The Bo Xilai political scandal is officially a crime story now, as his wife, Gu Kailai, has been charged with murder. According to China's Xinhua news agency, and her assistant Zhang Xiaojun were both "recently prosecuted" for allegedly poisoning British businessman Neil Heywood after a business dispute last fall. It was Heywood's death and the subsequent investigation that lead to Bo's downfall as one of China's top party officials and a possible future president.

As it usually is when it comes to the entire Bo saga, the news is scant on details of the prosecution or what stage it might be in. No one know what charges might await Bo himself, but this development pushes him and his family even further outside inner circle of the Communist Party they once thrived in, and raises the possibility even further that neither one of them will be heard from again. Neither Bo nor his wife have spoken publicly since the investigation began. 

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Dashiell Bennett