Nanjing police use modern methods to finally solve 26-year-old murder case

Police in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, recently solved a home invasion that led to three deaths 26 years ago following the work of generations of officers.

On Oct 8, 1997, a family of three were killed in their home in Nanjing's Qixia district, but the case remained unresolved due to technical limitations at the time.

However, this year Nanjing police applied modern criminal techniques and successfully targeted two suspects, who were arrested.

Wang Hairong, deputy head of the criminal investigation detachment of the Nanjing Public Security Bureau, participated in the original investigation. Wang said two of the victims were operating a restaurant and a building materials shop, and they had a complex interpersonal network, making the investigation very difficult.

Police at the time believed the case was a targeted gang robbery and murder case.

"At the scene, we did not spare a shred of evidence. Over the past 26 years, several generations of police officers have carried out relay efforts and finally caught the real culprits," Wang said.

Police eventually found that a man surnamed Xie who has a criminal record for theft and robbery, broke into a house with a knife about two weeks before the 1997 case along with a man surnamed Dong, who is now serving a sentence in prison for unrelated crimes.

On Feb 7, police captured Xie in Nanjing. Meanwhile, they also interrogated Dong in prison. The two confessed to committing the murder and robbery in 1997.

Ji Shengzhi, head of the criminal investigation detachment of the Nanjing Public Security Bureau, said that Nanjing police have been reviewing cold cases and those involving death, and have applied the latest criminal investigation technologies.

A number of cases have been resolved and a number of fugitives have been detained, Ji said.

According to the Nanjing Public Security Bureau, after the resolution of the 1997 case, police also resolved a break-in and murder case that occurred in December 1998, and a poisoning case that occurred in April 2000. They also assisted police from another province in resolving a long-pending murder case that occurred about 30 years ago.