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Four bodies were discovered inside a university wardrobe. The student responsible had already vanished. In February 2004, one of the most shocking cases in modern Chinese criminal history unfolded at Yunnan University, where four students were brutally murdered by someone they knew, lived with, and trusted.
For days, nobody realized what had happened. The victims hadn’t run away, transferred universities, or simply stopped attending classes — their bodies had been hidden inside a wardrobe within the dormitory itself.
The killer was 23‑year‑old biology student Ma Jiajue. What followed was a nationwide manhunt that gripped China, turned Ma into one of the country’s most infamous criminals, and sparked fierce debate about bullying, social isolation, humiliation, mental health, and whether warning signs had been missed long before the murders took place.
This deep dive explores Ma’s childhood, his life at Yunnan University, the relationships with his roommates, the argument prosecutors believe triggered the violence, the murders, the discovery of the bodies, the manhunt, his arrest, trial, execution, and the lasting impact the case had across China.
More than twenty years later, the Ma Jiajue case remains one of the most discussed crimes in modern Chinese history — a disturbing intersection of psychology, resentment, identity, and violence.
Podcast: True Crime w/ Anna Templeton