According to court documents filed Wednesday, the man accused of slaughtering a family of four from Cypress in 2014 killed them over a work dispute involving a promotion.
As a result of the killings of Maoye and MeiXie Sun and Timothy and Titus Sun, Feng Lu has been charged with capital murder.
The family was found shot to death in their home on Fosters Creek Drive on Jan. 30, 2014, after friends had not heard from them for several days. They’d all been shot in the head.
Sheriff Ed Gonzalez announced on Tuesday that his investigators had identified a suspect who had arrived in San Francisco on a flight from China eight years earlier.
Friends and family had been baffled and alarmed for years by the killings. The criminal complaint filed in Harris County District Court reveals that Lu’s motive was professional jealousy.
It appears that Feng Lu was interviewed by a special agent with the FBI shortly after the murders. According to those documents, he told the agent he had worked at Cameron International Corporation along with Maoye Sun, an oil and gas engineer. Schlumberger now owns Cameron.
According to the documents, Lu requested a recommendation from Sun for a transfer to the company’s research and development department. In response, Lu called Sun and asked why Sun didn’t provide the recommendation, according to the records. Sun denied the accusation, saying he had recommended him.
The next day, Lu’s coworkers treated him differently, leading him to believe Sun made derogatory remarks about him and “may have been the reason he didn’t get promoted.”
Investigators focused on a series of contradictory statements Lu made about a firearm he claimed to have purchased in the weeks before the murder.
Additionally, Lu told the FBI agent that he purchased a gun in west Houston in January 2014.
When he returned the gun to Full Armor Firearms after the murders, he said that his wife had thrown away the barrel because she didn’t want a gun in the house.
In addition, he told investigators he didn’t know the couple’s home until he saw it on the news.
In another interview, Lu said he lost the barrel while cleaning it outside a grocery store.
Meanwhile, Lu’s wife also told investigators that Lu and Sun had a dispute about a promotion. She didn’t know her husband had bought a handgun, and expressed “disbelief” when she learned Lu claimed she had taken the barrel.
Forensic technicians were unable to identify DNA mixtures found in a Coach purse they found at the Sun family home, according to the records. In January, analysts from the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences subsequently used another test which identified the mixtures as containing Lu’s DNA and MeiXie Sun’s DNA.
According to Lu, he had never been inside the house.
A warrant was obtained shortly after that, but Lu wasn’t arrested until earlier this week, when he arrived in California on a flight from China.
Lu is currently in California awaiting extradition. He has not yet been assigned a lawyer.
The prosecution is asking for him to be held without bail, according to court records.
For more on this story, please consider these sources:
- Feng Lu arrested, charged in 2014 killings of Houston-area family The Washington Post
- Man Wiped Out Boss’ Family After Getting Rejected for a Job Promotion, Cops Say Yahoo! Voices
- Arrest made in 2014 murders of 4 family members, including two children, executed at NW Harris C… KPRC 2 Click2Houston
- Cypress murders: Sun family killed over job promotion, records allege Houston Chronicle
- DNA leads to an arrest eight years after couple and 2 sons killed inside their Texas home CBS News