Man says father-in-law's refusal to lend him money triggered attacks

BEIJING - A man suspected of killing 10 people, including his father, son and wife, in a village in Northeast China is allegedly blaming his "stingy" father-in-law for pushing him to the point where he carried out the brutal hammer attack.

Police said at the weekend that Zhou Yuxin said his father-in-law had refused to lend him money and that, coupled with suspicions about his wife's fidelity, triggered his killing spree.

According to police, the 33-year-old suspect wrote a note shortly after the rampage that reads: "Yan Bing (the suspect's wife), I have loved you for my whole life. It is the Internet that destroyed us. All the things that happened were made worse by your father."

Ten bodies were found on Thursday at a bathhouse and neighboring car wash owned by Zhou in Ertaizi village in Anshan city, Liaoning province. Among the dead were Zhou's wife, his 10-year-old son, father, a female bathhouse worker, Zhou's landlord and the landlord's son, three car wash workers and a good friend of Zhou's father.

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After his arrest in the city of Yingkou on Friday afternoon, Zhou appeared "calm" during questioning and gave explanations of why he killed his wife and the car wash workers, a spokesman from Anshan public security bureau told Xinhua News Agency.

The spokesperson said: "Yan Bing (the suspect's wife) liked chatting and had abnormal adulterous relations with several friends online." Police said Zhou believed one of the car wash workers had been having a relationship with his wife.

One of Zhou's neighbors said the suspected infidelity was only part of the story and thought Zhou's father-in-law might have been the main reason for the killings.

"The couple's conflicts were not intense enough to have driven Zhou to kill," the neighbor, Yan Zhengyuan, told China Daily on Sunday.

"They did not live separately but Zhou recently paid a visit to his father-in-law. It might have been that there was too much pressure from the debts Zhou owed and that drove him crazy."

Police said Zhou had borrowed 100,000 yuan ($15,300) from his father-in-law to open an electrical repair shop several years ago but the business did poorly. When Zhou asked his father-in-law for more money several days ago, he refused, said police.

Zhou also complained that his father-in-law had long dismissed him as "useless" because of the business failure and persuaded other relatives not to lend him money, according to police.

Officers said Zhou fled the scene after the killings in the hope of attacking his father-in-law.

According to Zhou's confession, he started out trying to contact his father-in-law and searched for him but he was out on business.

The confession states that Zhou then grabbed a hammer and drove a minivan out of the village "with the purpose of finding a chance to kill his father-in-law", police said.

But officers said Zhou has not yet explained why he killed his own father, son and others who apparently had no part in his dispute with his wife and her father.

According to Zhou's confession, he killed his wife, son and a niece of his wife on Wednesday night before killing his father and three workers the next morning.

The confession states that he called his landlord and asked him to call at his shop to collect his rent before killing him and his landlord's son, as well as the friend of Zhou's father who happened to visit the shop at that moment.