National Forensic Doctor
Chapter 1065 - 998: Grinding Orders

Chapter 1065: Chapter 998: Grinding Orders

"People from the late 90s who are now rich, successful, and celebrated are not uncommon. However, the chart that you had Wang Chuanxing compile is indeed quite interesting."

Liu Jinghui was quite interested in the new strategy proposed by Jiang Yuan.

Both he and Jiang Yuan had investigated numerous cold cases, so they both understood that the key to investigating cold cases wasn’t to retrace the steps already taken. Even if one has excellent skills and strong reasoning abilities, can retracing the same paths taken by predecessors, after so many years, truly yield better results?

Producing a half-baked result is more common.

Especially in criminal cases, many end without a definitive conclusion. If the suspect does not confess, how can one prove that their resolution of the case isn’t mistaken or wrongful?

Time erases evidence. It not only eliminates evidence that might suspect a criminal but also obliterates evidence that could prove someone’s innocence.

Therefore, often the investigation of cold cases requires finding perspectives that predecessors have not considered.

A new angle, a new route, and maybe new evidence represent a better investigative plan. Of course, it doesn’t guarantee that the case will be solved, but such an approach is considered quite favorable for a cold murder case.

The "Soaring Success" plan proposed by Jiang Yuan is indeed a new angle. Its core principle is quite simple: the one who benefits is the mastermind.

This is also one of the most common reasoning strategies in administration, and while there are hundreds of papers and specialized books on its internals and detailed analyses, it is not so easy to implement in practice.

Liu Jinghui highly appreciated Jiang Yuan’s "compromise" with the logic of deduction.

After carefully reviewing the list provided by Wang Chuanxing, Liu Jinghui clicked his tongue and said, "Really, those Beijingites from the late 90s who are still around now, they’re not doing badly, the worst are just those who didn’t buy a house. As long as they bought property, they at least have assets worth several million. But indeed, some are far better off than others. Much better."

"After all, more than 20 years have passed, and some people’s circumstances have surely changed."

"Right, that’s another bug in your plan. What if someone rose up and then fell down again? How would that be calculated?"

Jiang Yuan pondered and then discussed, "We don’t necessarily need to look at their current status. Those who started to thrive a few years after the incident, especially those who made it big five or six years later, should be given more attention."

Liu Jinghui nodded, "That’s a good idea, typical criminals won’t wait ten years for you to fulfill a promise, three to five years is long enough for them. However, let me update your idea a bit more."

"Go ahead."

"Anyone who has ever risen should count. Anyone who has experienced a sudden increase in income, whether they became wealthy regardless of the reason—be it inheritance, stock trading, or stumbling upon a fortune, we don’t care. Given that Jianmen Court is such a small place, any person who has ever been wealthy should be considered a suspect."

"That works." Jiang Yuan expressed his agreement.

"Promotions count too."

"Right." This point was a bit sensitive, so Jiang Yuan didn’t elaborate more.

Liu Jinghui then handed the list back to Wang Chuanxing for further modification.

By this time, Wang Chuanxing was thoroughly engaged in detailed operations, pulling out the entire resident list of Jianmen Court, assigning different categories to different people, and listing out everyone’s economic status, career development, and life trajectories over the past two or three decades.

With a few hundred residents across four buildings, distributing the work among over twenty police officers meant that things would be sorted out quickly.

There are many points for vetting here, beyond bank deposits, securities accounts, real estate, and car documents. Everybody’s monthly phone bills, transportation expenses, whether they have traveled in business or first class, whether they have overseas travel or studying abroad experiences, expenses on children’s education, and medical costs for the elderly, all can serve as a background.

From the police’s perspective, ordinary people are pretty much the same; there’s only so much money they can spend and they tend to spend on essentials, with occasional expenditures at certain special places.

However, for wealthy individuals in hiding, they often spend extra money at inexplicable places, or rather, they actually don’t care much about spending, sometimes opting to spend more at unremarkable places. When entries like these appear, the police naturally pay close attention.

Soon, a list of over thirty people was placed back on the desks of Jiang Yuan and Liu Jinghui.

Liu Jinghui and Jiang Yuan reviewed it, both equipped with files and computer backend data.

After a short while, Liu Jinghui had crossed out the first ten people, saying, "Businessmen, and a few who have embezzled money, but they don’t seem like the people we’re looking for."

"The person we are looking for must know how to use a grappling hook," Jiang Yuan frowned and said, "I don’t know what kind of person would still be able to learn this in the 1990s. Besides, this person is still young, not even 30 years old."

"Yes, but we can’t directly filter by age since the money may not necessarily be spent by the person themselves. Moreover, it isn’t necessarily a resident; it could also be a family member or someone else," Liu Jinghui said and then pondered more deeply after giving it some thought.

Jiang Yuan thought it over and said, "I believe that this murder case is increasingly unlikely to be a death caused by a burglary. From this perspective, if it wasn’t due to burglary, then the murderer clearly had a bigger reason and more gains to commit the act."

Liu Jinghui gave an acknowledging "Hmm" and said, "I understand what you mean. You want to directly construct a list of people who could benefit from killing Zhang Xiaoming. This direction is indeed viable. We’ll consider this first, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll look into other investigative directions..."

As he spoke, Liu Jinghui began summarizing, "First, the murderer paid 500 yuan to find someone to pick the lock. This shows he has money on hand. Secondly, he took away thousands in money and items from Zhang Xiaoming and even shared it with Wang Futing, which shows he is quite generous. From these two points, the murderer’s economic status is likely quite affluent."

As he spoke, Liu Jinghui began searching for suspects from the list.

With over thirty people on the list, plus factors like age quickly brought forth two names by Liu Jinghui.

"Let’s start investigating them," Liu Jinghui said, not bothering with double checks since resources were abundant and it was feared there were no leads to investigate.

However, the youth from over twenty years ago are now quite old, but fortunately, people in Beijing tend to settle less elsewhere. Both individuals were still living locally, making the investigation not difficult.

Several police cars lightly headed out, estimating the time, it probably would take a couple of hours to see results.

Liu Jinghui patted the files in front of him: "Since we are here, let’s comb through Zhang Xiaoming’s workplace as well."

He thought this method was pretty good, with many limiting conditions. Actually, when thoroughly checked, there wouldn’t be many people on the list, making the investigation less burdensome.

Jiang Yuan was not opposed, and members of the Cold Case Squad were thus mobilized again to extract the factory’s list, distribute it among individuals, and investigate one by one.

Compared to before, the process was even faster now.

Moreover, compared to the residents of Jianmen Court, who were primarily government staff, the mere factory workers often did not fare well, and those who reached levels of ’high-flying success’ and ’achieved fame’ were few and far between. With over two thousand people on the list, in the end, only a few dozen were pulled out, making the investigation even more convenient.