Heinous – An Asian True Crime Podcast · Mediacorp

Best of Heinous - Buckling Under Pressure | Wu Xie Yu | 2015

·35 min·8 clips

The episode begins with a thank-you to listeners and a quick note about the show’s return in 2026. From there, it moves to Fuzhou, a busy city on China’s southeastern coast. The narration centers on the pressure many families put on children to excel. Wu Xieyu is introduced as the model student, the kind of son whose future seems to carry the weight of the whole family. That image holds until July 10, 2015. On that day, his mother, Xie Tianxin, is found dead in an ordinary apartment. Wu stands over the body as the setting shifts from home to evidence. The contrast is the point: the brilliant student and perfect son are gone, replaced by a man trying to manage what he has done. He wraps the body in bedsheets and plastic, then keeps adding more layers. The episode says the body was wrapped in 75 separate layers. It also describes his attempts to deal with decomposition and hide the smell. The narration paints him as careful and calculated, not panicked. It then widens into the criminal case. Wu stays ahead of authorities for a long time. The story lingers on how a 21-year-old managed to do that. Prosecutors later bring charges of murder, fraud, and the buying and selling of identity documents. His relatives ask for leniency and point to mental illness. The court rejects that argument. The judge finds that he acted with awareness of the consequences. The episode treats the legal system as strict and final. Wu is sentenced to death for murder on August 26, 2021. He also receives 14 years for fraud and identity theft. On January 31, 2024, the episode closes the case with his execution by lethal injection at age 29. The court reports that he declined a final meeting with his father and relatives. The story leaves behind a life reduced to pressure, secrecy, and punishment. It does not reach for comfort. It follows the case to the end and stays there.

As heard by us

A grim, tightly told case about pressure, concealment, and the cost of a perfect image.

The episode keeps Wu Xieyu's story on a tight line, starting with the pressure of being seen as an ideal student in Fuzhou and moving through the killing of his mother, the concealment of her body, prosecution, sentencing, and execution.

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Why you'd press play

Press play if you want a true-crime case built around crushing family expectation, a murder in Fuzhou, and a final ending in execution.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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