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

The Chinese lawyer who fatally poisoned the billionaire gaming mogul who helped produce Netflix’s sci-fi hit “3 Body Problems” has been executed, according to Chinese state media.

In 2020, Xu Yao killed his boss, Lin Qi, by gifting him pills that he said were probiotic pills, but actually contained deadly toxins that he bought from the dark web and mixed in his own laboratory.

Earlier that year, the successful lawyer had helped Lin acquire the rights to adapt Liu Cixin’s famous trilogy of science fiction books, beginning with “The Three-Body Problem.”

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

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

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

In the statement, a moment of silence was paid to Lin, who is shown as the executive producer in the opening credits of Netflix’s “3 Body Problems”, which will be released in 2024. Lin was a big fan of Liu’s trilogy and had long dreamed of developing the series.

Just months after Netflix announced plans to produce the series, Lin was poisoned to death at the age of 39.

One winter evening in 2020, while driving home from the headquarters of his company Yoozoo Games in Shanghai, he suddenly felt unwell and was admitted to the hospital.

He died 10 days later on Christmas Day. According to reports in Chinese media, at least five toxins were detected in his body, including deadly poisons such as mercury and tetrodotoxin.

Xu was quickly identified as a suspect.

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

The case was widely reported by China’s heavily state-censored media for the chilling details of how Xu planned the murder.

Xu was inspired by the American TV series “Breaking Bad,” about a chemistry teacher who gets into the meth-making business. He set up a laboratory in a suburb of Shanghai and purchased more than a hundred toxins from the dark web to experiment with; He often tested mixed poisons on cats, dogs and other animals.

He also poisoned the drinks in the office of two managers with whom he had an argument, causing four of his colleagues to fall ill. These four survived.

He set up a trading company in Japan to buy dangerous chemicals and at one point had 160 mobile phone numbers.

Between September and December 2020, Xu replaced the contents of coffee capsules, whiskey bottles, and water bottles in his colleagues’ offices with methylmercury chloride, an acute toxin that can be fatal if swallowed, inhaled, or touched.

He then crushed the lethal ingredients into a pill before gifting them to Lin.

For more CNN news and newsletters, create an account at: CNN.com