On September 11, 2003, it was the traditional Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, a day for families to reunite, admire the moon, and eat mooncakes. But for Professor Gu’s family in Suzhou, this day marked the beginning of their nightmare.
At 9:55 that evening, Professor Gu, who was about to go to bed, received a call from his eldest son-in-law Qiu Xiaoqiang, saying that he was taking his wife Gu Su to the hospital and asking Professor Gu to come quickly.
Professor Gu’s drowsiness immediately vanished. Gu Su was his eldest daughter. A month earlier, she had suddenly developed heart disease, and a week before that, she had been rushed to the hospital for emergency treatment once.
On September 4, a week earlier, when he and his wife hurried to the hospital, their daughter Gu Su was being taken into the emergency room.
At that time, Gu Su’s face was pale, and she was clutching her chest. When she saw her father Professor Gu, she tightly grasped his hand and said with all her strength, “Dad, save me quickly!”
Qiu Xiaoqiang was Professor Gu’s favored student and also his eldest son-in-law. Looking at Qiu Xiaoqiang waiting anxiously outside the emergency room, Professor Gu felt threads of doubt rising in his heart: his daughter had always been quite healthy, so how could she have developed heart disease in just about a month? Could his son-in-law Qiu Xiaoqiang have harmed his daughter?
Qiu Xiaoqiang, as a student, was diligent, eager to learn, and able to endure hardship. Even after achieving some success in medicine, he was not arrogant. It was precisely these fine qualities that Professor Gu had valued when he introduced his eldest daughter Gu Su to him.
In October 1997, Qiu Xiaoqiang and Gu Su held their wedding in Suzhou. After Qiu Xiaoqiang graduated with a master’s degree in 1998, through Professor Gu’s connections, he found a satisfactory job at Suzhou Children’s Hospital.
Professor Gu felt that he was overthinking. How could such a good son-in-law harm his own daughter?
The light outside the emergency room went out. Qiu Xiaoqiang was the first to run to the door and ask the doctor who came out, “How is Gu Su?” The doctor said to them with a smile, “It’s fine, she’s been resuscitated. Just pay more attention in the future.”
Professor Gu’s anxious heart settled. He asked Qiu Xiaoqiang to go home first and pack some daily necessities before coming back to accompany Gu Su. Qiu Xiaoqiang agreed readily and walked out, turning back repeatedly. Watching his reluctant demeanor, Professor Gu felt even more that he was old and had wrongly blamed his son-in-law.
The scene of the emergency treatment a week earlier was still vivid, and now the same thing had happened again.
At this moment, sitting in the car rushing to the hospital, Professor Gu once again recalled this terrible suspicion. How could a perfectly healthy person suddenly develop heart disease? And be rushed to emergency treatment twice?
When Professor Gu and his wife arrived at the hospital, Gu Su was already lying motionless on the emergency bed. The screen of the instrument beside her showed a flat line, and the urgent “beep beep beep” sound pulled Professor Gu back from grief to reality.
The best opportunity for rescue had already been missed. Gu Su left her loving parents on the Mid-Autumn Festival, a day of family reunion.
During the rescue, Professor Gu noticed that his daughter’s body was dark purple from head to toe, which did not match the symptoms of death from heart disease. If death were caused by heart disease, the patient should have experienced cardiac arrest or other reactions, with the heart stopping before breathing. But his daughter’s whole body showing dark purple was more like death by suffocation.
On the morning of the 13th, Professor Gu said to his wife, “Let’s have an autopsy done on our daughter. I must find out the true cause of her death.”
Professor Gu called the Suzhou Huqiu Public Security Sub-bureau: “I suspect my daughter did not die of heart disease but was murdered. I request that you perform an autopsy on her.”
When Qiu Xiaoqiang learned of this, he immediately went to the forensic medicine office at the public security bureau. He tried to stop the forensic doctor from performing the autopsy, throwing himself at the forensic doctor’s feet and tightly hugging his legs. The forensic doctor was startled, and Professor Gu was also shocked by his behavior.
Qiu Xiaoqiang said tearfully, “Gu Su was such a good person. Let her rest in one piece!”
Qiu Xiaoqiang’s behavior appeared very suspicious in the eyes of the police. It was understandable to love one’s wife, but kneeling and wailing to obstruct an autopsy was highly suspicious.
That night on the 13th, the forensic doctor issued the autopsy report on Gu Su. The true cause of Gu Su’s death was ketamine poisoning, which led to heart failure and death.
Ketamine is both a medicine and a drug. In clinical medicine, it is used as an anesthetic. It is classified by China as a Category I psychotropic drug under control and can only be produced by pharmaceutical manufacturers designated by the State Food and Drug Administration. Ordinary people cannot purchase it.
The Suzhou police immediately opened an investigation. Because ketamine is difficult to obtain through ordinary pharmaceutical channels, the first suspect the police targeted was Qiu Xiaoqiang.
In the impressions of Qiu Xiaoqiang’s colleagues, he was a person who was proactive at work and helpful to others, and he and Gu Su were also very loving.
Would such a person murder his own wife? The police were somewhat puzzled when analyzing Qiu Xiaoqiang’s motive for the crime.
Qiu Xiaoqiang was born in 1969 into an ordinary worker’s family in Pingjiang District, Suzhou. In 1989, he was admitted to Suzhou Medical College, and in 1991, he was admitted to the college’s master’s program. Professor Gu was his supervisor.
Professor Gu had promoted Qiu Xiaoqiang to his current position, married his eldest daughter Gu Su to him, and even paid for the wedding house and renovation costs. Qiu Xiaoqiang and Gu Su had a daughter, Yuanyuan, after marriage. By all appearances, it was a happy and fulfilling family. Was Qiu Xiaoqiang really the murderer of his wife? What was he after?
At this time, the investigators conducting peripheral surveillance on Qiu Xiaoqiang made a major discovery: Qiu Xiaoqiang had a mistress!
The investigators saw Qiu Xiaoqiang bring a young woman back to the home he shared with Gu Su, and the two did not come out until the next day. Moreover, through tracking, the investigators found that Qiu Xiaoqiang and his mistress actually worked at the same hospital.
Through secret visits and investigations, the investigators found two mistresses of Qiu Xiaoqiang at the hospital: one was Jiang Lianlian, and the other was intern doctor Zhang Fan.
The investigators separately tracked Jiang Lianlian and Zhang Fan and found that the one who spent the most time with Qiu Xiaoqiang was Zhang Fan, who often followed Qiu Xiaoqiang in and out of Gu Su’s home. Besides these two, Qiu Xiaoqiang had several other mistresses and had also brought them home overnight.
The investigators clarified Qiu Xiaoqiang’s movement patterns and obtained all his communication information, waiting only for an opportunity to arrest him.
After checking usage records with doctors, the police investigating the ketamine situation at the hospital found that 8 ampoules of ketamine were missing. The day the ketamine disappeared was August 13, 2003, when Qiu Xiaoqiang was the lead surgeon for an operation.
According to Professor Gu’s recollection, August 27 was the time of Gu Su’s first onset. The next day, he took Gu Su to the hospital, where heart disease was diagnosed.
Only 14 days passed between the loss of the ketamine and Gu Su’s onset. Qiu Xiaoqiang’s suspicion increased rapidly, and the police decided to first bring Qiu Xiaoqiang back to the police station for interrogation.
On the evening of October 23, while Qiu Xiaoqiang and Zhang Fan were having a secret rendezvous at home, the front door suddenly opened, and police officers rushed in and arrested Qiu Xiaoqiang. Zhang Fan, frightened out of her wits, was also taken back to the police station.
Sitting in the interrogation room, Qiu Xiaoqiang said not a word and remained silent no matter what the police asked, which increased the difficulty of the interrogation.
Zhang Fan in the other room was terrified and answered whatever the police asked. Before long, she had clearly explained her affair with Qiu Xiaoqiang.
Through interrogation, the police determined that Zhang Fan had no direct connection to the murder case, but they still criticized and educated her.
Was Qiu Xiaoqiang killing Gu Su because of his mistress Zhang Fan?
The police showed Qiu Xiaoqiang Gu Su’s autopsy report. “Your wife Gu Su died of ketamine poisoning, and on August 13, 8 ampoules of ketamine disappeared from the operating room you were in charge of. Your mistress Zhang Fan has told us everything. Are you still going to resist us to the end?”
Qiu Xiaoqiang raised his eyes to look at the report in front of him, then lowered his head. Twelve hours later, through the police’s unremitting efforts, Qiu Xiaoqiang finally relented and admitted, “I killed Gu Su.”
According to Qiu Xiaoqiang’s confession, he married Gu Su because he valued the power in Professor Gu’s hands, not because he loved her.
After marriage, Qiu Xiaoqiang took full advantage of the Gu family, but his strong self-esteem constantly tormented him. In addition, not long after marriage, Gu Su suffered a car accident that caused a pelvic fracture, affecting her physiological functions and making her increasingly uninterested in sex. After their daughter Yuanyuan was born, Gu Su refused marital sex even more, which caused Qiu Xiaoqiang to resent her.
From this point on, Qiu Xiaoqiang began to become infatuated with women around him. The first he hooked up with was Jiang Lianlian. Having tasted the sweetness, Qiu Xiaoqiang became bolder and more reckless.
In 2001, he took a fancy to intern doctor Zhang Fan. After several pursuits, Zhang Fan became his mistress.
However, Zhang Fan kept pressuring Qiu Xiaoqiang to divorce and marry her. But Qiu Xiaoqiang clearly understood that everything he had now was given by Professor Gu. If he divorced Gu Su, he would likely be thrown out and would also be cursed by others as ungrateful.
Qiu Xiaoqiang hesitated, but in the face of Zhang Fan’s relentless demands and Gu Su’s coldness, Qiu Xiaoqiang’s psychology gradually became distorted. He felt that Gu Su’s existence was hindering his happy life. So Qiu Xiaoqiang decided to get rid of Gu Su and decided to create the illusion that Gu Su died of illness.
Qiu Xiaoqiang stole 8 ampoules of ketamine from the hospital. On the afternoon of August 20, he began mixing ketamine into Gu Su’s coffee. For several consecutive days, Gu Su drank coffee containing ketamine.
On August 27, Gu Su fainted at work, and the hospital diagnosed her with heart disease. This gave Qiu Xiaoqiang confidence, and he began to increase the dose of ketamine.
At 4 p.m. on September 4, shortly after Qiu Xiaoqiang left home, he secretly sneaked back and made Gu Su a cup of coffee mixed with ketamine, then returned to the hospital, attempting to create the false impression that he was not present when Gu Su fell ill.
That evening, after receiving a call from Gu Su saying she felt unwell, Qiu Xiaoqiang set off for home. The first thing he did when he got home was wash the cup on the table, and only then did he hold the uncomfortable Gu Su, call Professor Gu, and finally take Gu Su to the hospital.
In Qiu Xiaoqiang’s plan, he had originally not intended to kill Gu Su so quickly. But a few days before the Mid-Autumn Festival, Zhang Fan again urged him to divorce. Combined with the fact that he could not spend the Mid-Autumn Festival with his mistress, Qiu Xiaoqiang’s resentment toward Gu Su deepened, and he increased the dose of ketamine.
After Gu Su drank the coffee, Qiu Xiaoqiang helped her to bed to rest. Qiu Xiaoqiang then returned to the living room to wait for the drug to take effect. Hearing Gu Su’s painful cries for help, Qiu Xiaoqiang turned up the volume of the television, trying to drown out Gu Su’s voice.
It was not until 9:55 that Qiu Xiaoqiang pretended to be anxious and called Professor Gu, then took Gu Su to the hospital.
On October 25, 2003, Qiu Xiaoqiang was approved for arrest by the Huqiu District People’s Procuratorate of Suzhou.
On December 7, 2003, the Suzhou Intermediate People’s Court publicly tried the case. After the judge announced the verdict, Qiu Xiaoqiang expressed dissatisfaction and appealed, emphasizing that he had not killed Gu Su.
At 10 a.m. on January 2, 2004, after the court retried the case, it announced that Qiu Xiaoqiang was guilty of intentional homicide and sentenced him to death with deprivation of political rights for life.