Oakland dentist murderer-for-hire suspect passes away in custody

Authorities say a 73-year-old man who was detained on suspicion of paying someone to kill his longtime partner, a well-known dentist in the San Francisco Bay Area, committed suicide while still in police custody.

At the time, it was thought that Lili Xu’s, 60, deadly shooting in Oakland last August was a heist gone wrong. Investigators, however, said last week that Nelson Chia paid Hasheem Bason, 33, to assassinate Xu.

According to the Bay Area News Group, both men were detained on Thursday on suspicion of murder. According to the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department, Chia was discovered dead in a holding cell at Santa Rita Jail the following day.

Due to Xu’s popularity in the Oakland Chinatown community and worries about anti-Asian violence spurred by prior hate crimes in the Bay Area, the death attracted attention.

At a news conference on Friday, Oakland police Chief LeRonne Armstrong said that as his department looked into the case, it “did not seem to be a standard robbery-related murder… something felt odd.”
The issue here is wealth, not race or hatred, according to Armstrong. He made no further mention of the potential monetary motivation for the act.

Before Chia’s death was made public, Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley predicted that his murder case would be enhanced to reflect his alleged intent to profit financially from the homicide.

It was unknown on Saturday if Stockton resident Bason has a lawyer who could represent him. He was detained without bail and his arraignment was set for the following week.

The gun that murdered Xu on August 21 in an Oakland neighborhood where she and Chia had gone to a spa is thought to have been fired by Bason, according to investigators. According to the initial reports, a suspect pulled up in a car, tried to rob Xu of her pocketbook, shot her, and then drove away. Chia suffered no harm.

According to the Bay Area News Group, Xu, who immigrated to the country from Shanghai in 1995, had operated dental offices in Castro Valley and Oakland’s Chinatown for many years.

She and Chia shared a house in the Oakland hills and had been companions for more than ten years.