Anhui Jieshou, a town called Brick Collection, has recently been hot searched with the key word "homicide case".
It was a homicide in 1999. Because the identity of the victim is unknown, there has been no progress in 10 years, and the victim has been labelled as "the case of unknown female corpse". The reason why the old case attracted more attention was that Henan Xinyang billionaire Yang Zhicai was involved in it.
On August 29 this year, the People's Court of Jieshou City heard the case of Yang Zhicai's murder in public. During the trial, Wang Fuwei pleaded guilty in court, but Yang Zhicai, the principal offender, confessed in court and refused to admit homicide.
This case involves several key persons - Criminal suspects, informants, family members of victims, shelters and witnesses. They also have inextricable relations with each other, which makes the 20-year-long case more complicated and confusing.
Each sticks to his argument
In this case, the origin of the victim Merry and the suspect Yang Zhicai and their relatives should be mentioned earlier.
In 1962, Yang Zhicai was born in a small town at the junction of Henan and Anhui. He was a village doctor with a diploma in technical secondary school. In the 1990s, he opened an ophthalmic clinic in Zhaoji Town, Xinyang, and met Shen Li, a fellow villager of the open-mouth clinic in the town.
The two men soon became brothers, and Shen Li even lived in Yang Zhicai's house in 1997. At that time, Shen Li's ex-wife Mei Li came to the door with her stomach held high and praised Shen Li's children. Shen Li, unable to take care of her, entrusted Merry to Yang Zhicai and his wife.
From pregnancy, childbirth to disappearance in mid-March 1999, Merry lived at Yang Zhicai's home. Shen Li left Zhaoji Town shortly after his birth.
It was also on March 11, 1999 that an unknown female corpse occurred in the brick market town of Jieshou (county-level city of Fuyang) in the neighbouring province.
Ten years later, Yang Zhicai's niece Liu Fang (alias) and Shen Litong reported cases in two places in 2009, both claiming that Yang Zhicai had killed Merry. Only then did the outside world associate Merry's disappearance with the case of the unknown woman's body.
To be exact, it was only in 2012 that the police confirmed the anonymous female corpse as Merry because the two informants were located in two provinces (Jieshou in Anhui Province and Xinyang in Henan Province respectively) and it was difficult for them to gather information in time.
Yang Zhicai and Wang Fuwei were arrested and detained by the public security chief in September 2012. According to previous media reports, the two men confessed separately shortly after their arrest.
According to the indictment, on March 11, 1999, the defendant Yang Zhicai asked Liu Fang to take the victim Meili to Linquan County. That night, Yang Zhicai and his wife, nephew, Wang Fuwei, aged 16, cheated Mei Li into a remote village on the grounds of going to the border. At the edge of the wheat field, Wang Fuwei hit Mei Li's head with a steel pipe prepared beforehand. Yang Zhicai took over the steel pipe and hit Mei Li's head several times, and used the rope to Le Mei Li's neck. Merry dragged herself into the wheat field and fled.
For the process of committing a crime, the two people's opinions are quite consistent. But for the motive of committing a crime, the relevant personnel have given different or even contradictory statements.
Wang Fuwei told the police that Yang Zhicai was found by his aunt Liu Jinxia because he had "one leg" with Mei Li, and that Mei Li had been living at home for a long time, suggesting that she had committed murder. He believed that Yang Zhicai and Liu Jinxia had discussed the killing of Merry.
In Yang Zhicai's eloquence, the motive of killing became Merry's "incorrect style". He said Merry often took men home for the night, and Liu Fang, a niece who helped him at the ophthalmic clinic, complained to him many times. At first, he and Wang Fuwei just wanted to "frighten" Merry, but unfortunately they lost their hands.
The two men's statements were denied by Liu Fang. Liu Fang said that on the night of the incident, Yang, Wang and Mei, who went to ask for debts, only returned two. Later, they were told by their uncle that Mei Li had been exterminated and threatened her with "killing one is killing, killing two is killing". Out of fear, Liu Fang has been afraid to report the case. Yang Zhicai argues that Liu Fang is a red-eyed asset and extortion is not easy to slander and fall into the hole.
Shen Li said that he had heard from Liu Jinxia that Yang Zhicai had killed her ex-wife Mei Li; Liu Jinxia firmly denied that she did not know anything about it, which was the first time he had heard about it from Shen Likou.
Previously, Shen Li and Yang and Liu were both engaged in plastic surgery in Xinyang.
Confession in Court
In August 2013, the Fuyang Procuratorate granted bail to Yang Zhicai and Wang Fuwei pending trial. In October of the same year, after three prosecutions and returning to the investigation, the Fuyang Procuratorate finally concluded that "the facts are not clear, the evidence is insufficient, does not meet the conditions for prosecution, and will not prosecute". Among them, the biggest problem is that the body has been cremated. In the absence of DNA testing more than a decade ago, the prosecution believes that biological information has been lost.
According to Beijing Time, a police officer told Mei Li's relatives that they did not rely on DNA technology to handle the case. Without DNA, the existing evidence can also be mutually corroborated. Yang Zhicai and Wang Fuwei have also accurately identified the photos of the deceased, forming a complete evidence chain.
Yang Zhicai, who was released, has since been interviewed by various media, saying that he was tortured to extort confessions and was forced to admit that he had killed.
In 2018, the Criminal Police Brigade of Jieshou Public Security Bureau sent blood from soil and wheat straw to be preserved. DNA comparison confirmed that the unknown female corpse was Meili, Yang Zhicai and Wang Fuwei were arrested again.
On August 29 this year, the case was first heard by the Intermediate People's Court of Fuyang City, Anhui Province. The defendants Yang Zhicai and Wang Fuwei were prosecuted by the procuratorial organs for intentional homicide.
China News Weekly learned from the audience that Yang Zhicai retracted his confession in court, claiming that the confession was made up by the public security organs themselves after they threatened to guide them. After Yang Zhicai's second arrest, the prosecution used video recordings of his plea to show that he had not been induced.
Another defendant, Wang Fuwei, pleaded guilty in court. In fact, after the second arrest, Wang's parents had been in contact with Merry's family, hoping for forgiveness. Therefore, the family members of the victim Merry expressed their agreement to mediate with Wang Fuwei out of court, but never forgive Yang Zhicai.
According to the Red Star News, Yang Zhicai's defenders said that Yang Zhicai had no legitimate motive for the crime and that the reliability of testimony from outsiders was not high. The source of straw and soil for inspection was not recognized, and it was considered that the DNA detected by blood stains in soil had a great correlation with Merry's parents and children.
Yang Zhicai said in court that he studied plastic surgery in Xi'an at the time of the incident and had no time to commit the crime, but Shen Li told China Newsweek that he had been with Yang Zhicai for only a few days in Xi'an, but he could not remember the exact time.
According to the prosecutor, all the items sent for inspection in 2018 were collected by the police on the spot the day after the incident, including buttons, bloody straw and soil extracted from slope 2. There was no problem. The court also invited experts of judicial expertise from Anhui Public Security Bureau to explain this.
Can biological information be extracted from evidence nearly 20 years ago? Hu Zhiqiang, director of the forensic Department of Beijing Huaxia Material Evidence Identification Center, told China News Weekly that the key to extracting DNA lies in the material and preservation conditions. If the blood on the spot was dried and preserved in that year, it could be extracted with the present technology.
But Ho Chi-qiang also questioned why the public security departments of every province in China had DNA detection technology in 1999, so why not keep biological materials directly from corpses? Shen Li identified the female corpse as Merry's in 2009 by identifying photos. She could also test the blood stored in the field before. Why did she delay the examination until 2018?
In addition, because the case data did not mention that Yang Zhicai's biological information was detected at the scene of the case, Wang Haochen, a lawyer of Beijing Zebo Law Firm, believed that China's current criminal procedure law has the characteristics of emphasizing evidence and neglecting confession. If there are no clues left by the suspect, it is difficult to convict only by testimony of several witnesses.
Enthusiasm for charity
Time went back 20 years ago. That was the year Merry was murdered, Yang Zhicai opened his first cosmetic clinic in Xinyang under his wife's name.
Previously, in the promotion of Jinxia Beauty Clinic, Yang Zhicai was "good at facial contour remodeling, facial anti-aging and younger minimally invasive surgery, pure Korean fine nose augmentation, traceless motion breast enhancement..." However, these introductions no longer exist today.
According to the Red Star News, Liu Jinxia had no medical background, but learned plastic surgery under the guidance of Yang Zhicai. Moreover, the husband and wife can do a big business, mainly because Liu Jinxia is "skilled and refreshing".
Yang Zhicai has also changed from an unknown rural doctor to "Professor Yang", "Chairman of Xinyang Jinxia Beauty Salon" and "Super Professor of Plastic Surgery". Up to now, there are three medical beauty agencies, 30 beauty clubs and more than 100 joint-venture stores under the "Jinxia" brand established by the couple, which is worth billions of dollars.
It is said that the couple's reputation was good from the time of Zhaoji Town. When the media interviewed Yang Zhicai's old neighbor, many people expressed their disbelief that Yang would kill.
The cover news reported that the neighbors said the couple were warm-hearted and that the Yang family rented a building where nieces and nephews, including Merry, and sometimes patients were taken in. Yang Zhicai's ophthalmology is good and the fee is not high, even for poor or elderly patients, he will take the initiative to reduce the free use.
However, there are also media reports that Yang Zhicai is not improper in the relationship between men and women, more than one lover.
After his first arrest and release, Yang Zhicai began to devote himself to charity. In the official micro-blog of Xinyang Jinxia Beauty Clinic Co., Ltd., the last one related to Yang Zhicai was on March 11, 2017. He went to visit the families in need with the leaders of the local federation of industry and commerce. Curiously, March 11 was the date of Merry's death.
The last news before Yang Zhicai's second arrest was from September 8 to 10, 2018, when he led company employees to visit orphans and elderly people in local children's welfare homes and communities for three consecutive days.
Homicide suspects, billionaire businessmen, plastic surgeons, philanthropists... Yang Zhicai has too many labels on him. Now, with his confession, this case has already existed like Rashomon.