On December 30, 2010, the 110 Command Center of the Harbin Public Security Bureau received a request for assistance from the Xi’an police, asking local police to assist in investigating the whereabouts of a young girl named Fangfang, who had gone missing after traveling from Xi’an to Harbin.

At the same time, more and more Harbin citizens learned of this news through television, radio, and various other news media. For a time, the anxious and helpless calls of Fangfang’s family echoed over the ice city. Where on earth had this young girl, only 21 years old, gone?

Just as people were deeply concerned about this girl’s fate, only a few hours later, a young girl suddenly appeared before the police. The police discovered that the girl who came to report the case was Fangfang, the very person they were working hard to find. Her appearance was inspiring.

However, after learning about Fangfang’s experiences over the past few hours, the police, who had originally relaxed, became tense again.

On the last day of 2010, young Fangfang experienced the most painful night of her life, and her tearful account pierced the hearts of all the police officers present.

According to Fangfang’s description, after arriving in Harbin that night, she took the airport bus to Tongda Street to transfer and go home. At that time, it was about 2:30 in the morning.

After Fangfang got off the bus, a young man came over and asked her whether she wanted to take a taxi. Then the young man picked up her suitcase and put it in the taxi, and drove away with her.

Without any vigilance, Fangfang got into this taxi. However, as the car drove on, Fangfang began to have an ominous feeling.

Ever since she got into this taxi, Fangfang kept feeling that something was not right. She felt that the driver was sizing her up constantly, and she suddenly felt that the taxi’s direction also seemed wrong. Her home was clearly in a busy downtown area, but now the taxi was heading toward the suburbs, and the farther they went, the darker the road became. At this moment, Fangfang suddenly realized that the driver was simply ignoring her repeated questions.

The taxi stopped in a place pitch-black all around. At that moment, the trunk suddenly opened, and another young man emerged from inside. Then what followed was the painfully unforgettable scene that Fangfang would remember for the rest of her life.

After carrying out the robbery, the two criminals did not let this frail girl go. They forcibly took Fangfang to a residential apartment and raped her.

It was not until the next morning that the two criminals sent Fangfang back into the city, and throughout this process, Fangfang was blindfolded the entire time.

Because her body and mind had suffered severe trauma, when facing police questioning, the terrified and uneasy Fangfang was unable to provide the officers with more valuable clues.

During the first interview with Fangfang, the police could only obtain simple physical descriptions such as that the criminal suspects were two men, one tall and one short, one fat and one thin; there was also simple information such as that the taxi was a red Jetta. There was very little valuable information.

The police found that there were at least over a thousand red Jetta taxis like the one Fangfang took on the day of the incident in Harbin. If they relied only on the clues provided by the victim to find this vehicle, it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack for the police.

On the other hand, based on the victim’s description of the room where she stayed and the external features of the residential compound, the police conducted extensive and meticulous searches, but found nothing.

For the police, this case was almost one without any clues, which gave them a severe headache.

From an investigative perspective, the police could carry out work in two directions: one was to find the suspects’ residence, and the other was to find the vehicle driven by the suspects. But at present, both directions seemed to be dead ends for the police.

In order to break the deadlock as soon as possible and completely reverse the current passive situation, after discussion, the police believed that the immediate priority was to quickly determine the route taken by the vehicle involved in the case. However, with no progress in the earlier investigation, the police could only pin their hopes on the victim Fangfang recalling more details. After the police patiently guided and prompted her many times, Fangfang finally recalled some details one day.

Fangfang said that during the process in which the two criminal suspects sent her back to the city the next morning, possibly on a bridge, she saw a sign for a bathhouse.

Based on Fangfang’s recollection, the police quickly found this bathhouse located along the Second Ring Road in Daoli District, named Jinhong Bathhouse. The appearance of the bathhouse undoubtedly brought a new direction to the case investigation.

Combining relevant factors such as the time described by the victim, the locations passed, and the direction of travel, the police began to reconstruct several possible trajectories of the suspect vehicle.
On January 2, 2011, investigators repeatedly conducted road-driving simulation experiments on the sections the vehicle involved might have passed, thereby further inferring the approximate range of the crime location. In the end, the police narrowed the location of the crime to the two areas of Songbei District and Hulan District.

Although after a great deal of meticulous work the police had initially inferred an approximate activity range for the criminal suspects, at present they were still at a loss, because almost none of the information they had was directly related to this case. Whether it was the criminal suspects, the place where the criminal suspects lived, or the red taxi they drove, all of this still seemed to the police to be unsolved mysteries. But they firmly believed that no matter how cunning the fox, it would eventually show its tail.

In order to find the vehicle involved in the case driven by the criminal suspects, the investigators worked day and night. Combining the previously inferred areas the vehicle involved might have passed through, the police retrieved image data from all surveillance cameras along the route, as well as Eagle Eye surveillance photos from the Highway Bridge, which the vehicle involved had to pass. Based on the time Fangfang reported the case, the police further inferred that the vehicle involved was highly likely to have crossed the Highway Bridge between 7:00 and 7:30 in the morning.

The police examined one by one the more than 100,000 photos captured throughout the day on December 30 by the Eagle Eye surveillance of both directions of traffic lanes.

According to Fangfang’s recollection, when she got into the car that day, she noticed that the red Jetta taxi she was riding in did not have a license plate displayed.

Accordingly, the police specifically retrieved and screened photos of all red Jetta taxis, including all taxis without license plates, that had passed over the Second Ring Highway Bridge in the past week. While screening photos of vehicles traveling from the north bank of the river to the south bank, the police found a red Jetta without a license plate that passed over the bridge at 7:22 in the morning.

The police brought Fangfang in to identify whether this red Jetta was the vehicle involved in the case that she had taken. After identification, Fangfang felt that this vehicle was very likely the one involved, but she could not be absolutely certain.

Because the Eagle Eye capture system is extremely clear, the outlines of people in the car and some detailed features could be reflected very clearly in the image. In order not to miss any detail, the investigators carefully observed this photo, and soon some subtle features shown in the photo caught their eyes. The police found that there was a rectangular black object on the front passenger seat of this red Jetta.

The victim Fangfang immediately recognized that what was placed on the front passenger seat was exactly the suitcase she had carried on the day of the incident, and based on some ornaments hanging in the car, Fangfang finally determined that this red Jetta taxi was the vehicle involved in the case that she had taken.

The appearance of this vehicle undoubtedly brought a breakthrough in the police investigation, but next an even more difficult problem emerged. The police found that the red Jetta taxi they had gone to great lengths to discover was a vehicle without a license plate. It was still unknown how much help such a vehicle could bring to the police investigation, but in any case, finding this vehicle next was the key to solving the case.

Based on the victim’s description of the criminal suspects, the police believed that the two criminals who had robbed and gang-raped Fangfang had strong anti-investigation capabilities. Through further analysis of their behavior, the investigators unanimously believed that these two experienced criminal suspects were very likely to have been active around the crime scene for a long time, so if they searched carefully, they would certainly be able to find more clues about them.

The police then noticed that after completing the robbery of Fangfang, the suspects did not choose a nearby location to continue committing crimes, but instead drove to the relatively distant Songbei District. This journey took at least nearly an hour, and this abnormal behavior of the suspects attracted the police’s attention.

The police analyzed that the criminal suspects might live in Songbei District and have their own fixed residence. The police’s judgment of the case further clarified the direction of the next investigation. The investigators once again carefully screened all red Jetta sedans that had passed over the Highway Bridge in the week before the incident.

After another screening of the Eagle Eye surveillance images, one photo entered the investigators’ field of view. The vehicle in the photo passed over the bridge at around 2 a.m. This red Jetta taxi with the license plate <吉 RK617> was extremely similar to the previously discovered suspect vehicle without a license plate.

The position of this vehicle’s inspection stickers, the front windshield, and the shape of the snow on the front hood all matched the police’s previously identified suspect vehicle without a license plate.

After that, the investigators repeatedly found this red Jetta taxi with the license plate number <吉 RK617> traveling back and forth over the Highway Bridge many times. During this period, through careful comparison, the investigators did not miss any small detail. A suspicious vehicle with an obscured license plate <黑 A ending in 929> also did not escape the investigators’ keen eyes.

Although the cunning criminal suspects used various methods to disguise themselves, in the end they could not escape the sharp eyes of the police investigators.

In the end, the police determined that these three suspect vehicles were the same vehicle, and this major discovery also brought the case into its final stage.

At 21:00 on January 8, 2011, one group of investigators arrested the criminal suspect Qi Haipeng in front of the Yushun Jiayuan residential compound in Limin Development Zone, Hulan District, Harbin, as he was preparing to drive out. In a temporary residence of his in that compound, they seized multiple forged license plates, roof lights, vacant lights, taximeters, machetes, the <黑A S7929> license plate used in the crime, and condom wrappers. According to Qi Haipeng’s confession, on the night of December 30, he and another criminal suspect, Zhang Jinxin, gang-raped Fangfang in this room. At the same time, at 22:00 that night, another group of investigators arrested Zhang Jinxin in Yanshou County. At this point, this major robbery and gang rape case that occurred in Daoli District, Harbin, was successfully solved.

After being brought to justice, the criminal suspects Qi Haipeng and Zhang Jinxin confessed to the police that starting in September 2010, they had successively carried out armed robberies at passenger transport stations, airport bus stops, and other such places, with more than 10 victims, obtaining more than 10,000 yuan in illicit money.

In the process of solving this case, Eagle Eye surveillance played a crucial role.