Tragedy of jealousy, husband kills wife with 8 stabs
With his son sentenced to life in prison for killing his wife, Mr. Minh and his wife hope to live long and have good health to take care of their 5 orphaned grandchildren.
When the prison van stopped in front of courtroom number 7, Hanoi People's Court, many people who were talking suddenly stopped talking, watching the police open the door. From the van, Dang Hung Manh, handcuffed and paralyzed in both legs, was taken to the defendant's chair by two policemen.
Head still bowed, Manh secretly turned to look at the people sitting on the 8 benches at the back of the room, full of relatives and neighbors, only missing his parents and 5 children.
Manh was accusedkillwife, Trinh Thi Thu Nga, on suspicion of infidelity. The trial took place on January 12, 2021.
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| Defendant Manh at trial. |
Earlier, on the morning of August 6, 2020, Manh questioned his wife about the rumor that their youngest son, born in 2018, was not his biological son, but Ms. Nga did not answer and drove her motorbike out of the gate. Manh leaned on crutches and went to the kitchen to get a chisel, hid it in his pocket, then chased after her, held her motorbike, and stabbed her 8 times.
The panel of judges announced the DNA test results showing that he and his youngest son were related by blood. Manh trembled and said, almost crying: "The defendant knows he was wrong, and his crime is unforgivable."
Bowing his head throughout the trial, Manh admitted to being "blind because ofjealous", pushed his wife to death, leaving behind his elderly parents and children. Sobbing sounds echoed from below the courtroom.
On the day Manh was tried, in the house near the Red River in Bai Nha village, Cam Thuong commune, Ba Vi district, Mrs. Nguyen Thi Ky, Manh's mother, woke up at 4am like every morning, in the cold of 8 degrees Celsius. She tucked in the blankets for her three granddaughters, then went to the kitchen, rolled up her shirt sleeves, chopped banana stems to cook pig feed. Smelling the scent of incense wafting down from the house, she knew that Mr. Minh had just woken up.
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| Mr. Minh takes care of his grandchildren. |
As soon as the trial ended, Mr. Minh's phone rang. He listened and then trembled, spilling the half-eaten bowl of lunch he was feeding his 2-year-old grandson. Mrs. Ky looked at her husband, knowing the content of the phone call, the rice in her mouth was still bitter. The nieces who were chatting suddenly stopped, bowed their heads, and quickly picked up their half-eaten bowls of rice and took the trays to wash.
Mr. Minh thought for a while then went down to the kitchen. "Your father is in prison for life, he will only be released when he dies," he quickly told the children and then hurried upstairs, not daring to linger to see their reactions, only hearing a very small "yes" behind him.
Exactly 20 years ago, Manh had an accident, fell from a tree, injured his spine, paralyzed both legs, and 3 years later married Nga, a girl in the same neighborhood. The couple asked to build a house at the end of the neighborhood and live separately. Five children were born one after another.
Working alone on more than one hectare of rice fields, during the harvest season, Nga often went out to the fields with a flashlight at 3am. After finishing her work, she would come home to cook for her husband, then carry a shoulder pole along the dike to work as a brick carrier for the factory.
Manh sits in a wheelchair, but still gets fabric to sew clothes at home, saws wood, and does carpentry.
"In all the years we lived apart, I never heard them complain or raise their voices about anything," Mr. Minh shook his head, still unable to believe what had happened to his family.
Early in the morning of August 6, the day of the murder, while feeding their three grandchildren breakfast, they heard the bad news from a neighbor and ran into their son's house. Manh sat in the middle of the yard crying, panicking, his hands and feet covered in blood, next to him, Nga was breathing her last gasps. Next to her mother, her 6-year-old daughter cried hoarsely...
From that day on, the little girl slept hugging her grandmother tightly, and at night she still cried and woke up startled. But like the other siblings, she rarely asked her grandparents about her parents.
The children understood family matters early on and never asked their grandparents for anything. A meal for seven people often consisted of just a bunch of vegetables and a dozen eggs, cooked and stir-fried into various dishes, but the children gave some to their grandparents, and they gave some to their children.
Little Nhu was in 8th grade, didn't have a calculator to learn math, every day ran to borrow from her neighbor. Mr. Minh knew about it, and wondered why he didn't tell her. "Our family is still poor, I didn't dare ask for it," the little girl replied.
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| Despite her poor health, Ms. Ky still finds many jobs to earn money to support her life. Photo: Thanh Van |
Around this time every year, the daughter-in-law would start chattering about Tet shopping, but this year was completely different. In August 2020, four days after the daughter-in-law’s funeral, the brick dealer brought the money to pay. Manh and his wife ordered twenty thousand bricks, but before they could carry out their plan to renovate the house, the tragedy happened. The house was uninhabited and increasingly dilapidated. The wall calendar block stopped at that month, and no one had torn it down yet.
On the 1st and 15th of every lunar month, Mr. Minh still takes his 6-year-old granddaughter to his house to light incense on the altar for his mother. Once, seeing his father's wheelchair lying on the porch, the granddaughter turned to him and said, "Grandpa, cover it with a tarp. When my father comes back for Tet, he will still have something."
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