National Forensic Doctor
Chapter 727 - 670 Consecutive Deaths

Chapter 727: Chapter 670 Consecutive Deaths

Liu Jinghui was in charge of arranging the direction of the investigation, so Jiang Yuan returned to the autopsy room.

He still had a lot to do, but time was becoming somewhat insufficient.

First of all, the Skull Restoration Skill was still a supermodel-level forensic technique. Of course, its technical requirements and difficulty were also supermodel-grade, which meant it required a lot of time. Not to mention performing skull restorations on three bodies, even doing it for just one would take one or two months.

Two months was the normal time frame, one month or even less would require working overtime and constantly holding impromptu skill sessions during critical phases.

In the case of the current investigation, Jiang Yuan had already started working on the skull restorations, but he had not announced it widely. The scale of the special case team had already grown to nearly the size of three large teams, upwards of three hundred people. With so many people, it was not possible for everyone to wait for his skull restorations to be completed.

Beyond skull restoration, forensic anthropology always remained a high-end trump card skill. Jiang Yuan also wanted to make a breakthrough with this, but to be fair, all four bodies discovered so far were young people’s, which meant that the traces of years left on their bones were very shallow, shallow to the point where professional diseases had not yet taken hold.

If a person had no hereditary diseases, had not encountered major trauma like car accidents during growth, and was young and tended towards inactivity without working, then their bones would be shiny and new, looking as ordinary and plain as they did when they left the factory, both new and beautiful, and difficult to find traces that would provide a breakthrough.

This was like sheep bones. If you cook two young lambs at once, the bones left over after eating would be mixed together and it would be difficult to distinguish which was which.

Jiang Yuan moved a chair and sat in front of the autopsy table, looking at the four bodies before him, and fell into deep thought.

The fourth body was still male, so now the victims were two men and two women, making it impossible to even guess the killer’s sexual orientation.

Or could it be that the murderer was not killing for sexual purposes, and using social media to lure victims was just a ruse? Was the goal to select suitable victims?

If viewed from this angle, by changing to a psychological analyst, one would speculate at this point whether the killer’s sexual functions were impaired, or when he had received some kind of trauma...

Jiang Yuan shook his head. His experience was not yet sufficient to tackle this proposition and he should instead focus his attention on the bodies themselves.

All four victims were not old, all below 30 years of age. The second body did have a fracture and wear on the knee, but none were severe enough to be identifiable by name.

Here lay a big problem, for they all came from different places, and it was even possible that they came from other countries, like Mike. Without being able to define a scope, even if some anthropological characteristics were determined, it would still be hard to find the specific identities of the bodies.

This could be said to be the limitation of forensic anthropology. It is a collection of various conditions, but unlike fingerprints or DNA, it cannot point to a singular individual.

"Let’s go over it again," Jiang Yuan decided as he jumped off the chair, ready to start anew and go through the bones once more.

When in doubt, draw the diagram again; it was also a kind of solution.

This look took another two days.

Afternoon.

Liu Jinghui came to the autopsy center to communicate with Jiang Yuan and saw that Jiang Yuan was already studying insects.

"How’s it going? Any new discoveries?" Liu Jinghui was still somewhat hopeful.

"Not so far. I want to re-determine the time of death and see if that will yield any additional clues." Jiang Yuan’s skill in determining the time of death was extremely high; with a temporary +1 skill, maybe there would be a breakthrough.

He considered it this way, but as for the clues, none were obtained for the time being.

"What about you? Any news?" Jiang Yuan asked.

Liu Jinghui smiled and said, "Didn’t we send someone to check the victim’s residence the day before yesterday, the one in Hu City? Found a bit of something, but not much."

"Oh, what did you find?" Jiang Yuan hadn’t followed them there, mainly because the forensic center at Zhengguang Bureau had a very high technical level in crime scene investigation, at least LV3, and possibly even LV4, which would be on par with Jiang Yuan. Under such circumstances, he didn’t need to insist on taking personal action.

Liu Jinghui said, "The victim’s house was rented in Wutong District, which is the prime area of Hu City’s Puxi, with expensive rent. It costs 60,000 yuan a month, and the interior decoration is quite nice. During the more than two years he was missing, his parents continued to pay the rent, even though it was with company money."

"Benefits of a Fortune 500 company?"

"More like personal perks of a Fortune 500 executive," Liu Jinghui didn’t delve further into the topic and continued, "We collected DNA from many people at the scene. His house was also stocked with a large amount of condoms and other adult products. Based on the interviews and video footage, this Li Mai appears to have been a playboy, and moreover, he was bisexual... Ah, here we go again."

Jiang Yuan understood his meaning. If Li Mai was bisexual, it meant that the killer could still be someone who committed the murder with a sexual motive, and the investigation had circled back to the starting point.

"Li Haochen has already started considering writing the psychological profile of the killer," Liu Jinghui revealed the main reason for his visit that day.

Jiang Yuan couldn’t help but give Liu Jinghui a glance and asked, "Is it effective?"

"It’s still in the works, but it’s roughly the same old story about childhood trauma, with bedwetting and all that," Liu Jinghui, though skilled in deduction, wasn’t much of a believer in psychological profiles and didn’t show much respect in his tone.

Jiang Yuan recalled Li Haochen’s demeanor, let out a laugh, then gradually his smile faded.

In other words, the investigation of these past two days had still not yielded any clues.

"Technical investigation is also doing a screening. This is a costly endeavor as well, but hopefully, we can identify the other two victims."

There were four victims in total, with only two identified so far, one male and one female, but there weren’t many similarities between the two, let alone a connection to the killer.

"I do have a bit of a discovery on my side that can serve as a reference," Jiang Yuan said as he took out a notebook from the drawer.

Liu Jinghui immediately took out his own notebook and pen and said, "Go ahead, I’ll take notes."

"It’s not that serious," Jiang Yuan waved his hand and continued, "It was when I was assessing the time of death for the bodies, I noticed that the death times of these three bodies were clearly different, especially between body number two and number three. Even though they were both skeletonized, you can still see that there’s a significant difference in the weathering of their bones. If their times of death had been close, there wouldn’t be such an obvious difference."

Liu Jinghui’s spirits lifted as he heard this: "There’s a significant difference in the death times of the three bodies? How much of a difference?"

"Number two died first, then about two weeks later, number one died, followed by number three, approximately another two weeks after number one," Jiang Yuan paused, then said, "There’s also an issue with the insect succession. Actually, I found the cause by tracing back from the abnormal insect succession."

"So you mean that after the killer murdered number two, they didn’t bury the body right away, waited around two weeks, until number one arrived, killed again, and still didn’t bury them, waited again for number three to come, killed again, and then buried them all together? Where did he keep the bodies?"

"It can’t be certain, but it’s very possible that the corpses were exposed to the wilderness," Jiang Yuan hadn’t figured it out either, and simply said, "Some insect eggs, larvae, and the adult stages require a terrestrial environment; the insect systems on the three bodies are very chaotic. A careful analysis indicates that they weren’t buried at the same time or place."

"First left on the ground surface, then buried bones and the like altogether later on?" Liu Jinghui couldn’t help shaking his head, "That would be a lot of work, wouldn’t it leave traces on the ground?"

"Perhaps it did, but after more than two years, it’s no longer discernible," Jiang Yuan said, also mentioning, "Placed on the hot ground surface, a body can skeletonize in 14 days."

Liu Jinghui asked, "What about the smell? And it might be seen by people, right?"

"Perhaps," Jiang Yuan shook his head. Regarding this part, he hadn’t figured it out either, or perhaps there were other mysteries.

"So you’re saying that we need to find the first crime scene where the body was discarded?" Liu Jinghui immediately believed in Jiang Yuan’s conclusions. If it were someone else, hearing such a far-fetched technical conclusion would require some time to verify.

Liu Jinghui skipped this step and proceeded to think based on this foundation.

This time, Liu Jinghui pondered for a long time and pulled out the tablet he carried with him, continuously flipping through the photos of the crime scene.

As he looked, Liu Jinghui’s gaze settled on a photo of a wastewater pond. "We’ve combed this wasteland several times in a grid search, but we’ve never carefully examined these wastewater ponds from beginning to end."