On the morning of April 9, 2008, near the Shizitan Dam in Changshou District, Chongqing, in a small grove, people discovered a woman who appeared dazed. This woman was wearing only a top, with her lower body naked, lying on the ground outside a bamboo pavilion by the dam. Someone subsequently reported the case to the police.

Through on-site investigation, the police found that a layer of dead leaves had fallen at the scene, and there were traces of dragging on the dead leaves. Beside the traces, a pair of black women’s trousers, a pair of white underwear, and an empty beverage can were left behind. After testing the residual liquid in the beverage can left at the scene, the police found that the residual liquid contained a drug component scientifically known as triazolam. When the forensic doctor questioned this woman, they found that she was unclear in mind and unable to clearly describe what had happened. No other clues usable for solving the case were found at the scene, which made the police’s investigative work impossible to proceed.
Afterward, several similar cases occurred successively in Chongqing, one of which occurred in Hechuan District, Chongqing.

On April 30, 2009, the Hechuan District Public Security Bureau of Chongqing received a report from a middle-aged woman surnamed Wu, saying that she had just been robbed and that the valuable items she carried had been swept away.

Ms. Wu said that what was robbed was not only her mobile phone, gold earrings, and a postal savings card, but she also discovered that the 8,000 yuan in the postal savings card had been withdrawn. What puzzled the police was how the criminal suspect who robbed Ms. Wu of her property knew her postal savings card password and thus withdrew the money. Could the suspect be someone familiar to Ms. Wu?
Ms. Wu said that everything began with a chance encounter on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2009.

Ms. Wu’s home was in Bishan County, Chongqing. On February 14, while dancing at a public dance hall, she met a man who claimed to be named Tian Changwu. Ms. Wu said that Tian Changwu was in his 30s and claimed to be a boss from out of town doing business in Bishan County. The man was well dressed and good at ballroom dancing, making him particularly eye-catching in the public dance hall.

The man boasted to Ms. Wu that he was a business boss inspecting projects in Bishan County, asked to further interact with Ms. Wu, and they exchanged phone numbers.

At that time, Ms. Wu, in her 40s, had been single since divorce, and her emotional life was in a blank period. The eloquent Tian Changwu, who claimed to have some financial strength, quickly left a deep impression on Ms. Wu, and the two exchanged phone numbers.

After more than two months of dating, Tian Changwu began an emotional offensive against Ms. Wu, and step by step Ms. Wu fell into the emotional trap carefully designed by Tian Changwu.

Ms. Wu said that after a period of contact, she felt that Tian Changwu was honest and very considerate toward her, caring for her warmly, and was someone she could entrust her life to. Just as Ms. Wu was immersed in the joy brought by this relationship, on April 30, 2009, Tian Changwu falsely claimed that he wanted to cooperate with Ms. Wu in business and tricked Ms. Wu into going to Hechuan District, Chongqing.

At that time, all of Ms. Wu’s money was deposited in her postal savings card. After arriving in Hechuan District, in order to obtain the password of Ms. Wu’s postal savings card, the suspect told Ms. Wu that his older brother wanted to transfer money over, but he had not brought a bank card, so he begged Ms. Wu to first use her postal savings card to receive the money transferred by his older brother.

At around 6 p.m. on April 30, 2009, Tian Changwu asked Ms. Wu to go with him to an ATM to check the balance and see whether his older brother had transferred the money. Taking this opportunity, Tian Changwu secretly obtained the password of Ms. Wu’s postal savings card. That night, Ms. Wu, who already trusted Tian Changwu deeply, was tricked by Tian Changwu into a storefront room in Hechuan District, Chongqing. After drinking the beverage Tian Changwu handed her, Ms. Wu lost consciousness.
Gradually awakening from coma, Ms. Wu found herself completely naked, while the man called Tian Changwu had long disappeared. Tian Changwu had not only swept away her property, but also sexually assaulted her. Only then did Ms. Wu awaken and immediately report the case to the Hechuan District Public Security Bureau.

The police tested and analyzed the residual liquid in the beverage can left at the scene and found that it contained a drug component called triazolam. The biggest characteristic of triazolam tablets is that oral absorption is very fast, and it can cause a person to fall into a deep sleep within 15 to 30 minutes. If taken in large doses, it can also cause continuous mental confusion. In recent years, people across the country have used triazolam tablets to commit cases of drugging, robbing property, and sexual assault.

During the investigation, the police found that several similar cases had also occurred in several other places in Chongqing.

In May 2007, Ms. Jin of Liangping District, Chongqing, met a man at a dance hall. After drinking a beverage mixed with triazolam provided by the man, she fell unconscious, and the gold necklace, gold ring, jade pendant, and other items she wore were all robbed.

In April 2008, Ms. Yuan of Liangping District, Chongqing, met a man at a teahouse. After drinking a beverage mixed with triazolam by the man, she fell unconscious, and two mobile phones, a computer, a gold ring, and other items were robbed.

On April 9, 2008, the woman found at Shizitan Dam in Changshou District, Chongqing, wearing only a top with her lower body naked, was investigated and also found to have met a man at a dance hall. After drinking a beverage mixed with triazolam provided by the man near Shizitan Dam in Changshou District, she fell unconscious and had a pair of gold earrings, three gold rings, and one gold necklace robbed.

In November 2008, Ms. Tang of Hechuan District, Chongqing, also met a man at a dance hall. Ms. Tang said that not long after they first met, the man extended an olive branch of love to her, who was in her 40s. At that time, Ms. Tang had been laid off and had not found work, her husband had divorced her, and she was living very hard alone with her child. After this gentle and considerate man appeared, Ms. Tang rekindled hope for life.

After gradually gaining Ms. Tang’s favor and trust, the man proposed doing a gold business together with Ms. Tang. Encouraged by the other party, Ms. Tang withdrew all her savings of 30,000 yuan from the bank.

On the night after withdrawing the money, the man invited Ms. Tang to a hotel. After Ms. Tang drank the beverage mixed with triazolam provided by the man, she quickly lost consciousness. When she woke up, her mobile phone and gold jewelry had been robbed, and the more than 30,000 yuan in cash she carried had also disappeared.

After sorting out all similar cases already grasped, the police summarized some patterns in the criminal suspect’s modus operandi. The suspect pretended to be a business boss, targeted middle-aged women wearing gold jewelry in public dance halls in the city, boasted to the victims that he was rich, and gradually gained the victims’ trust with sweet words. After the victims relaxed their vigilance, the suspect tricked them into hotels and other places, gave them beverages mixed with anesthetic drugs, and after causing them to lose consciousness, swept away the gold and silver jewelry and cash on them. In some cases, in addition to robbing the victims, the suspect also sexually assaulted them. The police were filled with indignation and decided that no matter what, no matter how great the cost, they must bring the suspect to justice and punish him according to law.

If the criminal suspect was not arrested for a day, more women might be victimized. So with so many cases having the same modus operandi, was it possible that they were committed by the same suspect?

The Hechuan police immediately conducted a technical investigation of the scene where Ms. Wu was anesthetized, robbed, and raped, and extracted the beverage bottle used by the suspect in committing the crime and the tissue stained with his semen. At the same time, the police conducted joint investigation and evidence collection for similar cases occurring in areas around Chongqing.

In order to capture the suspect as soon as possible, in addition to questioning the victims about the facts of the cases, the police also conducted a comprehensive investigation of the suspect’s physical features, accent, psychological characteristics, habits, hobbies, and so on.

The descriptions by all the victims of the suspect’s physical features were almost astonishingly consistent. Male, about 1.65 meters tall, medium build and somewhat thin, with a Chongqing accent. But were the suspects in these cases the same person?

In the police’s visits to several victimized women, it was learned that some victims said the criminal suspect was called Tian Changwu, some said the other party claimed to be Yan Xiaoyu, and still other victims provided the police with the names Tian Bing and Chen Yonggang. The police immediately checked these names one by one. After sorting, there were a total of 7 people named Tian Changwu in Chongqing, and 3 with the same name in Hechuan District, but none matched the characteristics of the suspect described by Ms. Wu, and no information related to the criminal suspect could be found for the other names either.

In order to capture the criminal suspect as soon as possible, the police also retrieved the surveillance video from when Ms. Wu and the suspect went to the ATM to check the balance, and asked other victims to identify it.

Because the criminal suspect dodged in the video, stayed for a very short time, and the images were very blurry, and the several victimized women had only brief contact with the criminal suspect, they could not provide the police with effective information, so the several cases had never found a breakthrough for solving them.

Who exactly was the criminal suspect, and were the several robbery and rape cases committed by the same criminal suspect? How to catch the criminal suspect was a problem that had to be solved before the police.

In order to figure out the criminal suspect’s true identity, the police began collecting DNA materials left by the suspect in numerous cases and sent these DNA materials to the Chongqing Municipal Public Security Bureau for examination and comparison. Unexpectedly, after examination and comparison, it actually led to a shocking murder case from many years earlier.

On the morning of July 20, 2003, a hotel attendant in Qijiang County found a female corpse with her lower body exposed while cleaning a room. The room was very messy, and she immediately reported the case. At the crime scene, the police found a tissue stained with semen, an empty medicine box, and several cigarette butts, and also found male footprints and fingerprints.

After investigation and verification, the deceased was Ms. Dai. Through questioning Ms. Dai’s surrounding friends and the on-site investigation of the crime scene, the police learned that the murdered woman, Ms. Dai, had also met a man while dancing at a public dance hall. The man also used the pretext of romance and partnership in business to trick Ms. Dai into a hotel in Qijiang County.

After tricking the victim into the hotel room where he was staying, the suspect gave the victim a beverage mixed with anesthetic drugs. The victim lost consciousness, and then the suspect robbed the victim of her necklace and other personal belongings. When the suspect was preparing to flee the scene, the victim suddenly regained consciousness. She found that her personal belongings were missing and cried for help. At that time, the room where the suspect was staying was relatively close to the hotel’s front desk. Afraid that his crime would be exposed, the suspect simply went all out and used a bedsheet to cover the victim’s mouth and nose, cruelly killing her.

Through DNA examination and comparison, it was not only confirmed that multiple cases of anesthetic robbery and rape were committed by the same criminal suspect, but also that the suspect used aliases when committing the crimes.

If the suspect was not caught, there would be no way to answer to the numerous victims and their families. But although the suspect’s DNA was already known, the police still did not know who the suspect was.

Subsequently, the police decided to visit the multiple victims again for questioning, hoping to collect more evidence. However, because the criminal suspect was very cunning and used aliases every time he committed a crime, it was very difficult to lock down his true identity, which also added considerable difficulty to the police investigation. Just when the investigation of the entire case encountered a bottleneck, the police inadvertently learned that the criminal suspect had accidentally revealed a flaw during one crime.

During case handling, the police obtained a piece of video. It was noon on May 10, 2008, the noon of the same day before the suspect committed anesthetic robbery against a woman in Liangping County. In order to appear generous and gain the victim’s trust, the suspect treated the victim and several of the victim’s friends to a meal at a relatively high-end hotel in Liangping County. During the meal, a friend of the victim, Ms. Zhang, had just bought a new mobile phone and took it out to record everyone at the meal one by one.

Although the suspect tried hard to dodge the mobile phone camera, his image was still recorded by the phone. After comparison with the ATM surveillance video obtained in Ms. Wu’s case, the man in the footage was the same person.

Although the suspect appeared for only a very short time in that mobile phone video and the image was relatively blurry, after repeatedly watching the video, the police believed that as long as someone familiar with the suspect saw this video, they should be able to recognize the suspect’s identity.

The police not only distributed this video to all units of the Hechuan District Public Security Bureau for identification, but also took the video to various villages and neighborhood committees, mobilizing the broad masses to identify it, hoping to capture this suspect as soon as possible.

On June 13, 2011, the police received exciting news. After viewing the video, a member of the public believed that the suspect was very likely Tian Changquan of Laitan Town, and his physical features were very close to those of the suspect in the series of anesthetic robbery cases.

Tian Changquan was born in 1973 and was from Laitan Town, Hechuan District, Chongqing.

Was the suspect Tian Changquan? The police immediately showed his photo to each victim for identification, but because Tian Changquan’s photos were all old photos from many years earlier, the victims could not determine that he was the suspect who had robbed them.

Was Tian Changquan the suspect in the series of anesthetic robbery cases, and how could this be verified? Another problem was placed before the police.

The police also conducted a large amount of investigation around Tian Changquan’s social relationships and family relationships. After repeated study, the police decided to secretly extract the DNA of Tian Changquan’s family members.

Upon investigation, the DNA samples of Tian Changquan’s relatives were related by kinship to the suspect’s DNA samples in the 2009 Hechuan robbery and rape case, the 2003 Chongqing Qijiang County robbery and murder case, and multiple anesthetic robbery and rape cases, confirming that the suspect was Tian Changquan. Afterward, the police sorted out Tian Changquan’s activity trajectory in recent years and found that he had carried out many anesthetic robberies by the same means in Chongqing, Guizhou, Sichuan, Guangdong, and other places.

By checking his information, the police found that he was also a fugitive suspect in another anesthetic rescue case. In that case, in 2002, he defrauded three female victims of their property at the same time.

Not only that, Tian Changquan was also a fish that escaped the net in an anesthetic robbery case in the High-tech Zone in 2001. On June 12, 2001, Tian Changquan and his ex-wife Chen jointly committed anesthetic robbery against a young woman. After the victim reported the case, Chen was arrested, while Tian Changquan disappeared without a trace after fleeing.

After secret investigation, the police learned that since the late 1990s until the present, Tian Changquan had never lived in his hometown and had been wandering outside all year round. The police once suspected that Tian Changquan might already be dead.

Where was Tian Changquan now? The police divided into two groups, one continuing secret investigation of Tian Changquan’s relatives, and the other collecting traces of Tian Changquan’s crimes nationwide. Gradually, Tian Changquan’s escape trajectory became clear.

The police also learned that during his flight, Tian Changquan had several romantic relationships, all using false identities. He even had two children, one in Kunming, Yunnan, and one in Dazhou, Sichuan.

After analysis, the police believed that Tian Changquan was very likely now in Dazhou, Sichuan. The police immediately sent a arrest team of more than 10 people to Dazhou to carry out work. But Dazhou is a prefecture-level city with a large urban area and a large population. Finding Tian Changquan there was undoubtedly like looking for a needle in a haystack. In early July 2011, with the cooperation of the Dazhou police, the cunning fox finally showed its tail.

The police obtained an important piece of information: Tian Changquan’s older brother had rented a house in Dazhou. The police had previously learned that Tian Changquan’s older brother had long worked in Xiamen, Fujian, and it was impossible for him to rent a house in Dazhou. In addition, Tian Changquan had previously used his older brother’s name and assumed his older brother Tian Changwu’s identity. The police judged that the renter was Tian Changquan.

Through secret investigation of the surrounding masses, the police learned that the renter was indeed Tian Changquan. On the afternoon of July 1, 2011, the police, who had been keeping watch around the suspect’s rented residence, seized the opportunity and successfully arrested Tian Changquan in a teahouse in Dazhou, Sichuan.

After interrogation, faced with iron facts and evidence, Tian Changquan had no choice but to confess to the criminal facts of more than 30 anesthetic robberies committed from 1998 to 2010 in Chongqing and Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan, Guangdong, and other provinces.