In 1988, a police officer in Tonghua City, Jilin Province, China, went to the toilet late at night when he noticed that the gun under his pillow was missing. For the police, the loss of matching guns is an extremely serious problem, and if not handled properly, it can trigger social panic and can lead to *** cases.
After receiving the report, the Dongchang District Public Security Bureau immediately launched an operation to solve the case, and they made every effort to find the missing guns to prevent more serious crimes.
However, in that era when the surveillance system was not developed, no clues were left at the crime scene, and the investigation of the case was in a difficult situation and progress was slow.
As the deadline for solving the case approached, the police officers who handled the case felt more and more pressured, but they were helpless. Suddenly, the arrival of a veteran brings a major turn to the case.
Without any clues, he finds a new direction of investigation and pulls the cunning criminal out of the darkness. The criminals couldn't believe it, they were caught at dawn.
Wang Tongtong, a night shift worker at a rubber factory, had just returned home from the night shift when he was called to a meeting by a colleague who had arrived early. He was puzzled by this because he hadn't heard of anything important to deal with at the factory recently.
He is not involved in the specific business of the factory, and he goes out day and night, and his colleagues are not very familiar with him. He is like a transparent person, and he is rarely notified of meetings except for the annual all-hands meeting.
Wang Tongtong felt a trace of uneasiness in his heart, but the continuous work pressure and the urging of his colleagues made him unable to think carefully, so he hurriedly got up and followed his colleagues straight to the auditorium in the factory.
It has to be mentioned that Wang Tongtong's hunch was extremely accurate, and as soon as he left his residence, several police officers broke into his home and conducted a thorough and exhaustive search. Soon after, the police found stolen police pistols, holsters and bullets in the chimney of Wang Tongtong's house, and immediately arrested him.
Wang Tongtong, who was in a meeting, was full of surprise when he was caught, and he kept questioning the police around him: "Impossible, I didn't leave any traces, how did you find me?" ”
Facing the police who arrested him, asking such a question, it can be seen that Wang Tongtong is both arrogant and full of confidence in his own ability. In fact, Wang Tongtong does have arrogant capital.
In those days, the thefts he committed were indeed difficult to solve with conventional detective means.
While the average theft case will always leave some indelible clues, it can help trace the identity of the criminals and recover lost items. However, in the gun theft case handled by the Dongchang Branch of the Tonghua Municipal Public Security Bureau, no suspicious traces were found at the scene.
The person who reported the case was a single police officer who lived in a self-built two-story building, with two one-bedroom suites on each floor. There is a lockable door in the middle of the stairs on the first and second floors.
On the day of the incident, the police went home at 8 o'clock and saw that the tenants were all at home, so they locked the courtyard gate, staircase door and their own door from the inside, making it impossible for the outside world to open it.
Due to his frequent missions, he was always vigilant in the management of his guns. In order to prevent theft and use it in time in case of emergency, he used to put the matching gun under his pillow.
However, on the most recent occasion, before going to bed at 10 p.m., he took the matching gun out of the holster as usual and placed it under his pillow, with the holster on his belt and his pants on the table at the head of the bed.
However, at 4 a.m. the next day, when he got up to go to the bathroom, he was surprised to find that the gun under his pillow was missing. He immediately searched the bed and under it, but was surprised to find that the holster at the head of the bed had also disappeared.
While it is possible for a pistol to accidentally fall out of bed, the holster is worn on a belt and will never come off on its own. That's when he realized that his gun and holster had been stolen.
After investigating the scene, the police who reported the crime found that the doors were locked, the windows were closed, and there were no signs of damage to the stairwell and courtyard door. Despite his experience, he still couldn't understand how the thief quietly entered the room and took his gun.
He immediately called for the help of the police and stressed the urgency of the theft of the gun. The officers of the police station conducted a rigorous secondary investigation and questioned the tenant and the police who reported the crime.
They quickly came to preliminary conclusions. If the thief had entered through the main door on the night of the crime, he would have passed through the rooms of the three tenants and opened the three locked doors.
And the door between the first and second floors uses a snap lock with a spring, whether it is unlocked or locked, it will make a loud noise, this sound cannot be ignored in the middle of the night.
According to the statements of the tenant and the police who reported the incident, no one heard unusual noises that night. In addition, there were no signs of broken locks on all three doors, indicating that the thief could not have entered the room through the main door to commit theft.
During the investigation, the police found that although the windows of the police room were closed, the old-fashioned latches of the kitchen windows were only plugged in and did not rotate and stuck, and there were also two windows on the south side of the second floor that were not closed overnight.
Experienced thieves can easily take advantage of such a latch and open the window and close it with a tool, leaving no trace. Based on this, it is inferred that the thief may have climbed into the courtyard from the top of the wall, then climbed up to the second floor, entered the room of the police through the window, and committed the theft.
However, this plausible assumption is weakened by a loophole. Tonghua City is located in the northeast, and the north wind often blows in July, and even if you wipe the windowsill frequently, a layer of dust will quickly accumulate on the windowsill of every household.
This layer of ash provides the thief with an ideal "invisibility cloak", making his movements obscure.
The thief's actions did not seem to leave any traces, and there was nothing unusual about the dust throughout the yard, which confused the police handling the case. Someone found that their high-end lighter was missing, but they couldn't find the person who stole it, and there was no sign of anyone even entering the house.
This caught the attention of the police handling the case, and he realized that this might not be a simple gun theft case, but a series of theft cases. He began to expand his investigation and was surprised to find that more than a dozen households in the nearby neighborhood had lost their belongings.
Most of these theft cases do not leave obvious clues, many people think that they accidentally lost them, and did not report to the police, and some of the cases that were reported to the police, due to insufficient evidence, could not find the real culprit.
After an in-depth investigation, ** found two unique features of these cases: first, no obvious traces of destruction and strangers were found in the homes of the stolen residents; Second, thieves carry out sophisticated restoration of the scene after the theft.
A resident reported that when he came back from grocery shopping in the morning, he found that the dozens of yuan in his wallet were missing, but when he got dressed, his wallet was still in his trouser pocket, and even the zipper of his wallet was still well drawn, and everything was as usual, but when he woke up, the money was gone.
Such a criminal modus operandi immediately reminded ** of the details of a gun theft case, where the thief put the belt back on his pants intact after stealing the holster on the belt.
Originally, this detail had been confusing to the investigators, but after they visited and investigated, they realized that this irrational behavior, which seemed redundant and might even increase the risk of the thief's exposure, was actually a habit of the thief and had a clear purpose.
He was able to escape for so long, not only because of his ingenious methods, but also because of his precise grasp of public psychology. He succeeded in covering up his whereabouts by exploiting public misconceptions and misleading them into not reporting crimes.
This unique modus operandi convinces investigators that these gun thefts and dozens of thefts were committed by the same theft expert. His main motive was to acquire wealth, and theft and robbery were only incidental to him, and he did not orchestrate the destruction of society.
However, when ** breathed a sigh of relief, he received another bad news, and the stolen police officer reported again that more than 100 rounds of ammunition he had kept in the cabinet had also been stolen.
The first offense may have been stealing, and stealing bullets again was clearly ill-motivated. In order to achieve his goal, this Jiangyang thief either made a temporary decision or used it to provoke public power.
The theft of firearms is already a major accident, and what is even more troublesome is that more than 100 rounds of ammunition have been missing, and the arrogance of criminals is worrying. To this end, the Tonghua City Public Security Bureau immediately activated the emergency plan, which was personally commanded by a deputy director, and set up a case-solving command center to arrest the criminals and recover the stolen guns within two weeks.
Based on past experience, criminals who are not caught are often lucky and will continue to commit crimes. In order to catch this rampant thief and at the same time prevent him from committing more serious crimes with stolen guns, the Crime Solving Command decided to arrange a large number of police forces in areas frequented by criminals and wait for his appearance.
However, the cunning criminals seem to have detected our actions in advance and have since disappeared without a trace.
At the critical moment of solving the case, ten days have passed, and the police still have no clue, the pressure is increasing, and they are physically and mentally exhausted. The thief they were trying to catch was Wang Tongtong, the husband of the rubber factory, who was deeply hidden, triumphantly observing all this, paying no attention to the hard-working police.
He thinks he's the smartest man in the world, but no one knows that the city bureau is secretly sending a special person to help them. This person's name is Ban**, he is not a graduate of the police academy, but a veteran of the reconnaissance unit, who used to be the head of the reconnaissance section and has completed many tasks excellently.
Due to the importance of this case and the tight timeline, the city bureau decided to put Ban ** in full charge of the case, which fully proves their recognition of Ban **'s ability and credibility.
After Ban ** took over the case, he quickly organized the police to conduct an in-depth analysis of the case. After a detailed briefing on the case, he speculated that the criminal, who had stolen a gun and then a bullet, was most likely a firearms expert and was extremely proficient in the use of firearms.
At the same time, his criminal activities have continued for many years, and he has carried out more than 30 thefts, but he has never missed, which shows that he is a well-trained and athletic master, and it is very likely that he has a special identity.
Moreover, Ban ** also found that the general thieves are relatively concentrated in criminal locations and have their own unique activity patterns. However, the location of the gun theft suspect was marked on the map, although the scope was limited, and no pattern was found.
As a scout, the squad immediately realized that this criminal was by no means an idle person, and it was likely that he had received professional and systematic anti-reconnaissance training.
On the territory of China, institutions with such a level of training exist only in the reconnaissance units of the army. Based on this, Ban ** deduced that the criminal in the gun theft case was most likely a scout of the army, and an elite of the elite, a special scout.
He immediately ordered the investigation of all retired scouts who had transferred jobs in Tonghua City, especially special scouts. ** A large number of people were then evacuated from the streets, and paper files were reviewed overnight, and 23 special scouts were finally screened out from a large group of soldiers.
In further investigation, the name Wang Tongtong attracted the attention of **, and Ban** focused on it. This person worked as a shift man at the Tonghua Rubber Factory, which was in the area where criminals were active, and his working habits were day and night, providing an excellent opportunity for crimes.
What has attracted the attention of the class even more is that Wang Tongtong, as a "one-in-a-million" special scout, retired early when he was young and became a husband who did not match his ability.
His instincts told him that there must be something big hidden in this.
Ban ** and the police officers who handled the case received good news from the troops, which made them full of confidence in the gun theft case that made them almost collapse. It turned out that Wang Tongtong had maliciously stolen a military pistol during his service in the army and caused personal injury to the people near the station, so he was sentenced to 8 years in prison.
This is the main reason why he changed jobs early. Such a criminal record and various previous clues made the case-solving command officially determine that Wang Tongtong was a major suspect.
However, suspicion alone is not enough, and direct evidence is needed to bring him to justice. Due to the limitations of criminal investigation methods at that time, Wang Tongtong's criminal methods were very clever, so no very favorable evidence was found during the investigation.
After in-depth discussion, Ban ** and the police officers who handled the case decided that since they could not find evidence at the scene of the crime, why not directly look for evidence from the suspect himself?
They skillfully used the "meeting in the factory" to lure Wang Tongtong away, and successfully searched his home for missing guns and bullets, so that people could seize both the stolen goods. Wang Tongtong had to admit his guilt in the face of ironclad evidence, and in his confession, we saw a deeply regrettable life.
Wang Tongtong showed outstanding talent when he was a child, not only extremely intelligent, but also practiced martial arts since he was a child, and became a leader among his peers.
After entering the army, he had a strong learning ability and excellent military qualities, and was soon selected into the special forces and became a special scout. These outstanding achievements have made his journey smooth, and they have also shaped his character of being unsightly and ambitious.
He always believed that his ability was better than anyone else's, and what the army gave him was far less than his ability.
He was once an "excellent pacesetter" candidate in the army, but after he was defeated, he did not use this as motivation, but held a grudge and became more and more extreme. In the end, this extremism made him commit the crime of gun theft and was forced to retire and change jobs.
Although the army gave him a chance to reform and gave him a job to support his family, he was not grateful, but complained about the working conditions and treatment. This negative attitude led him to embark on the path of crime again, and eventually committed the gun theft case again and was arrested.
According to his confession, on the night of the gun theft, he used a long bamboo pole and climbed over the wall and window frame by pole vaulting, so he left no traces.
During the interrogation, Wang Tongtong continued to ask the police how he was arrested, and he was convinced that he had no flaws and thought that no one could match him. He may never understand that it is his pride that makes him ignore that there are higher mountains beyond the mountains, and that there are stronger people beyond the strong.
And this pride made his original life of infinite possibilities, smart and capable, reduced to a prisoner.