Trigger Warning: This article contains references to the child murder that some readers may find distressing.
Ashley Zhao, a five-year-old Ohio girl, went missing from her family restaurant in Jackson Township on a freezing afternoon of January 9, 2017. Her father, Liang Zhao, frantically called 911 to report her disappearance, informing the operator that he had last seen his daughter over five hours ago.
Liang and his wife, Ming Ming Chen, insisted that they last saw Ashley sleeping in their Chinese restaurant around 5.00 p.m. However, she was missing when they went to check on her hours later.
In a desperate race against time, investigators immediately searched the area around the restaurant. The temperature dropped below six degrees that night and there was a brutal blizzard outdoors. Zhang was not dressed for the extreme cold.
Police launched an extensive search outside the restaurant using dogs, cherry pickers, and drones to find the missing Ashley. When they turned their focus back inside, they initially looked for spots where a young child might have accidentally hidden or wandered off.
Tragically, officers discovered that the child had never left the building. Her lifeless body was found stuffed inside a large salt container, hidden in a secret storage space in the ceiling. Jackson Township police ultimately determined that the young girl’s death was caused by her mother hitting her in the head “several times with her right fist.”
Detectives then questioned her parents about whether they had agreed together to hide her body there. Exclusive interrogation tape posted by YouTube channel True Crime News reveals Ashley’s mother confessing to murdering her daughter and a detective taken aback by her apparent lack of emotions. “Your daughter’s dead. I just don’t understand. I know that you’re not crying. You said I don’t have nothing left, isn’t that what you told me? You don’t have no tears left. You don’t have nothing left. Ming Ming, your daughter’s dead,” he can be heard telling her.
Speaking about the motive behind the killing, Chen said, “Kids always do something, you know, the bad things that make me angry. And I can’t control myself, and I kill her… I told my husband to take care of it.”
“I need to take care of everything for the restaurant. I only have two hands. I’m not four hands girl. I’m two hands,” she said.
According to her husband, who was being interviewed separately, Chen had a sudden outburst after Ashley peed and pooped in her diaper. He said she ended up slamming her head on the floor. “And then my wife got angry and, uh, hit her head on the carpet. You know, two times.”
“And initially she was breathing. Her heart had stopped beating. So, I started panicking, and I tried to do CPR on her, and that’s when I realized she’s gone.”
The couple put Ashley’s dead body in their car, drove to their restaurant, and laid her down in the back room. They did this in a desperate attempt to fabricate an alibi, with their six-year-old daughter, JoJo, as a witness. “The plan was for JoJo to come home and see her there to verify that she’s there. And then I would hide her up on top of the walk-in.”
He further confessed that they came up with three possible ways to get rid of Ashley’s body. After the police stopped looking for her, they planned to either burn it or bury it or throw it in the ocean.
What stunned detectives even more was the fact that the parents opened the restaurant for usual business while their daughter’s lifeless body was sitting in the ceiling.
Chen was charged with murder, child endangerment, obstructing justice, tampering with evidence, and abuse of a corpse. Zhao faced charges of child endangerment, obstructing justice, tampering with evidence, and abuse of a corpse.
Chen pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter, while Liang agreed to testify against his wife in exchange for a lighter sentence.
“The horror of being beaten by her own mother, and I use the word ‘mother’ with great pain I find when talking to you. It’s insulting to mothers who do what they are supposed to do for their children. No number of years is enough. A hundred years is not enough,” the judge criticized Chen while handing the sentences.
Chen was ultimately sentenced to 22 years in prison. After serving her time, she will be handed over to immigration authorities and deported to China. Liang was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Disclaimer: The Inquisitr could not independently verify all facts of this incident and is reporting based on the information available within the public record and video footage.
