For all their riches, wealthy billionaire Asians are not immune to tragedy and crime when it strikes their families. From dismemberment to maid murderers to killer boyfriends, here are some of the horrific murder and homicide stories that happened to rich, wealthy Asians.

The Millionaire Who Was Chopped Into 100 Pieces — A Chinese Murder In Vancouver

In May 2015, Gang Yuan, a 42-year-old millionaire, was found cut up into more than 100 pieces at his mansion in an upscale suburb of West Vancouver, Canada.

“There was a lot of blood,” a police officer said as he detailed how he found several garbage bags containing Yuan’s remains in the garage.

Everybody wanted a piece of the dead millionaire, it seems, metaphorically and physically. A woman had petitioned the B.C. Supreme Court for a DNA sample from one of Yuan’s 100 pieces to confirm that he is the father of her daughter. But she was not the only one making paternity claims for her child.

A legal fight had broken out over his estate that was estimated to be worth between $20 million and $50 million. Five women had came forward, claiming that Yuan had fathered their children and that their children are, therefore, heirs to Yuan’s enormous fortune.

There is little doubt that these women have the $5 million mansion that Yuan had died in within their sights as well.

But Yuan was not the sole occupant of the grand hillside manor.

His female cousin, Xiao Mei Li, her husband Li Zhao and her daughter, Florence Zhao, also lived in the sumptuous house, where they were financially supported by Yuan.

In a strange twist, Florence was one of the stars of YouTube reality show Ultra Rich Asian Girls. In one of the episodes, Florence was shown exercising next to an outdoor swimming pool in the mansion. In the same episode, the film crew shot her sailing to a private island near Sidney, B.C. She gave a grand tour of the island grounds, of its main building, the four guest cottages and the servant quarters.

Court records showed that Yuan had bought the island a few years ago. In addition, it appeared from the claims filed in court that he also owned interests in a coal mine and an iron mine in China. He owned farmland in Saskatchewan that was valued over $7 million, two luxury cars worth $600,000, and a mansion in Vancouver’s posh Shaughnessy neighbourhood that was estimated to be worth $14 million.

Florence’s father, Li Zhao, is being charged with the murder of Yuan.

In a shocking confession in court in May 2018, Li Zhao testified how he and Yuan had struggled over a gun in the driveway of the mansion, before the gun went off and killed Yuan.

Zhao related how the two of them were discussing a business plan to market custom stands for hunting rifles. He said they had taken out a rifle to see how the stands would work.

Zhao said he became upset when Yuan mentioned to him that he would like to marry Florence as part of the business deal. Zhao said that he told Yuan, “You not only beat up and further abuse your girlfriends, you verbally abuse your own mother. I can never allow my daughter’s lifetime happiness to be ruined by you.”

He went on to tell Yuan that he is “disgusting” and worse than “a dog”.

Zhao said it was at this point Yuan had struck at him with a hammer. He claimed that the two of them had tussled and the gun had gone off as Yuan pulled at the gun. He said his wife and mother-in-law had chanced upon the scene and screamed at him to call an ambulance.

Zhao said he shouted at the women to leave and dragged Yuan’s body into the garage instead. He described how he spent the night cutting up the body with an electric saw.

“I started to have hallucinations. I heard someone talking to me about a bear and how to cut up a bear. And that’s how I cut up the body… I cut up the body into so many pieces like I was cutting up a bear.”

The trial is ongoing at the moment.

Wealthy Socialite Murdered By Maid

69-year-old Nancy Gan was a well-known socialite and philanthropist among the well-heeled in Singapore’s upper circles.

She was known for hosting dinners at home for ambassadors’ wives. Educated at Trinity College London, she was an accomplished classical pianist and a porcelain painter who would frequently donate her artworks to raise funds for charitable causes.

She made select appearances at high society galas and charity balls. A publishing director said, “Nancy’s very unassuming and genuine. She belongs to the corporate crowd and is quite selective about the events that she attends, preferring to turn up at charity dos. She’s not the kind who will attend events to show off a $10,000 gown.”

In 2014, her friend recounted how Madam Gan was wondering if she should attend the Bone Marrow Donor Programme’s fund-raising gala in May. Her wrist was in a cast, the result of a fall at the Botanic Gardens. According to her friend, Madam Gan had said, “If my cast is still on, I think I won’t come. Friends might want to write on it, and I don’t want that. I am conservative.”

Her younger brother called her “an extremely nice and charitable person”. A magazine editor who knew her for four years said, “She’s one of the nicest people around. Warm, vivacious and so down-to-earth.” Her neighbours described her as “gregarious, neat in appearance and talented”.

But on 19 March 2014, Madam Gan was found dead in the swimming pool of her luxurious bungalow at Victoria Park Road.

She had drowned with severe head injuries.

Her Indonesian maid, 18-year-old Dewi Sukowati, was arrested and charged with murder.

It was 19 March 2014, Dewi’s sixth day of work at Madam Gan’s house.

This was Dewi’s first job in Singapore. She was still new. Not only to the job. But to the country as well. Everything was so different from her home village in Pati in central Java.

At 7.30am, Madam Gan rang a bell. She had woken up.

Dewi took a glass of warm water on a tray to Madam Gan in her bedroom.

Madam Gan became upset. The glass had been served to her on a plastic tray instead of a silver tray.

Madam Gan reportedly scolded the maid in Bahasa Indonesia: “Wrong again, wrong again, very stupid girl, don’t know anything.”

She splashed the glass of water on Dewi’s face and flung the tray onto the floor. When Dewi bent down to pick the tray up, Madam Gan grabbed it from her hands and hit Dewi on the head with it. Madam Gan proceeded to scold the maid and threatened to slash her salary.

“I’ve already told you, you forget again, you make mistakes again, I will cut your salary until it becomes $200.”

It was at this point Dewi snapped.

She grabbed Madam Gan’s hair and swung her head against the wall. Madam Gan collapsed unconscious, her head bleeding profusely. Frightened, Dewi checked to see if Madam Gan was still breathing and found that she still had a weak heartbeat.

Fearful that Madam Gan would call the police when she wakes up, Dewi decided to drown her employer instead. She dragged Madam Gan by her hair out of the house towards the swimming pool. As she made her way down to the pool, her anger grew as she recalled all the daily scoldings that Madam Gan had given her.

She slammed the back of Madam Gan’s head onto the edge of a ceramic tiled step and grabbed Madam Gan by her pyjamas instead. Dewi dragged Madam Gan across a few more steps so that her head would hit the steps along the way, causing her to bleed more.

At the pool, Dewi pushed Madam Gan into the water. She threw in a pair of Madam Gan’s slippers to make it appear as if Madam Gan had committed suicide. Dewi cleaned the blood in the house and changed into a fresh set of clothes. She went to the neighbour’s house to ring the doorbell, but along the road, she met a dispatch rider riding past her. She beseeched him for help, telling him that her employer was in the swimming pool. The man called the police after he saw Madam Gan’s bloodied body in the water.

Madam Gan was pronounced dead at 9.07am.

The cause of death was drowning, contributed by an injured brain because of a fractured skull.

A psychiatrist found that Dewi was suffering from “acute stress reaction”, a psychological disorder that arises from witnessing a traumatic event. The doctor testified that Dewi’s young age and history of abuse by her father may also have impaired her judgement and mental responsibility during her act of crime.

Dewi’s charge of murder was reduced to culpable homicide instead.

Prosecutors argued that Dewi had launched a “brutal” and “deliberate” assault on a weak and defenceless victim. She had killed Madam Gan with “senseless brutality and mindless violence” that was “manifestly disproportionate” to any resentment that she might feel towards her employer over her six days of employment.

The defending counsel said that Dewi had been physically abused by her father in Indonesia. She had gone to work in Singapore to get away from her abusive father. However, her recruiter had sent her to work without mandatory training. Dewi was not given time to learn her job and adjust to life in a foreign country.

He alleged that Madam Gan had hit Dewi with a broomstick, kicked her and hit her fingers with a plate on her first day of work. Dewi’s lawyer added that Madam Gan had abused her previous maids similarly in the past. Madam Gan’s handyman described his ex-employer as a “perfectionist” and that she would “nag and scold” her employees frequently.

In May 2016, Dewi Sukowati pleaded guilty to culpable homicide, not amounting to murder.

She was sentenced to 18 years of jail.

Millionaire Heiress Battered To Death By Boyfriend

Bi Xixi was young and intelligent, with a bright future ahead of her.

Her family described her as “kind, friendly, approachable” with “the whole world in front of her”. Born in Nanjing, eastern China, she had moved to UK at age 15 for her studies. She later graduated from Cardiff Metropolitan University with a BA in international hospitality and events management. She was a polyglot who spoke English, French and Spanish.

At age 24, she was a post-graduate student doing her master’s degree in international business. Her father was reported to be a billionaire transport mogul in the food industry in China. Her brother said Xixi was slated to take over the company that was a multi-million dollar business.

However, all that was taken away from her when she was beaten to death by her British boyfriend in August 2016.

Jordan Matthews, 23, was an unemployed pub chef who had been in a relationship with Xixi for over a year. In a confession to the police, Mathews gave a harrowing account of what he did to Xixi for seven hours in the one-bedroom flat they lived in Cardiff, South Wales. The assault had began around 1.30am on the 19th of August.

“I grabbed her by the front of the T-shirt with two hands and picked her up off the sofa, then I dragged her with one hand around the sofa and threw her into the bedroom… I picked her up from there and threw her into a cabinet. I picked her up from there and I punched her in the stomach… I instantly punched her pretty, pretty hard in the solar plexus area around here. She instantly, pretty much, bent over, pretty much fell to the floor. I held her up.”

At 8.30am, Matthews called 911 and said he had a “bicker” with his girlfriend and she was struggling to breathe.

When paramedics arrived to find Xixi lying bruised and limp on the bedroom floor, Matthews said, “I hit her around a bit, but I didn’t punch her.” Xixi was so badly battered that one paramedic thought she was already dead. Xixi suffered a cardiac arrest due to complications from her injuries. She was pronounced dead in hospital one hour later.

Matthews was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder.

A post-mortem of Xixi’s body uncovered 41 fresh injuries that covered her head, face, shoulders, chest, arms and legs, around one-third of her body. The pathologist testified that the injuries could have been inflicted with fists, knees, feet and a rod-like weapon. The autopsy also revealed older injuries. There were nine previous rib fractures and a jaw fracture — all inflicted by Matthews.

Xixi and Matthews had met in April 2015 on the dating website Plenty of Fish.

They went out on dates. Soon, he moved into her apartment at the Hayes in the Cardiff city centre. They later went to live in Paris together, so that Xixi could improve her French. It was the first time Matthews had been overseas. Months later, they returned to Wales where they rented an Ely Road apartment in the Llandaff area of the city.

During this period of time, Xixi paid for everything — the accommodation, the food, the clothes, the car.

It was in March 2016 that their relationship began to show signs of deterioration. After an argument, Matthews sent Xixi a message that called her a “worthless piece of s***”.

In May, Xixi’s brother noticed bruises around her eyes which she tried to cover up with heavy makeup. Her friends and family said over the months, her weight plummeted. She stopped taking care of her appearance. She became quieter and more withdrawn.

Neighbours testified that they heard Matthews shouting “If you don’t suck my d**k, I’m going to hit you”. One neighbour heard him call Xixi a whore and say, “One day I’m going to kill you”.

Matthews also sent disparaging text messages to Xixi such as “You never do anything right. I can’t be bothered texting you.” In another message, he said, “I have to hit you repeatedly in the head while screaming at you.”

Xixi’s studies began to decline. Her senior lecturer at the Cardiff School of Management said Xixi frequently scored 80% in her assignments and that she actively participated in class discussions. But over time, her attendance at the university began to drop. She had to resit a year because she had missed a number of deadlines.

One month before she died, Xixi was admitted to hospital for a broken jaw. She told doctors that she fell downstairs at home, despite the fact that she was living in a ground-floor apartment.

On the day before she was killed, Xixi arrived at Cardiff at around midnight. She was returning from a trip to London. Matthews picked her up and they both went for dinner before returning home. Matthews said he became enraged after he saw what he thought was a text message from a man called Ben on the Tinder dating app on her phone. He had hit her, believing her to be cheating on him. Xixi did not have a contact called Ben and she did not have the Tinder app on her phone.

Prosecutors contended that Matthews had beaten Xixi to death in her own home in a “vicious, sustained and prolonged attack”. Xixi’s family called Matthews “selfish, mindless and gutless” in their statement released by the police. Matthews’ mother made a statement which said that there had been “serious domestic violence” in Matthews’ childhood.

Jurors deliberated for five hours after the 10-day trial.

Matthews was found guilty of murder.

The judge, Mrs Justice Nicola Davies, had harsh words for Matthews.

“When you met, you were unemployed. Xixi provided you with a home, clothing. She bought a car for you. You took what she gave. You lied and lied again in order to attempt to exculpate yourself from the overwhelming evidence which was that… you relentlessly and remorselessly inflicted physical injury upon a defenceless young woman.”

Senior crown prosecutor Ceri Murphy read out a statement on behalf of the Crown Persecution Service.

“In August last year a young woman lost her life at the hands of someone she trusted.

Matthews carried out a brutal sustained attack, causing extensive injuries which proved fatal. Matthews had previously pleaded guilty to manslaughter, however the prosecution team believed it was in the public interest to seek a trial on the offence of murder due to the injuries sustained, and the nature of the assault.

No one should suffer violence, or any form of abuse from their partner, and we urge people in this position to contact someone who can help them.”

In February 2017, Jordan Matthews was sentenced to life in prison, with a minimum term of 18 years.