The Soc Trang Province People’s Court has sentenced an adulterous woman to life in prison and her lover to death for killing the woman’s husband earier this year.

The woman, 32-year-old Van Thi Thuy, of the southern province’s My Tu District, and Tran Tuan Thanh, 28, also of My Tu, were tried on Wednesday, June 26, for murder charges. The victim in the case was Tran Van Nhan, who was Thuy’s husband and a cousin of Thanh. He was 38.   According to the indictment, Thuy and Thanh had an affair three months before the murder, and they wanted to kill Nhan so that they could freely live together as husband and wife. On January 5, after Nhan came home from a wedding party, Thuy and Thanh managed to have get Nhan to take sleeping pills and they then used a rope to strangle him to death. They later used a motorboat to carry Nhan’s body to the Ben Tau River, in Hau Giang Province’s Phung Hiep District, and threw the body into the river.     Thuy and Thanh then returned to her home and made love. Three days later, locals found Nhan’s body floating in the river and reported it to police. After investigations, police arrested the adulterous couple, who later pleaded guilty to killing Nhan.

In a related news, the Supreme People’s Court in Ho Chi Minh City on June 25 maintained the death sentence for 45-year-old Du Kim Lien, who killed her husband, a police officer, with sleeping pills first and then pesticide through injection last year.

The victim was Colonel Tran Xuan Chuyen who had worked in the Phu Lam Police Office under HCMC Traffic Police Department.  He died at 50.

Lien told the court that she had asked Chuyen to sell their house to pay debts totaling VND1.3 billion ($62,400) that she had borrowed from many people, but Chuyen did not agree.  Therefore, she decided to kill him so that she would become the sole owner of the property and have a free hand to sell it at any time.