The Five Reluctant Hitmen Who Tried To Subcontract Their Work
Nanning Intermediate People’s CourtFive hitmen all involved in a scheme of trickle-down contract killing.
Usually, people hire a hitman because they want someone dead and don’t want to do the killing. But what happens if the hired hitman doesn’t want to do the killing? Well, maybe he’d hire another hitman in turn. Odds are, the buck would stop there. But not in this case.
In a bizarre turn of events, a murder-for-hire plot that began in 2013 in Guangxi, China involved not one, not two, not three, but five hitmen, each of whom had been reluctant to actually kill their target.
It began when Tan Youhui and his real estate business were sued by a competitor identified only as Wei in 2013. Tan did not take this slight lightly, and in response paid hitman Xi Guangan the equivalent of $282,000 to take Wei out.
Thus began a series of hitmen hiring other hitmen for less and less sums of money, until the contract eventually landed in the lap of the fifth and final man in the chain, Ling Xinsi, who was offered the measly sum of $14,000 to kill Wei.
But Ling didn’t want to kill Wei for such a small amount, and so he devised a plan of his own. He got in contact with Wei and plotted a way to stage Wei’s death, and surprisingly, the two went though with it.
The plan was for Wei to disappear for 10 days after Ling sent photos of a seemingly dead Wei to Tan. When Wei returned, however, he changed his mind about the whole ordeal and told the police everything.
