-word suicide note on WeChat and disappeared with their son and daughter, aged four and two, sparking a search by local authorities in Xinhua county, China, when she thought her husband was dead.
Their bodies were retrieved the next day from a lake near their home in Langtang township.
Her husband, identified only by the last name He in Chinese media was missing presumed dead after his car was found near a river, though his body was never recovered.
The 34-year-old did not tell his wife his alleged plan and she believed he had died. He has since handed himself into police.
State-run Voice of China Radio reports that in early September Mr He bought an insurance plan worth one miliion yuan (£110,000) without his wife’s knowledge.
She was named as the beneficiary.
Police have said that on September 7 Mr He disappeared.
On September 19 a borrowed vehicle Mr He had been using was found near a river, leading to the presumption he was dead.
On October 11 the bodies of his 31-year-old wife, their four-year-old son and three-year-old daughter were found in a pond near their home.
In a suicide note posted on WeChat, she wrote that she was coming to “accompany” him, adding that she had “only ever wanted our family of four to be together”, the Voice of China added.
“I wanted to leave by myself, but thinking that my children would suffer without both their parents, I decided to take them with me,” wrote Dai, who it was revealed had lost both of her parents when she was young, reports the South China Morning Post.
Mr He turned himself over to police the next day.
He had earlier posted a video online, which was later widely circulated, in which he was crying and saying he had borrowed money to pay for treatment for his three-year-old daughter, who suffered from epilepsy.
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