Asia, Murder | featured news

Investigators looking for a missing Hong Kong couple reportedly found their severed heads in a bloody apartment, leading to the arrest of their son. A 29-year old man appeared in a Hong Kong court Monday in connection with the deaths of his parents, whose heads were found in a refrigerator, Sky News reports.

China will open the murder trial of Gu Kailai, the wife of ousted Communist Party Politburo member Bo Xilai, on August 9, two sources said on Friday, a case at the center of a scandal that has rocked the government and could bring Gu the death penalty.

Gu Kailai, the wife of the disgraced political leader Bo Xilai, has been indicted for intentional homicide, in a crime that has triggered China’s most serious political crisis in decades. The official Xinhua news agency on Thursday evening published a brief dispatch announcing that Ms. Gu and an aide employed by the family had been formally charged in the poisoning death of the Briton, Neil Heywood, 41, whose body was found last November in a hotel in Chongqing, the sprawling municipality Mr. Bo led until his downfall.

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said Tuesday that news of a Chinese investigation into the death of a British businessman in China followed repeated British requests for an inquiry. Forty-one-year-old Neil Heywood was found dead in a hotel room in Chongqing, China's biggest metropolis, last November. His death was initially attributed to alcohol poisoning but foul play is now suspected.

The British businessman whose murder has sparked political upheaval in China was poisoned after he threatened to expose a plan by a Chinese leader's wife to move money abroad, two sources with knowledge of the police investigation said.

China’s Communist machine on Wednesday launched a coordinated chorus of approval of the decision to oust fallen top official Bo Xilai and arrest his wife in a murder probe, likely an effort to stave off criticism from the disgraced politician’s many supporters.

India's oldest inmate, jailed for a multiple murder when he was 84, is released from prison at the age of 108.