The trace examiner Zhao Yucheng once told me more about strange tools used in crimes, but he said he couldn't go into too much detail, as it might be dangerous for someone with ulterior motives to learn about them.
But just a few days ago, he decided to tell us today's story without hesitation, because the technical difficulty was so high that no one could learn it! It was probably the strangest weapon he had ever seen --
Here is the account of the trace examiner Zhao Yucheng:
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I had a childhood trauma when I was a child, so I didn't eat corn for several years.
It was all because of a detective story that the man's head was smashed and the police arrived, only to see the man's wife munching on the corn as if nothing had happened. No weapon could be found at the scene. In the end, it was revealed that the woman killed her husband with corn that had been taken out of the fridge and was still frozen.
As I grew up, I formed the Hunters' Alliance, and because of my exposure to crime, I saw more and more incredible weapons.
Some people use desiccants that are everywhere to poison, and even make a small bomb; There are also doctors who are well-versed in the weaknesses of human tissues and can instantly turn the heel of a high heel into a sharp dagger; There are even people who, in a fit of rage, beat each other to death with a wok.
Three steel nails as thick as chopsticks were found at the scene of the murder, and one of them was forcibly driven into the victim's spine.
Only a monster could do it with his bare hands.
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The delivery man, clutching the change he had found, knocked on the barbershop door for a long time, but there was no response.
He couldn't help muttering to himself: The man who had just poked his head out to get his meal seemed like a stranger.
The delivery guy turned the door handle. The lights were dark inside. He stood by the door and called out "Bro" twice to the dark air inside. The moonlight slipped through the crack of the door -
The three men who had just ordered now stood before him, covered in blood.
In the repeated reflection of several large mirrors, scarlet spread across the more than 40-square-meter barbershop. The floor, the roof, along with the three hairdressing chairs, were all splattered with black and red blood. On the roof, the lampshades were smeared with spurting blood, and the lights cast hazy shadows in the room, making people feel uncomfortable all over.
The lights of various police equipment flickered on and off, creating a bizarre and eerie atmosphere in the room, reminiscent of a "magic cave" in a science fiction movie. My assistant, Aben, darted up to me from the "cave" like jumping in a square, dodging the bloodshot spot beneath his feet.
Since we last handled the case of the paralyzed old professor's murder together, this guy has been calling me "master" in public and behind the scenes. He quickly introduced the situation to me: the two corpses at the scene were a pair of brothers, Zhang He and Zhang Yun, and the barber shop was run by Zhang He and his girlfriend.
I noticed three pairs of chopsticks and three wine glasses on the folding table in the middle of the shop. There had been three people having a meal there, but there were only two corpses on the ground.
What about the third person?
I waved my flashlight over there and asked Ben. Aben said there was a survivor who had been sent to the hospital and had been slashed twice, seriously injured.
Three of them, two dead and one seriously injured, should have escaped unscathed from the scene. I have a feeling that the murderer I encountered this time must have been professionally trained and was quick and ruthless.
This feeling also stems from something unusual I found at the scene - a steel nail.
It was called a steel nail, which was more like a 2B pencil in shape, about the length of a chopstick, and was inserted right into Zhang He's neck. It was buried deep, with only a section as long as his little finger exposed. There was no puncture at the back of the neck because the entire steel nail was forcefully inserted into Zhang He's cervical vertebrae.
I roughly measured it and found that the exposed section was far from enough for an adult to hold and Pierce, with the help of tools? I made eye contact with Forensic expert Li Wenjie at the scene and then examined Zhang Yun's body.
Zhang Yun also had a steel nail stuck in his right forearm, with the tip of the nail protruding from the outer side of the forearm, and beside the body was a broken beer bottle. The same thing that could not be ignored was the large open muscle tissue on Zhang Yun's neck. It was probably the fatal wound left by the large machete, which almost cut off the entire neck.
On the right side of Zhang Yun's neck, I also found a penciler-sized piercing wound. Looking in the direction of the wound, I actually saw the steel nail on the wall of the barber shop.
It went straight into the wall and looked very deep.
I walked over, wrapped the pliers tightly with black rubber, pressed my face against the wall, held my breath, and used the pliers to "scrape" the nails out of the wall bit by bit without shaking them as much as possible.
One centimeter, then another centimeter, a strong force was passed through the pliers to my hand - the nails were indeed inserted very deep. There was blood on the nail, the one that shot through Zhang Yun's neck.
I couldn't help feeling a chill down my back and subconsciously touched my own neck as it pierced through a person's body and was driven deep into the wall.
"With the aid of tools" means with something like a nail gun, but how could a tiny nail gun shoot a steel nail the length of a chopstick?
This weapon is so damn professional, what the hell is it!
The on-site investigation is still ongoing. There is a camera on the door. I asked the police to remove the surveillance footage. Once it comes out, many things will become clear.
After giving instructions, I left and wanted to have a cigarette to catch my breath. This kind of scene, the smell of blood would get through the mask and into the throat, and before the cigarette was lit, Aben shouted as if he were stepping on his tail, "Master, the computer hard drive connected to the surveillance has been taken away."
The foul language was on the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed it back.
On the bar counter, there was a blackened computer screen, and beneath the counter, the computer was covered with blood handprints, and all of them were gloved. I got up and went to the door to take a look. There were also blood handprints of gloved people on the door handrail.
This is an expert who knows how to remove the hard drive connected to the surveillance video, especially when there are three blood gourds lying in the room. What kind of mental quality is this?
The longer I stay in this small 40-square-meter room, the more I break out in cold sweat. I had no idea what kind of opponent I was facing.
What's even more terrifying is yet to come. On the folding table, there was a bottle of white wine with a blood handprint on it: full middle finger, ring finger, little finger fingerprints. There were also drops of alcohol on the table, which showed that the alcohol had been spilled after being stained with blood.
Did this guy kill someone and then grab a bottle and take a sip? This is just too crazy!
I told Aben to hurry up and compare the blood fingerprints and DNA on the white wine bottles at the scene in the depot. A fugitive with such skills wouldn't be so clean.
But standing behind Aben, I suddenly felt a strange tension --
The computer screen went blank and my mind went blank.
Originally, this case was not difficult to handle, there were survivors, and the chain of evidence would be complete when the victim identified, the surveillance video restored the physical evidence, and fingerprints and DNA were added, but all the clues at the scene seemed like the murderer came to play a joke on me.
Recalling the roof, the wall, the mirror, the lampshade, the bloodstain on the table and the sequence and direction of the spray, a professional, meticulous, cold-blooded and even a bit arrogant murderer, with his unknown weapon, put on a killing show right before my eyes --
He pretended to be an acquaintance of the two brothers and knocked on the door. Zhang He went to open the door unprepared and was shot directly into his neck by a steel nail, which got stuck in his cervical vertebrae. Zhang He died on the spot.
Seeing Zhang He being attacked, Zhang Yun stood up with a beer bottle and rushed forward. The murderer calmly shot out the second steel nail, which was blocked by Zhang Yun's arm. Then the third steel nail was aimed at Zhang Yun's neck, but it was slightly off target. The steel nail pierced through the neck and hit the wall, and Zhang Yun's blood sprayed onto the mirror and the wall.
The murderer did not give up and chased after him, cutting off Zhang Yun's neck with a machete, and more blood shot onto the roof and lampshade.
The only survivor must have been "incidentally" slashed twice before he managed to stay alive. The murderer's aim was clear: to kill the Zhang brothers.
I have never met a murderer who is so confident and so desperate and ruthless. The room was filled with mottled bloodstains, as if they were pouring out the most ruthless and straightforward murderous intent of the man who had committed the massacre.
I seemed to be able to see his vague appearance from these: he was like the unidentified weapon he had chosen, precise, swift, with a definite sense of direction and full of lethality. He knew clearly that he, like the weapon in his hand, could not turn back once he began, but made every shot as certain as it was directed at himself.
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About three months ago, a square-faced man walked into a hardware store to buy tools. After entering the store, he shouted for a long time before the owner came out of the back room.
The moment the door opened, the man saw the machete that the owner had placed in the inner room and showed great interest in the "underbox goods".
The boss thought he was going to buy it and secretly showed him a few items.
But the man blurted out, "I have something. I'll show you two next time."
The square-faced man, who was the technical director of a nearby machinery factory, lived and ate in the factory, and had his home in a simple partition behind the factory workshop: a single spring bed, a small table, two iron boxes and a filing cabinet, with a thick laptop on the box and a pile of electronic components and welding torches scattered around.
The man, Wu Xiangdong, is a tech enthusiast. Living in the factory is a habit he has left behind in order to spend as much time as possible with his "darlings".
When Wu was young, he worked in a large state-owned enterprise. At that time, many people couldn't learn the newly introduced CNC machine tools in the state-owned enterprise. He followed the trainers all day long and asked them every detail. He didn't stop until he was not only proficient in operating CNC machines, but also skilled in repairing faults. He was poached by a machinery factory in Shanghai that offered him four times the salary.
Wu Xiangdong was not interested in the city's prosperity at all, but in its advanced technology. He had worked in Shanghai for more than nine years and had never been to Nanjing Road or the Oriental Pearl Tower. Apart from buying small parts for his own machinery and electronics, he sent most of his salary home.
Just two years ago, he suddenly quit his well-paid job in Shanghai and returned to his hometown machinery factory, working and taking care of his son. His son has a mental illness.
Once he could adapt to the hustle and bustle of big cities and focus on what he was interested in, but when he returned to his family life, he found that some of the little things in daily life were no easier than delving into technology --
He wanted to cook rice for his son. When there were worms in the rice, he would expose it to the sun and then add water and cook it according to the method on the Internet. But the rice that was exposed to the sun turned out to be extremely unappetizing. Wu Xiangdong also used a washing machine for the first time in his life, although he washed his socks and underpants together.
He struggled to learn to do housework, worked hard to earn money, and took care of his son who was sick from time to time.
But he still couldn't control his thoughtful mind. After two days, Wu Xiangdong actually made a machete for the hardware store owner. The owner, upon seeing that the quality and workmanship were indeed better than his, agreed with Wu Xiangdong to deliver the goods to him on the 25th of each month.
The owner of the hardware store had been in this business for some time. Perhaps seeing that Wu Xiangdong had a technical foundation, he thought of coming up with something new to show off to those young people and specifically asked Wu Xiangdong for things like Nepalese army knives and slingshots.
Wu Xiangdong seemed to have been awakened by the hardware shop owner's request and readily agreed, and incidentally made a decision: to send his son to a mental hospital.
Without the burden of his son, Wu seemed to return to his former state of freedom. He doesn't go home at all and lives alone in the factory. He used to drink very little, not even once a year, but now he gets himself drunk almost every day before he can fall asleep.
During the few hours when he was awake, he did only two things: working hard, processing parts and the "private jobs" he promised to the hardware store owner; And visiting his son Xinjie in the mental hospital every week. The whole person was in a state of being closed but running at high speed.
To others, he seemed to be trying hard to earn more money to take better care of his son, but only Wu Xiangdong himself knew that deep in his heart there was a long-lost excitement - a plan that had been brewing for a long time finally saw a turn for the better.