On the morning of October 21, 1997, police in Changzhou City, Jiangsu Province, received a report from employees of Yimin Grocery Store that their two night-shift workers had been killed the previous night.

Upon receiving the report, police immediately rushed to the scene. The scene was extremely bloody. The two victims had been struck on the head with a blunt instrument while asleep and killed. A check by store staff revealed that a large quantity of cigarettes had been stolen.

Of the two deceased, one was Zhu Jumei, a retired female employee who had come to the store for the night shift. The other was Xue Chunfeng, a newly hired 20-year-old female sales clerk who lived at the store at night because her home was relatively far from where she worked.

Through crime scene investigation and taking into account the stolen cigarettes from the store, police quickly determined the nature of the case: it was a homicide that had escalated from theft to robbery and murder.

Based on the crime scene investigation and interviews conducted in the surrounding area, police developed a preliminary profile of the perpetrator: a young adult male, approximately 25 years old, financially strapped and in great … Read More