Record of Major Cases: A bizarre murder caused by a fire

In September 2014, a fire broke out in Changzhou City, Jiangsu Province. When firefighters arrived at the scene, someone had already taken out the only "trapped person" from the burning house. Different from ordinary fires, this woman's body was covered in blood, and the wounds were not burned by fire, but stabbed and scratched by a knife.

The firefighters felt something was wrong and notified the Public Security Bureau while actively fighting the fire. After the fire was extinguished, the criminal police entered the scene and saw a lot of blood stains at the bathroom door. After opening the door, a strong smell of blood hit their faces. There was a lot of blood stains on the bathroom toilet and washbasin.

A pair of scissors and the cap of a liquor bottle were found at the scene. There were some burning residues on the ground. After testing, they were found to be rags containing alcohol. Investigators concluded that the scissors and liquor bottle caps were probably left at the scene by the arsonist. The scissors were used to cut the cloth, and the liquor was used as a combustion accelerant. Unfortunately, no biological information of the suspect was extracted from the scissors or the bottle cap.

During the criminal police investigation, news came that the injured person died on the way to the hospital. Based on the circumstances at the scene, the police determined it to be an "intentional homicide and arson case."

The deceased’s name was Liu Yu, thirty-two years old, and the hostess of the burning house. Forensic doctors determined that Liu Yu had five stab wounds on her neck, which were caused by blood loss due to the rupture of a major artery in her neck. In addition, Liu Yu had six stab wounds on her left chest. The suspect's cruelty made the forensic doctors unable to bear to look at her.

Generally speaking, setting fire after murder is to destroy evidence. Liu Yu was young and good-looking. The police suspected that the suspect had sexually assaulted her and wanted to destroy the scene through fire. However, subsequent inspections found no such signs.

The doors and windows at the scene of the crime showed no signs of damage, but there was a key inserted in the door. After questioning, it was learned that the key was left by the deceased’s husband, Wang Hong.

That day was September 11. Wang Hong recalled that in the morning, his wife sent the children to school and left home first. He then got up, washed up and went to work at the company. When he left, his wife had not yet go home. After 9 a.m., he was at work when he suddenly received a text message from his wife, saying that she had a stomachache and would go to the hospital for treatment later, and asked where the money was.

The content of the text message made Wang Hong very strange, because the couple never carried large amounts of cash at home, and always swiped their cards for anything. Therefore, when he saw his wife directly asking where the money was, he felt it was abnormal.

Wang Hongsui called his wife, but no one answered at first, and then the phone was turned off. Wang Hong felt more and more strange, so he asked a colleague to accompany him to his home. Only when he entered the community did he find that his home was on fire. Wang Hong was worried about his wife's safety, so he rushed back in three steps at a time. He was eager to save his wife, so he opened the door without taking the key. Later, he found his wife lying in a pool of blood and hurriedly carried him downstairs. His colleague didn't know the situation and thought Wang Hong's wife had been burned, so he only helped call the fire alarm.

Wang Hong couldn’t walk fast while holding his wife in his arms. After a few minutes, he reached the gate of the community and happened to meet the firefighters who came after receiving the call. This is the scene described at the beginning of this article.

Wang Hong confirmed that no valuables were missing from the home, only two bottles of liquor were missing, thus ruling out the possibility of making money.

The suspect is not looking for sex and money. Is it a vendetta?

The doors and windows at the scene were intact, indicating that the suspect entered the room peacefully. There is a high probability that an acquaintance committed the crime, and the prerequisite for a vendetta is that the two parties knew each other.

Based on this, the police first asked Wang Hong and his wife whether they had any enmity with anyone recently, but received a negative answer.

Two years ago, Liu Yu quit her job due to physical discomfort and became a full-time housewife. In addition to taking her children to and from school every day, she stayed at home watching TV and doing housework, with almost no contact with outsiders. An opportunity to make enemies with others. Wang Hong mainly does technical work in the unit and does not travel outside. He has no conflicts of interest with his colleagues or bad habits. He goes home after get off work every day and never gets into arguments with others.

This is strange. What is the suspect’s motive for committing the crime?

After careful investigation by the police, there were no clues such as fingerprints or footprints at the scene, so they had to conduct multi-point extraction and identification of the blood stains in an attempt to find out the suspect's biological information.

Liu Yu and Wang Hong lived in an old residential building. There was no surveillance installed inside the community, but there was a Skynet probe not far from the gate. This made the police overjoyed and immediately reviewed the information before and after the incident. video.

At 6:30 that morning, Liu Yu sent his son to school as usual, with no abnormality in his expression and movements. At 7:33, Wang Hong went out, and at 8:09, Liu Yu returned to the community.

Wang Hong received a text message from Liu Yu at 9:17, and the car appeared on the screen at 9:58. The police analyzed that the suspect was definitely at Liu Yu's home at 9:17 and left before 9:58, so the men who walked out from the community during this period were listed as the focus of investigation.

After investigation, within these 41 minutes, 13 men left the community. The police on the special case conducted detailed inquiries and investigations on them one by one. They all had alibis, ruling out the possibility of committing the crime.

But this investigation was not without success. Among the 13 people, 5 were renters. This made the police realize that the community's personnel structure was complex. So, could the murderer be one of the residents in the community?

If this hypothesis is true, it would reasonably explain the situation where the 13 people are not suspected, because the murderer does not have to leave the community after committing the crime. He can return to his home and pretend that nothing happened. .

During surveillance, when Liu Yu sent her children to school and returned to the community, there were no suspicious persons behind her, which also showed that the suspect did not follow her into the community from outside.

The police quickly adjusted their investigation direction and began to investigate the residents of the community, focusing on the people in the building where Liu Yu was located. Soon, a suspicious man entered the police field of vision.

He is Cheng Hai, a 34-year-old unmarried neighbor of the deceased Liu Yu. When the police first went to learn about the situation, Chenghai was not at home. The resident downstairs reported that his activity hours were very irregular and he liked to drink. When they met him in the corridor several times, he always had a bottle of liquor in his hand.

Chenghai rented here. The police learned from the landlord that he was a quality monitor for a coal company and obtained his phone number. As soon as they met, one detail about Cheng Hai caught the attention of the police. He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt. The left sleeve was rolled up, but the right sleeve was lowered. It felt like he was covering something.

The investigator pretended to touch Chenghai’s right arm unintentionally. Chenghai made a hissing sound and felt very painful. The investigator asked him to roll up his right sleeve, which was nearly three inches long. The centimeter-inch wound was clearly visible.

Chenghai explained that the wound was accidentally scratched when he went down the well. The investigators were inconvenient to ask too much, so they registered and asked him to leave first, saying that they would talk to him later if necessary.

As a result, the next day, Chenghai’s landlord suddenly contacted the police on the case and said: “Chenghai has moved.”

This behavior aroused the vigilance of the investigators, who were ready to ask him. Finally, I found that Chenghai's phone number never got through. The investigators immediately went to Chenghai's unit to learn about the situation. His direct boss said that when the incident occurred, Chenghai was working at the unit, but he left in a hurry after receiving a phone call and did not come back that day. Before getting off work yesterday, Chenghai took a day off and said he wanted to move. No one in the company knew where he was going to move.

On the day of the incident, he answered a phone call and then disappeared. The police lost contact with him after questioning him. He lived opposite the victim Liu Yu, which made the police feel that this person was extremely dangerous. It may be closely related to the case.

That night, Chenghai, who had been out of contact for a day, finally turned on his phone. It turned out that there was something wrong with his phone, and he had time to find a place to repair it after moving.

But why is he eager to move?

Chenghai told the police that since the incident at Liu Yu's house, the neighbors around him looked at him wrongly, as if he was the murderer of Liu Yu. He felt uncomfortable living there, so he came up with the idea of ??moving. . On the day of the accident, he received a call from a familiar resident in the community, saying that there was a fire at the door opposite him, and he was asked to rush back and guard it for fear of affecting his home. Cheng Hai also said that Liu Yu and Wang Hong had enthusiastically introduced his girlfriend to him. A few days before the accident, he saw Liu Yu playing badminton with his son in the community. Now that Liu Yu died tragically, he remembered such a vivid person while walking in the community. It was very unpleasant when people said it was gone and it was gone, which also accelerated the pace of his move.

After repeated verification, the police ruled out Cheng Hai as a suspect in the crime, but the direction of continuing to investigate the residents of the community has not changed.

At this moment, the video investigation team made a major discovery - in the two days before the incident, a man appeared behind Liu Yu three times, as if he was following her. At noon that day, when the man came out of the community, he was holding a plastic bag in his hand.

After verification, the man’s name is Liang Kang, a local in Changzhou, an owner of the community where the crime occurred, and he lives in a building next to Liu Yu’s house.

Liang Kang is an ordinary worker in a local factory. Although his income is not high, it is relatively stable, and he has no bad criminal record. In the face of inquiries, Liang Kang was very cooperative and patient no matter what questions the police asked.

However, when Liang Kang recalled his behavior at the time of the crime, the police felt strange.

It was already September 17, six days after the incident, but Liang Kang clearly remembered watching a TV series at home at 9:40 on September 11.

In this regard, Liang Kang explained that he had been watching the TV series during this period, and the TV series was broadcast at the same time every day, so he remembered it.

This seems to make sense.

On the evening of the 17th, the test results of multiple blood stains extracted from the crime scene came out. In addition to the deceased Liu Yu, there were blood stains from another person.

In order not to let go of any possibility, the police conducted blood tests on all the people who had been suspected before.

The next morning, the test results confirmed that the blood sample matched Liang Kang.

With the irrefutable evidence, Liang Kang knew that he could not deny it and admitted the crime of murder and arson. When talking about the motive for the murder, Liang Kang confessed that he and Liu Yu were lovers. Since both of them had families, he did not want to continue. On the day of the incident, he approached Liu Yu to break up, and Liu Yu demanded 100,000 yuan. The breakup fee was paid, and he claimed that Liang Kang would tell the story about the two of them without paying him. Liang Kang couldn't afford that much money, so he killed Liu Yu.

However, after police verification, there was no trace of contact between Liang Kang and Liu Yu on their mobile phones or social software. Wang Hong also said that the couple did not know Liang Kang at all, and it was even less likely that his wife would betray the family and the family. Such people are sexually immoral.

All this evidence shows that Liang Kang was lying, but since he admitted to the murder, why did he make up a motive for the murder?

Tracing traces revealed that on the evening of the 17th, after his blood was drawn for DNA testing, Liang Kang left the community and did not return overnight. He did not run away, but went to an Internet cafe. The police used technical means to obtain Liang Kang's Internet records that day and found that Liang Kang had searched for "Will killing a lover be sentenced to death?". Someone mentioned that both parties If the person is a lover and the person kills someone for a specific reason, he will not be sentenced to death.

This is the reason why Liang Kang lied. He did not know Liu Yu at all, but he just wanted to use this to exempt himself from the death penalty.

Then why did he want to kill Liu Yu?