Lai Huili was 51 years old and had a quiet routine: she grew flowers, cared for small animals, and battled insomnia every night. She lived in a residential complex in Hangzhou, China. One early morning in July 2020, she simply ceased to exist for everyone who knew her.
The building’s security cameras showed no one leaving. Police reviewed 6,000 hours of footage and knocked on the doors of 379 neighboring families. Nothing. Not a trace, not a clue, not a body. For 17 days, the search proceeded blindly, until investigators decided to drain 38 truckloads of wastewater from the building’s septic tank. There, among the waste, they found tiny fragments of human tissue belonging to Lai Huili.
The case took a turn no one expected: the person who had reported her disappearance and offered nearly $15,000 as a reward for finding her was her own husband, Xu Guoli, 58. He had sedated her, dismembered her with a meat grinder, and flushed the remains down the toilet. A court sentenced him to death in 2021, and he was executed in March 2023.
