'A Life Is Worth More Than That' (Exclu...

Curtis Holliday, the Texas businessman who murdered his wife and left her body in a freezer, will walk away a free man after he serves his 10-year prison sentence

Published Time: 13.07.2024 - 22:31:15 Modified Time: 13.07.2024 - 22:31:15

Curtis Holliday, the Texas businessman who murdered his wife and left her body in a freezer, will walk away a free man after he serves his 10-year prison sentence.

Back in 2020, Holliday had been arrested for continuously abusing his wife, 29-year-old Chi Le, and ordered to have no contact with her. While out on bond, he murdered her.

Years later, in June 2024 and shortly before jury selection was scheduled to begin in his trial in Harris County District Court, Holliday, 62, pleaded guilty to murder in exchange for a decade-long sentence. (He already served two of those years, per ABC 13.)

“We are pleased that we were able to get that accountability. He took responsibility,” Assistant District Attorney Lindsey Bondurant says in a statement to PEOPLE.

Le met Holliday on WeChat in 2015, before moving into his home and working for his business, where the couple bought and resold household goods that customers had returned to retailers.

A year later, Le, a Vietnamese immigrant, gave birth to their daughter, and the pair then got married in 2019.

For more on the murder of Chi Le, pick up this week's issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands now, orsubscribe.

In early 2020, Holliday was arrested on domestic violence charges. Court documents detailed the abuse he allegedly subjected his wife to, including striking her, restricting her access to food, locking her in a room against her will and telling her “that if he were to kill her, no one would know, care or notice.”

Four months later, Holliday killed his wife. “I was jealous and angry that Chi had decided to leave me for another man,” he explained in his guilty plea.

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Le's death was discovered in April 2020, when her aunt, Simone Le, noticed that weeks had gone by since she had talked to her niece.

After calling the police and explaining that it was unlike Le to miss their frequent phone conversations, the aunt requested that an officer stop by the couple’s home. That's when police made a startling discovery that there was a woman there, caring for the couple's dau -

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ghter — but it was Holliday’s ex-wife and not Le.

A month later, police 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.

Authorities then were shocked to find Le’s body wrapped in plastic inside the freezer, “frozen with frost on the skin,” according to an autopsy report.

Holliday later confessed to placing his wife in the freezer but insisted that she had diedby suicide.

But authorities were skeptical, in part due to a Facebook message that Le's aunt had noticed before her niece’s death: “If suddenly nobody can find me, or find me dead,” she wrote, “please check my husband. He many times tell me sic that he will murder me.”

After a medical examiner ruled Le’s death a homicide, prosecutors charged Holliday with murder in July 2020. His attorney Dick DeGuerin was expected to argue that his client had merely visited the couple’s home — albeit despite a court-issued no contact order — discovered his wife’s body and panicked before stuffing it into the freezer.

“We thought that a settlement was better than a trial for him,” says attorney DeGuerin of Holliday. "He could be out in eight years, back with his daughter.”

Prior to her violent death, Le had turned to law enforcement and the courts, knowing her life was in danger. According to those who work with domestic violence victims, her case, and Holliday's short prison sentence, is emblematic of larger social problems.

Amy Smith with the Harris County Domestic Violence Coordinating Council, tells PEOPLE, "It goes to show just what little resources and support there are for the victims.”

Adds Andy Kahan with Crime Stoppers of Houston: "This case sends a chilling message to domestic violence victims. Her life is worth much more than 10 years.”

If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go to thehotline.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.