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the 24-year-old life of shaanxi girl shen xueyan was frozen in that culvert. her body was lying facedown in the water with a stone pier on her back and a three-month-old fetus in her belly.

this murder occurred 29 years ago. after six years of investigation and two trials, on february 26, 2001, the deceased shen xueyan's fiancé ma xiaoang was sentenced to life imprisonment for intentional homicide. his sentence was later commuted to 20 years, six months and 22 days.

in the nine years since he was released from prison, ma xiaoang has done only one thing: to appeal for himself. he insisted that he was not the murderer. "my blood type does not match the blood type of the murderer left at the crime scene." ma xiaoang appealed that the real murderer could be found through dna identification.

female corpse in the culvert

on wentong road, yang county, hanzhong city, shaanxi province, a new commercial building is the original site of yang county plastic company. the company has long been closed, and only the courtyard wall of the old factory remains. the old factory is still surrounded by farmland and villages, and many new houses have been built in the village.

outside the courtyard wall, there used to be an irrigation canal running from north to south, which formed a cross with an east-west cement road. at the intersection of the two, the canal passed through a culvert. there were wheat fields and villagers' houses around the culvert, and to the northeast was the former plastic company factory.

walking from the wall to the field, you can see a culvert less than 50 meters away. the irrigation canal is no longer in use, but the culvert is still there, filled with weeds, silt and gravel.

57-year-old ma xiaoang stood by the culvert with a solemn expression: "it is impossible for me to kill anyone. xueyan was pregnant at the time. if i had not turned around and left that day, xueyan might not have been killed. i failed to protect her." ma xiaoang muttered to himself.

29 years ago, ma xiaoang’s fiancée, 24-year-old shen xueyan, was found dead in this culvert.

time goes back to may 9, 1995. at about 7 o'clock in the morning, a villager found an unidentified female corpse in a culvert while releasing water for irrigation.

the police on-site investigation records show that the culvert is 5 meters long and made of stone and cement. the culvert entrance is about 0.6 meters high and wide. the deceased was in the culvert, wearing a white sweater jacket on the upper body, no clothes on the lower body, and the waistband of the pants was torn by 7.5 centimeters. the body was in a "stomach-lying position", with both hands clasped in front of the chest, and the whole body was immersed in water. there were injuries under the left hairline of the forehead, behind the left ear, in the left ear cavity, on the occipital, wrists, back of the hand, fingers, and knees. a reinforced concrete pier was pressed on the left side of the deceased's back.

according to forensic identification, the cause of shen xueyan's death was an external force (blunt object) hitting the head, causing coma, and drowning. shen xueyan was pregnant when she died.

for a time, the news of shen xueyan's murder became big news in the local area. on may 10, 1995, shen xueyan's fiancé ma xiaoang was taken into custody for investigation as a murder suspect.

fiancé sentenced to life imprisonment

ma xiaoang was born in april 1967. he joined the army after graduating from junior high school. in 1991, ma xiaoang retired from the army and became a driver at yangxian plastic company.

in 1994, ma xiaoang met shen xueyan, who was four years younger than him, through the introduction of a colleague. shen xueyan worked in a printing factory at the time. shen xueyan's mother died when she was a minor, and her father remarried. she lived with her stepmother and her two children.

ma xiaoang said that although he was a driver in the company, his salary was not high. his father died in 1983. his mother struggled to raise four children. the family had no financial foundation and was not able to get married at that time. he and shen xueyan had been in love for more than a year. shen xueyan had been pregnant twice, but she miscarried the first time. when she was killed, she was pregnant for the second time and was just three months pregnant.

on october 30, 2000, ma xiaoang was sentenced to life imprisonment at the first instance for intentional homicide.

the first-instance judgment of the hanzhong intermediate people's court shows that after the court trial, on the evening of may 7, 1995, when ma xiaoang and shen xueyan walked to the southeast corner of the plastic company's courtyard wall, they quarreled over marriage and shen xueyan's pregnancy. shen grabbed ma in anger and refused to let go. ma xiaoang clamped shen's head and neck with his arms and pressed him down at the foot of the wall. he also grabbed shen's hair and hit it twice on the foundation of the wall. shen climbed up and rushed towards ma xiaoang. ma's body flashed and shen fell into the canal. after ma xiaoang went down the canal, he grabbed shen's hair and pressed shen's face into the muddy puddle in the canal, causing shen to drown. after killing him, ma xiaoang moved shen's body to the culvert at the southwest corner of the plastic company, and then sneaked back to his brother's residence.

after the first-instance judgment, ma xiaoang appealed, but his appeal was rejected by the shaanxi provincial higher people's court on february 26, 2001, and the second-instance court upheld the original judgment.

during both the first and second trials, ma xiaoang claimed that he had been coerced into confessing and also filed complaints against three investigators.

seek justice for yourself for the rest of your life

after serving 20 years in prison, ma xiaoang was released on december 2, 2015. he said that while serving his sentence in prison, he used his only living expenses to subscribe to legal magazines in order to learn legal knowledge for future appeals and rights protection.

in the nine years since he was released from prison, apart from working as a security guard, ma xiaoang has only done one thing - appeal for himself.

"i didn't kill anyone. i will spend the rest of my life seeking justice for myself, giving an explanation to the deceased, to my family, and most importantly, to myself." ma xiaoang has never married or had children. apart from work, he spends all his time accompanying his mother. his 81-year-old mother is becoming increasingly weak. "i don't know if she can see my grievances being cleared before she dies," said ma xiaoang.

recalling the incident again, ma xiaoang felt it was as clear as yesterday.

ma xiaoang recalled that on the evening of may 7, 1995, he was sleeping in the dormitory of the plastics company when shen xueyan and her stepmother's daughter wu fangfang came to the dormitory to find him. "she said her father asked me to go home, but i was very tired and didn't want to go. xueyan was very angry and quarreled with me for a while." ma xiaoang remembered that wu fangfang looked at her watch and said, "sister, don't make trouble. it's already 11:15 and there are exams at school tomorrow." ma xiaoang immediately decided to send shen xueyan and her sister home together. he pushed the bicycle, and the three of them walked all the way to shen xueyan's home.

the plastics company is about 2 kilometers away from shen xueyan's parents' home. when the three of them walked to the jiefang building near shen xueyan's parents' home, they ran into shen xueyan's father who came out to look for her and her sisters. "xueyan didn't want to go home again and wanted to go back to the dormitory with me. her father insisted on pulling her back. she grabbed my collar, and her sister and stepmother finally pried her hands apart and told me to leave quickly."

ma xiaoang said that he rode away on his bicycle and stopped to rest for a while. when he rode to the bentonite factory in beijie village, about 700 meters away from the plastic company, he saw shen xueyan walking in front of him. "she walked towards the plastic company, probably to find me." ma xiaoang judged that he took a detour on the way back from jiefang building, and xueyan took a shortcut, so she walked in front.

"after seeing xueyan, i said to myself, forget it, i won't go back to the dormitory at night. i was afraid she would make a noise again after seeing me, and i wanted to avoid her so that she couldn't make a noise alone." ma xiaoang said that xueyan was about 10 meters away from him. he didn't talk to xueyan. he immediately turned around and rode to his brother's house. after arriving at his brother's house, he went straight to bed.

ma xiaoang recalled that after waking up the next day, he first helped his brother to collect vegetables at the yangxian balong supply and marketing cooperative. at noon, he went back to the plastic company dormitory to take a nap. then he went to shen xueyan's home. shen xueyan's father said to him, "after i let you run away last night, shen xueyan broke free and chased you away without even wearing shoes."

"i feel very angry. why hasn't she come back yet? why is she so ignorant? i don't care about her anymore." ma xiaoang said that after leaving shen xueyan's home, he stayed at his mother's home for two days until he was arrested on may 10.

ma xiaoang said: "if i had followed her and returned to the factory with her, she wouldn't have been killed. i blame myself every day."

regarding ma xiaoang's statement, the reporter tried to contact shen xueyan's family, but her father had passed away, her stepmother and wu fangfang could not be contacted, and shen xueyan's brother's phone number had been changed.

“the bloodstains at the scene are not mine”

after ma xiaoang was released from prison, he first appealed to the shaanxi high court, but his appeal was rejected on may 29, 2016. in 2023, lawyers cao ying and tian linqing represented him in the appeal. currently, the case has been submitted to the shaanxi provincial people's procuratorate for a protest.

the "application for appeal" stated that a major issue in this case was that the key evidence on which the original trial based its determination of the facts of the case, namely, the bloodstains collected at the crime scene, were not from ma xiaoang.

the attorney said that according to the appraisal report, ma xiaoang's blood type was identified as om and shen xueyan's blood type was on, but the first-instance judgment actually made a mistake in the blood type described in the appraisal report and identified ma xiaoang as having the on blood type. what do these two blood types mean?

the autopsy report and blood stain identification showed shen xueyan's name as shen xueyan

"faced with such an obvious and serious error in the first instance judgment, the second instance not only failed to correct it, but also adopted an ambiguous expression, determining that 'on and om human blood were found in the samples, which were consistent with shen xueyan and ma xiaoang'."

after ma xiaoang was released from prison, at the suggestion of his appeal lawyer, he had his mn blood type tested at the shaanxi provincial blood center in 2017 and 2023. six years later, the results of the two antigen tests were consistent, both showing that ma xiaoang's blood type was om+n+.

the attorney said that mn blood type is the second blood type system detected in humans after abo blood type, which is independent of abo blood type and has species reference value. "this is completely inconsistent with the om and on blood types left at the scene as determined by the investigation and the original first and second instance judgments, which can fully prove that the real murderer is someone else." the attorney said.

on august 22, 2019, beijing yunzhi science and technology identification center issued a "forensic medicine document review opinion" on this case. the review opinion believes that if the blood type test report of ma xiaoang from shaanxi provincial blood center is correct, ma xiaoang has nothing to do with the blood at the scene. the reviewer hu zhiqiang has served as an expert in the "fujian nian bin poisoning case" and "hebei nie shubin murder case" and other cases.

in addition, the attorney-in-fact also raised many doubts about the case.

according to shen xueyan's autopsy report, she had multiple injuries on her body. the cause of death was external force (blunt object) hitting her head causing her to fall into a coma, and she drowned in the water.

the beijing yunzhi science and technology identification center issued a "forensic documentary evidence review opinion" on this case, which shows that shen xueyan suffered injuries caused by blunt objects, atypical sharp objects and sharp objects. the verdict's determination that "ma grabbed shen's hair and hit it twice on the foundation of the wall" could not have caused the above three types of injuries.

"when the deceased shen xueyan's clothes were torn and there were even obvious scars on her body, the investigative agency had to conduct a vaginal swab test on the deceased, even if it was in accordance with the homicide investigation work standards of the year, to determine whether the deceased had been sexually assaulted, and then identify the possible criminal. however, no such evidence was found in the case file," said the attorney.

"the bloodstains at the scene are not ma xiaoang's, and the real culprit can be identified through dna identification. my country's ministry of public security has already started this work that year, but i don't know whether this identification has been done. as long as the bloodstain evidence from that year is retrieved for re-identification, the real culprit can be found now." the attorney believes that the basic facts of this case are seriously wrong and hopes that the prosecution can supervise the court to re-examine the case.

at present, the appeal application filed by ma xiaoang is under review by the shaanxi provincial people's procuratorate, and his attorney has applied for dna identification of the five bloodstains extracted from the scene and the blood samples extracted from shen xueyan and ma xiaoang.