Chinese nanny admits to killing dead baby’s parents
Print Edition
A CHINESE nanny admitted in a Paris court to killing and dismembering the parents of a baby who had died in her care, in a gruesome case worthy of a horror movie.
“It’s true, I killed them, and I will regret it for the rest of my life,” Hui Zhang, 34, said at the start of the hearing on Tuesday.
Zhang said she acted in self-defense as the furious parents of the dead newborn attacked her and her boyfriend with a butcher’s knife.
Her boyfriend and co-accused Te Lu, also 34, denied helping Zhang kill the couple.
“I was sucked into a whirlwind of nightmares but I am innocent,” he told the court.
The case first came to light in June 2012 after two joggers came upon a leg, cut off at the ankle, in a forest on the edge of Paris.
Several days later, a guide dog found a human torso in the same area, but the hunt for further remains was fruitless.
Police knew the victims were Asian and initially thought the murders could be the work of the Chinese mafia, or of Luka Rocco Magnotta, a Canadian convicted of killing and dismembering a Chinese student who spent time in Paris.
But before the bodies could even be identified, Zhang and Lu turned themselves in.
Zhang told police she had been babysitting a 2-month-old boy who died in his sleep.
She and her partner decided to offer the parents money to try to get them not to report the death. They invited the parents to their home, but said their plans quickly went awry faced with the fury of the grieving couple.
“My client maintains she was acting in self-defense,” said the nanny’s lawyer Alexis Guedj.
A lawyer for the family of the child’s mother, Chloe Arnoux, said Zhang “was not able to tell them to their faces that their child was dead, so she brought the baby’s body into the sitting room.”
Zhang chopped up the two bodies in the bathroom with an electric saw, using the washing machine to cover the noise.
She then wrapped the body parts in rubbish bags and scrubbed her apartment clean.
Lu said he fell unconscious during the fight and remained so while Zhang cut up the bodies.
“He was violently hit, it has been medically recorded,” said Lu’s lawyer Eric Dupond-Moretti, arguing that his client was not complicit in the murder.
When he came to he helped her get rid of the remains, transporting them “by foot or public transport,” said a policeman.
After the couple turned themselves in, they directed police to the locations of more body parts around the forest.
However, they did not find the baby’s body, which Zhang said she had thrown in rubbish bins along with some of the other remains.
The trial will continue until tomorrow.
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