A Toronto woman, who worked in insurance, has been found guilty of the first-degree murder of her husband, which prosecutors say was motivated by potential life insurance payouts worth $2 million.
Xiu Jin Teng, 41, was accused of using a ligature to strangle her husband, Dong Huang, in their Scarborough apartment, and hiding his body – which the couple’s landlord later found.
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Teng took out a number of life insurance policies in the years before her husband’s death – with herself as the salesperson, a
Toronto Star report said.
She took out two policies on her husband in late 2011, with herself as the beneficiary, the prosecution claimed, as well as taking out a life insurance policy of $1.5 million on herself, with her mother as the beneficiary.
In January, she changed her life insurance policy to increase the premium to $40,000 a year from $500 - earning herself a $20,000 commission and $33,000 in bonuses, according to the prosecution.
By selling the policies to herself, Teng was paid a commission. However, it was not clear how she intended to collect on her husband’s life insurance.
Dong Huang was killed in February 2012. He was strangled to death with a thin piece of twine, after being hit on the head and drugged.
Huang’s body was discovered in the couple’s apartment less than a week later by Teng’s landlords, after they knocked on the door to collect rent money and became suspicious that Teng was packing boxes, indicating that she might leave without paying.
Teng told her landlords that her husband had died of a heart attack after they found the body, which was bound and covered in bleach.
The prosecution told the jury that Teng had bought several items from Canadian Tire in cash – including rubber gloves, a hand saw used to cut up a mattress and several garbage bags – and had plans to dispose of her husband’s body, possibly in the Humber River or Lake Ontario.
On Friday, Teng is due to receive the mandatory sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.
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