The Luoyang Reservoir is located in Luo Family Village in Jinghai City, a reservoir in a remote area. Li Xiang didn’t even know there was such a reservoir there.
Li Xiang flipped through the case files, slowly getting to know this old, unresolved case.
In 2009, an elderly man named Liu came fishing, and when he cast his line in, he felt a heavy pull, thinking he had caught a big fish, but upon retrieving it...
Elderly Liu felt thirty years younger for a moment.
It was the body of a woman. Frightened, he quickly called the police, and soon, the criminal investigation team from Jinghai City arrived at the scene to investigate.
The victim’s clothing was intact, but several hollow bricks were tied to her body, clearly indicating a disposal of a corpse at sea. The suspect did not want the body to float to the surface.
Unexpectedly, it was reeled in.
The police then conducted an investigation around the scene of the crime. The reservoir was not the primary crime scene, but rather the dumping site. However, the traces at the scene had long been severely damaged, and no valuable clues were obtained.
The victim, having been in the water for many days, was severely decomposed, her face unrecognizable. The police did not find any documents, such as an ID card, which could verify the victim’s identity.
Forensic experts also conducted an autopsy on the victim. She was a female, about 165cm tall, believed to be between 23-25 years old. The cause of death was mechanical asphyxiation, and the time of death was seven days prior. There were no signs of struggle on her body, and although she had engaged in sexual activity before death, forensic experts did not retrieve any sperm from her body.
The hollow bricks tied to the victim’s body were common in local construction. During the year of the crime, the reservoir was in a remote, desolate area. Without guidance, outsiders rarely came there, leading the police to deduce that the perpetrator was likely a local from Luo Family Village, possibly a physically fit adult male; otherwise, it would have been impossible to carry out such actions.
Thus, the police centered their investigation around the reservoir, examining all villages within a 3-kilometer radius to see if anyone had used hollow bricks in their home constructions. Eventually, in Luo Family Village, they found a brick wall matching the hollow bricks tied to the victim, indicating that the perpetrator likely acquired the bricks from there.
However, this place was interconnected with roads, and anyone with intentions could easily take a few hollow bricks, only establishing that the perpetrator had been there, yielding no further clues.
The police’s immediate priority was to ascertain the victim’s identity.
In a murder case, identifying the body brings solving the case within reach.
At that time, coinciding with the Qingming Festival, the police speculated that the woman had come to pay respects at a grave, prompting them to visit and investigate Luo Family Village and nearby villages.
Unfortunately, no villagers recognized the victim, and during that period, there were no reported missing persons in the village. The case reached a dead end.
The police subsequently photographed the victim’s clothes and posted them online to solicit clues, but no valuable leads emerged.
Without identifying the body, they couldn’t pinpoint a suspect; without apprehending a suspect, the case couldn’t be solved.
The case thus languished, becoming a thorn in the side of the Jinghai City investigative team.
With the advancement of forensic technology, the victim’s DNA had long been entered into the police database. The investigative team reviewed the case annually, comparing the victim’s DNA, but no leads ever materialized.
The case dragged on for years, now over a decade without being able to identify the body.
Through understanding the case files, it’s clear that the police didn’t completely idle over the years. They brought in a sketch artist from the province to reconstruct the victim’s face, attempting to restore a facial likeness of the victim.
Police then took the sketch back to Luo Family Village, asking villagers for identification, but still, no one recognized the victim.
Currently, the only clue remains the victim’s DNA.
After reviewing the files, Li Xiang’s phone issued a system task:
[Task Name: Luoyang Reservoir Corpse Case]
[Task Description: A fourteen-year-old unsolved mystery that has weighed on the minds of the Jinghai City investigative team. Despite annual reviews, clues are scant. Under the principle that every murder case must be solved, Jinghai police are focusing resources to reignite this case. As a newcomer to the first investigative team, you’re bound to take over this baton and thoroughly investigate this case.]
[Task Requirement: Assist Jinghai police in uncovering the case’s truth]
[Task Reward: Experience +600, Diamonds +3000]
"So, what do you think about this case, Li Xiang?" Mao Ji asked after seeing that Li Xiang had finished reviewing the files.
In the previous case, Li Xiang provided constructive suggestions, allowing them to uncover the truth the perpetrators sought to hide, directing their investigation and saving substantial police resources.
So Mao Ji still had high expectations for Li Xiang, hoping he could play a definitive role in this case as well, ideally discovering some new leads or perspectives through the case files.
"The clues are too sparse. Without identifying the body, can’t our DNA database match the victim’s family?"
"DNA comparison is not a simple task. Each human cell contains 23 pairs (46) of chromosomes, from both the father and mother. The 23 chromosomes provided separately by each spouse pair up during fertilization, forming 23 pairs (46) of chromosomes for the child, continuing the cycle to ensure the continuation of life."
"Since the human body has about three billion nucleotides forming the entire chromosome system, this makes the comparison incredibly difficult, with considerable error as well. To minimize this error, we typically use both parents’ DNA data together for comparison. Thus, if the victim’s parents had reported the case to the police, and their DNA data were collected, we could more accurately identify the victim’s identity."