Chapter 33 Chapter 33 Breaking the Fog
A day later, an office meeting.
Gu Yanzheng pointed out the key points to note during interrogation: "During the interrogation, they know that their statements may affect the verdict, so we should be more cautious in responding to their answers."
"Be cautious during the initial interrogation. Don't question too much or reveal things you already know. Try not to arouse the other party's interest or attention. During the re-examination, you can intensify the interrogation and correct their testimonies."
"Testimony should be used to establish an independent chain of evidence along with other discovered evidence."
"Although we value evidence over confessions, objective, reliable, and coexisting confessions can also support the validity of evidence. However, this does not negate the independence of the evidence."
He spoke first, while Shen Zhenzhu and the others below carefully took notes. Analyzing the authenticity of witness testimonies is also a key focus of the criminal investigation team.
After a short rest yesterday afternoon, Professor Chen Jiale, a clinical psychology professor from Gangcheng, and his students arrived at the Liancheng temporary care center and immediately began providing psychological therapy to the victims.
There have been no results yet, but Professor Chen Jiale has confirmed that these six people suffer from "Stockholm syndrome".
After communicating with Professor Chen Jiale, Gu Yanzheng stated the current requirements: "In short, we can guide and hint, but we cannot let them know the importance of their testimony. We should let them describe the objective events more and their subjective consciousness less."
Shen Zhenzhu took a clear picture in her notebook. After the meeting, she waited outside the nursing room with the reinforcement team for Professor Chen Jiale's good news.
Unfortunately, there's still no good news today.
On the third day, Shen Zhenzhu returned from the nursing room at noon and saw Gu Yanzheng.
"Li Wen has woken up." Gu Yanzheng put away his mobile phone and found Shen Zhenzhu to say, "She is in a very bad mood and does not want to talk about this."
Wu Zhongguo said with a troubled expression, "She is the most clear-headed one. If we can't get her testimony, Huang Yingfeng's crimes might be less serious, and he might actually get away with it."
Lu Ye said anxiously, "What should we do if she doesn't want to talk?"
Gu Yanzheng's gaze fell on Shen Zhenzhu.
Li Wen was the older sister who helped Shen Zhenzhu retrieve her wallet. Hearing that the rescue was successful, Shen Zhenzhu was truly happy for her and looked at Gu Yanzheng expectantly, saying, "Captain Gu, I want to give it a try."
Wu Zhongguo had just returned from the hospital, while Zhou Chuanxi was still there working on his statement. He wasn't optimistic: "She's very tense. If we take turns going in, I'm afraid it will upset her."
Shen Zhenzhu pursed her lips and hesitated for a moment, then raised her head with a firm belief in her eyes: "I still want to give it a try."
Gu Yanzheng said, "Old Wu is right. Not only is she unwilling to talk about this matter, she also avoids seeing any strangers. You have had contact with her, so I think you can go and try to see if she can become a witness for Huang Yingfeng's murder."
Shen Zhenzhu asked, "But confessions alone are not enough. Huang Yingfeng couldn't have not killed anyone. He used them as a shield."
Gu Yanzheng nodded and said, "The colleagues in the investigation department are still looking for clues in the cellar. Right now, we can only hope that they can find some clues."
"Understood. I will try to find out if she witnessed Huang Yingfeng committing murder or cruelty." After receiving the order, Shen Zhenzhu returned to her office, grabbed her monthly pass and pager, and went out.
Li Wen lived in a rural school during high school. Her father worked as a taxi driver, earning money by driving students, while her mother raised dogs and sold puppies at home. She was admitted to a junior college to study nursing. On the day she graduated, her father drove to pick her up, but they were involved in a car accident. Her mother, who was sitting in the passenger seat, was also hit and killed by an oncoming truck.
Three years after graduation, Li Wen got married to a man who was also an orphan. That same year, she gave birth to a girl, but the girl was diagnosed with leukemia. The man, not wanting to bear the heavy medical expenses, divorced Li Wen.
Li Wen became one of the more than 700 hostesses in Liancheng, willing to accompany anyone for money. The single mother did not use her daughter's illness as a gimmick, but instead desperately used herself to earn money for medical expenses.
Even so, she gave me the wallet she found for free.
On her way to the hospital, Chen Zhenzhu looked out at the street outside the bus window. The trees and scenery kept receding, but alas, life cannot be relived.
Li Wen quietly gazed out the window from her hospital room, unable to distinguish whether these were hallucinations created by her pain or the real world.
After enduring two weeks of inhuman torture, Li Wen was on edge and unwilling to believe anyone. Perhaps because of this, she resisted Huang Yingfeng's advances and intentionally dismissed his sweet talk, preventing her from becoming a member of Stockholm Syndrome.
Her entire body was covered in bandages, her limbs were broken, and only her neck and eyes could move. On the morning of her rescue, Huang Yingfeng said he would bring a new woman, and her life would be forcibly ended. Like the women who died before her, her internal organs would be piled up in buckets to ferment and compost, and her bones and flesh would be buried deep in a cellar where she would never see the light of day.
The world that once caused her pain has become like paradise since she returned.
She looked at the doctor who was taking care of her with a questioning gaze, and then remained silent with the same questioning gaze, ignoring any questions Zhou Chuanxi asked.
The young policewoman in her olive-green uniform appeared at the ward door without attracting her attention. It was Zhou Chuanxi who asked, "Do you know her?"
Li Wen did not react.
Shen Zhenzhu nodded to the police officer at the door, went into the ward and said to Zhou Chuanxi, "Let me talk to Sister Wenwen."
The words "Sister Wenwen" seemed to touch a part of Li Wen's deepest memories, and she slowly raised her head and finally looked at Chen Zhenzhu with her eyes.
Zhou Chuanxi glanced at the things Shen Zhenzhu was carrying and left. After that, Shen Zhenzhu closed and locked the door. She didn't go to Li Wen's side, but kept a safe distance to relax Li Wen and prevent her from feeling threatened: "Sister Wenwen, have you forgotten me? You were the one who found my wallet for me that day. Look, I even brought you some cigarettes. You can smoke them when you're better."
Li Wen's scattered attention gradually focused on Shen Zhenzhu's words, and her traumatized mind tried hard to recall what happened before her death.
Shen Zhenzhu waited patiently for her reaction. After a long while, Li Wen murmured, "It's you."
Shen Zhenzhu dragged the wooden chair forward two steps, stopping before Li Wen could frown: "It was me. I was the one who carried you up from the cellar. Look, I even have a scrape on my arm."
Shen Zhenzhu showed her her arm. Li Wen couldn't remember the scene, but the faint feeling of damp soil told her that she had indeed been carried out by Shen Zhenzhu and put into the ambulance.
Shen Zhenzhu had a sweet scent about her, as if an angel was extending a helping hand. Words of gratitude stuck in her throat; she opened her mouth, but tears fell silently.
Shen Zhenzhu got up and wiped away her tears. Before coming, she had studied what to pay attention to when dealing with patients with "Stockholm syndrome," and she was worried that Li Wen might become one of them. But the fear in Li Wen's eyes told Shen Zhenzhu that Li Wen did not.
Shen Zhenzhu took out her wallet and showed it to Li Wen, trying to reconstruct her past memories. Sure enough, seeing Li Wen's increasingly focused expression, she said, "I found it."
“Yes, you remember.” Shen Zhenzhu said softly, “This is reality.”
Outside the door, Zhou Chuanxi stood in the corridor waiting for Chen Zhenzhu.
The police officer next to him asked curiously, "Wasn't she here to ask for a statement? Why did she bring lamb skewers? Is she trying to bribe the patient?"
Before Shen Zhenzhu arrived, Zhou Chuanxi received a call from Gu Yanzheng, who asked him to cooperate and not interfere with Shen Zhenzhu's behavior. She would try to rebuild the victim's neural memory and activate the victim's sense of reality through the five senses.
"Just wait and see." Zhou Chuanxi couldn't say much, but in front of the police from other departments, he still gave Shen Zhenzhu face: "Does the Serious Crimes Unit handle cases the same way as ordinary people?"
As Shen Zhenzhu chatted seemingly casually with Li Wen, the aroma of the barbecue restaurant they often went to near her bedside filled the ward.
Having not eaten for a long time, Li Wen recalled the aroma of lamb skewers, and slowly her mouth began to water...
Meanwhile, in the criminal investigation team's ward, Professor Chen Jiale was also severing the six victims' false sense of mission.
In Stockholm syndrome, the feeling of "only I can save him" inexplicably intensifies. Cutting off this false sense of mission can cause physical headaches in the victim, as the psychological damage spreads to physical reactions. These require Professor Chen Jiale's external assistance.
There is another point that also requires the help of others, which is what Shen Zhenzhu did for Li Wen in the hospital—to rebuild the altered memories.
Professor Chen Jiale, in his early thirties, wearing a black suit and silver-rimmed glasses, said in a refined manner: "Now the six victims have suffered brain trauma and will temporarily forget the details of the violence they were subjected to, only remembering the soda, candy, and happiness that Huang Yingfeng brought them. I have shown them the injuries on their bodies and hope that they can regain their senses, but they still need objective and accurate memories to bring back the mental memories that were lost due to the stress."
“Their memories are confused right now; they can’t even remember their own names, only the ‘nicknames’ Huang Yingfeng gave them. They definitely can’t provide accurate testimonies, and even if they do, it’s hard to tell if they’re true or false.” Gu Yanzheng pursed his lips and said in a low voice, “We can only rely on Lao Shen. She’s going to contact the only conscious victim, hoping to get some information.”
Professor Chen Jiale is encountering so many Stockholm syndrome patients for the first time, and he feels a great deal of pressure. He said hopefully, "They are still living in a false world. If we have objective facts to assist them, I believe I can help them rebuild their true memories."
In a private room at the People's Hospital, Shen Zhenzhu continued chatting with Li Wen. Seeing her effort and harmless demeanor, Li Wen became more talkative, slowly saying, "So many terrible things have happened around me; my life has been a nightmare."
"But a miracle also happened." Chen Zhenzhu closed her notebook and walked to her side, stroking her scarred hand. "You helped me, and I saved you. This is the cycle of good. I believe that good and evil will eventually be rewarded. So many girls have died, and you almost lost your life too. Do you really want demons to return to the world? You also have a daughter. Do you want such demons in her world?"
Li Wen slowly raised her head, her lips trembling slightly, and said angrily, "No, no one can hurt us, I want him dead!"
As soon as he came out of the ward, Zhou Chuanxi stepped forward and asked, "How are you?"
Shen Zhenzhu stated definitively, "She is willing to be a witness and identify Huang Yingfeng as the murderer. She personally witnessed both brutal acts, both committed by Huang Yingfeng, and also—"
Shen Zhenzhu walked to the nurses' station, picked up the phone, and dialed Gu Yanzheng's mobile phone. Zhou Chuanxi listened to her report: "Li Wen said that two female corpses were buried under the pillows of the earthen beds where people sleep. The person who killed the female corpses was Huang Yingfeng, and the internal organs we found belong to these two victims!"
Witness statements require the presence of two police officers. After Shen Zhenzhu finished her report and returned to the ward, Zhou Chuanxi accompanied her to record Li Wen's entire horrific ordeal from beginning to end.
Zhou Chuanxi noticed that Li Wen's demeanor and body language had become much more resolute, and her eyes no longer held a timid and fearful look, but rather a deep hatred.
After they returned to the Criminal Investigation Team from the People's Hospital, Gu Yanzheng obtained Li Wen's confession and appeared in the care rooms of the six victims.
With Professor Chen Jiale's help, they gradually came to understand the true reality, and the fog in their minds cleared, revealing a ray of sunshine.
"Both female corpses were found to have died from strangulation, and the fingerprints on them belonged to Huang Yingfeng. In addition, a small amount of semen was found in the genitals of one of the female corpses, which was also identified as belonging to Huang Yingfeng. He strangled the resisting woman during the forced intercourse, and did not have time to completely dismember her body before burying it directly in the north of the cellar where he slept. The tool used to dismember the body was an entrenching tool, which was covered with Huang Yingfeng's fingerprints."
"Although not all six victims could appear in court to testify, the testimonies of two victims with milder symptoms were basically consistent with Li Wen's. After assessment, their neurological consciousness was gradually recovering, and they could identify Huang Yingfeng and his wife's crimes as victims."
Lu Ye had been feeling aggrieved in front of Huang Yingfeng for several days, but today he finally got the witnesses and evidence. He punched the wall twice, gritted his teeth, and said, "That's fucking satisfying! His time to die has finally come!"
Gu Yanzheng patted him on the shoulder and said, "I'll thank Sister Pearl properly later; she deserves a lot of credit."
Lu Ye chuckled and said, "Going undercover to find victims and even obtaining important witnesses and crucial evidence, boss, my sister Pearl is truly our team's lucky star!"
"That was also what I dug up." Gu Yanzheng passed by the door of Team Three and knocked on the door: "Notify your Team Leader Park that we found a victim whose appearance and physical characteristics match those of the missing persons in your case. The key is that she is still alive. Have her family come over to identify her. She has lost a lot of weight, but her mental state is recovering. Tell the family to be prepared."
"We were just doing it on the side," Lu Ye said with a smirk. "Of course, if we waited until you solved the case, we wouldn't even know if the victim was alive or dead!"
"...Thank you so much." Chen Youwei and Kang He were dumbfounded. They knew that Team Four had solved the cellar case in a flash, but they had no idea that Team Four had also solved their year-long missing persons case.
Although it's a joyous occasion, I feel a sense of unease...
......
“I told you they were jealous of each other and willingly killed for me.” Huang Yingfeng was unaware of the shadow looming over him. Facing Gu Yanzheng’s final interrogation, his lips were dry, his eyes were cloudy but firm, and he said, “You just want me to admit that I killed people, right? I don’t admit it.”
He looked unwell. He had been detained for 72 hours and thought he would be released, but since he was under criminal detention, special circumstances had been approved to extend his detention in the criminal investigation team to 30 days.
He was prepared to confront the Major Crimes Unit and believed that no one would discover his brainwashing of them.
If he could just hold out for another twenty-odd days, the police would definitely release him due to insufficient evidence. He had a clear understanding of this; at most, they would put him under house arrest. Then he could find an opportunity to go to Fuzhou and leave the country without anyone noticing. Who could find him then?
"Do you think we won't find out about the underhanded tricks you learned when you smuggled yourself out of Fuzhou?" Gu Yanzheng seemed to have turned inside him, leaned back, and became extremely relaxed.
However, these words were like a bombshell, startling Huang Yingfeng so much that his pupils contracted rapidly.
Huang Yingfeng was imprisoned abroad in his early years for smuggling himself out of the country. He had contact with a member of a cult organization there. After being deported back to China, he never forgot what the other person had told him: that an entire estate of women belonged to the leader.
He returned from abroad, working illegally and using all the money he earned to get married. Who knew he'd marry a slut who, after having her fill of prostitution outside, would come home and pretend to be a virtuous wife and loving mother.
Knowing that his wife was restless and jealous, he began to brainwash her after studying some psychology on his own. It took him seven or eight years to develop her into his right-hand woman.
He wasn't highly educated, but he enjoyed studying crimes and knew that interrogators had many methods, one of which was breaking down a suspect's psychological defenses.
Huang Yingfeng spent his days and nights building up his psychological defenses. He even brainwashed himself into believing that he didn't kill the people and implied to them that loving him meant giving up one's life and that he couldn't live without them.
Just like when he was a child, his mentally ill father and grandmother conspired to kill his mother and then buried her body in the fields. All evils will be diluted by time. In the end, the last rumor about his mother, who was swallowed up by the fields, was that she was unfaithful and abandoned her husband and children to run away with another man.
As long as he doesn't admit it, and as long as the brainwashing is attributed to other reasons, someone will naturally help explain everything. Besides, those women love him so much.
"Given your complete chain of evidence, it's the same old story: whether you confess or not doesn't really matter." Seeing his eyes darting around, Shen Zhenzhu, mimicking Gu Yanzheng's calm demeanor, said, "Your resistance is pointless."
"I didn't kill anyone." Huang Yingfeng stared intently at Shen Zhenzhu, as if trying to analyze her expression to determine whether her words were true or false.
Shen Zhenzhu chuckled and looked at Gu Yanzheng: "Captain Gu?"
Gu Yanzheng closed the notebook on the table and put the pen on its lid.
What happened?
In the quiet moments, Huang Yingfeng's forehead gradually became covered in sweat.
Gu Yanzheng presented evidence of his murder and the victim's confession: "Don't deceive yourself when you're lying to others. They don't love you at all; it's all a delaying tactic. They say they pity you, that you're old, poor, ugly, and still hoping to be loved. You know, prostitutes lie to swindle money from customers; isn't that another form of deception towards you?"
Shen Zhenzhu laughed and said, "You think you've got them under your control, but actually you're the one being controlled. Don't you know how they whisper about your shameful behavior whenever you leave? Don't you know how disgusting and foolish your smug expression looks to them?"
Huang Yingfeng was dumbfounded; a crack appeared in his world: "Impossible...they couldn't have done this to me...Confessions, why would there be confessions..."
Gu Yanzheng said, "I gave you a chance, but you didn't repent and are still immersed in your own beautiful dream. I've never seen such a stupid murderer before."
Huang Yingfeng saw the disdain in their eyes. Facing him, who had killed many people, they seemed to be watching a cliché prime-time drama, showing no interest whatsoever.
"They couldn't have lied to me. They...they even killed people." Huang Yingfeng was covered in cold sweat and accidentally bit his tongue, drawing blood from his lips.
Gu Yanzheng said, "The confessions all say that they were forced to participate in the dismemberment. Not only will they not be severely punished by law, but they will also be protected. They will use the property that you and your husband were auctioned off to enjoy care and pampering in a beautiful sanatorium, and live out the rest of their lives peacefully without you. Your appearance will at most be a joke in their lives, and they may forget you before long."
Huang Yingfeng's face turned ashen, and he trembled with rage, repeatedly saying "Impossible!" But his confession clearly recorded his evil deeds; if this wasn't what they were saying, then who else could it be?!
Shen Zhenzhu continued to stab him in the heart: "By the way, it's no use for you to confess now. Sister Ying has already confessed to all your crimes from beginning to end. You used her to deceive girls, and she used you to eliminate her competitors. You two were sleeping in the same bed but dreaming different dreams, which can be considered as each getting what they wanted."
As one of the first to be brainwashed, Yingjie later regained her senses for a period of time and was terrified awakened by his brutal murder.
Later, due to jealousy and numbness, and because she couldn't get away from the crime, she continued to become Huang Yingfeng's accomplice, which was actually just to kill the girl in the nightclub who was more attractive than her.
Huang Yingfeng finally abandoned his wicked ways, staring at the large characters on the wall that read "Confess and you will be treated leniently; resist and you will be punished severely," and said on the verge of collapse, "Why aren't you continuing to question my confession? Quickly, ask me for my confession! I want to confess, I want leniency!"
Gu Yanzheng led Chen Zhenzhu through the process, stood up, opened the door, and remained silent.
This behavior further provoked Huang Yingfeng, who suddenly roared, "Why don't you want my confession anymore?...I...I confess, I confess!!"
"It's not necessary," Shen Zhenzhu said calmly. "Your death is not a pity."
No one wants to hear the devil's confession. With six lives lost at his hands, the abyss was already filled with the blood and fear of his victims.
The devil will not let the victims go, nor will heed their pleas for mercy. So the sword of justice will not hesitate to fall, nor will it allow a sinful soul to live in this world for even a second longer.
She walked forward without looking back. Gu Yanzheng said to the police officer outside the door, "The evidence is conclusive. Transfer the case to the procuratorate."
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Author's Note: See you tomorrow! Hope you're all in a good mood! [kiss][kiss]
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