Episode 97:
The Shanghai Murder: A Wife's Deadly Betrayal and the Sale of Her Children

A scream rang out through a luxury apartment in Shanghai. When police rushed inside, they found the apartment in complete chaos. Blood covered the living room. A man lay stabbed, and a woman nearby bled heavily from her arm. Yet one woman sat quietly, motionless.

But it was a single receipt that would alter the direction of the case completely.

Michael Simpson was a promising elite from a wealthy British family. After graduating college, he went straight to work for the major fashion brand Next, rising quickly to a senior position. In 2009, at just twenty-six, he was chosen to launch and lead the company's new Shanghai branch as part of its expansion into China — an extraordinary opportunity for someone so young.

Two Different Worlds

Deeply committed to the role, Michael personally visited every store under his oversight. On one of those visits, he met twenty-two-year-old sales employee Fu Weiwei, who had left a poor rural village alone as a young woman to build a life in Shanghai. What began as work conversation grew personal, and within a year they were living together, expecting a child, and married.

The cracks appeared quickly. After their first son Jack was born in 2010, the family stayed with Michael's relatives in the UK, where Fu Weiwei reportedly spent lavishly on shopping, left her husband alone with the newborn to go clubbing until morning, and stayed glued to her phone with friends back in China rather than engaging with his family. When Michael asked for more family time, she threw a plate at his face hard enough to require an ER visit. Michael's father eventually urged him to reconsider whether the marriage could survive. Their second child, Alice, arrived in 2012, but the underlying damage was already too deep to repair.

A New Beginning, An Old Threat

Five years into the marriage, Michael and Fu Weiwei separated — delaying formal divorce to soften the transition for their children, with Michael retaining custody given his stronger financial position and Fu Weiwei receiving visitation and a substantial monthly allowance. Michael rebuilt his life, enrolling his daughters in one of Shanghai's top international schools and taking them regularly to the UK to see their grandparents.

In 2017, two years after the separation, Michael met Lin Jing, a company executive who had studied in the UK. The two quickly grew close, and Lin Jing moved in with Michael and the children, forming what felt like a real family again. Convinced he'd found his true partner, Michael began finalizing the divorce he'd left pending.

A Knife Bought That Same Day

On the evening of March 20, 2017, Fu Weiwei arrived at Michael's apartment with two friends. The moment the door opened, they shoved past Michael and forced their way inside. As he tried to stop them, Fu Weiwei pulled a kitchen knife from her bag and began slashing wildly, stabbing him in the heart and a major vein — injuries that would prove fatal almost instantly. When Lin Jing rushed in at the commotion, Fu Weiwei turned on her too, stabbing her repeatedly before her own friends managed to pull her back.

Fu Weiwei set the bloodied knife down and sat silently on the couch, making no attempt to flee. Neighbors alerted police, who found Lin Jing barely conscious — she survived, though her right arm suffered permanent, irreversible damage. Michael was pronounced dead at the scene. Throughout the attack, the couple's two children slept in the next room, unaware their father was being murdered feet away.

A Story That Didn't Survive the Evidence

In custody, Fu Weiwei claimed self-defense — insisting that since the divorce wasn't finalized, she was still legally Michael's wife and had only come to see her children, only to find him with another woman, be treated as an intruder, and be attacked first with a knife he'd retrieved from the kitchen. Investigators quickly dismantled the story: a receipt and security footage from a nearby market showed she had purchased the murder weapon herself, that same day — proof this wasn't a spontaneous confrontation but a premeditated act.

Her motive came down to jealousy and greed. Despite an allowance generous enough to cover a luxury Shanghai apartment with money to spare — several months' salary for an average Chinese worker — Fu Weiwei's spending, and her family's dependence on the same funds, left her perpetually short. When she learned Michael intended to finalize the divorce and pursue custody, cutting off her income source, combined with the reality of his new relationship, her resentment escalated into a determination that if she couldn't have the life back, she would end it entirely.

Final Thoughts

At trial on July 9, 2018, Fu Weiwei was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison, along with orders to pay roughly $21,000 to Michael's family and $40,000 to Lin Jing for her permanent injury. But for the two children, the tragedy didn't end with the verdict. When Michael's parents flew from England to Shanghai to care for their newly orphaned grandchildren, they discovered the children had vanished — Fu Weiwei's family had taken them the moment she was arrested and disappeared into the countryside, pulling them out of their privileged international school life overnight.

What followed was a ransom demand: Fu Weiwei's family refused to return the children without a large payment from Michael's grieving parents, who paid it to get them back. In return, they received only the younger child, Alice — her family kept the older son, Jack, explaining that once Fu Weiwei was eventually released from prison, she would need someone to support her, and that someone was meant to be Jack. Michael's family continues fighting to bring him home.