Chapter 126 Eighteen Notes
The location of the fifth note is at a junction leading to the neighboring city of Tai.
But the result is also obvious, there is the next location, the next note.
In the next three days, Qian Hongxing and the police officers from Qingshan Branch kept running back and forth between Hongcheng and Taicheng in response to the kidnappers' demands in one note after another.
In total, eighteen notes were found.
Every time the clue to the note was interrupted, the kidnappers would call Qian Hongxing's home through a public phone at a different location and provide the address for obtaining the next note.
These eighteen notes were almost the only clues for the police.
The police captured some important information from these notes.
First of all, the police suspected that this was a gang kidnapping case because the handwriting on the 18 notes was obviously from multiple hands, and our name appeared in them.
Secondly, this group of kidnappers has a strong anti-reconnaissance awareness. In addition to these elusive notes, another detail is that the kidnappers asked for old banknotes in order to avoid being tracked.
The police immediately adjusted the direction of their investigation and focused on similar unsolved kidnapping cases, because it was impossible for such a professional gang to commit only one crime.
At the same time, an investigation was also launched into Qian Hongxing's interpersonal relationships, because since the kidnapping, Qian Hongxing has been in a lot of trouble and has become very thin.
It cannot be ruled out that someone is seeking revenge.
But the result was that nothing was found in either direction.
But until the eighteenth note, something different happened.
At first, the kidnappers demanded a ransom of 50,000 yuan, but they kept teasing Qian Hongxing and never let him pay the ransom.
It wasn't until the eighteenth note that the ransom demand changed to two hundred thousand. It still required old banknotes, but it had to be divided into four parts and also wrapped in brown paper.
The note also gave four different addresses, requiring that within the specified time, people related to the Qian family must deliver the money to the trash cans at these four addresses at the same time, and no strangers were allowed.
This further confirmed the police's speculation that this was a gang crime and that the gang consisted of quite a few people.
But at this time, Qian Hongxing was almost half dead, and his wife had already been hospitalized due to anxiety.
The police originally planned to arrange several policemen to disguise themselves as members of the Qian family, but they felt that since the note included such a request, it meant that the kidnappers had already figured out the situation of the Qian family.
If a stranger shows up rashly, it might backfire and I'll just have to give up.
In the end, it was decided that Qian Hongxing and his wife, along with the family's nanny and driver, a total of four people, would deliver the money.
The police believe that since the other party would use this method of paying the ransom at multiple locations at the same time, they must have been prepared.
As long as one of the people who come to collect the ransom cannot be contacted, the others will immediately flee, and the hostage will of course have no chance of survival.
Therefore, the police need to divide their forces into four groups, keep an eye on these four locations, and then track the people who come to collect the ransom, and decide whether to arrest them based on the situation.
Qian Hongxing repeatedly stated that she didn't care about money, she just wanted her son to come back safely.
Because the time set by the kidnappers was very short, Qian Hongxing and the police had to prepare in a hurry.
Finally, within the specified time, he managed to throw the four bags of money wrapped in brown paper into the designated trash can.
But something strange happened again.
The police officers who were waiting in ambush on all four sides failed to catch anyone who came to collect the ransom.
Only one of them caught a suspicious person and found the bag of money from the trash can.
In order not to alert the criminal, the police followed him all the way, but eventually found out that the man was just an ordinary scavenger.
Realizing that they had been fooled again, the police could only take back the four packages of ransom and then returned to the Qian family's villa in dejection.
But from then on, there was no more news from the kidnappers, no phone calls, and no new notes.
The kidnappers just disappeared.
This kind of silence is even more terrifying than being teased before.
What was even more terrifying was that they later discovered that one of the four packets of money had turned into cut newspaper.
However, due to the rushed preparation time and the fear of arousing the kidnappers' suspicion, the four bags of money were not marked, so it was impossible to know whose bag was switched.
The only outsider who had access to the money was the scavenger.
The police conducted a surprise interrogation of the scavenger all night long but found no clues.
Afterwards, the kidnapping case was forced to enter the most stupid stage, which was a large-scale investigation.
The worst result occurred on the tenth day after the incident.
In Liyang County, a suburb of Hongcheng, near Taicheng, in a farmland, someone found the body of a child in an abandoned drainage ditch.
After receiving the report, the Liyang Branch rushed to the scene and immediately notified the Qingshan Branch because the case had already entered the internal joint investigation procedure.
Soon, the identity of the body was confirmed. It was Qian Lailai who had been missing for ten days.
The forensic doctor also found out a shocking piece of information. Although Qian Lailai had multiple external injuries on his body, the real cause of death was mechanical asphyxiation.
In other words, the child was strangled to death.
Judging from the degree of decomposition of the body, Qian Lailai must have died four to five days ago.
In other words, during the time when Qian Hongxing and the police officers from Qingshan Branch were teased by the kidnappers, Qian Lailai was still alive.
Qian Lailai died after the eighteenth note appeared.
That is, after one of the four ransom packages was mysteriously switched, the kidnappers killed Qian Lailai.
The farmland drainage ditch was obviously not the first crime scene, so the police immediately launched a comprehensive search and dispatched a large number of police dogs to conduct a carpet search.
But the result was basically no result.
In this bizarre kidnapping case, the only real clue the police had was those eighteen notes.
Qian Hongxing, who was extremely sad and angry, published a reward order in all major newspapers in Hongcheng.
Anyone who provides effective clues and catches the real murderer based on the clues will be rewarded with 200,000 yuan.
There will be a reward of one million for anyone who catches the real murderer.
In 1997, one million yuan was an astonishing figure, not to mention in a small place like Hongcheng, even in a first-tier city. It was enough to buy two or three courtyard houses.
Qian Hongxing's purpose in doing this was actually to use a price that was twenty times higher than the ransom to sow discord among the kidnappers.
If anyone covets the money and reports the accomplices, we can follow the clues and bring everyone to justice.
Qian Hongxing's plan was coordinated with the Qingshan Branch, and the reporting phone number mentioned above is a dedicated line of the Qingshan Branch.
But strangely, the reward had been posted in all the major newspapers in Hongcheng for a full month, yet not a single useful clue had been found. Instead, the Qingshan Branch received numerous requests from people who tried their luck for the reward, providing a large amount of miscellaneous information, leaving the staff exhausted.
The investigation into this kidnapping and murder case eventually reached a dead end, became an unsolved case, and was gradually forgotten.
The investigation was not reopened until eight years later, in 2005.
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