Chapter 1053: Report from Dongzhou Criminal Investigation Team

At this moment, Zhou Baoguo from Dongzhou City’s Criminal Investigation Team, along with Li Donglin and others, was already standing by the edge of the landfill pit at the crime scene.

"When the body was discovered, it was relatively intact except for the parts cut away by the killer. There were no signs of physical compression on the corpse."

Zhou Baoguo introduced these circumstances because all the garbage in the landfill site was transported and dumped by garbage trucks, and during transportation, the trash undergoes physical compression.

If the body had been transported by a garbage truck, it would have suffered some damage from compression. However, evidence suggests there was no compression, indicating the body was not brought here by a garbage truck from a garbage container elsewhere.

Someone must have intentionally dumped the corpse here.

This is the analysis recorded by Dongzhou City’s Criminal Investigation Team in the case files.

The landfill pit is now sealed off, with police tape drawn around it, and local police officers from the nearby precinct maintaining order. Many people were observing from afar.

"After discovering the body, we performed an autopsy and determined that the direct cause of death was neck wounds, which is consistent with the previous method of the Red-clothed Killer."

Zhou Baoguo and Lu Chuan were already inside the pit.

This landfill pit was about 10 meters deep, with a very pungent smell surrounding it.

Lu Chuan began his examination at the edge of the pit.

There were no surveillance cameras near this landfill site, with only garbage trucks passing by. Usually, only scavengers come here.

"At that time, we conducted a detailed examination of the surrounding area where the body was found, but because it was all garbage, there were no valuable clues."

Given the environment of this landfill pit, even finding clues for an investigation was very difficult.

Fingerprints and footprints, for instance, would be nearly impossible to find.

What’s more, seven days had already passed since the incident, and Lu Chuan had very little hope for obvious clues.

"Were there bloodstains?"

Li Donglin asked.

Zhou Baoguo shook his head.

"There were no bloodstains at the crime scene. According to the forensic doctor, the time of the victim’s death was determined to be early that morning."

The victim’s identity was confirmed.

The morning of the crime, a report was filed for a missing person. The victim was a cashier at a supermarket in Dongzhou City’s High-tech Zone.

During the Spring Festival, the supermarket was busy, so none of the staff at this supermarket had time off.

Dengzhou City’s Criminal Investigation Team conducted a detailed investigation into the victim’s whereabouts on the day of disappearance.

The victim left work at 9 PM on the evening of the first day of the Lunar New Year.

"The victim, named Zhu Panpan, did not return home after leaving work at 9:00 PM on the Lunar New Year. She rented a place by herself, and did not go to work the next day. The supermarket called her but couldn’t reach her."

"At the time, it was thought she had resigned without notice, but some friends from the supermarket also tried calling her with no success. Until a colleague who was relatively close to Zhu Panpan went to her rented place to find her, she wasn’t found, and a report was filed on the fourth day of the Lunar New Year."

The red-clothed body hadn’t been discovered by the fourth day of the Lunar New Year, but the severed finger had been found on the second day and confirmed through DNA testing to belong to Zhu Panpan.

By the fifth day of the Lunar New Year, after discovering the red-clothed body, it was confirmed that the victim was Zhu Panpan. Of the missing parts from her body, only the severed finger was recovered; other parts remained unfound.

After Zhou Baoguo finished introducing the general situation, Li Donglin looked at Lu Chuan.

"Lu Chuan, take a look here, what did you find?"

The experts from Zhengzhou City’s Criminal Investigation Team may not have found anything on site, but Li Donglin believed Lu Chuan would discover something different.

"The body was carried inside."

Lu Chuan first stated his conclusion.

Li Donglin waited for Lu Chuan to continue explaining why he arrived at such a conclusion.

Lu Chuan started to explain.

"This landfill pit has a diameter of about 500 meters, surrounded by heaps of dumped trash."

Lu Chuan pointed to the surrounding area and the path they just descended from at the edge of the pit and continued.

"After garbage is dumped from garbage trucks, bulldozers flatten them and bury them in the pit."

Lu Chuan gestured around.

"If the killer discarded the body directly at the edge of the pit, the body shouldn’t have reached the very bottom of the pit. It should have remained near the edge."

"That’s a bit odd. The killer could have just thrown the body directly into the landfill from the edge, so why carry the corpse inside and hide it at the bottom?"

Lu Chuan’s meaning was clear to everyone. If the suspect discarded the body at the edge of the landfill pit, then as the corpse fell inside, it should remain near the edge, not at the pit’s deepest point.

The bottom of this landfill pit was relatively flat, about 100 meters in diameter, and the place where the body was found was right in the center of this pit.

"Any other findings?"

Lu Chuan shook his head.

The landfill site was too chaotic, making it impossible to distinguish what was left by the suspect and what was dumped with the trash.

Even with Lu Chuan’s expertise, conducting a detailed on-site investigation here was not feasible.

Li Donglin frowned.

This case was certainly difficult to solve.

Otherwise, the Red-clothed Killer wouldn’t have remained at large for fifteen years, committing so many offenses.

Moreover, the motivation for cutting and discarding the body after the murder was still unclear to the team.

Li Donglin had previously dealt with the Red-clothed Killer case in Dongzhou City.

The provincial department specially invited psychological experts to analyze the characteristics and psychology of the Red-clothed Killer.

After each murder, the suspect would cut off part of the body, and all the victims were women wearing red clothes. The suspect also raped them.

In this instance, the suspect cut off the victim’s finger and threw it in a trash bin.

He then discarded the body in a landfill several dozen kilometers away.

What is the significance of this? Why did he do it? Was it a compulsive behavior or was there a special reason?

From a criminal investigation standpoint, this case was not particularly difficult to solve because the suspect left traces of assault on the victim.

Forensic doctors had long extracted the suspect’s DNA information.

Unfortunately, in all past cases, even after extensive DNA testing on all suspect profiles, none has successfully matched.

It can be said that this case has clues, but remains unsolved.