Chapter 861: Spanning Fifteen Years
In all murder cases, whether premeditated or crimes of passion, how to kill is often not the most important aspect.
The crucial process is how to dispose of the body afterwards.
If a body can be completely destroyed, with the person physically gone, naturally the question of how the murder was committed becomes moot.
Burial, water hiding, or burning—how well the murderer disposes of the body often becomes the most challenging point of solving a homicide case.
Lu Chuan learned about such cases in college.
Twenty years ago, there was a murder case where the perpetrator was the husband, and the victim was the wife.
After killing his wife, the murderer dismembered the body, then burned it in the stove pit of his own home.
The murderer dismembered the body by the stream in front of the house and acted at night to avoid being discovered.
He dealt with it in small parts each time.
Then, during meal preparation, he incinerated the body.
This process took over a month to complete the disposal of the body.
Yet, a missing person report was never filed.
The victim’s parents were the ones who noticed something amiss.
The victim’s parents lived not far from her home, only a dozen kilometers away, typically visiting every two or three months.
Since the victim did not return home for half a year after her murder, her parents came to look for her.
That was when the disappearance was discovered.
Naturally, the husband became the prime suspect, but the subsequent investigation faced a significant challenge as the murderer confessed to the killing.
However, the evidence was gone.
The murderer had strangled his wife to death, meaning there was no conventional murder weapon.
He disposed of the axe used for dismemberment by throwing it into molten iron at a small local foundry where he worked odd jobs.
The investigating officers found nothing of value in the stove pit of the murderer’s house; too much time had passed, and the murderer removed ashes every morning.
Even if there were any human tissue remnants, they were long gone.
Moreover, after cleaning the pit, the murderer discarded the ashes in the stream in front of the house, letting the water carry them away.
This made the case particularly peculiar.
Though the victim was missing, it couldn’t be confirmed she was murdered, as there was no body.
The murderer had confessed, but the evidence was missing, rendering "nothing left" after the killing.
Under such circumstances, the evidence chain was entirely incomplete and unable to close.
Thus, even though the murderer confessed and described the killing process, it was still impossible to convict during the trial phase.
After all, it couldn’t be confirmed that the murderer was telling the truth.
Although this case didn’t entirely erase traces of the victim’s remains, the murderer’s use of vacuum bags to package the body had a similar effect.
Of course, this method of body disposal wasn’t about finding the body, but rather leaving no trace and not impacting the surrounding environment during disposal.
The body itself provided no additional clues.
The work done by Wang Gang’s team was quite thorough, and what could be investigated was already completed.
The key was to examine the steel plate in the victim’s right arm to find identity clues.
Theoretically, a person living in society cannot be entirely independent of it; they will inevitably intersect with the surrounding environment or people.
Failure to ascertain identity does not mean there is none.
It merely indicates a problem with how the police are determining identity.
Additionally, by normal experience, the murderer and the victim certainly knew each other, or else the body wouldn’t have been sealed in a vacuum bag.
The burial was meant to prevent police from identifying the murderer through the victim’s social relationships.
Now Lu Chuan decided to investigate from two fronts.
The first is to widen the search for missing persons.
Expand from the city to the entire province, or even nationwide.
The second is to investigate if anyone in Haizhou City underwent a similar procedure involving a steel plate in the right arm years ago.
Of course, there are likely many cases of arm fractures requiring surgery, but the use of a steel plate indicates a more severe fracture.
This isn’t something an average hospital can perform.
So, records should exist.
However, the issue in reality is the victim’s time of death isn’t precisely determined.
Guo Jianfeng, the forensic doctor of Tianshan District’s Criminal Investigation Team, estimated the time as around ten years.
But that’s just a range.
Lu Chuan also reviewed and estimated the time of death to be between eight to twelve years ago.
Yet the issue remains—what about the fracture timeline? Lu Chuan needs further study.
Fracture timing can be determined by examining bone healing and the condition of the implanted steel plate.
But this requires time to conduct experiments; at least a day is needed to potentially reach a conclusion.
But fortunately, this case isn’t urgent, given how long the person has been dead without an established identity, meaning there’s no immediate pressure to solve it.
In comparison to investigation and reasoning, Lu Chuan, who comes from a Crime Scene Investigation background, actually prefers technical work.
Because technical work offers certainty—one is one, two is two.
If there’s direction, it works; if not, it doesn’t.
Guo Jianfeng had already removed the steel plate, and Lu Chuan took over the subsequent work.
However, both the Tianshan District and High-tech Zone’s Criminal Investigation Teams lacked the necessary equipment, so Lu Chuan had to take it back to the Criminal Investigation Team.
The analysis process isn’t complicated; the wear and marks on the steel plate can indicate when it was implanted.
With bone healing status, one can roughly determine the time of bone healing.
Combining both, Lu Chuan concluded that the victim’s arm fracture occurred three to five years before death.
This places the surgery for the fracture from eleven to sixteen years ago.
"That’s manageable, investigating records from our public hospitals; the data collection period is quite lengthy. We’re just concerned if it wasn’t done in Haizhou City, the surgery, that would..."
Wang Gang worried about this aspect.
No matter how capable this side is, it’s impossible to investigate all hospitals nationwide.
So, if the procedure was in Haizhou City, the problem is manageable with some effort; success could follow.
If elsewhere...
Truthfully, then there’s truly no solution.
At that point, they can only archive the victim’s DNA and wait for matches.
Of course, whether matches are found and when remains uncertain.