Barbara Wu will be released as part of a plea deal, after having plead guilty to four felonies. Wu conspired to murder two of her ex-boyfriends who she was obsessed with, describing how she wanted to break their legs with baseball bats.
Wu’s plea bargain credited her with time served for the 610 days she spent in jail, with a bonus of time doubled to eliminate prison overcrowding. The judge in the case stated that “Were they to actually have carried this out and killed somebody, you would be prosecuted for a special circumstance murder case, which could carry up to capital punishment or the death penalty,” she said.
The trial briefings describe how Wu carefully planned her revenge on multiple victims. One victim described seeing her standing outside his door with a knife. She also placed an ad on his behalf on Craigslist, advertising him up for random sex with strangers.
Wu incriminated herself by trying to convince friends of hers to participate in murdering the men. “She asked Mr. Lin to kidnap [her ex] and tie him up so that she could break [his] legs with a bat and ‘motorcycle’ him,” according to a trial brief obtained by PEOPLE. “She then told Mr. Lin she would kill [her ex] and dump his body off in Mexico with a drug cartel.”
Wu’s friend reported that she planned to commit suicide, but if she was going to do it, she wanted to “go Virginia Tech on the school,” or if not the school then at least her ex’s residence. “She specifically asked [her friend] to beat up [her ex], kidnap him and tape his hands together so that she could hit him with a shovel,” according to court papers. “She also planned on pricking [her ex’s] fingers with needles until he told her what his PIN number was for his debit card, which she would steal while he was unconscious.”
“Ms. Wu never intended that anyone get hurt or killed,” Rajan Maline, Wu’s defense attorney said. “When we are young and angry we say things that we regret saying. We don’t have the maturity of having a filter sometimes. We always maintained the position that this was the words of a young person flying off the handle during a break up.”
Wu is reportedly very happy to be free and excited about resuming school.
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