Ma Jiajue, A Brutal Quadruple Murder and the Chase That Followed
Ma Jiajue was born May 4, 1981, in a farming village in a remote part of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of China. Besides his mother and father in the home, he was one of four children that included two boys and two girls. He was a smart young boy and an excellent student, particularly up through the middle school.
High school was a different story though. During this time his grades began to slip brought on by what others thought was a lack of effort. Also out of a crushing fear of not being able to pass the Gaokao College Entrance Exam, he ran away. Police eventually find Ma in a town in the eastern part of the region and return him home where he was disciplined harshly. Ma, now refocused on his studies, passes the Gaokao Exam and enrolls at Yunnan University in September of 2000 to study biochemistry. Now the pride of his family sends him off with what amounts to their small life savings hoping he makes something of himself.
It isn’t until his final year of school that we pick up his story once more. One February night, Ma and his four roommates are playing a game of cards. The other four, unlike Ma, are from well-off families and when they accuse him of cheating he becomes enraged. This outburst may have been a culmination of the accusations and them allegedly, according to Ma, bullying him about his plans for the upcoming Lunar New Year.
It is at this moment Ma’s life will change forever. In his anger, he takes a hammer that he finds in the home and proceeds to rain blow after blow upon them until all four of his roommates lay dead on the floor. The eventual causes of death are ruled to have been because of blunt force trauma. In hopes of hiding what he’s done, Ma Jiajue collects the bodies and stuffs them in one of the dormitory’s closets where they will be eventually located after people returned from the holiday.
As for Ma, instead of staying and facing the consequences he decides to go on the run. Despite a motivated police pursuit he manages to allude to them. To prompt information on his whereabouts a reward is posted amounting to $24,000 that would lead to his arrest. 21 days later on the date of March 15, 2004, police finally catch up to and arrest Ma in Hainan Province, China, 560 miles from where the crime actually occurred.
Ma Jiajue admitted to killing the four people, however, the confession was a mere formality given the evidence against him. After his conviction, on April 24, 2004, a Chinese court sentenced him to death for the brutal murder of his four roommates. After an automatic review is conducted by a higher court the sentence is carried out on June 17th of that same year, just 63 days after his arrest.
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