The strange circumstances surrounding the death of Hilary St John Bower, a 60 year-old English teacher at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, has taken a bizarre turn following the revelation that Bower had several girlfriends.

According to a Weibo post from the Shenzhen police department, a 38 year-old Hubei woman named Xu and two other suspects have been arrested for Bower’s murder. “Due to a dispute over their relationship, a 38-year-old woman surnamed Xu was unhappy with Hilary St John Bower and conspired with suspects (a man surnamed Sun, 28, and a man surnamed Liu, 23) to kill Bower in her apartment in the Nanshan district of Shenzhen on March 22.”

Bower was last seen alive on March 22 crossing the Lo Wu border from Hong Kong into Shenzhen, where he lived. Xu was the last known person to speak with Bower - on a 9pm phone call that day - but didn’t report his disappearance to police until March 30, eight days later.

While Xu had been in a relationship with Bower for 17 years, she was not the only woman in his life. Earlier reports claimed Bower shared a six year-old son with Xu, but in fact, the mother is another woman, named Shi Xiumei.

Local media believe Bower was involved with several different women, and that a lover’s quarrel may have resulted in his murder. Bower’s corpse was dismembered and several of his body parts were removed from the Shenzhen apartment where he was found, reported the SCMP. The investigation of the body is ongoing.

A motive has not been established by police, but Bower is believed to have recently completed the sale of a Shenzhen property worth over $1 million.