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in 2001, a woven bag containing a female corpse floated in a lake near the sun yat-sen mausoleum in nanjing. who was she? who killed her? for more than 20 years, the nanjing police have never given up looking for the real murderer. in september 2023, they finally found out the victim's information and found the murderer. on september 21, the nanjing police disclosed the whole process of solving this case.

unknown female corpse found in lake

on september 22, 2001, a nanjing resident called 110 to report that a woven bag had floated in a lake near the sun yat-sen mausoleum, and that there was a body in the bag. after receiving the report, investigators from the criminal police brigade of the nanjing public security bureau rushed to the scene.

after the on-site inspection, the woven bag contained a highly decomposed female corpse that was unrecognizable, and more than a dozen bricks of various sizes were also contained in the bag. apart from this, no other items that could identify the victim were found at the scene.

the police initially inferred that the deceased was about 30 years old and had been killed for about a week. nanjing criminal police immediately set up a special case team with xuanwu branch to carry out investigation work, and mobilized the city's police force to conduct extensive visits in order to confirm the source of the body as soon as possible. after forensic examination, the deceased was found to have drowned, and sleeping pills were detected in his stomach.

"the deceased took a large amount of sleeping pills and was pushed into the water. this is called drowning." according to wang hairong, deputy secretary of the party committee and deputy commander of the criminal police detachment of the nanjing public security bureau, who participated in the investigation of the case that year, the body was wrapped in a woven bag tied with nylon rope.

based on this analysis, this should be a murder case committed by a relative. due to the extremely limited clues, the investigation of the task force gradually expanded from the area surrounding the crime scene to the whole country. although many family members of the missing persons came to identify the bodies, the bodies were highly decomposed and the identities of the deceased could not be confirmed, making it difficult to advance the investigation of the case.

victim's identity confirmed 22 years later

the first thing to do when investigating a murder case is to identify the deceased. that year, the nanjing police screened many reports of missing persons in the city one by one, but none of them matched the identity, and the identity of the deceased could not be determined. however, the police did not give up, and properly kept the biological samples and physical evidence of the deceased, and organized police forces to go to various parts of the country to conduct screening and comparison many times.

wang hairong said that for more than 20 years, the nanjing police have never given up. in addition to continuing to investigate and identify missing persons in society, they have also been trying to use new criminal technologies to re-analyze the individual characteristics of the biological samples of the deceased.

after generations of criminal investigators have worked hard to expand the conditions for inspection and comparison by using new technologies and methods, the case has achieved a breakthrough on september 22, 2023. "we have matched xu, who is related to the deceased by blood and should be a relative of the deceased," said yu weidong, deputy director of the criminal science institute of the criminal police detachment of the nanjing public security bureau.

after investigation, it was found that xu's mother, xu, had been missing for many years, but had not left any information since 2001. this situation was too strange. xu's mother reported to the investigating police that before her daughter disappeared in 2001, she had called to tell her that she was traveling with friends and would be back in a few days. that year, xu's mother also reported the case, but because some of the physical characteristics of the female corpse did not match her daughter's, and she had received messages from her daughter after the case, she denied that the victim was her daughter.

the police collected the biological information of xu's mother for comparison and finally confirmed that the victim of the corpse sinking in the lake was xu!

the murderer was serving a sentence when he was caught

"after confirming that the female corpse was that of xu, her mother sent all the materials related to her daughter that she had kept for more than 20 years to the bureau." wang lei, a police officer from the task force, clearly remembers that among a pile of scattered notes, business cards and ious, the police found that the last contact xu had before she disappeared was deng, who took her out for a trip.

after visiting xu's friends, the police learned that xu had said that if anything happened to him, it would definitely be xiao deng who did it. are xiao deng and deng the same person? what is the relationship between the two? is xiao deng related to xu's murder? after in-depth research and analysis of the deceased xu's related people, the task force found that deng was indeed a major suspect.

as the investigation deepened, the police learned that deng was serving a prison sentence for intentional homicide. in october 2006, deng had a dispute with his stepmother over property inheritance, and finally killed her and buried her body in a small mountain village. later, deng was sentenced to life imprisonment. during his imprisonment, he behaved well and actively sought a commutation of his sentence. he currently has 4 years left in his sentence.

on september 29, 2023, deng was taken to the nanjing public security bureau for questioning. at first, deng denied all the questions raised by the police. "deng saw that he was about to regain his freedom, so he was naturally extremely resistant to the police's questioning. how to break through his psychological defenses was the first thing we needed to consider," said suo hao, deputy captain of the 9th brigade of the criminal police detachment of the nanjing public security bureau.

to this end, during the interrogation, the police made deng believe that the police had a lot of evidence and he could not escape or deny it. faced with the strong psychological offensive, deng's psychological defense gradually collapsed, and he finally confessed the whole process of killing xu.

at that time, due to emotional disputes, the conflict between the two gradually deepened, and deng decided to kill xu. he then mixed sleeping pills into the wine he bought and tricked xu into drinking it. when xu was asleep, he put xu into a snakeskin bag, drove him to a lake near the city wall, and sank him to the bottom of the lake.

this murder case spanning 22 years has been solved, and deng will pay the price for his crime. every unsolved murder case is a tough nut to crack. but no matter how long ago the case happened, no matter how deep the fugitive hides, the nanjing police are determined to "solve the murder case and clear the backlog of cases", and are patient, meticulous and persistent until the murderer is brought to justice. in 2023, the nanjing police set a record: within one year, they solved 7 local unsolved murder cases and 8 unsolved murder cases from other places, and arrested 16 fugitives of murder cases, ranking first in the province in terms of the effectiveness of cracking down on unsolved murder cases.

author: ding guofeng and luo shasha, all-media reporters of legal daily