Man executed for fatally poisoning billionaire who helped bring ‘3 Body Problem’ to Netflix

By Sylvie Zhuang, CNN

Hong Kong (CNN) — A Chinese lawyer who fatally poisoned the billionaire gaming tycoon who helped produce the Netflix sci-fi hit “3 Body Problem” has been executed, according to Chinese state media.

Xu Yao killed his boss Lin Qi in 2020 by gifting him what he said were probiotic pills, but in fact contained lethal toxins which he bought off the dark web and mixed in his own lab.

Earlier that year, the high-flying lawyer had helped Lin secure the rights to adapt Liu Cixin’s celebrated trilogy of sci-fi books, which starts with “The Three-Body Problem.”

He was executed last Thursday, two years after being sentenced to death for murder by a court in Shanghai.

The news of execution was first reported on Tuesday by Chinese state media the Economic Observer, citing people familiar with the matter.

Confirming the report, Three Body Universe, the company once owned by Lin to develop the trilogy’s intellectual property, issued a statement on Tuesday saying “all employees of our company are grateful for the justice served by the legal system.”

The statement paid tribute to Lin, who was named as an executive producer in the opening credits of Netflix’s “3 Body Problem” when it was released in 2024. Lin was a huge fan of Liu’s trilogy, had long dreamed of developing the franchise.

Just months after Netflix announced its plans to produce the series, Lin was poisoned and killed at age 39.

On a winter evening in 2020, he was driving home from the headquarters of his company Yoozoo Games in Shanghai when he suddenly felt unwell and checked himself in to a 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 reports from Chinese media.

Xu was quickly identified as a suspect.

According to the court ruling, Xu had a dispute with Lin over “company management matters” and plotted to poison him.

The case has been widely reported by China’s heavily state censored media for the gruesome details of how Xu plotted the murder.

Xu drew inspiration from “Breaking Bad,” the American series about a chemistry teacher who goes into the meth-making business. He set up a lab in a suburb of Shanghai and bought more than a hundred toxins on the dark web to experiment with, often testing mixed poisons on cats, dogs and other animals.

He also poisoned beverages in the offices of two executives he had disputes with, causing four colleagues to fall sick. Those four survived.

He set up a trading company in Japan to acquire the hazardous chemicals, and at one 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 swallowed, inhaled or touched.

He later made the lethal substances into a pill, before gifting them to Lin.

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