The joined case traces prosecutors’ theory from a 2024 ambush outside an apartment to a 2025 double killing inside a family home.
WALNUT CREEK, Calif. — The triple-homicide case against Howard Wang now reaches from a suburban East Bay home to an apartment building in San Gabriel, with prosecutors laying out a sequence of events they say began in June 2024 and ended with two women dead inside Wang’s Walnut Creek residence in September 2025.
The latest charge does more than add one more count. It lets prosecutors tell the case as a single timeline, beginning with the shooting of Chengli Li, the boyfriend of Wang’s girlfriend, and ending with the deaths of Wang’s wife, Linlin Guo, and her mother, Beimin Cheng. The district attorney’s office says the alleged planning for Li’s death happened in Contra Costa County, allowing the Southern California killing to be joined with the Walnut Creek murders in one venue.
The timeline starts on June 7, 2024, when prosecutors say Wang and Demarques James Pearl traveled from the Bay Area toward Los Angeles County after planning to kill Li. The following day, Li, 41, was shot outside his San Gabriel apartment. Authorities allege Pearl carried out the shooting while Wang drove the getaway vehicle. Prosecutors say Li had been in a relationship with Yan Wang, 45, the woman they describe as Howard Wang’s girlfriend. That detail is central to the state’s theory, because it places the first killing inside a personal rivalry that investigators say later widened into the Walnut Creek deaths.
More than 15 months later, the case resurfaced in a different form on Kelobra Court. Walnut Creek police said officers responded about 11:45 p.m. on Sept. 18, 2025, to a 911 call about a disturbance with possible gunfire. Inside the home, officers found two adult women dead. Prosecutors later identified them as Guo and Cheng and accused Howard Wang of killing both. Authorities have said Wang cut their throats, then fired shots and claimed he had confronted a fleeing intruder. That account quickly fell apart, investigators said, and Wang was arrested after the initial response. He has remained in custody in Martinez since then.
As the investigation expanded, prosecutors added details that gave the case a deeper history. They accused Wang of threatening Guo in August 2024 and of stopping her from reporting a crime to police in January 2023. Local reporting also said court records showed Wang had filed for divorce in January 2024 before later moving to dismiss the matter. Those earlier filings did not charge him with homicide, but they sketched a household already under strain before the September 2025 killings. They also became part of the larger public picture after neighbors and local outlets described prior domestic turmoil connected to the home.
Other defendants then entered the case. Yan Wang was charged after the fact in September 2025 with helping Howard Wang evade arrest, entering the residence with intent to commit larceny and destroying cellphones. Prosecutors say those acts happened after Guo and Cheng were killed. Pearl, 33, was later charged in Li’s death. In a March 30 release, the district attorney’s office said both murder matters would proceed together in Contra Costa County. The court had expected arraignments for both men that day, but defense lawyers sought delays. Pearl’s arraignment was reset for April 1. Howard Wang’s was moved to April 14 at 1:30 p.m.
The structure of the case is unusual because the public first learned about it through the Walnut Creek double-homicide arrest, not through the earlier San Gabriel shooting. Only months later did prosecutors publicly connect the incidents and argue they were part of one narrative. That shift changes how the story is understood. What first appeared to be a brutal domestic homicide inside one home is now being prosecuted as a chain of killings involving two counties, an alleged accomplice, a second woman charged with helping afterward and a motive prosecutors trace to competing relationships. District Attorney Diana Becton has called the case a reminder of domestic violence’s wider consequences for families and the community.
Currently, the next chapter is in court, not at the crime scenes. Pearl is due in Martinez on April 1, and Howard Wang is scheduled to return April 14, when the joined prosecution is expected to move into its next phase.
Author note: Last updated April 20, 2026.