Shanghai man who killed wife, hid body in fridge gets death sentence

A man who killed his wife and stored her body in a fridge for three months was today sentenced to death by a Shanghai court.

Zhu Xiaodong, 31, was convicted of strangling his wife Yang Liping to death in 2016 during an argument, a statement by an intermediate court said.

He wrapped the corpse in a bed cover and hid it in a refrigerator on the balcony of their home, according to media reports.

Over the next three months, Zhu then used his wife's money to fund travel as well as hotel trysts with other women, the court said.

"He spent lavishly without restraint and showed no signs of remorse," it said.

Zhu also used his wife's WeChat messaging account to impersonate her in communications with her friends and relatives.

But he eventually turned himself in when his father-in-law's birthday came around and relatives were expecting his wife to attend a family gathering.

The case has transfixed the public in Shanghai, where the victim's parents had publicly pushed for the death sentence.

It was among the top-trending national topics on China's Twitter-like Weibo platform on Thursday, clocking up nearly 40 million reads and tens of thousands of discussions.