Top AI Scientist "Gone Mad" and Executes His Nephew In Front Of Courthouse

one prominent ufo researcher once said if you start looking for patterns you're gonna find them and people think one of the worst patterns to emerge in 2026 is the pattern of important scientists going missing or ending up dead is it a fear-mongering conspiracy where netizens are connecting together a few dots and calling it a link or is it a real legitimate theory i mean i can't be the one to tell you however it does seem that any scientist or researcher studying something important to the greater safety of humankind or the detriment of humankind anyone scientist researcher involved in some sort of death it's going to be investigated by some curious netizens so chen a chinese researcher based in the united states he has the exact type of resume where if something happens to him it makes you want to throw a coincidence out the window and sign up for like a front row seat at conspiracy con chen has a research role at cassia which is basically china's flagship ai research institution right now although they were first formed i will say to help china build nuclear missiles and satellites their first program was actually called two bombs one satellite which is like two bomb yeah two bombs one satellite yeah and cassia's signature specialty is actually biometrics which is how they teach computers how to identify humans by face by their iris and even their gait how they walk they had this like whole thing where they could identify you they don't even know you they don't know what your face looks like but they could identify you from like a mile away on cctv footage if they like follow certain gait patterns yeah they have a free data set of people's faces that have become one of the most widely used training set in the entire world for facial recognition he was a postdoctoral researcher in the bioinformatics division at chinhua university what does that even mean what is bioinformatics it sounds kind of like cute but it's not cute at all it's a very interesting role it's not just data it's not just ai machine learning you have to specialize in all of that but you also have to specialize in molecular and cell biology researchers in the bioinformatics division at chinhua are working on projects like the human cell atlas which is actually a giant international project like a global initiative it's to catalog every cell type of human cell and it's actually a giant international project it's to make sure that every cell has the same type describe its molecular fingerprint if you will and notate where it lives and what it does basically google maps for the human body which the human body is made up of roughly 37 trillion cells so this is going to take a minute the goal would be to give every biologist like a shared reference so if they find a weird cell in their own experiment they can look it up against the master map it would also make it easier to find out which cells changed how you know which could help find cell signatures that way so flag early cancer before it's dangerous but if you're not working on the single cell atlas they could be in any number of different ai and biology research programs the whole idea is llm large language models so chat gpt cloud but instead of being trained on human language they're going to be trained on the human body biology like a language create a foundational model a cloud for cells chat gpt for cells they train on cells and patterns of which genes turn on together in which cell types under which conditions the ultimate goal they said is to have a digital patient so everybody has a patient profile and now they have one for ai and you run experiments and medications through the digital patient before the real patient which sounds like it could also save lives but also sounds really fucking terrifying at the same time okay but after those research positions in china chen gets invited to come to the united states he doesn't try to immigrate he gets an invitation it's like a hogwarts invitation in the mail for a research role for cold spring harbor laboratory which has been dubbed the birthplace of molecular biology so there is that they've been around since like 1890 they're a world-renowned non-profit private research and engineering company and they've been around for a long time and they've been a world-renowned non-profit private research and engineering company and they've been the lab today focuses on five distinct areas cancer neuroscience genomics plant biology and quantitative biology they do a lot of important work but also they were the epicenter for the american eugenics movement at one point so um the lab did preserve all its records for teaching and research while openly discussing it so i guess they're trying to be transparent about one of the darkest chapters of american history and science but i mean who's to say right chen gets an invitation from that lab the cold spring harbor laboratory lab to come study in the u.s do research for them he moves to long island new york his research direction is is so complicated he's focusing on providing systematic solutions for early diagnosis and precision treatment in cancer research using bioinformatics technologies yeah it's a very important role he also joins harvard as a research scientist in the department of statistics throughout his entire career he has published co-authored at least 15 papers in notable peer-reviewed international journals and he's also a research scientist in the department of statistics in subjects like cancer basically like trying to cure cancer he starts his own company in china called my health gene the company uses huge amounts of biological data dna genes they analyze to help doctors catch diseases early on and pick treatments tailored to each individual patient so he's got the type of resume where if he's involved in a death people are going to start a conspiracy theory online april 7th 2022 outside the cambridge district courthouse in medford massachusetts it's like a small courthouse with three courtrooms there's two jury deliberation rooms it's 12 holding cells it's not like a big giant fortress building like a lot of federal courthouses you get a free parking lot there's restaurants right next to it you go pay your ticket and then you go eat i don't know bajangles okay that's the vibe researcher chen is walking towards his car a white chevy equinox it's like a suv and as he's walking getting ready to get into the driver's seat he i don't know if he does but he must right he must send something like something must shift in that exact moment it is believed that as he's getting into his car he locks eyes with this young man who also just stepped out of the courthouse and there must be something that happens between the two of them nobody hears any sort of exchange nobody hears them talking or at least i haven't reported it but something must happen some reports describe it as they share a look whatever it is it's like something activates inside of researcher chen he gets in the car turns the engine on on and before anyone else can react he slams the foot down on the accelerator he's not booking it to leave the courthouse he's accelerating and ramming straight into the young man who just walked out of the courthouse that he just locked eyes with he's not honking for the young man to get out of his way this is not like a road rage incident either chen the brilliant researcher drives directly into this young man he basically has him trapped so this young man is now trapped in between the chevy equinox chen's car and another parked car he's trapped chen reverses rams it back into him until the front of chen's suv is completely dented like the surface of the moon and then chen steps out of his car slamming into the young man and another car yeah but mainly the young man then he steps out with a black handgun and fires into the young man five to six times this is a courthouse where the hell are the cops why isn't anybody stopping chen police officers are circling him within seconds you know they're pointing their own weapons while ordering him to drop his guns but it's not the police that stopped chen it's very interesting it's a tall man in a suit walks up he approaches chen restrains him almost calmly like he's just pinning chen on the ground he uses his knee so chen is face down and this man in the suit has his knee on chen's back and then using one of his hands he's kind of rubbing chen's back almost soothing him okay and then finally the police come over handcuffed chen who the hell is this man in the suit this is chen's attorney who was just representing chen in the courtroom chen the brilliant researcher is now being arrested and the young man laying dead in the parking lot of the courthouse is wang kong otherwise known as kohen he's 23 years old and he's chen's nephew but with this scientist killed his own nephew his sister's own son it doesn't it doesn't make any sense well it is believed that kohen wanted a wife he wanted a woman to marry but like what does that have to do with chen it is reported that kohen didn't just want anyone to marry he wanted to marry scientist chen's wife his aunt he wanted to marry chen and he wanted to marry chen he wanted to marry scientist chen's wife his aunt he wanted to marry chen he wanted to marry chen's wife his aunt we would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for rotten mango to support nami national also known as the national alliance on mental illness nami is the nation's largest mental health organization dedicated to improving the lives of individuals this episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support rotten mango's team of dedicated researchers we would also like to thank you guys for your continued support as always full show notes are available at rottenmangopodcast.com today's episode includes brief mentions of stalking behaviors gun violence some quotes or statements may be condensed for brevity and a lot of the research even though this case does take place in the united states a lot of the research was done with the help of our chinese translators because there's just a lot more information in china you'll see why in a second but with that being said let's begin the setup for chen it's just not ideal it's not ideal he has his wife michelle they have michelle is a pseudonym um her name is i wouldn't say it's not widely circulating so we're gonna keep it michelle she has two young kids and chen is barely home now to be fair how old is chen and michelle though they're like in their late 30s by this point early 40s and how old are they too young elementary school so they're pretty young yeah yeah and chen is like barely home he's never home he's not doing school pickup and drop off and to be fair he is the sole breadwinner and his most lucrative business appears to be the one in china where he has the biotech company he has all these research roles in the united states but you're not getting paid a bajillion dollars to be in the department of statistics at heart but you probably will get paid a bajillion dollars to own a private company in china that helps cure people of certain diseases yeah half time in china half time in boston and it's doing really well he's even being invited to speak as the guest at the qinghua beijing tanjin high bay health care big data summit forum the amount of ink that they would need to just like have letterheads with that entire it's unclear exactly how his time is divvied up but i would say it's like closer to 50 50. but it has been established that michelle chen's wife she is adamant that she wants her children raised in the united states so it's not like chen leaves her without a choice it's not like chen is like well you have to stay here i'm gonna go in fact if chen had it his way they would all move back to china because not only does he have his company he's been offered really crazy prestigious roles in research and things that would give him a lot of funding to do i guess his life's dreams and goals whatever that may be it has been said that the long-term goal of chen is to become a business owner and to be a business owner is to be a business owner and to be a business owner is to be a business owner and to be a business owner and to be a business owner and to be a business owner and to be a business owner and to be a business owner and to be a business owner because every time he comes back to boston she does seem a little bit distracted she does seem a little bit distant but that could also be because she's just freaking exhausted she's holding the house down by herself she just might be awash with dilemmas and deficiencies you know however it is noted that michelle is the one that also wanted him to go to china to start this lucrative business and she did not want to go with him so technically it is a compromise chen does make it back to the family to spend all the big holidays so he's back for christmas he's back for chinese new year and sometimes he likes to keep it fresh he wants to surprise his kids in 2019 after finishing up this huge project with his company in china chen decides i got time sure i was gonna stay in china for an extra three days to wrap up the project but it's already wrapped so i can go home three days earlier than i expected the name of the game is surprise i'm gonna go surprise my wife and kids he quietly boards a flight home gets to the airport drives back home in boston and when he slips his key into the front door all's quiet everything's good he walks up the steps opens the door to the primary bedroom and there in his bed is his wife his 39 year old wife michelle and his 19 year old nephew and that is how chen finds out that the last year of his life has been a lie okay well over a year like a year and a half because the nephew's almost turning 20 but he in his house it's his wife and nephew they've been having an affair in his house and he's like oh my god i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry not only is he betrayed by his wife he's also betrayed by his nephew it's not just his marriage that blows up that night it's his entire extended family now this is not incestual in the sense that the nephew is chen's sister's son so his wife has no blood blood relation to the nephew so i guess that's the only silver lining is this is not an incestuous affair but i i i mean that's like a really low bar to set it's his wife and it's his sister's little brother at the end of the day to chen it probably feels like a lot of money but it's a lot of money and it's a lot of money multifaceted attack on his psyche on top of that affairs are always very tricky when it's happening inside the shared marital home because that's supposed to be your safe space moreover moreover chen is the one that invited his nephew to come live with them out of the goodness of his heart so that his nephew could go to college in the united states so in 2016 back in 2016 chen gets a call from his older sister and she's telling him that her one and only son cohen the only nephew that chen has because he only has one nephew and he's the only nephew that chen has one older sister and this is the only son that she has he's ready to go to college now but the problem is he wants to study abroad in the u.s but the problem with that is that his english is not good enough to yet apply to most of the colleges that he wants to attend so probably the fastest way to learn english would be going to the united states taking a gap year immersing himself in the culture and the language and going to like a english program would chen mind if cohen could come stay with him in boston for a year to learn english just provide housing and food and we're going to send a little money for transportation and we're going to send a little money for transportation like the setup is a lot of asians have probably experienced the setup okay and then he gets to college we'll go from there that's it just like a year really is what we're asking we're not asking you to put him through high school it's just a year and then he's going to dorm in college that's the plan cohen joins the chen family in boston michelle doesn't like this she is not happy she's got two kids now she has to watch this random ass teenager okay not blood relation she's never even really met the kid like that and now she has to watch him in fact this is a huge point of contention for them early on michelle is arguing like i don't even want him to be here first of all why are you even saying yes if you're not even here to help take care of him you're gonna be in china most of the time so it's it doesn't make sense now she's doing chores cooking cleaning managing the entire household with some teenagers she barely knows adding on to all of it but chen convinces his wife his older sister is the only reason that he was able to go to college she paid most of his tuition and this is her son she's not going to be able to go to college she's going to be able to go to college so he owes it to his sister also chen's been with michelle since college so she kind of knows so she's like okay you know what fine chen leaves for china and at first he's very worried that every time he calls michelle it's just gonna be screaming on the other line she's gonna be like complaining about how miserable she is and how this is so unmanageable and you know now there's this stinky probably smelly unhygienic teenager living in their house and she just wants to like punch someone in the face but no every time chen would call she would tell him chen is helping around the house doing chores he seems really grateful that he has this opportunity so he's trying to do his part he's actually a very mature young man chen is so relieved he's like holy cow this is great until he's not relieved the part nobody knows however is who initiated the affair not that i think it's well maybe it is kind of pertinent but it's believed by some that michelle has blamed cohen for seducing her and cohen blames michelle for seducing him and they're both selling their sides of the story to chen when he finds them in bed together we don't know who did what however the likely starting point of this affair seems to be from english tutoring lessons so remember cohen is trying to learn english he went to this english academy to learn and he ends up failing his very first english exam that he worked a year to study for so the whole point of the agreement was he's going to come to america to learn english get admitted into an american college if he can't learn english he can't get admitted into an american college he's going to come to america to learn english he can't get admitted into an american college so michelle takes it upon herself has been what's been reported and she decides that i'm just going to tutor him in my free time like when the kids are at school i'm just going to like try to help him with his english it works he passes all of his exams successfully gets admitted into northeastern university in boston for computer science which is obviously not the only thing that he gets into while he's in the united states the affair goes on for almost two years so it does seem that he was of age when it started so there's no allegation that he was of age when it started he was not of age it seems like he was about to turn 20 when the affair was caught so it's like almost two years 18 yeah and even after getting into northeastern and moving into a dorm moving out of chen and michelle's house they allegedly continue the affair so he's just dropping by playing daddy yeah the only person in the dark of what's happening in his house is chen the one who's working non-stop in china earning money to support his wife and children and now his nephew is in his house playing house wow that's really fucked up too for him the two kids though yeah they also live there yeah that night after kicking cohen out chen can't even sleep in the same house he goes to a hotel and he decides he's going to divorce his wife there's nothing else that he can do about it it's not something that he's going to get over and the whole process of divorcing his wife goes as amicably as one would hope a divorce goes he does have to go back to china frequently still after the divorce it's believed that his wife and children end up staying in the boston house chen is not lashing out on them he's not trying to take every penny with him that he earned and rob michelle out of a life and home there's no violent tendencies there's no really even strong resentment it seems like he just cuts her out but still co-parents some allege that once the emotions settle down a bit chen has a conversation with cohen about it which i can't imagine any sort of conversation like this going well but allegedly it ends with cohen telling his uncle i will stop harassing you guys as long as you let me marry my aunt what the worst part about this is chen's sister so cohen's mom what is that yeah how do we know that and what is that what's going on yeah no there's a reason behind it and it's actually kind of like weird and dark but you'll see the worst part though is that not only chen is like what do you what do you mean like what why would you marry my wife you well ex-wife now right his sister agrees with him his sister is like you need to let my son marry your ex-wife because you guys are divorced anyway i cannot believe this outside of the head yeah this is like breaking he's flabbergasted yeah no because even for chinese people one is when you know these things are even more frowned upon because just for the cultural reason number two is for the mom to want the son to marry the aunt is even more unbelievable outside of the harry potter series a lot of people in china are referred to as voldemorts say voldemort the way that you do in china yes okay actually has nothing to do with the source material it's not a nickname for those caught gossiping with snakes or like bald men with uniquely shaped noses that streamline the process of breathing like it's not for those people it has nothing to do with that it's rather the you in chinese it's which if you switch the characters it can also be read as monstrous brother supporter monster brother support brother support okay okay that's a really yeah it's like an oddly complicated nickname but like once you get the nuance it all clicks there's a few prerequisites that must be met for someone to fully live up to the nickname you must be a sister you must have a brother it is better if the biological brother is younger than you preferably like a few age gap is you know the best part is like the sweet spot and the most important aspect is your family must not have enough resources for every child that is when someone could become voldemort it is to describe families with a strong patriarchal mindset that prefers sons over their daughters which results in the family resources being directed by the only to the sons there have been countless situations where the older sister foregoes college not because she can't get admitted she's already been admitted but because the family can only afford one tuition and it's going to go to the brother the daughter has to stay behind drop out of school early so she can focus on helping the struggling family business while the son who's not nearly as bright as the daughter because of course he's not he's been spoiled his entire life because they live in a patriarchal society and those specific families in china gets to go live in a big city attending college while everyone back home is supporting him the nickname voldemort is not to shame the sisters that this happens to it's more so like a description of they're getting their souls and dreams sucked out of them slowly by their families the shame is placed on the parents and obviously society but the sisters are called voldemorts because phonetically it you know can mean that it's like kind of used sympathetically so if you look at a girl who's given up everything for her brother you might say like oh well she hasn't had the best shot at life because she's a voldemort it's more like it's not really her choice she could have done way better it's just this is what happened if anyone has the rights to this god-awful nickname it's probably chen's older sister she's basically like grandfathered into this it's a miserable unlucky position to be in chen's family are from a really really small town they've got two kids so they have chen's older sister and chen they're only three years apart which makes this even worse usually when the son is older the parents are like oh my god i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry chen's parents come up with a bunch of palatable excuses like oh well he's gonna go to college first because he just got in and we're gonna save a lot of money for the next few years so you can maybe go to college probably not but when they're younger than you it's like well no you can't because we're saving the money for your little brother chen's family are day laborers mainly doing farm work chen and his sister were also expected to help with but they noticed that chen would try to sneak away from work to read in a corner when he was a kid everybody noticed nobody got mad at him they thought that this might be the only way to get him to work the start of a child who could get them out of this situation somehow both the siblings were blessed academically chen's older sister ends up getting admitted into a key point high school which key point high schools in china notoriously difficult to get into essentially it's a pre-college admissions program and just to give you a bunch of context in the 70s and 80s china did not have enough educational resources but they wanted to compete with the rest of the world how do you compete if you don't have elite talent pipelines it's hard the government decides that they're going to concentrate a lot of their very limited educational resources into a small number of designated schools across the country and they're going to skim from the top of every class so this is why you have a pre you have a high school entrance exam that's why because like in america that doesn't make sense because it's like wait what do you mean you go either private or public and public is based off your zip code which there's already a lot of inequality there but in china now you have to take a test to get into the high school and the high schools are ranked so they take skim the top of everyone in the country and throw them into the key point high schools and that's to elevate them to become the elite talent pipeline they still have to study really hard to get admitted into the colleges because now you're competing against everyone at all the other key point high schools in the country the government actually renamed it to model high school because key point high school seemed a little rough on the ears politically speaking so they renamed it recently but it seems like no one really calls it that's interesting yeah um Chen's sister places really well in the high school admissions test she gets admitted into one of the province's key point high schools this is huge especially for students with lower income families that don't have a bunch of tutors it's like nearly impossible but because the key point high school she gets into it's a boarding school yeah she has to board they don't have they don't have the fee for boarding and transportation to and from the school also like the food she has to eat like everything is going to add up so she has to go to a boarding school and she has to go to a the family could maybe do it but then they would have nothing in three years when Chen takes his high school admissions exam and they also think he's going to get into a key point high school so the family it is said that they told the older sister you do what you want to do and we're going to support any decision but she knows she knows what that means okay everyone knows what that means she doesn't go to high school yeah she drops out after middle school gets into odd jobs working on farms restaurants factory work and then three years later it's Chen's sister who turns turn he does get into a key point high school and it is funded a lot of the boarding costs are funded by his parents and his sister and then with college it's also funded by his sister and his parents it would be justified if Chen's sister showed a lot of resentment for all of this but she never does and maybe she genuinely never felt it because it is reported that Chen showed a lot of gratitude he was always showing how appreciative he is towards his sister so maybe that eased any potential resentment or tension she worked hard to get into a high school and she worked put him through university he ends up at NPU which it's like a military industrial university there's a total of seven universities that are called seven sons of national defense in China mainly because those seven universities so all the other universities they report to the ministry of education but NPU and the other six universities they report to the ministry of industry and information technology really yeah and they're they're good yeah they're very good because but a lot of their major focus is like like military military defense lots of like aerial sciences lots of um weapons research yeah yeah yeah yeah which he could only attend this school with his parents and his sister helping for the tuition he doesn't take it lightly he said it said during the first four years Chen holds himself to such high standards that he only did four things he had to do was eat sleep walk to and from his room to the library and to class and study that's it eat sleep transport and school that's it nothing else basically everything was just keeping him alive and everything was just studying he consistently ranked in the top of his class in the university to the point where most students have to apply and take another test to attend grad school but Chen was admitted offered a spot without taking a test he didn't even need to apply which again he wouldn't be if he was working and studying but he's just stunning and he feels like a lot of this is due to his sister and grad school he still has to pay for it he gets a master's degree in image processing from the department of automatic control and his sister helps pay for it now essentially image processing the foundational technology is for guided weapons drone perception aerial reconnaissance surveillance it's very like um defense engineering pipeline degree which kind of fits NPU that's what they're known for from there he gets into Cassia which is like the Chinese that's where they do the AI you know stuff and then Qinghua then cold springs lab in the US and while he's doing that Chen's sister goes from sending money over to pay for all of his education to now now that he doesn't need the help and he's getting paid now she's um back in their hometown taking care of their elderly aging parents since Chen clearly doesn't have the time he's also in the United States he has a demanding job and now he has a wife and two kids and the promise like the unspoken promise nobody says it outright but the unspoken promise is that he's going to do all of this and Chen will do everything he can to help his sister later in life whenever she asks and again Chen does really really really well in his field he's been granted a US green card based off his outstanding contributions to science and then later he gets a US citizenship they purchase a house in Boston he's even offered a position at again Cassia the Chinese academy of sciences this is like the highest academic institution in the sector that he's working in it's like the most prestigious they collaborate closely with the government they're the ones that helped create create China's own Baidu navigation satellite system because, you know, U.S. sanctions. So China had to build its own like space station to build like their own navigations. It's crazy. OK. And they're the ones that mainly did it. And so he gets this opportunity to go research there at this level. And it's huge. It's huge. So he's like, OK, I want to go back. I want to go there and do this. But his wife, Michelle, is like, well, no, I don't want to go to China. So we're not going to go there. So you can do research that you could maybe probably do here. So just figure out a way to do it here. Anyway, after the affair, originally, the plan is for everybody's sake to keep the entire affair a secret. Chen and Michelle are going to get divorced, but they can give like some generic reason about schedules. He's in China. Yeah. Maybe there's probably going to be rumors that he has like a mistress in China, because that's usually what happens when these very vague reasons for divorce come out. And they're circles. But they could just say, no, our schedules were not matching up. It just didn't make sense. We're not seeing each other. We're not seeing eye to eye. As for Cohen, I mean, he's already in college. It's natural. He's drifting away from his uncle and aunt. He's making his own friends. So it's not like he has to call his sister and be like, oh, yeah, Cohen did this today. Cohen hung out with me today. They're already living separate lives. So the whole plan is not even to tell Cohen's mom about what happened. Just tell nobody. They haven't. OK, I see. That's the original plan. But Cohen starts telling his mom what happened. He shares his version of events, whether it be the truth. It's hard to say. We'll break it down in a second. But he tells his mom back in China that his aunt, Chen's wife, seduced him and they were intimate for a while. But he was so lonely. He didn't even really know what was happening. It's like hard to understand. And she manipulated him into this really, really inappropriate affair. And when Chen found out, you know, his uncle found out instead of protecting him, he throws Cohen out of the house, leaving him practically stranded in the United States with nobody he can reach out to, nobody to look after him. And like, sure, he's a college kid. But still, like this, this is his only link to an adult who might be able to help him. He's only been in the States for a few years. And now now on top of that, Mom, Chen is threatening to get a restraining order out on me. And Cohen is like, all I wanted to do was talk to my uncle about what happened and apologize and explain my side of the events. But Chen is so hot tempered, so upset, so jealous, so resentful. He threw me out of the house without hearing me out and told me that this is trust passing. And he's going to get a restraining order with everyone finding out in the family about the real reason for the divorce. Chen is feeling probably humiliated, but also there is this new pressure put on him from his sister. She's upset because then at least the least you can do. Her theory is like the least you can do is help my son get a green card by marrying the aunt. Yeah, I guess her like thought process is this is a woman who is 39, took advantage of my son who is 18, went into this new country. Where he knows nobody. His entire life is now inside of this box, which is probably his room inside of Chen's family house. And she is the adult. She's the one making decisions. And she seduces him. She takes advantage of this, ruins his life, ruins the entire family relations. And of course, Chen divorces her. So the least she can do for basically repentance is to marry my son, give him a green card. Like this is what he should get out of the trauma, at least is kind of like her thought process. In the theory. And but she's mad because she's like, OK, brother, not only are you letting your ex-wife not marry my son, because that's the least she can do after taking advantage of him, because that's from her perspective. She brought it up to Chen. Yes. And Chen say no. Yeah. OK. And on top of that, she's like, now you're trying to get a restraining order against my son, which, again, jeopardizes his chances of getting a visa or green card the more appropriate way through work after he graduates because he's on his. Student visa. And that's so much harder also to get like an H-1B visa. It's so difficult. From her perspective, she did everything from her brother. And this is how he repays her for her one and only son. She repeatedly calls Chen, telling him that, you know, Cohen is young. He's clearly been used and seduced by your ex-wife. Yes, he acted foolishly. But now that it's all said and done, the least you guys can do is get him the green card. It is unclear if this version of events is true, though I can see how it is highly possible. OK. Considering Michelle is the one in the position of power in this situation, and I will stand on that. I tend to agree that she's mostly the one at fault. I get that Cohen is 19. I get that the affair started after he was 18. But he's in a very vulnerable situation where he's coming into a brand new place, moving to a whole new country. He doesn't speak the language. He has no support system. He thinks he's being taken care of in this home. I can see how he is the most vulnerable in this situation, though I do see some netizens saying Michelle might have been vulnerable because, you know, she's in a marriage where her husband is never home. She's left alone with the kids. Her entire identity is just being alone and raising the family without her husband. That's just speculation of what people think Michelle was going through. However, Michelle is also the one that reportedly wanted Chen to work in China a lot. It's been reported that she was not enthusiastic of a research opportunity that Chen received in China that he was really excited for. But she was enthusiastic of a lucrative business idea that he wanted to start a company in China. So some people are putting the blame on her and it's like, well, it's kind of your fault that he's not home because you wanted him to go start this company instead of just being satisfied with his research roles where he is probably doing greater good for humankind and society, trying to find ways to prevent cancer, even if it is using technology that people may not agree with. He might ultimately net neutral, like be saving lives at least. So there is that that people are like, well, you really have to be in China. All the time. So that doesn't make any sense. Or if you really want it, you can move to China with the kids. But regardless, there's a lot of back and forth. But I would say wholeheartedly out of the two, Michelle and Cohen, it's pretty clear the one who bears more responsibility, at least for the start and the continuation of the affair is Michelle. She's 20 years older than Cohen, double his age. She's supposed to be his caretaker in the US, even though he is an adult. But still, however, there are new theories that have come out kind of out of nowhere. There are stories coming out that perhaps Cohen is the mastermind of this affair. Mainly, this is stemming from online forums with netizens who claim they went to high school with Cohen, one particularly well circulating post. The netizen who claims to know Cohen says he is highly manipulative, that during his high school years in China, he just jumped from one girlfriend to another to another, which is not inherently a bad thing. However, they believe that he was manipulating and using his girlfriends. They claim that Cohen had a whole group of guys in high school that looked up to him because they all wanted to be P.U.A.s, pickup artists. Yeah, but in Chinese context, it's like basically you're. Gaslight manipulator. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not like a. To get different girls. Like lying, scheming, and cheating is not below a P.U.A. It has a very strong negative connotation, probably worse than America. And they said that Cohen would. This is an allegation that's coming from like a random netizen post that he would. Film himself having intimate relations with girls and share it amongst the group of guys who also aspired to be P.U.A.s. But I don't know if this is true at all or if he just like would talk a big game because he's a high schooler. And I think the only part that would be really alarming is if these videos were shared without anyone's consent or taken without anyone's consent. Also, there are minors at that point, so that's already concerning. However, I don't know how true this post is. I mean, there's really no verification process for this. There's no way to authenticate. But it has since gone viral in China, which is why a lot of Chinese netizens have kind of bought into this theory that maybe Michelle is not the one that started the affair. Not that they like Michelle. It seems most netizens don't like her, but maybe she's not the one that started the affair. I don't know how true that is. I still think Michelle should have known better. But the theory goes on in China that Michelle was not a fan of Cohen when he first got to the U.S. She was really annoyed that she has this task of taking on, you know, a full. full-grown teenager that she's not even personally related to other than by marriage. He's a burden. She's probably not treating him the nicest. And the netizens theorize that Cohen seeing this, feeling this, he decides instead of being upset and treating her the same way, he's just going to woo her. He starts changing his attitude, showering her with compliments, not thinking it was probably going to lead to an affair, that it was just going to make her be nice to him. But things snowball into an affair. Who's the one that should have stopped it? Probably Michelle. You get the idea. People are spreading. It's a lot. Others have been spreading even more bizarre theories online stating that Cohen had a plan to come to the U.S. He knew that his uncle and aunt had a strained relationship because his mom would talk about it. That's an allegation. That's like a huge speculation. It's a rumor. It's not even an allegation. It's a fucking rumor that he just wanted to break up the parents so he could get his aunt, marry for a green card. Now, I will say there's a little bit more nuance to this. I know everyone's like, well, that's like a huge theory for Chinese netizens to come up with. Like, why would he marry his aunt? Why would he marry his uncle's aunt for a green card? It is a very tricky situation. So when Chinese students come into the United States to study, they all come on a student visa and getting a green card or getting citizenship is notoriously difficult of really anyone of any nationality when they come into the United States. Obviously, like, we see it on the news all the time, but with Chinese students, it's especially difficult because the people that they typically socialize with and form relationships, interpersonal relationships. And I think that's one of the reasons why they come to the United States to study. And I think that's one of the reasons why they come here for maybe future marriages are also Chinese students who are more immersed in Chinese culture. versus like chinese americans who might be american citizens right or are american citizens and so if they find each other you kind of get these situations where you have now a couple in the u.s and they're both hoping that they can separately get h-1b visas or at least one of them can and the other one can try to stay h-1b is work visa yes which are very difficult and you have to have specialized skills in the industry and a lot of the industries that they're going into such as tech such as you know it's just like a very overpopulated industry of people trying to get h-1b visas unless you're phenomenal at your job it's going to be very difficult and even if you are phenomenal at your job it gives you a really limited sense of mobility because if you're an american citizen you could work at meta today and then amazon tomorrow because they pay you more but then you're kind of locked into a company for a very long time until you can find a way to get a different visa that's not dependent on your work it's just it's really hard it's a really lengthy process visas are a huge deal to the point where i believe because i was like talking to the chinese researcher about it and she was saying like even if you like go on dating websites in china like in the u.s as a chinese person a lot of the chinese students will indicate on their dating profile if they have a visa or if they don't yeah it changes the whole like factor of the relationship so it's a huge deal so this is not just like a let me marry my aunt and do something crazy for giggles it's like a maybe some people can wrap their minds around why he would do something not saying he did but why this rumor gained legs and started running around he would also be able to secure permanent residency from that point if he were to marry someone with u.s citizenship i don't know if that's the case there's a lot of back and forth of rumors here technically he is studying computer science at the university and he's not really sure if he could technically apply for an h1b visa um you know again difficulty it's northeastern is not a top 10 school it is ranked top 50 in the united states it's an incredible university okay it's it's a good school it's just like visas are fucking hard i don't know what else to say it's just so difficult he may have a relatively okay chance at securing a visa but it's not guaranteed so the only way to guarantee a visa is to marry a u.s citizen however he goes to northeastern a lot of the girls that he probably would date are probably fellow chinese students who are also trying to secure a visa and then with chinese americans or even americans of different cultures there it's not going to be as easy to mesh and click and try to because i don't know how proficient he is at english it didn't seem like he had that much struggles but you get what i'm saying yeah so maybe the easiest way would be to marry his aunt on paper for a few years another theory is that chen's older sister was never resentful of being voldemort out loud but maybe she expressed it to her son and in the privacy of her own nuclear family unit so maybe she talked about it all the time with her brother and in front of her son cohen or maybe she said things like oh yeah my brother got into a nuclear war and he was like oh yeah my brother got into a nuclear war and he was like oh yeah my brother got into a nuclear war and he was like oh yeah my brother got into a nuclear war and he was like oh yeah my brother got into a nuclear war and he was at the department of statistics but it's all because of me he wouldn't have been able to do it without me because i paid his way through college so perhaps she felt like he was living the life that she was owed and cohen soaking in all of these statements throughout his years of development he decided that his uncle really just owes him things is what a lot of chinese netizens suspect and this is coming from i think a lot of cultural nuance that they probably have in this case that we don't have as much in the united states so there's saying like we've seen situations like this where sisters will openly talk about it in front of their kids talk about their uncles and say these types of things or they feel like they need to be repaid so maybe for that reason they felt it was entirely reasonable for michelle to marry cohen for the green card but again these are just internet theories and rumors there's really nothing that we can be certain about and cohen is no longer here to defend himself against such rumors and allegations which makes the waters much murkier here but one of cohen's old roommates has a few interviews where he states at least from his perspective he thought cohen was scared of his uncle yeah he says cohen was telling him that he's scared that his uncle is going to break in one day and kill him and obviously the roommate is like i also live here so now i'm scared too this is after the affair yeah the uncle found out so the roommate is like but you know at the end of the day i felt like it was him being paranoid and maybe chen's resume played a role into it because i i also feel like he's trying to like he's studying cell biology for cancer like maybe he's not gonna kill you like i don't know for the affair itself there are people who blame michelle and only michelle there are people who blame cohen and only cohen and then there are people probably the majority of people who feel like it's just probably all around a tricky situation mainly falling on michelle but also is cohen as innocent as people think he is innocent in the ethical and moral sense in the illegal criminal sense because after all of this after the affair is found out by chen and cohen goes back to his dorm it's said that he would um he would show up to the house a lot whose house chen and michelle's house who's living there right now so chen ends up moving back in because of this so when it was just michelle and the kids it said that cohen would show up a lot and like trespass onto their property trying to talk to michelle he alleged he would also non-stop send messages to michelle he would show up to the church that she goes to he says that he just wants to talk to her and just talk that's it but the messages he sends are far more threatening than just talking he tells her that he's going to kill her entire family what yeah but it's like not just i'm gonna kill your entire family it's like if i'm not gonna kill your entire family i'm going to self-exit so i'm not entirely sure what the energy of that type of text message is but it's not or yeah either or either i'm gonna kill you all or i'm gonna kill myself yeah basically yeah so this is very alarming for chen and that is when he ends up moving back into the family house he's not trying to get back together with michelle so this is not like a let's try again type of thing it's more like hey my kids are in here so i i'm scared for my kids that's why he had the restraining order right yes so he ends up getting a restraining order and they end up drawing the line for this restraining order so it seems like there were multiple incidences where they didn't think it was far but they finally do it once cohen allegedly shows up at the children's elementary school waiting for michelle to come pick them up so that he can catch michelle and talk to michelle so there are allegations that cohen would show up to the house and just like peer through the windows until they would open up which they would never open the door just a lot a lot um it's also said that cohen started demanding that his uncle chen find him someone to marry if michelle is not going to marry him the least you can do is get me a green card or else i'm going to tell everyone on line about what happened where's our report coming from from what they alleged happened in order to get this restraining order this is directly from chen reported to the police no so he's reporting it to his attorney and the attorney is summarizing this for the judge however there is text message evidence but in terms of like we did try to foi at this case it's still pending so they didn't give us any files but um i don't know if we have the exact evidence for that but this is what he told his attorney and the attorney told the judge and a restraining order was granted so he's saying that i just want permanent residency find me someone to marry and chen is like okay i'm not someone who runs in those circles i'm sure there are people out there who will find someone who would arrange an illegal and unethical deal where you pay money and marry someone for a green card right but he doesn't know these people and also he thinks what nerve does cohen have to not like what leg do you have to stand on to make these demands after everything transpired like maybe he could make these demands to michelle but to chen he feels like this is kind of crazy it's also been reported that in one heated confrontation cohen beat up chen and put him in a headlock it's unclear if this happened it's unclear if chen attacked him first everything is kind of unclear but it seems that it seems like there was definitely something going on chen and michelle end up filing a restraining order against cohen in late 2020 and one of the screenshots of the threatening messages sent to michelle from cohen was submitted as evidence he's saying things like if i don't kill your entire family i'm gonna self-exit great this is just too fucking amazing my future has been ruined by you you ruined everything for me she goes ruined by me and he responds now i'm the walking dead with zero dignity left in 2020 the court not only issues a restraining order but because of the threats of self-exit in the messages um that's a cause for concern for the courts they decide to hospitalize cohen and put him on a self-exit watch days which does not make cohen feel better about his uncle and aunt after the restraining order is filed it said that cohen felt even more wronged by the whole hospital stint everything because all of these things are probably going to they're not going to help his chances of getting a green card because you know these are all going to be in probably the i don't know how much of the hospitalization stay will be i don't know if it would be recorded as just he was hospitalized because he was sectioned for it so it is you know but i don't know if like i don't think they're the type of violation but i think it would probably show up and so any violation of this restraining order would result in a criminal record which would ruin any and all chance he would have at applying for a visa or green card in the near future so with all of that going on chen's dad passes away so in the midst of all of this chen's dad passes away just yeah and then it's just their mother left and with nothing left to argue about chen's sister allegedly threatens chen if you don't help my son get a green card i'm gonna abandon our mother i'm gonna leave her like i'm just not gonna take care of her what are you gonna do you're barely in our hometown when you come to china you're like working in the big city what are you gonna do like all of that is gonna be on you it is said that under all of this alleged pressure chen's mental state starts crumbling the only mental protection he has is knowing that cohen the only thing he cares most about is staying in the united states so he's not going to break that restraining order as long as it's in place the order is only valid for one and a half years and the court will then have to decide whether or not they need to extend it for the one and a half years that he's been in the united states for the one and a half years that he's been in the united states chen's life is a living hell from the constant pressures but still this is kind of his only saving grace his company in china is suffering because of his frequent absences he's stressed non-stop about his kids safety he's trapped in this house with his ex-wife and it's just he has to face and confront the affair every day because again it happened in the house and i was actually on reddit and a lot of people who have been whose partners have had affairs say it's actually so detrimental to find them in the house like they're saying they think the trauma of the affair would be slashed in half had it never taken place in the house because it's like such your safe space that now feels so dirty and they say that everything every room reminds you of the affair and so i wonder if that did something to his psyche not that i would excuse anything but you're on top of that yeah from your families and so his very stable envy and his indecision to be able to have a child and to be able to have a kid and to be able to be able to have a child and to be able to have a kid and to be able to have a kid and to be able to have a kid hopefully net positive purpose for humankind is just gone april 7th 2022 they're at cambridge district court in medford massachusetts to attend a hearing on whether or not they should extend the restraining order against cohen during the restraining order chen says he strangled me physically attacked me went to elementary school to find my child without permission attempted to enter my house on several occasions would show up unannounced late at night and just hide lingering outside the windows cohen was there he testified before the judge and he says i think it's a good time for both the parties to move on i think for me i have been like working very hard on myself i've totally moved on on this matter and i even moved away from where i lived previously i live with my church friends now ultimately the judge states that they did not see any grounds on extending the restraining order the judge states with the defendant having moved it seems that the likelihood that they're going to encounter each other in their everyday lives is much diminished i haven't seen a significant change in the circumstances or the need for the order with the restraining order being lifted this meant that there is no longer any restriction on cohen coming near them near their property contacting them going to their children's schools their session was the last session in court that day some people speculate that the judge just wanted to get out of there that's a huge speculation but after the last session everyone is slowly leaving the courthouse as they're leaving william barbino who is chen's attorney is you know making sure chen is okay and he's thanking his attorney and chen's like i'll be fine and he's like thank you thank you like i'm just gonna go home michelle is not there by the way so chen he exits the courthouse walk towards the parking lot gets to his car and he's clearly not fine because he steps into the parking lot and he makes eye contact with cohen and it's said that in that moment something happens it's hard to say what but people think that maybe he looked at cohen and saw something in his eyes that indicated like a promise of like i'm gonna keep harassing you but maybe it was a snarky look maybe it was nothing maybe he looked at the back of cohen's head and was like no i can't do this i don't know we like genuine there's no way of knowing what went on in his mind at that moment but he decides to ram his car into cohen and then get out the car and shoot him oh so he brought a gun though yeah but he does have a license to carry oh okay yeah a concealed carry permit i believe there will be a huge argument is it premeditated versus yeah that's a huge thing right now so um the fact that he has that permit makes it harder to prove premeditation i think even you know even to argue it's a crime of passion is difficult some would say it would perhaps be more applicable if he had killed him in bed when he found the affair but i would say that this is actually a pretty solid argument that could have a back and forth of crime of passion because it is after the restraining order was denied and his safety he feels like he needs to protect some sort of safety for himself his ex-wife and his kids maybe perhaps could be an argument i'm not entirely sure but he does um get into the car ram into cohen's body and shoots him five to six times and 23 year old cohen is killed chen's attorney says he thought he heard construction noises like the ramming of the car and he went outside and that's when he realized he said i went in he sees chen with the gun so he's like i just i went in i just kind of put my knee on his back so he sees the police he sees that that's his client he's like i mean i would assume that the police want my client okay want to restrain him so he's like i just went in put my knee on his back kind of rubbed his back a little bit just kind of comforting him i guess wait so he went in the cops were standing by just watching with with their gun yeah i think they were trying to assess how how to approach yeah the attorney just charged yeah yeah i don't think he charged but more so like you know was like approaching calmly so that he didn't startle chen i see and then he just put him on the ground chen went down without a fight and he said i just kind of looked over there and there was a dead body and my client here and i knew the police would want to have him so i just kind of held him there he says about the restraining order and this whole situation he says it's really sad i mean chen was so gentle chen was so kind he didn't have any history of violence he never had a physical abuse he grew up in china originally he got his phd there it was in statistics i mean he's a bright guy he was basically number one in all of his scholastics all his education then he went over to postdoc at harvard in statistics he has two children i i know he loves his children very much there's going to be two children at home who do not have a dad if in fact he's the killer which you know he's a lawyer so he has to say that and he goes to the jail for the rest of his life he was very kind and pleasant and timely and decent and just like the type of guy you always want working next to you you know what i mean i mean it's emotional it's powerful stuff it just really affected him apparently more than i could see i knew it affected him clearly but it affected him obviously a great deal the da states we know the restraining order was not renewed we don't know if that was the reason for whatever happened outside the courthouse he was arrested he was denied bail and it's going to be very interesting considering a lot of the public sentiment actually seems to be in favor of chen a lot of people also have this ongoing still yeah so he and it's just very messy i think a lot of the public sentiment comes from clearly his resume clearly his track record of no criminal history and his resume of doing such high level research in fields that again could probably ultimately end up helping people and his very docile demeanor and further i think a lot of people are going to be very disappointed in him and i think a lot of people have frustration on the restraining order process in the united states of how it's almost like never never given out how it's never really upheld how the police don't really care until the restraining order is broken which at that point like where is the harm done probably everywhere so a lot of people they side with chen they think that he actually was someone who was driven into madness by relentless pressure by everyone around him one person says i really sympathize with dr chen hope he receives a lenient sentence so he can return to a peaceful life others you know think that he should what he was doing for humans was probably way more important so they think like we should just let him out they're like he's probably he's not like a spree killer he's probably not going to go out and like randomly kill another person not that he killed allegedly you know others say well he's got to lay in his bed he made it he's got to lay in his bed they think that chen's biggest mistake was quote he married the Others lament on the fact that Chen could have actually done a big service to society, saying, this is so sad. I truly feel sorry for him. He could have had a brilliant future. Others blame the court, saying the court refused to extend the restraining order to his nephew. The court implicitly made this happen. Others say, bless this guy. He was just trying to protect his family against his crazy relative. During the arraignment, he was in court. He looks, I mean, he bears like zero resemblance to the Chen everyone knew. He looks like he's having a full mental breakdown. He looks disheveled. He looks like, I don't think he was, but he looks like he's been sedated. He looks like he's been dragged into court. Like his hair is a mess. He is kind of in like a hospital gown. So I don't know if he's been sedated, but it looks like he could have been. He has pled not guilty to murder and armed assault. The judge ordered Chen be held without bail. Michelle was present in the courtroom. She was visibly distraught. She did wave goodbye to him as he was being taken away. So it is going to be interesting. Now he has a new attorney. Cause this is now a very serious criminal case. And his new attorney has stated, my client was seeking a restraining order against the person that is now being described as the victim. There is a lot of investigation. that has to happen to understand who and why things happen the way they did chen has gone from a very well-respected cancer researcher to now being on trial for murder what are your thoughts on this case yeah his sister there was a um in 2025 a wrongful death suit filed on behalf of cohen's estate so i would imagine his mother is heavily involved in that against chen and it has been settled it has been like just yeah so it doesn't seem like it's settled i don't think that there was an exchange of any um payment or damages paid it's just been dropped yeah wow this is man yeah yeah but i think um maybe the trial will be enlightening in the sense we can actually get some real answers i do think that there is a huge role that michelle played in all of this i think there are really only just rumors of how much of a role cohen played i think it would be interesting to see all of the evidence come out of whether or not he was extensively stalking them because there are some rumors on chinese social media of people saying maybe this was michelle trying to lure her husband ex-husband back by creating this like i guess potential threat to safety so there's you know like i guess questions of how scary was was this restraining order against cohen even as scary as people think it is like i guess there's that rumor so we don't know and i think that is it's going to be a huge point of contention what are your thoughts let me know in the comments be safe and i will see you in the next one you