Lin Zhao
However, she did understand that in effect the conclusion of the trial would not be in her favor, and her only hope to a long sentence without surrendering and agreeing to reform was help from above. In accordance with Chinese tradition, she wrote to the mayor of Shanghai, Ke Qingshe asking for his intervention. Ke was an early communist, who's wife had been driven to suicide during a purge, however. Mao has personally spared him, he was as a result, strongly tied with Mao. She wrote two letters to him, finishing the second in February. On 10 April 1965, Liberation Daily, reported Ke's death. Lin Zhao, however, saw a connection where one was not. She assumed that Ke had taken up her case with Mao, and been killed as a result. It is in this time period that Lin Zhao seems to have been driven into state of conspiracy that affected her sanity. In fairness, she has been follow by police, and had an informer sent to befriend her, alongside her actual mental instability, caused by the perception that her last hope had been murdered, there was the fact that the State really was out to get her.