'A WOMAN'S LIFE IS WORTH MORE THAN THAT'

Texas businessman Curtis Holliday murdered his wife, Chi Le, and left her body in a freezer. Now he could walk free within 10 years.

- JOHNNY DODD, GROSSMAN KANTOR

More than two weeks had passed since Simone Le had last spoken to her 29-year-old niece Chi Le in Texas, and—for good reason, as it turned out— she feared something was wrong. Simone called police in the Houston suburb where she lives on April 30, 2020, explaining that it was unlike Chi—a Vietnamese immigrant who married businessperson Curtis Holliday, 62, in 2019—to miss their frequent phone chats. Could an officer stop by the couple’s home, she asked, and see if Chi and their 3-year-old daughter Sophia were okay?

When Harris County sheriff’s deputies arrived at the couple’s home, they made a startling discovery: There was a woman there, caring for their daughter, but she was not Chi Le—she was Holliday’s ex-wife Yan Xu. More alarming, as deputies combed through the dwelling a month later, they spotted what prosecutors described in an affidavit as a “large freezer that appeared to be brand new in the middle of a room.” The appliance not only looked “out of place,” they wrote, but was big enough to hold a person.