In the early hours of April 6, 2011, a fire broke out in a residential building in the mining area of Datong City, Shanxi Province. After receiving the alarm, firefighters immediately rushed to the scene.
The fire started in a second-floor apartment of the residential building. When the firefighters had brought the fire under control and were about to enter the apartment to check whether anyone had been injured, they made an unexpected discovery. After breaking down the door, they found two bodies inside the apartment, which made what had originally seemed to be a small fire become extremely complicated. Who exactly were the two dead people?
After receiving the report, police officers from the Criminal Investigation Brigade of the Mining District Public Security Sub-bureau of the Datong Municipal Public Security Bureau also arrived at the scene. According to a preliminary investigation, both of the deceased had multiple fatal wounds. Because the fire had been extinguished in time, the two bodies were not badly burned. The police initially concluded that this was a case of murder followed by burning of the bodies.
The suspect set the fire in the early hours of April 6, and his intention was very clear: to destroy evidence. While setting the fire, the suspect also used diesel as an accelerant. After the diesel burned, the apartment was covered everywhere with a layer of oily soot, causing relatively extensive damage and making it impossible for the police to extract useful physical evidence.
Through interviews and investigations, the police determined that the two deceased were a mother and daughter from Zhangjiakou, Hebei Province, who were temporarily living in Datong. Neither of them had a regular job, and they had very little contact with their neighbors. Although the mother, Huang Zhiying, had not divorced her husband, she had been separated from him for many years.
Through careful examination of the scene, criminal investigation technicians judged that the two deceased had probably died about seven days before the fire occurred. In other words, about a week after committing the crime, the suspect returned to the scene, set the apartment on fire, and attempted to burn the bodies to destroy evidence.
Because the suspect had used diesel to start the fire, and because a large amount of water had been sprayed into the room while fighting the fire, the police did not extract much physical evidence during the scene examination. They only collected three blood samples. Based on this, the police inferred that there might have been only one person involved in the crime. So who was this person? Why was he so ruthless? What deep hatred did he have against this mother and daughter?
The police’s in-depth interviews and investigations gradually clarified the social network of the deceased, and they discovered that this mother and daughter were not simple people. Huang Zhiying and her daughter did not lead very respectable lives. They had many friends of the opposite sex, and their sexual relationships were very casual. Their main source of income was lending money at high interest in small gambling venues, and they also gambled themselves.
The police decided to focus their investigation on the deceased’s relationships involving romance, grudges, and debts, centering on the crime scene and expanding outward to a five-kilometer area as the key investigation zone.
By analyzing the call records on the victims’ mobile phones, the police found that the deceased had a large number of contacts and might even talk with dozens of people on the phone in a single day. The police decided to use the time of the victims’ deaths as the baseline and work backward. All people who had had phone contact with the deceased within the previous 10 days were to be interviewed one by one, and DNA samples were to be collected from key suspects and compared with the bloodstains from a third person found at the scene, so as to identify the suspect.
The police visited and screened more than 400 people in total and met with key suspects one by one. However, all of these more than 400 people were eliminated. They all had reliable alibis, which caused the case to reach a dead end.
After summarizing and analyzing the previous investigation, the police found that only one person had not yet been met and interviewed. When the police spoke with him on the phone, he showed nothing unusual, and the reason he gave for being unable to meet was very good: his father was seriously ill and already dying, and he could not leave his father at present. The police learned from his friends that he was indeed facing this difficulty at the time. However, the police did not give up investigating him because of this. They were determined to see this person.
When the police contacted him again the next day, his mobile phone was already turned off, which rapidly increased his suspicion. The police immediately launched an investigation, and that afternoon they found the man’s rented residence.
The landlord told the police that she had not seen the man for three or four days, and he had not told her where he had gone. He had seemed to leave in a hurry.
In the room rented by the man, the police extracted some trace physical evidence and sent it to the technical office of the municipal public security bureau for analysis and identification. A few days later, the results came out. The DNA extracted from these trace materials completely matched the DNA extracted from the crime scene. This showed that this man was exactly the criminal suspect the police were looking for.
The police further learned that the suspect’s father had indeed just passed away, but the suspect had not returned to his father’s home to handle the funeral affairs. The suspect was now like a bird startled by the mere twang of a bow. So how would the police next determine his whereabouts?
The police immediately sent investigators to the suspect’s father’s home to conduct a secret investigation. Although they did not find any trace of the suspect, his sister still provided a valuable clue.
His sister said that the suspect had called and said he was working in a factory in Inner Mongolia. The police immediately rushed to Inner Mongolia.
After extensive screening by the police, the suspect’s whereabouts were finally narrowed down to a small factory in Xianghuang Banner, Inner Mongolia.
At this point, An Zhihong, the murderer who had cruelly killed Huang Zhiying and her daughter and attempted to burn the bodies to destroy the evidence, was captured by the police.
An Zhihong, a native of Huai’an County, Hebei Province, was 43 years old at the time. An Zhihong was an ordinary farmer. In addition to farming, he occasionally did odd jobs, earning a monthly income of more than 1,000 yuan. Although life was not comfortable, it was at least stable. An Zhihong’s greatest hobby in life was gambling. In the eyes of ordinary people, gambling is a bad habit, but in An Zhihong’s view, gambling was full of pleasure.
An Zhihong liked to gamble for money from childhood. When he was young, he gambled for smaller stakes, and as he grew older, the stakes became larger and larger.
An Zhihong’s wife was also a gambling addict. After they married, the monthly income of An Zhihong’s family was only one or two thousand yuan, yet both husband and wife were addicted to gambling as if their lives depended on it.
Because all the money they earned was spent on gambling, the couple’s life became unsustainable. In order to support the family and restore his dignity as a man, An Zhihong began to think of crooked ways.
In 2004, he began to target communications cables, stealing them and selling them for money, and then using the money to gamble.
After being captured by the police, An Zhihong was sentenced to five years in prison. After being released upon completion of his sentence in 2009, his wife divorced him. Although they were both gambling addicts and shared the same hobby, the two did not grow old together because of it. Afterward, An Zhihong came to Datong, Shanxi. His family also extended a helping hand to him, hoping he would turn over a new leaf.
An Zhihong’s parents, elder sister, and younger sisters pooled money to buy him a motorcycle taxi so that he could earn money by carrying passengers on the streets. When there was less work in summer, he set up a stall selling fruit. His life gradually began to improve.
Five years behind bars also seemed to make An Zhihong repent somewhat. In the first half year after his release from prison, An Zhihong did resolve to quit gambling and never again sat at a gambling table. But the good times did not last long. Two passengers who rode his motorcycle taxi to an underground casino brought him back to the gambling table again.
Once he became addicted to gambling again, the gambling craving that An Zhihong had suppressed for many years was released with even greater intensity.
Gambling sessions where he had previously won or lost only dozens or hundreds of yuan could no longer make his heart race or give him excitement. Losses of several hundred or several thousand yuan began to increase.
An Zhihong was proficient in all kinds of gambling. He liked to play a few rounds of mahjong, poker, and pai gow in ordinary times. This time, the gambling method introduced to him by the two passengers riding in his motorcycle taxi made him even more fascinated. It was a game that gamblers called “guessing the envelope.” The organizer of the gambling session wrote a number on a piece of paper inside an envelope. Participants chose one or several numbers from 1 to 24 to bet on. The minimum bet was 10 yuan, the maximum was 300 yuan, and the highest odds were 24 times. For example, if you bet 10 yuan on one number and the number written in the envelope happened to be the one you bet on, you could win 240 yuan.
An Zhihong thought that if he had good luck, this would be a good way to make money.
From then on, An Zhihong became uncontrollable. He gambled more and more heavily and became more and more addicted. An Zhihong gambled for a whole summer. Not only did he not make money, but he also lost twenty or thirty thousand yuan. To him, this was an astronomical figure. All the money he lost was borrowed from his parents and sisters.
Although he kept losing money, An Zhihong enjoyed it endlessly. He seemed unable to control himself. Every night when he lay down in bed, he always thought: hurry up and let it be daylight, so that after dawn I can go gambling again early.
At this point, An Zhihong no longer had the heart to run his motorcycle taxi or sell fruit. When no relatives or friends around him were willing to lend him money anymore, he sold the motorcycle taxi that his family had pooled money to buy him, and the 3,000 yuan from selling the vehicle kept him at the gambling table for only a few hours.
Ironically, An Zhihong, who spent lavishly at the gambling table, was very frugal in daily life.
He was reluctant to spend on food and clothing. Buying a set of clothes from top to bottom and inside and out cost him less than 200 yuan in total. But in the casino, every time he placed a bet it was 200 or 300 yuan, and he did not feel distressed at all.
After selling all his valuable possessions, borrowing from all his relatives and friends, and losing every last cent in his pockets, An Zhihong still refused to leave the gambling table. He thought of loan sharks. He soon found someone willing to lend him money, and thus An Zhihong incurred the first high-interest loan of his life.
For someone with An Zhihong’s income level, borrowing from loan sharks was not an easy matter. The exorbitant interest seemed to touch An Zhihong somewhat, and he once again resolved to quit gambling.
After promising his family that he would thoroughly reform, An Zhihong’s relatives once again pooled money to buy him a tricycle so that he could run a motorcycle taxi. An Zhihong returned to a normal life again. Although the money he earned from carrying passengers by motorcycle taxi was not much, it was enough to maintain his daily life.
But the good times did not last long. Just as life had begun to improve a little, An Zhihong could no longer resist the temptation of gambling, and his attempt to quit gambling failed once again.
If gambling was like a drug that made An Zhihong unable to stop, then loan sharks were like poison to him. From the day he borrowed from loan sharks, his life fell into painful struggle.
From then on, An Zhihong’s life fell into a vicious cycle. As soon as he earned a few hundred yuan, he went gambling. When he lost it all, he borrowed from loan sharks. Then he worked to earn money again, and afterward gambled again, borrowed from loan sharks again, and so on repeatedly. His life was completely plunged into darkness.
Although An Zhihong was addicted to gambling, he had no other bad habits. Even though his wife left him because of gambling, he was very able to understand her.
Why would such a person, who did not seem very fierce, kill Huang Zhiying and her daughter so brutally?
An Zhihong met the deceased Huang Zhiying in a casino. When he had lost everything, it was Huang Zhiying who lent him money at high interest.
When An Zhihong borrowed from Huang Zhiying at high interest, it was usually in amounts of 300 or 500 yuan, and An Zhihong could quickly repay Huang Zhiying within a day or two. Once, An Zhihong borrowed 4,000 yuan from Huang Zhiying. Because he could not repay it quickly, he pledged gold and silver jewelry stolen from his sister to Huang Zhiying. The loan period was one and a half months, and the interest was 3,600 yuan.
This loan made An Zhihong brood over it all the time. He felt that Huang Zhiying had exploited him too ruthlessly. That batch of gold and silver jewelry from his sister had a market value of nearly 10,000 yuan, but when An Zhihong borrowed the money, Huang Zhiying only credited it as 5,000 yuan. At the time, An Zhihong asked Huang Zhiying to keep the jewelry for him for another month, and when the period expired he would give Huang Zhiying 5,000 yuan to redeem it. But when An Zhihong went to redeem it a month later, Huang Zhiying said she had sold it. An Zhihong was very angry, but there was nothing he could do.
However, An Zhihong did not quit gambling because he had suffered a big loss from borrowing at high interest.
Despite all kinds of dissatisfaction with Huang Zhiying, whenever he lost all his money, the first person An Zhihong thought of was still Huang Zhiying.
Although Huang Zhiying was a woman, every time An Zhihong borrowed money from her, he felt great pressure, and he did not dare to default on the debt. Huang Zhiying often threatened An Zhihong that if he did not repay on time, she would find someone to break his legs and tear off his arms.
The police found several text messages like this on Huang Zhiying’s daughter’s mobile phone: “Repay my money as soon as possible. If you don’t repay the 7,000 today, it will become 8,000 tomorrow, and in a few more days it will become 10,000. If you still don’t repay after a few more days, I will break your legs and take your life.”
Of course, An Zhihong would not have been so afraid merely because of the verbal threats from this mother and daughter. In order to collect high-interest loans, the mother Huang Zhiying also thought of many methods. She even had her daughter specifically seduce idle members of society to serve as enforcers, so as to intimidate gamblers and quickly collect the money she had lent out according to her own demands.
After learning the news that An Zhihong was the murderer, many people who knew An Zhihong could not believe it, because in their view, although An Zhihong was addicted to gambling, he was not a vicious person. Everyone unanimously believed that An Zhihong was quite easygoing and never quarreled or fought with others. They found it incomprehensible that he had killed someone. In their eyes, An Zhihong usually spoke little and had a good temper. When others joked with him, he did not get angry, and he was easy to get along with.
So why did the ordinarily easygoing An Zhihong commit such a vicious act against two women? It turned out that on the day of the incident, An Zhihong came to Huang Zhiying’s place intending to borrow more money. During the conversation, the matter of the gold and silver jewelry was mentioned, and they began to quarrel.
At the time, Huang Zhiying had just finished eating and was washing pots and dishes in the kitchen. After the two began quarreling, Huang Zhiying picked up a knife and angrily said to An Zhihong: “Get out of here! Do you believe I’ll chop you up?” An Zhihong had been drinking at the time. When he heard Huang Zhiying’s words, his anger surged immediately. He said, “You are so ruthless to me. I was already very unhappy, and this is going too far.”
An Zhihong, who had long been suffocated by high-interest loans, was completely enraged. The emotions he had suppressed in his heart were fully vented on Huang Zhiying and her daughter.
After his arrest, the word An Zhihong said most to the police was “regret.” He said that such a thing should never have happened to him. He had tried many times to quit gambling. If he had persisted even once, the outcome would not be what it was today.
But regret could no longer change An Zhihong’s fate. He was ultimately sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve.
Everyone knows the harms of gambling, but why are there still so many people who become addicted and unable to extricate themselves?
Because gambling is like drug abuse: it creates dependence in the brain and in people’s physiological structure. Scientists have now proved that there is a substance in the human brain called dopamine. If one becomes addicted to gambling, the secretion of dopamine decreases, and then each new gambling session is needed to stimulate dopamine secretion. This mechanism is the same as the principle of drug abuse. Therefore, gambling is extremely harmful to the human body. Efforts must be focused on prevention. Once addiction has developed, quitting gambling afterward becomes very difficult.