From November 2002 to February 2003, within a period of five months, there were four extremely similar cases of cremation in Heping City.
The victims were all young women who had never given birth. The bodies were dumped in remote places, such as abandoned factories, temporarily suspended construction sites, rural wilderness, and unfinished buildings. The bodies were all burned, making it impossible to distinguish faces and fingerprints.
After the police investigated, they were able to obtain the following clues:
The first case, size 40 rubber shoe prints
In the second case, the fuel was diesel
In the third case, it snowed lightly that day, and the murderer left behind tire marks.
In the fourth case, the body was identified.
This? It's pure coincidence.
The fourth case occurred in February of the following year.
At that time, one and a half months had passed since the third case, and the police still had not found out the true identity of the murderer, and they were wondering whether he had stopped.
Everyone was under a lot of pressure, especially after the first three cases were reported in the news, which caused panic among the people. During those months, once it got dark, no young women were seen on the streets.
Streets and communities were mobilized to remind residents not to go out at night, and women living alone must be especially careful and call the police station if anything happens.
There was a panic at the moment, and the police station and the street police were called several times. The woman begged for help in tears, but when they arrived at the scene, eight out of ten cases were burglaries and robberies.
Around 2 p.m. on February 18, several middle school students called 110 and said that they found a dead person in a haunted house and it was very scary.
The police rushed to the location of the report, which was an unfinished villa by the river, dark and like a haunted house.
There was a similar black charred corpse in the room, but the difference was that the bones of this corpse had been broken and several steel nails were inserted. The police immediately contacted the hospital and took the autopsy photos to ask the orthopedic surgeon.
Finally, a doctor recognized this person as a former patient of his.
The police finally confirmed the identity of the deceased.
Her name is Wang Zihui, she is 24 years old and works as a lobby manager in a restaurant. A few months ago, she accidentally rolled down the stairs and broke her leg. She had to wear a plaster cast for several months before it healed.
When I went to her workplace to ask, they said she had been missing for almost a week.
I asked my boss, and he said, "I heard she had a rich boyfriend, and I thought she had quit."
I asked my colleague, and he said, "She said she was going back to her hometown for a few days, but who knew she would die. Sigh!"
I asked my roommate, and he said, "Xiao Hui died? Oh my god, I didn't know. I was busy packing up and moving these days, so I didn't know anything about her."
This was the only deceased whose identity could be confirmed. The police investigated very carefully and quickly figured out her social relationships.
Wang Zihui is not from Heping City. She came here from other places to work. She doesn't know many people, mainly the boss and colleagues in the restaurant. Her roommate is not her friend. They just met when they shared a house. They don't care about each other or know each other.
According to a colleague, they saw Wang Zihui get into a man's car and guessed that it was her boyfriend, but her younger sister denied it and said that they had never heard her mention who she was dating.
The suspicion of the mysterious man suddenly increased.
After a detailed investigation, the police finally dug out the mysterious man driving the car.
His name is Wu Bing, and he is a fellow villager of Wang Zihui. He made a small fortune in the building materials business in the past two years, so he immediately bought a car and wanted to drive it back to his hometown during the New Year to show people his skills.
When asked about his relationship with Wang Zihui, he said, "We are from the same village. This girl didn't go home last year. Her parents were very worried and asked me to take care of her."
The police asked: "Did you drive to look for her?"
"Just once, I invited her to dinner and said a few words to her, nothing else." Wu Bing was quite nervous at the time, "Officer, did this girl commit a crime? I'm not familiar with her and we don't have much contact normally."
Of course the police don’t believe it.
With only one suspect like this, of course we have to investigate it thoroughly.
As a result, they uncovered bribery, □□, and shoddy workmanship, but no matter how they investigated, they seemed to have nothing to do with the previous three cases.
Wu Bing's car runs on gasoline, his shoes are size 42, and he had social events almost every day in the past few months and got drunk. How could he have the time to kill someone and dump the body
The case came to a stalemate.
After the Wang Zihui case, although the murderer was not caught, he stopped committing crimes again.
Police force is limited and it is impossible to invest unlimitedly. After another month, the matter gradually faded. After another half a year, the case files began to gather dust.
A year later, this serial murder and cremation case became just one of countless unsolved cases, and gradually no one mentioned it anymore.
It wasn't until 2007 that the murderer struck again, and this time, he was finally caught by the police.
In January 2007, the weather was freezing cold and Heping City experienced unprecedented heavy snowfall.
Perhaps it was this snow that ruined the murderer's plan. When the fifth body was found, only the coat and face were burned, and the body was still intact.
Fast forward nearly five years, and criminal investigation technology has continued to develop.
The forensic doctor successfully extracted some key evidence from this body: a small amount of beech wood chips and cigarette ash on the soles of the shoes, undigested hamburgers, chicken and some fried fish in the stomach, and paint on the nails.
After comparison, it was found that it was common acrylic paint, and the remaining clothing material was very young, so the police speculated that the deceased was a student or teacher at an art school.
After visiting and investigating, they found people who met the requirements.
Li Xiaonuan, a senior student at the Academy of Fine Arts, is about to graduate in a few months, but has not found a job yet and can only take some odd jobs.
In the past two days, she took an order to paint several large murals for a store. She went out at 18:00 every morning and came back at 6:00 or 7:00 in the evening.
The day before the incident, she went out at 9am as usual, but did not come back until lights out. Her roommates were a little surprised, but they were not worried. It was normal for college students to stay out all night, so they thought she had gone to a friend's house to spend the night.
According to the physical examination report provided by the school, the police believed that the fifth body was highly similar to Li Xiaonuan's information, so they collected DNA from the family members and finally confirmed that the deceased was Li Xiaonuan.
Her parents were heartbroken and knelt on the ground begging the police to find the murderer and bring him to justice.
The police officer in charge of the case at that time agreed cautiously.
His name is Ji Liming.
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Compared with the previous four cases, the fifth case has unique advantages: the person disappeared yesterday, the body was found the next day, the heavy snow extinguished the fire, the body was well preserved, and a large amount of physical evidence remained at the scene.
The police were very excited and conducted an extremely detailed investigation.
The pigment in the nails confirmed the identity, and the stomach residue was investigated and confirmed to be bought at a nearby hamburger shop. The specialty of this hamburger shop is fried fish, not cod or sole, but small yellow croaker, which is very recognizable and not available in other shops.
The lady boss said that she remembered a girl in a red coat came to buy something in the evening, but she didn't remember the exact time. However, the cashier had a record of two chicken burgers and fried fish, one of which had a beef patty, but Li Xiaonuan didn't have it in her stomach, so she was sure that the purchase was made at 17:30.
The red coat she wore was related to the clothing fragments of Li Xiaonuan. Judging from her digestion, she died about 2-4 hours after the meal.
So, when does Li Xiaonuan eat
The proprietress provided a valuable clue. She said that the girl who bought things seemed to have not eaten lunch (this was consistent with the owner's confession that Li Xiaonuan was busy all day and often did not eat). She was very hungry, so she took a bite of the fried fish and burned her tongue. She then asked her to buy an iced Coke.
The cash register records confirm this.
Therefore, it can be basically concluded that Li Xiaonuan's time of death was between 19:30 and 21:30.
Then came the beech wood chips.
There is very little beech wood in China, most of it is imported from abroad, and is generally used for furniture. The dormitory of the Academy of Fine Arts certainly does not use such wood. The soft furnishing shops have been decorated, the floor is swept clean, and there is no sawdust.
The probability that the sawdust got on the murderer is very high.
But beech wood is not that rare. It is used in decorating, furniture making, and transportation, so you never know where it might have been left behind.
Ji Liming found the map, drew a circle on the Academy of Fine Arts in the south of the city, and another circle on the shops in the west of the city, and marked the buses and subways at the two places.
Finally, a big circle was drawn at the garbage dump where corpses were cremated, also in the west of the city.
He drove to the Academy of Fine Arts and drove around a few times. The Academy of Fine Arts was located in a remote area, with a park nearby and beautiful scenery, which was suitable for sketching, and also suitable for disposing the body.
Therefore, he concluded that the murderer targeted Li Xiaonuan in the west of the city, not in the Academy of Fine Arts.
Return to the west of the city.
He drove through the streets one by one, took a notebook, and recorded all the shops that were being renovated. Then he sent the task to each community police station and asked them whether they had used beech wood.
He also asked someone to go to the transportation company to check the list to see if anyone had taken over the job of transporting the timber.
A large number of police forces were deployed, like an airtight net, pulling all the suspects to the surface.
The police have identified a suspect.
Wu Honglin, male, 35 years old, truck driver. In early January, he took over an order to transport timber and returned to Heping City around the 15th.
He and his wife rented a small house of 30 to 40 square meters in the west of the city, and they lived a very tight life. Usually, Wu Honglin drove the train for long distances, and his wife drove an electric tricycle to pick up passengers. In 2007, the operation market was still very irregular, and there were many similar black cars, which could be seen everywhere on the streets.
When the police came to their house, his wife thought they were cracking down on illegal taxis, so she smiled and said she had a license plate, and handed over a cigarette, hoping they would show mercy.
"Comrade police officer, we are just trying to make a living." The woman in her thirties wrung her hands, terrified that they would take her tricycle away.
This? But she spent seven or eight hundred dollars to buy it, and it has only been used for less than two years, so it’s still new.
But the police ignored her and asked her, "Where is your man?"
"He went out to earn money." The woman became more and more uneasy, and asked tentatively, "Comrade police officer, did he hit someone? We will pay compensation, of course."
The police officer in charge said, "Sit down first. I have something to ask you."
The woman asked anxiously, "What's the matter?"
"Where was your husband on the night of January 17?"
"No. 17... He is outside soliciting customers."
"But the transport company said he would be back on the 15th."
"Yes, that's a long-distance trip, it's different. On normal days when there's no work, he lets me rest and drives my tricycle to pick up passengers."
"Was he out all night on the 17th?"
"Yes."
"You? Are you with him?"
"No, I remember it was very cold those days and I wasn't feeling well, so he told me to rest at home." When she said this, a happy smile appeared on the woman's face.
The police asked a few questions and left.
Then, the police found Wu Honglin soliciting customers on the street and took him back to the police station for investigation.
Wu Honglin admitted that he did not return home on the night of the 17th, but he did not admit that he had raped Li Xiaonuan, and even denied killing her.
But the odds were stacked against him.
There is a tobacco and liquor store near the shop where Li Xiaonuan paints. The owner was afraid of being targeted by thieves, so he installed a surveillance camera at the door.
The camera captured the scene at around 17:00 when Wu Honglin's three-wheeled electric vehicle passed by the entrance.
The police asked him where he was between 19:00 and 21:00 on the 17th.
Wu Honglin said that the traffic police in the city center are strict, so he usually hangs around the factories in the west of the city, and it must have been one of them that day.
"You? Tell me the truth, did you pick up a young girl that day?"
"No, really. Little girls don't ride this kind of car. On the 17th... it seemed like the weather was bad that day. I picked up a girl who was going to school to pick up her child. It was still daylight at that time. She was definitely not the one you were asking about."
"No business after dark?"
"Yes, but it's just one order, and it's quite late, maybe around eight or nine o'clock."
This is a critical moment. The police asked: "Do you remember the place?"
"Remember, I often solicit customers in this area these past few days. It was a woman with long hair and a suit. She seemed to be an intermediary. I saw she was carrying a large handbag full of documents. She was very polite. I asked for 15 yuan, but she didn't have change. She gave me 20 yuan and didn't even ask for change."
The clues were relatively clear, and that place was a newly developed zone with only two or three real estate agents. After asking them one by one, we quickly found the passenger.
She said, "Yes, I worked overtime on the night of the 17th. It was too late and there were no buses, so I called a black tricycle. What did the driver look like? I don't remember him at all. He seemed not very tall and had a slight accent."
The police showed her a photo of Wu Honglin. She was unsure but recognized him when she saw the tricycle.
"It's this car, I'm sure. It has green curtains and is quite clean inside."
The police asked: "What time is it? Do you remember?"
"I got home around 9:20 and got on the bus around 8:50."