You're supposed to be a security officer, what case are you solving?

Chapter 174 Crazy!

January 11th, that is, that very night.

The county bureau's conference room was packed with people, all sitting around the conference table on either side.

Wisps of smoke drifted around the white fluorescent lights on the ceiling.

Wan Feng, the deputy director in charge of criminal investigation, stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and pointed at Captain Zhang Yong.

"The comrades from the Municipal Bureau are all here. Everyone has seen the scene, so let's not waste any more time. You tell us about the case."

"Ok."

Zhang Yong took out his notebook, stood up, and said, "The family annihilation case that happened this morning was reported at 7:24 a.m. The person who reported it was a female employee of a fertilizer factory named Lin Qiaoyun."

According to her confession, her daughter He Xiao did not return home all night, saying that she went to find Wang Yu, who lived in the family building. The two girls were classmates and had a good relationship.

Lin Qiaoyun runs a late-night snack stall, and she didn't get back until after 1 a.m. the night before.

She didn't realize her daughter He Xiao wasn't home at the time. He Xiao's room was closed. It wasn't until she got up in the morning that she discovered her daughter wasn't in the room and that the blankets were cold.

So she remembered that He Xiao had told her that Wang Yu had given her shoes to He Xiao on her way home from school on Friday.

He Xiao's family is relatively poor. They are a single-parent family, and after her mother was laid off, she had to go out to set up a food stall to make a living.

He Xiao wasn't without shoes; her shoes had been thrown away by some male classmates, so she wore sandals for the past two days.

On the evening of the 10th, He Xiao went to Wang Yu's house.

The next morning, when Lin Qiaoyun realized her daughter hadn't returned home all night, she went to Wang Jian's house to look for her and discovered the crime scene.

At this point, He Jinbo asked, "Was the door locked or closed at the time?"

Zhang Yong replied, "It's locked."

"Then how did she get in?"

Lin Qiaoyun said that she went there at six o'clock in the morning, but no one answered the door when she knocked, so she went home. She went there again at seven o'clock, knocked the door, but still no one was inside.

The two families had a good relationship. Lin Qiaoyun and Li Xiumei were both employees of the fertilizer factory and were quite familiar with Wang Jian's family situation, so they were very suspicious when no one was home at this time.

When she went downstairs, she found a set of keys in a pile of trash at the entrance of the first-floor hallway.

She recognized the key; it belonged to Wang Jian's family.

So Lin Qiaoyun picked up the key, went back upstairs, and tried to open the door. After entering, she saw Wang Jian dead at the dining table.

Then there was Li Xiumei, and the bodies of the two children.

She was so frightened that she fainted. When she woke up, she screamed for help and called the police using Wang Jian's home landline.

A few minutes later, a resident on the fourth floor came downstairs to work, heard her shouting, and went inside.

At this moment, He Jinbo picked up the conversation: "This person's surname is Niu, his name is Niu Kaixuan, he is Wang Jian's colleague and also the factory office's accountant, and they live in the same building."

He came downstairs at 7:43. After hearing Lin Qiaoyun's shouts, he went inside to check the situation. Seeing what was happening inside, he immediately called the fertilizer plant's security department to have them control the scene. Therefore, only he went inside.

Zhang Yong nodded and continued, "Wang Jian died at the dining table, then his wife Li Xiumei died in the room where they slept, followed by their daughter Wang Yu, and Lin Qiaoyun's daughter He Xiao, a total of four dead."

Wen Mo tapped his fingers on the table, then looked at Wen Ling and Zhang Jinkang: "What are your forensic findings?"

Zhang Jinkang said, "Let Forensic Doctor Wen speak."

Wen Ling nodded and said loudly, "Wang Jian was stabbed four times, and the fatal wound was a sharp weapon piercing the artery in his neck."

He first suffered hemorrhagic shock, and then blood rushed into his trachea, causing "blood to flood the lungs," so his death was due to combined asphyxiation.

As for the murder weapon, an autopsy is needed to determine what kind of weapon it was.

"Li Xiumei died of mechanical asphyxiation. The murder weapon was a 1.5cm wide, white nylon strap, which was also used to tie Li Xiumei's wrists."

At this moment, Yang Jinwen stopped writing, looked up, and interjected.

"The nylon strap binding Li Xiumei's wrists is 112 centimeters long, and the nylon strap strangling her neck is 88 centimeters long. I have seen it. This nylon strap is two meters long in total and was cut in the middle with a sharp weapon."

The nylon strap is very tough, and the broken edge has coarse hairs, so it must have been cut several times.

Furthermore, apart from the nylon strap used in the crime, I found no other similar nylon straps in the victim's home.

Wen Mo blinked: "You suspect it was brought by the murderer?"

Yang Jinwen did not answer directly: "The nylon tape was brand new. No fingerprints were found on it, but some fibers were brushed on. These are the same fibers that the forensic doctor Wen found in the fingernails of the first victim."

"what?"

Wen Ling said, "The murderer was wearing work gloves when he committed the crime. The first victim, Wang Jian, must have grabbed the murderer's hand when he was killed, which is why fibers were left under his fingernails."

Song Jun, the forensic examiner, nodded: "This is also something I'll talk about later. Similar fibers have been found on beds, tables, coffee tables, and in the kitchen."

After committing the crime, the perpetrator not only wiped away the footprints at the scene with a mop, but also wore gloves, so the fingerprints we collected should not be of much use.

He Jinbo asked, "What's the two-meter-long nylon strap, brand new, for?"

Yang Jinwen glanced at him: "It's used on the construction site." "What did you find out?"

"Although the nylon belt is new, there are some dark red powder residues on it. I took a look and it seems to be brick powder."

Wen Mo asked, "Are you sure?"

If the nylon strap used in the crime was brought by the perpetrator himself, and it was used at the construction site, that would be one direction for the investigation.

Finding a direction for the investigation is very difficult. Most criminal police officers investigate the victim's social relationships, but Yang Jinwen started with evidence, which is more convincing.

Yang Jinwen replied, "It should be powder from red bricks. This is my judgment, but there may be oversights. It would be best to take it to the provincial forensic center to test for trace elements and determine its composition. That would be the best outcome."

He said it all as if he hadn't said anything at all: take it to the provincial capital for testing? And it's supposed to be trace elements?
The term "trace elements" was not something most of the detectives present understood; it sounded very sophisticated.

Wen Mo ignored him and said directly, "You are in charge of investigating this lead."

Yang Jinwen nodded.

Wen Mo then said, "Wen Ling, please continue."

"In the other bedroom, the third and fourth victims also died mechanically. The one who strangled them was the third victim, the blue scarf around Wang Yu's neck. The scarf was stretched out of shape and was 1.5 meters long."

The scarf also had traces of work gloves fibers.

Besides, He Xiaosheng was assaulted before his death, but Wang Yu was not.

The two-meter-long nylon strap binding their wrists remained intact, binding the two girls' wrists together.

The meeting room fell silent when the topic of the two girls' murders came up.

Everyone here saw it; the two girls were holding each other with their arms crossed.

Wang Yu held He Xiao with both hands, her wrists bound behind He Xiao's back with nylon straps.

Then, He Xiao hugged Wang Yu with both hands, her wrists were also tied behind Wang Yu's back with a nylon strap.

A moment later, everyone in the conference room lit cigarettes, trying to release their pent-up frustrations.

Finally, it was Cat who asked, "Why would the murderer do this?"

But no one answered him. Any veteran detective who had solved several high-profile cases understood the extent of the killer's depravity.

Wen Ling continued, "I've tested the body, and there was no semen in the victim's body. The murderer must have taken protective measures when committing the crime."

Wen Mo asked, "Where did that protective measure come from? Did the murderer bring it himself?"

Yang Jinwen said, "We didn't find any condom boxes at the crime scene. They might belong to the victim. We need to go to a pharmacy or other places that sell them to check the purchase records."

He Jinbo immediately asked, "Who would have this? We searched the house and found that the wardrobes and drawers of the victim Wang Jian's family had been ransacked. The money in their wallets and their bankbooks were also missing. This constitutes burglary and property theft, which eventually turned into murder."

Yang Jinwen shook his head: "What if the murderer really brought it?"

He Jinbo's gaze sharpened, and he immediately replied, "That only means one thing: the murderer had scouted the location beforehand."

Wen Mo said, "I tend to think they scouted the place beforehand. If it's a burglary, they would definitely scouted it beforehand. We should investigate in that direction."

Everyone in the meeting room nodded and began taking notes.

Wen Ling said, "The time of death can only be given as an approximate time since the body has not yet been dissected."

Preliminary estimates suggest that Wang Jian died between 10 p.m. and midnight on the 10th.

Li Xiumei died between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m.

Finally, there were Wang Yu and He Xiao; their deaths occurred between 2 and 3 a.m., within an hour of each other.

Wen Mo nodded and looked at Zhang Yong, the captain of the county bureau: "Have you visited all the residents of the family building? I saw a guardhouse downstairs, so there should be someone on duty. How did the murderer get in?"

Zhang Yong said, "There were no witnesses. The murderer came at night and left after dawn. There are four households on the fourth floor. Apart from the victim's family, the other two households stayed in their new homes outside on weekends. There was also a retired working couple who were hard of hearing. We asked them, and they said they didn't hear a sound at all at the time."

As for the guardhouse downstairs in the family building, it was staffed by an employee named Fang Zhongtai, but he could not be found after the incident.

Residents of the apartment building said that Fang Zhongtai had not been seen since yesterday morning until the morning of today, after the incident.

He lives in the staff dormitory across the wall. We went to check on him; his luggage was all there, and none of his clothes were missing. But according to his roommates, he went out on the night of the 9th and hasn't returned.

"Find this person. Also, this family annihilation case is of great importance, so I won't go into details."

Judging from the circumstances of the case, there is a high probability that the crime was committed by burglary and then turned into murder. The murderer must have scouted the place beforehand, or it was an inside job.

We need to thoroughly investigate Wang Jian and Li Xiumei's social connections, whether it's in the staff dormitory, the family dormitory, or the fertilizer plant, and expose all of them.

The forensic doctor performed an autopsy to try and deduce the murder weapon.

"The forensic team, regardless of whether there are fingerprints or bloody footprints, will send some back to the scene to investigate, and others to examine the existing physical evidence to find clues!"

He Jinbo was about to say something when he turned around and saw Yang Jinwen holding a pen, scribbling something in his notebook.

His pupils dilated in surprise. Sure enough, Yang Jinwen definitely had something in mind!
(End of this chapter)