The "Corpse Hidden in Inn Case" shocked the entire Internet! After the murder, how did the criminal investigation personnel fight wits and courage with the murderer?

In the past two days, it was revealed online that a tourist had a thrilling experience while staying in a popular inn in Lhasa: he had stayed in a room with a corpse under the bed and had even slept on the bed.

Image source: Internet

Once the news broke, it quickly attracted everyone's attention.

Then, on April 21, @Lanzhou Railway Public Security received a report from the Criminal Police Brigade of the Lhasa Public Security Bureau of the Tibet Autonomous Region that the body of the victim Wang was found in an inn in Lhasa.

After investigation, it was found that Wang was killed by Gao, who escaped on the K306 train after committing the crime, and had a very strong anti-detection awareness.

Considering that this is a violent crime and the suspect's methods were brutal, and considering that the train runs at night, the passengers are asleep and have no sense of defense.

As there was only one police officer on the train, the Lanzhou Railway Public Security Bureau immediately coordinated and dispatched five additional police officers to support the train, who disguised themselves as train attendants and used the excuse of verifying ticket information to lock the train door of the suspect Gao, and eventually arrested Gao.

Copyright image, no permission to reprint

Let us first give a thumbs up to the efficiency of the public security officers!

However, there are some cases that cannot be solved so quickly due to various restrictions. As shown in the recently popular TV series "Who is He", the investigation of the case is not easy and often requires arduous efforts from public security officers.

Let’s talk briefly about how the police battle wits and courage with criminals, and what “the net of heaven is vast and wide” means.

01

Hiding the Sin

When someone commits a crime, out of the instinct of self-preservation, they will almost always try every means to cover up their crime and try to evade legal sanctions.

The most common trick in this regard is to destroy evidence.

Without evidence, they are doubly protected: if there are no clues, it will be difficult for the police to track them down. Even if they are caught, the court cannot convict them without sufficient evidence.

There are many ways to destroy evidence. The easiest way to think of is to destroy and hide the body as much as possible - the plot in the play is still very realistic.

Some criminals cut the bodies into pieces and discard them at different locations; others pour flammable substances on them and burn them.

Copyright image, no permission to reprint

A more common practice is to bury the body in the wilderness, stuff it into a manhole cover, or tie it to heavy objects such as stones and bricks and sink it in water.

Failure to find the body or determine the identity of the deceased would bring great difficulties to the investigation of the case, especially in an era when forensic science was not yet advanced.

For example, if the body has no head or hands, it is impossible to identify the deceased through face or fingerprints. If the identity of the deceased cannot be ascertained, it is difficult to discover hidden criminal suspects through investigation of social relations.

Similarly, burying or drowning a body will delay its discovery.

It is very likely that when the police discovered the body, it was already highly decomposed, or even a pile of white bones.

Faced with such a situation, criminal police often have a headache.

At the time of the plot of "Who is He", these questions were almost unanswerable.

02

Immortality

Fortunately, there is the support of technology behind the law and justice.

With the development of forensic science, especially the advancement of forensic DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) related technologies, the criminals' plans will be largely frustrated.

First, even if the body is unrecognizable and only small tissue fragments remain, as long as a little DNA can be extracted from it, the unique genotype of the person from whom the DNA came can be detected.

Then, by comparing the DNA information with the deceased's relatives or belongings during his lifetime, the identity of the deceased can be determined.

The question arises again, if there is no information or clues about the deceased, how can we find his/her relatives in such a vast sea of ​​people?

This is about a regulation of our country's public security organs:

When someone is reported missing, especially a child, police advise family members to take a DNA sample and enter the information into a national database.

Copyright image, no permission to reprint

Once public security organs in various places rescue abducted children or discover an unidentified body, they will immediately extract DNA information and compare it with the information in the database to help ascertain the identity.

There is also a technology called "forensic genealogy". The famous "Golden State Killer Case" in the United States was solved through this technology.

Forensic geneticists can use genealogy technology to infer very distant relatives (commonly known as the "five volts"). Even if there is no DNA information of relatives, it is still possible to track down the target through distant relatives.

In addition, "DNA characterization" is also a new technical means.

How each person looks is closely related to DNA. For example, features such as eye and skin color, hair color, height, etc. are all "determined by fate".

After extracting someone's DNA information, it is also possible to obtain physical features through computational models to narrow the search scope of the target individual. With these technologies, no matter how the suspects destroy the victim's body, it is still difficult to hide their crimes.

03

Searching for the trace in the crowd

Similar technologies are also used to identify and prosecute criminal suspects.

Everyone has their own unique DNA, and criminal suspects are no exception.

And these DNAs are hidden in every one of our cells. If the police detect someone's DNA on the key evidence at the crime scene, it means that this person has been to the scene and is very likely the murderer.

Some people may say that the murderer is not stupid, why would he leave his DNA at the scene? Why not just clean it up?

The theory is correct, but it is too difficult to implement. Modern forensic DNA technology can detect extremely small amounts of DNA and obtain accurate genotyping.

Copyright image, no permission to reprint

The "extremely small amount" here can be a hair follicle at the root of a hair; it can be a little blood left in a fight (especially in knife murder cases, suspects can easily cut their hands); it can be the murderer's skin fragments left between the victim's fingernails, or even the door handle that the suspect accidentally touched...

If you want to leave no biological samples at all, perhaps you have to wrap yourself in a full-body protective suit.

And it is not easy to clean up the scene thoroughly.

As the saying goes, a guilty conscience is the first sign of a thief's guilt. After doing something evil, how many people can remain calm and calm and clean up the scene calmly?

If a hair on the ground is missed, the cleaning work will be completely useless. The criminal police investigating the scene have the patience and skills to find traces of these physical evidence.

04

The sky is wide and wide

Even if there are criminals who can completely clean up the traces they left at the scene, they still have to face a powerful Skynet.

From a technical perspective, the "Skynet Project" has become the nemesis of criminals and even the enemy of suspense novelists: surveillance cameras can be seen everywhere in the streets, shops, hotels, hospitals and schools, shooting videos 24 hours a day and recording everything around.

Once a criminal case occurs somewhere, the police will quickly retrieve surveillance videos from the surrounding area to screen for suspicious persons.

Nowadays, many video surveillance systems have facial recognition functions. That is to say, when someone walks under the surveillance camera, the video background may perform facial recognition on him and confirm his identity.

For example, Lao Rongzhi, who was suspected of kidnapping and murder, fled for 20 years under a different name. She was automatically discovered by surveillance video and arrested just because she went shopping in a shopping mall twice.

You have to know that what the police used for comparison was just her ID photo from that year. Her appearance has changed a lot, but she can still be accurately identified. This shows the power of the system.

The more powerful "Skynet" is the support and assistance of the general public to the police work. As the saying goes, "Police force is limited, but people's power is infinite." Suspects can try every means to avoid the sight of the police, but it is difficult to avoid the countless vigilant eyes around them. The "Chaoyang Masses" who have repeatedly made meritorious contributions are a typical representative of this.

In short, with the public security police who are not afraid of danger, the increasingly powerful modern forensic science and technology, and the support of the general public, criminals have nowhere to hide. No matter how deep they hide, we can find out who they are and make them get the punishment they deserve.

Author｜Mantou Laoyao popular science author

Review｜Ruan Xing, Deputy Chief Forensic Physician

The cover image and the images in this article are from the copyright library

Reproduction of image content is not authorized