National Forensic Doctor
Chapter 635 - 579

Chapter 635: 579

Criminal detectives all have their little tricks.

Without needing further instruction from Jiang Yuan, Wang Chuanxing took advantage of the arrest to photograph the footprints of the two Jin Family daughters, the three daughters-in-law who arrived later, and even those of a more distantly related aunt.

Jiang Yuan just stood in the yard and watched, focusing on the gait. When he came across rather common footprints, he would take a closer look.

The gait of an individual is actually quite distinctive. For example, in families with children, when the child follows an adult and learns to walk, almost every child will imitate the adult’s way of walking perfectly.

This is a special ability that children have to grasp details.

Footprints are much the same. To the average person, identifying footprints is akin to distinguishing between the faces of dogs, cats, or pigs—if there are significant differences, they stand out; otherwise, they seem vague and uncertain.

But for experts with special training in footprints, reading them is as natural as recognizing faces. There is no need for overly special descriptions. With experience, the differences become naturally apparent, and sometimes they can’t even be objectively described. This is one reason why computer systems struggle with facial recognition.

In the end, at least for now, the human brain’s processing capability is still more advanced than that of computer systems.

Jiang Yuan’s footprint identification has now reached level LV5. He didn’t even need to activate temporary skills to memorize the footprints of the Jin Family’s female members within minutes. Of course, this was only a temporary memory, but it was like sitting on the couch in a SK bar and calling out, "Next batch," and then recognizing anyone who reappeared.

Jiang Yuan, with his hands behind his back, went back to the meeting room, brewed a cup of tea, and took a couple of sips before saying to Mu Zhiyang, "Call home and ask for reinforcements from the Cold Case Squad for the next few days."

"Roger that." Mu Zhiyang immediately took out his phone and began to make a call. While waiting, he asked, "Did you find a major case?"

Jiang Yuan gave him a puzzled look and said, "No major case, but I feel that solving such cases is quite smooth, and the police station might not have enough personnel."

They had just arrested the four men of the Jin Family and sent them directly to the county detention center.

Given the Jin Family’s domineering style, it was only a matter of time before they caused trouble in the township police station.

Thus, with the arrests, there were not many officers left in the station. Whether or not the Jin Family’s women had the same capacity for crime as the men, calling for backup was the safest move.

Mu Zhiyang was a little disappointed. In his opinion, the places where a gun incident was most likely to occur were drug cases and rural cases.

Although sometimes homemade guns in the countryside are excessively powerful and some even shoot buckshot, given the current domestic situation, there isn’t much opportunity for him to showcase his skills as a gun-control ’Prince.’

When Wang Chuanxing returned, he was excited. While uploading the photos to Jiang Yuan’s computer, he said gleefully, "The Jin Family members were stunned when they found out the charges and didn’t dare resist. They just let themselves be taken away, all guilty. These women haven’t been making much noise either and are getting ready to leave."

"Let them go. We’ll catch them separately later," Jiang Yuan was not too preoccupied with efficiency. He just directed Wang Chuanxing, "Sort out these cases and get the footprints up on the big screen."

On the one hand, Jiang Yuan was a bit tired from all the looking, and on the other hand, he realized that the footprints from the cases in the police station didn’t show much variation.

The footprints from these cases had never been examined by a footprint expert—not to mention an expert, even Wang Zhong, with his LV0.3 footprint identification in Ningtai County, hadn’t scanned them. Thus, these were not like the complex footprints Jiang Yuan usually encountered; they were just ordinary.

Furthermore, this time Jiang Yuan didn’t need to identify individuals from the footprints, meaning he didn’t have to determine the age, sex, height, weight, etc., of the person who made them... He just needed to match them up and recognize if they were the same. It can be said that the difficulty of identification was not on the same level at all.

To put it simply, the most basic level LV1 footprint identification would suffice, and at most, with level LV2, he could perform a broad scan.

Last, the criminals—perhaps they didn’t feel they had committed a crime, but regardless, the criminals of Litang Township were rather simple-minded. They were still bad people, but not very bright, which made their counter-investigation capabilities quite weak.

The first match Jiang Yuan found was a pair of identical footprints—in other words, this aunt hadn’t even bothered to change her shoes.

Compared to men, women have a wider variety of shoes, and many have heels, which causes a change in their center of gravity when they wear different shoes.

Therefore, as long as the woman changed her shoes, it naturally caused interference with the footprint identification.

However, this third sister-in-law, who is the wife of Kangliang Jin, the third sibling of the Jin Family, did not discard her shoes after committing the crime, and even wore them to the police station this time...

It was as if she delivered the evidence herself!

"The first Jin Family member we caught just now seemed to be Kangliang Jin, right? Is this his wife?" Jiang Yuan was saying while he opened the software backend to read the summary.

Wang Chuanxing said, "Kangliang Jin is the one who stabbed the sheep to death, right? A pure hoodlum. His wife still has that protective look about her, ’birds of a feather flock together’... What did she do?"

"Spreading heretical teachings, distributing leaflets." Jiang Yuan carefully read through once, clicked his tongue twice, and said, "She was distributing leaflets in the mountain villages, got chased away by the village cadres, and they even called the police."

This kind of case was usually a headless public case; if the person ran away, they ran away. It was impossible to make a big fuss over such a low-level lackey.

However, if such a case was caught, the sentence could be far more severe than stabbing two sheep to death.

"Not bad, a premeditated criminal case." Jiang Yuan wrote the case number in his notebook and glanced at the footprints in the photo again before saying to Wang Chuanxing, "Remember to collect her shoes as evidence later."

"Okay," Wang Chuanxing replied, his eyebrows twitching as he said, "If she was distributing leaflets, there must be a source for these leaflets, right? She must have a higher-up."

Mu Zhiyang stood up, glanced at the bustling courtyard, and said, "Once we’ve arrested her, we can turn her over to the National Security Brigade."

Jiang Yuan nodded and then continued to inspect the footprints that followed.

With eight pictures on one page, he scanned through them at breakneck speed.

"This one..." he stared at the screen for a quarter of an hour before getting up and stretching, and pointed out a footprint, "matches with the second one."

"That’s Jin’s wife then." Wang Chuanxing renumbered the person and immediately stood up to verify, then looked at the reason for the case and burst into laughter, "This is a serious case."

"A serious case?" Jiang Yuan, who was in the middle of stretching, also looked over.

"They stole the stone lions in front of a villager’s home." Wang Chuanxing nodded solemnly, "A stone lion weighs around 100 pounds, so two stone lions amount to 200 pounds..."

"So heavy!" Mu Zhiyang curiously rushed over to marvel, and praised, "Village police station cases are really interesting. How much are those two stone lions worth?"

"Three to five thousand, probably, just enough to meet the standard for a theft case, so that’s why a case was filed." While looking, Wang Chuanxing said, "It must have been four people stealing them together; there are footprints of four people at the scene. My blind guess is it’s still that Wuling Hongguang van."

"Four people plus two 100-pound stone lions, not overcrowded at all, they seem to be quite conscientious in following traffic regulations," Mu Zhiyang gave high praise.

From the photos, you could tell that the family who lost their stone lions must have a newly built three-story western-style house, with a red painted gate adorned with studs.

On both sides of the red gate, there used to be two pedestals with two stone lions on them, traditional carving craftsmanship, a male lion stepping on an embroidered ball and a female lion stepping on a cub—finely carved, albeit located right next to the county road...

But that wasn’t a flaw; the flaw was with the people who stole the stone lions!

What sort of upstanding household would mobilize a vehicle and four people just to steal two stone lions worth three to five thousand with free shipping?

"The footprints of the other three people, two of them are from the Jin Family’s third and fourth sibling. The fourth person is unknown. Print out a picture and put it up next to the rest," Jiang Yuan pointed at the whiteboard on the side of the conference room where over twenty people were already posted, all members of the Jin Family and their associates.

To sweep up everyone at once was improbable, but the remaining Jin Family members would probably need to arrange a small dinner table to fully gather all their nephews, nieces, and extended relatives.