Recently, Silicon Valley has not been peaceful, with wife murder cases and door murder cases one after another.
On February 12, in San Mateo, one of Silicon Valley's high-tech industry centers, it was discovered that Anand Sujith Henry, a 37-year-old former Meta engineer, was suspected of killing his twin sons and fired a fatal shot at his 38-year-old wife, Alice Benzinger, in a bathtub, and then turned the gun on himself, killing himself on the spot.
This murder of his wife and murder once again shocked the United States.
Less than a month ago, the "Google Engineer Murder Case" also attracted the attention of the Chinese community around the world, a middle-class elite family with excellent backgrounds and seemingly harmonious and stable backgrounds, and finally presented to the world in an extremely cruel way, which can't help but make people sigh.
In fact, a series of similar cases in Silicon Valley have recently revealed the violent side of this elite world.
On Monday morning, Feb. 12, San Mateo** received a report from a person who identified himself as a friend of Anand Sugis Henry, who said he was worried that he could not reach the engineer couple, so he called 911 for help.
* Rushed to the designated place and entered through the unlocked window, the police found the body of the couple in the bathroom with a gunshot wound on the body, next to a 9mm pistol, a magazine full of bullets.
Two 4-year-old twin sons died in their bedrooms. Sources familiar with the investigation told NBC that the cause of death of the two young children has not yet been released, but it is believed that they were either suffocated, strangled or overdosed — without any signs of trauma on their bodies.
* said in the statement that they were convinced that this was not a burglary homicide, **was in the residence, and that this was a case of "**suicide". According to investigators to local television station KTVU, the course of the case is roughly as follows: the male owner, Henry, is suspected of killing his two sons, and then shooting his wife Alice Benzinger in the bathroom, and committing suicide on the spot.
The Henry Family. At present, the specific motive for the crime is still under further investigation.
Court records also show that Henry filed for divorce from his wife, Ben Singer, in December 2016. But the divorce was unsuccessful, and in 2020 the couple purchased their current property, worth more than $2 million, where they are raising their twin children.
Neighbors say they look like a friendly couple and a happy family. During Ben Singer's pregnancy, they also often walked together.
What catches people's attention is the identity background of the couple. They are all of Indian origin, alumni of Carnegie Mellon University, and the so-called elite of Silicon Valley. LinkedIn information shows that Henry used to be a software engineering manager, after working at Google for 7 years and 9 months, then jumped to Meta, and left after 1 year and 5 months, that is, in 2023, he founded his own artificial intelligence company logits.
Mr. and Mrs. Henry. His wife, Ben Singer, earned a master's degree in data science from the University of San Francisco and has been working in data science ever since. Before her death, she worked as a data science manager at real estate giant Zillow.
At the time of this case, there were still two cases of domestic violence deaths in Silicon Valley still under investigation.
Three days ago, on the afternoon of February 9, another boiling suspect in the Silicon Valley wife murder case, Chen Liren, finally appeared at the court scene.
He was dressed in a yellow shirt, a white helmet on his head, his hands were handcuffed, and his eyes were glazed. The trial lasted only a few minutes and was designed to determine whether he needed the help of an interpreter and when his next court session would be.
Chen Liren faces charges involving aggravated violence and threats of serious bodily harm after he allegedly killed his wife by repeatedly hitting her in the head with a fist at home. If convicted, he could face life in prison.
Chen Liren at the trial.
Chen Liren's case is almost the same as Henry's case.
The case occurred on January 16, 2024. At that time, Chen Liren's friend came to his home and found something abnormal, so he immediately called the police.
When the police arrived, they saw that Chen Liren's jacket and socks were stained with blood, while in the bedroom behind him, a woman was lying on the floor with severe blunt force trauma to her head, and blood was everywhere in the house. It was confirmed that the woman was his wife, Xuanyi Yu.
At the scene of the incident, Chen Liren admitted that he had "hit his wife with his fist" the day before, and that his wife had severe blunt force injuries to her head; In addition, a police officer's record reads: "Chen's right hand was very swollen and purple in color. There was blood on his clothes, legs, arms, and hands. ”
Due to the suddenness of the incident, after the incident, there was a package from the pet store in front of the house, which they originally bought for the cat.
Many neighbors and classmates said in an interview with ** that the community where the crime occurred was quite quiet and peaceful, and the couple also sent biscuits and greeting cards to their neighbors when they checked in, and they usually didn't hear any quarrels.
On the surface, the lives of the two are going smoothly according to the predetermined track.
Chen Liren and his wife are both undergraduate students at Tsinghua University, but they didn't know each other until they were graduate students at the University of California, San Diego, and in 2022, they stepped into the palace of marriage. Previously, Yu Xuanyi jumped from Amazon to Google, and ended a long-distance relationship with her husband in the same company.
At the beginning of 2023, they have just purchased a new home, located on Santa Clara Valley Road, worth $2.05 million.
However, some details of the violence, which have not yet been fully disclosed, are secretly happening in this family, which eventually leads to the tragedy.
Chen Liren and his wife Yu Xuanyi.
Now, the case has entered the judicial process, and before he officially appeared in court, Chen Liren was arraigned in absentia many times due to medical reasons. Prosecutors had previously attempted arraignments on 18 January, 19 January and 24 January, but were unable to do so because they were "still in hospital" and did not succeed until 9 February.
After the sixth arraignment, the judge decided to re-appear in court on the afternoon of April 19, local time. Although the current attention of the case is still quite high, from the perspective of the judicial level in the United States, the trial process of the case will span a long time.
The local high court trial lawyer said, "The criminal defense process in the United States is very lengthy, and it usually does not enter the actual case at the arraignment stage, mainly to determine that the defendant pleads not guilty, and generally the defendant does not admit guilt, then there will be many pretrial proceedings." ”
Now, the Chinese community in the United States is sharing public court information, and they are hoping that people will go to the scene.
Behind the attention, there is more disbelief, and there have been more than one similar domestic violence case in Silicon Valley recently, each of which has shocked people's cognition.
In Silicon Valley, another case under investigation is that of Yingying Yu, a 40-year-old Chinese woman, whose remains were found on a hillside in the Bay Area, allegedly strangled to death by her 56-year-old American husband, John Maxey Yeager, with ropes.
It was her employer who first noticed that Yu Yingying had disappeared, and the company had no way to contact her, so from January 8, the local ** began to investigate, and then found that the information provided by her husband was unpleasant.
LinkedIn sources say that Jaeger studied computer science at the University of California, Irvine, and has been working in software for many years, working as a senior software engineer at a technology company in Silicon Valley at the time of the crime, owning two properties.
During her lifetime, Ms. Yu lived with Yeager in Los Gatos, a small city in Santa Clara County that is one of the most well-known affluent areas in Silicon Valley, known for its high prices and high housing prices.
Near Jaeger's house.
Judging from the disclosure of public information, there have been disputes within the family for a long time. In May 2020, they decided to get married, but three months later, Yu Yingying signed a divorce agreement to end the marriage, but she did not succeed in getting rid of her husband.
At the end of 2023, a nearby surveillance camera once filmed her being injured, and Yu Yingying had screamed desperately to a neighbor's house, screaming as she ran out of the house, while Yeager was chasing after her. Then, the two left the monitor's field of view.
It is almost certain that there has been some level of violence in Jayger, but there is little more to be done to stop the spread of violence.
Currently, suspect Yeager is being held in the Santa Clara County Jail, and the judge ruled that he should not be released on bail until the next ** and granted him a "zero-contact" protective order for his four children.
These violent cases in Silicon Valley shocked the entire United States because of their cruelty and vileness, and also set off waves in China on the other side of the ocean.
What is even more distressing is that many of the victims in the case are Chinese, and they involve one of the most insidious forms of violence - domestic violence.
The tragedy may have been accidental, but more people are reflecting on the details that have been overlooked by the public.
I Passed Through the Storm" stills.
It is worth mentioning that after Chen Liren's case, many ** contacted his former classmates and even his ex-girlfriend, and everyone said that he was usually easy-going and friendly, and he had never beaten anyone.
Some alumni recalled that Chen Liren gave the impression of being confident and lively, and was very good at enlivening the atmosphere in social situations, because of his outstanding English ability, he would also volunteer to be an English translator for others.
Around the occurrence of many tragedies, it is not difficult to find that these perpetrators are typical Silicon Valley elites, with good higher education, and can live a good life in the world's most expensive Bay Area with only their work income. However, this does not seem to be a necessary condition for isolation from violence.
In the law of the United States, the definition of domestic violence is more "relaxed" than we imagined, such as verbal threats, snatching mobile phones, not letting the other party leave, etc., can be recognized as domestic violence in California law.
However, one violent death after another occurred in Silicon Valley.
After a series of cases, the problem of domestic violence in the families of the tech elite has aroused strong concern in Silicon Valley and the Chinese community in the Bay Area.
Chen Liren's friend recalled that the case happened "without warning", Chen Liren and Yu Xuanyi looked like the epitome of many international student couples, and "code farmer" is one of the most popular majors for American students, and it is a template and benchmark profession for many students studying abroad.
The suddenness of the incident has made many friends unacceptable to this day.
Chen Liren with his wife.
When it comes to the negative family incident in the Bay Area, many people may still have the impression that there was once a "Bay Area scumbag" incident, which had a considerable impact, and it is said that since then, the number of Chinese consulting trusts in the United States has shown explosive growth.
The incident goes back to 2022, when Ms. Deng, who works at Facebook, was diagnosed with cancer, and she passed away after her parents came to the United States for several months. Her husband, Yu Ning, who works at Google, remarried in less than two months and brought his new pregnant wife from China, and then applied for an eviction order against his ex-wife's parents, ordering them to leave within a month.
The two old men said that they did not want to fight for the inheritance, but hoped that all the inheritance would be left to the children and used on the children.
Bay Area Scumbag" incident.
The estate mentioned here includes Facebook's employee benefits, and Ms. Tang's company has a compensation package for employees who die unexpectedly, including family assistance benefits3$50,000 and $50 of the deceased employee's base salary (capped at $12,500 a month) for a period of 10 years.
If calculated according to the upper limit, it can be speculated that Yu Ning will receive a compensation amount of $150,000 per year.
It is true that the so-called "Bay Area scumbag" incident is more of a moral controversy. But the subtle humanity behind the incident – indifference, ruthlessness, selfishness and refined self-interest – is the cause of the "public anger".
The circle of Silicon Valley was once full of the aura of big factories, and many Internet companies in the Bay Area attracted scientific and technological talents from all over the world, and created a certain sense of "utopia" with their generous benefits and unique natural environment, which is also a life landmark that many Chinese students yearn for.
It is impossible to ignore the fact that no matter how much education a person receives, how glamorous and decent his profession is, and how rich and peaceful his life is, it seems that it is difficult to stop the violence and tragedies that can occur in intimate relationships.
Further, intimate relationship violence is also not related to income and class, or even to upbringing. In the above cases, one thing in common is that people have mentioned that before the incident, the abuser was friendly, easy-going, and full of culture.
Silicon Valley is located south of the San Francisco Bay Area.
But is that really the case?
In fact, 10 years ago, the New Yorker journalist Maria Bustillos pointed out Silicon Valley's most hidden culture: the deep-seated machismo and winner-takes-all brutality that has a long history.
At that time, the domestic violence case of Gurbaksh Chahal, a wealthy Indian man, caused a lot of uproar. The young and promising Silicon Valley tech tycoon, who rose to the rank of billionaire in his twenties, was accused of punching and kicking his then-girlfriend 117 times and trying to suffocate her with a pillow. Of the 47 felony charges, he eventually pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors and spent just one year in prison.
Gulbash Chahar.
The business world teaches people, especially women, to be calm, polite, and collaborative in business, but in such a competitive Silicon Valley environment, this style has no place.
In Silicon Valley, Gulbash Chahar is portrayed as a quintessential alpha male, a bigwig-like figure at the top of the food chain, on whom people have poured an excess of male fantasy into glamour.
Ten years have passed, and social trends have come one after another, and nothing seems to have changed here, or the opposite is true. A VOX article notes that soft, soulful leaders like Jack Dorsey (former Twitter CEO) have taken away his delicacy and asceticism, and female bosses have left — with Cheryl Sandberg stepping down as Meta COO and leaving the board, as well as her laissez-faire style.
Today, the richest and most powerful people in tech are leading Silicon Valley toward a more macho future in which strength is measured in muscles and ruthlessness is a virtue. For example, the giant leaders who practice Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu want to wrestle their opponents in the cage. For example, Bezos, who used to be thin in a crumpled T-shirt, is now talking about his biceps.
Glenn Kelman, CEO of Redfin, said, "It's crazy, people I know are thinking about hormones and eating 500 grams of protein a day." They are hungry and thirsty, like carnivores.
RedFin CEO Glenn Kelman.
Kelman often interacts with CEOs, and he finds that these people make it clear that they are kings of the jungle.
Cryptocurrencies, the metaverse, the bubble bursts in turns, large models are surging, and waves of hot technologies are coming one after another. Ed Zitron, founder of the consumer tech PR firm EPR, said there was a kind of rift in people's hearts in Silicon Valley. They see that the world they love is fading away, while at the same time, they are making more money than ever before.
Perhaps, the brutal violence hidden beneath this culture is growing unchecked.
The pictures in the article are partly in Visual China and partly on the Internet.
Author |Monet.
Edit |Ah Shu.
Typography |Toru Kazama.