Reborn in 97, I solved a cold case at the Municipal Bureau

Chapter 362 [Case Closed] Completing the Chain of Evidence [1 Update Today]

Fan Zhongliang said, "You'll really know what happened next."

This time, Zhou Yi really didn't refute it anymore, because only at this point could the whole case be considered truly solved.

From the discovery of Li Youqiang's body to Fan Zhongliang's arrest and confession, the truth of the case involving a total of five lives has come to light.

This story contains human greed and ugliness, as well as coincidences that are both hilarious and absurd.

Some tragedies could have been avoided.

Ultimately, however, the choices these people made determined their fate.

In this complex case, no one is innocent.

Although the case has been investigated and clarified, it does not mean that the case is closed.

Because a confession is only part of the chain of evidence, other physical evidence and witness testimonies are needed to complete the chain of evidence.

Moreover, there is a key figure here who hasn't spoken yet, namely Fu Daqing, who is far away in Lujiang.

When Pan Hongjie returned to the municipal bureau with his team, the rain had completely stopped, but it was also completely dark.

Zhou Yi placed two thick interrogation records in front of him, one of Huang Yanli and the other of Fan Zhongliang.

His eyes lit up, and after reading it, he repeatedly said it was good. Then he couldn't wait to go and report the progress to Director Guo.

Now that all the relevant criminal suspects have been apprehended, we can report to the city leaders, and the matter of solving the case within the specified time will be resolved satisfactorily.

The city leaders will not make any further demands regarding the follow-up work; it will simply be handled according to normal procedures.

However, after strongly affirming their work, Guo Yuanchao still made a small request: it would be best to complete the chain of evidence before May 1st.

He asked Pan Hongjie to tell everyone that they should finish all the important work at hand before then, and he would give everyone a three-day holiday for May Day.

This news is certainly good news, because in 1997, May Day was only a one-day holiday.

It wasn't until 1999 that it became a three-day holiday.

So, in order to get a proper vacation, the Criminal Investigation Detachment of Anyuan City Public Security Bureau has been working non-stop.

Zhou Yi, on the other hand, has had some free time.

Because Pan Hongjie doesn't let him do those trivial tasks, Zhou Yi is no longer the young man he looked down on when he first arrived; he's now Pan Hongjie's honored guest.

He knew very well that without Zhou Yi, who knew when the case would be solved.

He was particularly horrified by the long record of Fan Zhongliang's interrogation. Fan Zhongliang was truly stubborn and wouldn't give up until he was completely cornered. He hid layer upon layer of deception when he confessed, and if one wasn't careful, he would easily fool them.

With nothing else to do, Zhou Yi started helping Xia Yu organize the on-site investigation records that Pan Hongjie had brought back.

On April 28th, Pan Hongjie led a team to conduct investigations at three sites.

The first one is the Zheng family's villa.

According to Huang Yanli's confession, on the morning of March 17th, Fu Daqing came to the villa again, handed her Zheng Guangming's mobile phone, and said that the matter had been taken care of and that she could rest assured.

The implication was that they were urging her to give them money.

Huang Yanli immediately called Zheng Guangming using her own phone. After confirming that it was Zheng Guangming's number, she immediately turned off her phone.

Then, at Fu Daqing's request, she took her bankbook, held her son, and got into the red Toyota, heading to a nearby bank.

She said that when she got out of the car to go into the bank to withdraw money, Fu Daqing stopped her from holding her son and told her with a smile that they would watch the child for a while and return the child to her after she withdrew the money.

Huang Yanli turned pale with fright. Seeing her son crying loudly, she felt heartbroken and begged them not to hurt him, as he was only five years old.

Fu Daqing laughed and said, "Don't worry, we just want the money. Your son is useless to us. Instead of lingering here, you'd better go get the money. It'll be troublesome if you attract the police."

Huang Yanli said she could only comfort her son a few words, telling him to be good and not cry, and that she would be right back.

Then I went into the bank to withdraw money.

However, she was still cautious. After getting the money, she sprayed the 50,000 yuan with disinfectant spray from her bag and wiped the surface with her sleeve to remove the fingerprints.

Then, using his sleeve as a cover, he put the money into the bag.

Then he ran to the car parked across the street and handed the money to Fu Daqing.

After receiving the money, Fu Daqing and Li Youqiang released Zheng Tianyu, then left with a "pleasant cooperation" message before driving away.

Zhou Yi guessed that Fu Daqing and Li Youqiang must have been overjoyed at that time, since they originally intended to kill Zheng Guangming, but ended up making an extra 60,000 yuan by chance.

They could never have imagined what fate awaited them, especially Li Youqiang. Chen Dejiang confirmed the information Huang Yanli provided during his investigation at the bank.

The teller who helped Huang Yanli withdraw cash that day said she looked flustered and kept looking outside when she did so.

Since it was a deposit certificate that had not yet matured, she specifically reminded the other party that if they withdrew it early, it would only be calculated as a current account, resulting in a significant loss of interest.

Then the bank security guard confirmed that a pretty young woman sprayed alcohol on the money after withdrawing it. The guard casually remarked that the money coming out of the bank is always very clean.

However, more important than the eyewitness testimony was the discovery of a crucial piece of physical evidence by Chen Dejiang.

After learning of the police's request, the bank regretfully said that they did not have the banknote serial numbers recorded, but if the banknotes were still in a stack and had not been opened when withdrawing cash, there was another way to confirm their authenticity.

It's the paper band that holds the banknotes together, the white paper band that holds a stack of 10,000 yuan banknotes together.

After the Lunar New Year, their bank started using a special type of banknote binding strap, made from environmentally friendly paper produced by a paper mill using recycled waste.

The bank provided the paper mill's contact information.

After Chen Dejiang brought this information back, the technical department analyzed and tested the paper strips on the outside of the seven stacks of 100-yuan bills. They found that the structural characteristics of five of the bills were the same as the parameters in the documents provided by the paper mill, while the other two were different.

In other words, the 50,000 yuan can be confirmed as money that Huang Yanli withdrew from the bank, while the other 20,000 yuan should be money that Fan Zhongliang withdrew from another bank.

On one of the 20,000 pieces, the technical department extracted a fingerprint belonging to Fan Zhongliang, confirming this.

This constitutes valid physical evidence.

Then, in the bathroom of a guest room on the third floor of Zheng's villa, behind the toilet tank, Pan Hongjie and his team found a brand-new mobile phone wrapped in a plastic bag and covered with tape.

It was confirmed that it was Zheng Guangming's phone. The call log on the phone showed that the last call was a missed call from Huang Yanli the next morning.

The second place Pan Hongjie and his team searched was the small villa where Bai Xiuxiu lived. Due to the continuous rain, they did not find any suspicious footprints or climbing marks on the outer wall.

However, there were obvious signs that the back door of the villa had been forcibly pried open, indicating that Fu Daqing and Li Youqiang climbed over the wall and then pried open the door to enter the villa.

The technical department did not find any bloodstains in the villa, but they did find a total of four sets of footprints and some drag marks.

The master bedroom on the second floor, facing south, should still be in the state it was in at the time of the crime, clearly indicating that Fu Daqing and Li Youqiang did not have time to deal with the scene.

The bedroom was a complete mess.

Numerous messy footprints were discovered. Analysis of the footprints and their overlapping patterns determined that after Fu Daqing and Li Youqiang entered the bedroom, the two victims did not get out of bed.

The drag marks in the bedroom confirm that dragging occurred on both sides of the double bed.

On the left side of the bed, there were scratch marks from fingernails, suspected to be left by Bai Xiuxiu when she struggled violently while being strangled by the rope.

In addition, a large number of sexy clothes and sex toys were found in the bedroom closet.

Based on previous information, many people mentioned that Zheng Guangming picked up Bai Xiuxiu at a nightclub while on a business trip. Therefore, Pan Hongjie judged that this woman probably used to work in the sex industry.

Subsequent investigations within the province confirmed Bai Xiuxiu's true identity.

However, when the police contacted Bai Xiuxiu's family, her divorced parents refused to come and identify the body. Her father even cursed her on the phone, saying that she had disgraced the Bai family by working as a prostitute and deserved to die.

Then he hung up the phone.

In other words, Bai Xiuxiu not only failed to marry a rich man and achieve great success, but also failed to do so.

He was tragically murdered, and after his death, no one claimed his body or ashes. In the end, the public security authorities could only temporarily store them in accordance with relevant regulations, and they would be cremated after the case was closed.

The third place to be investigated was Fan Zhongliang's home.

This is why Pan Hongjie was terrified when he looked at the interrogation records, because although Zhou Yi had told him beforehand that he suspected Chen Ting might be dead, he had also found Chen Ting's portrait at Fan Zhongliang's house.

However, since no case was filed regarding Chen Ting's death, Fan Zhongliang had plenty of time to eliminate all the suspicious evidence he could think of.

Including that bottle of medicine.

So if Fan Zhongliang hadn't been gradually driven to the point of being a nervous wreck by Zhou Yi during the interrogation, otherwise, if he had been allowed to calm down, or if he had been interrogated separately about Chen Ting's case, he really could have denied everything to the death, and the police wouldn't have had any key evidence to prove it.

However, based on the background he gave, although there was no direct evidence, there was factual logic, and the court will also adopt the claims of the public security and the procuratorate in its judgment.

Fan Zhongliang, as the principal offender in this case, is suspected of murdering Chen Ting, participating in the murder of Yang Jian, destroying the body, hiring someone to cause the death of Bai Xiuxiu, and possibly causing Zheng Guangming to fail to receive timely medical treatment.

For multiple offenses, the death penalty is the first line of punishment.

Huang Yanli is also suspected of hiring someone to commit murder, but given the existence of a specific motive for her crime, she is unlikely to be sentenced to death. As for the final sentencing, that will depend on how effective her lawyer is.

As for Zheng Tianlan, given that he was indeed unaware of the murder case, but at the same time concealed information and misled the police during the investigation, he has committed the crimes of harboring a criminal and perjury. He has been arrested in accordance with the law and will be subject to legal sanctions.

(End of this chapter)