Paris: Nanny Hui Zhang given 20-year prison sentence for killing and dismembering her employers with electric saw

Hui Zhang, 34, claimed that killed her employers Ying Wang and Liangsi Xui in self-defence, after they attacked her and her boyfriend with a butcher's knife. The nanny told the court that an argument ensued after she told them that their two-month old son had died in his sleep.

"It's true, I killed them, and I will regret it for the rest of my life," Hui said, according to a report in Le Parisien. After killing her employers, Hui cut up their bodies with an electric saw in the bathroom. Her boyfriend Te Lu helped her put the body parts into rubbish bags.

Te Lu pleaded not guilty to murder, saying he was knocked unconscious during the row and was acquitted. "I was sucked into a whirlwind of nightmares, but I am innocent," he said.

"He was violently hit, it has been medically recorded," said Te's lawyer Eric Dupond-Moretti.

The couple then disposed of the bodies in the Vincennes forest on the edge of Paris and then fled to China. They later came back to France because they feared the death penalty in China, according to police.

The bodies were found in June 2012 by two joggers who found a leg, cut off at the ankle. A guide dog found a human torso in the same area of the Vincennes forest. Before the bodies could be identified, Hui and Te turned themselves in. They then directed police to the locations of more body parts around the forest.

The body of the two-month old baby was never found, although Hui later confessed that she had thrown it in rubbish bins along with the bodily remains of his parents.

In his closing arguments, Advocate General Julien Eyraud had told the court: "When I learned of this case I was overcome by the horror of what happened, imagining the smell of blood, this butchery in the bathroom, this violence."