Victim was poisoned with lethal toxins purchased on the dark web in a murder inspired by “Breaking Bad”
A Chinese lawyer who fatally poisoned the gaming mogul who helped produce the Netflix sci-fi hit “The Three-Body Problem” has been executed, according to Chinese state media.
Xu Yao killed his boss, Lin Qi, in 2020, gifting him what he claimed were probiotic pills but which actually contained lethal toxins purchased on the dark web and mixed in his own laboratory.
Earlier this year, the successful lawyer had helped Lin secure the adaptation rights to Liu Cixin’s acclaimed science fiction trilogy, which begins with “The Three-Body Problem.”
He was executed last Thursday, two years after he was sentenced to death for murder by a court in Shanghai.
News of the execution was initially reported this Tuesday by the Chinese state newspaper Economic Observer, citing sources familiar with the matter.
Confirming the report, Three Body Universe, the company that belonged to Lin and which developed the trilogy’s intellectual property, also issued a statement this Tuesday stating that “all employees of our company are grateful for the justice served by the legal system.” The statement paid tribute to Lin, who was mentioned as an executive producer in the opening credits of Netflix’s “The Three-Body Problem” when the series was released in 2024. Lin was a big fan of Liu’s trilogy and had long dreamed of developing the franchise.
Just months after Netflix announced its plans to produce the series, Lin was poisoned and killed at the age of 39.
One winter night in 2020, he was driving home from the headquarters of his company, Yoozoo Games, in Shanghai when he suddenly felt unwell and went to the hospital.
He died 10 days later, on Christmas Day. At least five toxins were detected in his body, including deadly poisons such as mercury and tetrodotoxin, according to Chinese media reports.
Xu was quickly identified as a suspect.
According to the court ruling, Xu had a dispute with Lin over “company management issues” and planned to poison him.
The case was widely publicized by the Chinese media, heavily censored by the state, due to the macabre details of how Xu planned the murder.
Xu was inspired by “Breaking Bad”, the American series about a chemistry teacher who goes into the meth production business. He set up a laboratory in a suburb of Shanghai and purchased more than a hundred toxins on the dark web to experiment, often testing mixed poisons on cats, dogs and other animals.
He also poisoned drinks in the offices of two executives with whom he argued, causing four colleagues to fall ill. These four survived.
He created a trading company in Japan to acquire the dangerous chemicals and at some point had 160 cell phone numbers.
Between September and December 2020, Xu replaced the contents of coffee capsules, whiskey bottles and water bottles in colleagues’ offices with methylmercury chloride, an acute toxin that can be fatal if ingested, inhaled or in contact with the skin.
He later turned the lethal substances into pills, before giving them to Lin as a gift.
