Xie Tianqin (25 December 1967 – 10 July 2015) was a middle school history teacher in Fuzhou, Fujian, China. She was the mother of Wu Xieyu, a student at Peking University who had been admitted with the top score at his high school and had earned strong academic honors, including a Triple-A Student award and a scholarship, before planning to study abroad.
Wu Xieyu had experienced thoughts of suicide after his father died of illness in 2010, and came to believe his mother's life had lost meaning. In late June 2015 he purchased knives, waterproof cloth, plastic sheeting, isolation suits, and medical-style uniforms. On 10 July 2015, at approximately 17:00, Wu struck his mother with a dumbbell bar as she returned home to change her shoes, killing her. He wrapped her body in some 75 layers of plastic cloth with activated carbon added to mask decomposition odors, left the body in a dormitory at the school where she worked, and installed surveillance cameras and blacked out the windows of the room.
For approximately seven months, Wu concealed the killing from relatives and friends by claiming his mother was accompanying him on a study-abroad trip to the United States. Using this pretext, he borrowed a total of 1.44 million yuan from relatives, colleagues, and friends, transferring the funds to his mother's bank account, and fabricated a resignation letter in her handwriting that was sent to her workplace. He also purchased more than ten forged identity documents during this period to conceal his identity.
Xie's body was discovered by Fuzhou police on 14 February 2016 after relatives, unable to reach mother and son, reported them missing. Wu was identified as the primary suspect and had already fled. He evaded capture for over three years, traveling through several Chinese cities and eventually settling in Chongqing under assumed identities, working as a tutor and at a nightclub and bar. He was arrested by Chongqing police at Chongqing Jiangbei International Airport on 20–21 April 2019 after facial recognition technology identified him.
Wu was tried by the Fuzhou Intermediate People's Court, which on 26 August 2021 sentenced him to death for murder, eleven years' imprisonment for fraud, and three years' imprisonment for buying and selling identity documents, with the death sentence to be executed. Wu appealed. The Fujian Provincial High People's Court initially suspended the second-instance proceedings in March 2022 citing "irresistible reasons," later held a public second-instance trial on 19 May 2023, and on 30 May 2023 rejected the appeal and upheld the death sentence. Wu Xieyu was executed by lethal injection on 31 January 2024 at age 29, having declined a final meeting with relatives.
The case drew significant attention in Chinese media and academic commentary regarding parent-child relationships, mental health, and the ethics of crime reporting, including criticism of coverage that focused on Wu's status as a Peking University student.
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