“Two killers in the same case; who was the real murderer?” 

By reporter and interim editor-in-chief Ma Yunlong

“Special focus” column, 15 March 2005 edition of Henan Commercial Daily

On 18 January 2005, the police in Xingyang, Zhengzhou City, Henan Province took into custody a suspicious-looking male in a brick factory. After interrogation, the man confessed that he was in fact Wang Shujin, who had raped multiple women in Hebei Province, four of which were murdered (see our previous coverage, titled “Hebei serial rapist madman caught in Xingyang”). After being informed, the police in Guangping County, Hebei Province rushed to Xingyang to escort Wang back to Guangping. When the Guangping County police took Wang to one of the crime scenes that he confessed to, located in a suburb of Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, they heard an unexpected piece of news from an acquaintance of the victim of this particular rape and murder case—a woman surnamed Kang: the local police had long since closed the very case that Wang was now confessing to, and a 21-year-old man named Nie Shubin was convicted of the crime, sentenced to death by the Hebei Province High Court, and executed on 27 April 1995!

A decade after a serious rape and murder case was closed, and the convicted suspect executed for the crime, another perpetrator had now unexpectedly appeared. Who actually committed the crime all those years ago—Wang Shujin or Nie Shubin? We took our suspicions with us as we interviewed those connected to the case.

The monster of Hebei, apprehended in Henan

A man who called himself Wang Yongjun came to Henan a decade ago, and had worked odd jobs in Xingyang for four years, yet no-one knew about his past, nor where exactly he came from—even Ma Jinxiu, the woman who had been living with him for several years, and the mother of his three children had no idea. According to Qi Baosheng, another worker at the Xingyang brick factory where Wang worked, “I’ve been working with him for more than two years. He had a strange air about him. He would simply work, and he never said much to us.” Wang’s wife Ma Jinxiu added, “He would have nightmares and talk in his sleep all the time, always saying something about killing. Whenever a police car or police siren went past, he would immediately stop whatever he was doing and panic. Whenever anyone in a police uniform appeared at his workplace, he would walk away immediately.”

After some time, Wang Yongjun’s odd behaviour began to arouse suspicion. Right before the Lunar New Year holiday in 2005, when the police precinct in Xingyang’s Suohe Road conducted their regular survey of transient personnel in the region, a worker reported Wang’s erratic behaviour to the police. After the precinct summoned the person for questioning, they discovered that his real name was Wang Shujin, and a search on the internet showed that he was a wanted fugitive. After a nervous interrogation, Wang confessed that he had raped and murdered a woman in Hebei, and the police in Xingyang immediately notified the police department in Guangping County, Hebei Province, where Wang Shujin was registered as a resident.

The person who answered the call was Zheng Chengyue, deputy chief of the Guangping County Public Security Bureau, a veteran investigator who had been named as one of Hebei’s best criminal police officers several years in a row. When he heard that a man named Wang Yongjun had been arrested at a brick factory in Xingyang, Zheng immediately asked, “Is the man really named Wang Shujin?” This was a name he knew well. On 3 October 1995, not long after he began work as a rookie officer, with a pistol on his hip as he walked his beat, a woman’s body was found in a well in Guangping County’s Nansilang Village. After investigation, he heavily suspected that Wang Shujin was behind the rape and murder of this woman, but by this time Wang had vanished. His acquaintances said that no matter where Wang went, he would surely be working in a brick factory, as he had no other skills but his brute force.

On 19 January 2005, Zheng Chengyue’s party of four arrived at Xingyang to interrogate Wang Shujin; others at the interrogation included Xingyang City Public Security Bureau chief Zhang Wuqing, deputy chief Yuan Tianzeng, and criminal police squad leader Gong Huili. In addition to confessing to the case that Zheng Chengyue mentioned, Wang Shuji also admitted to numerous rapes in his hometown of Guangping County and around Shijiazhuang, and the murder of four of these women. At the end of the interrogation, he told Zheng that he had long wanted to return and face his guilt, but he became indecisive now that he had a wife and children in Xingyang. After moving around construction sites full of transient workers, he did not expect that the police in Henan would find him. In his account, he said he was illiterate, having never went to school during his upbringing in Hebei’s Guangping County. When he was 14, he raped a young girl aged 8; since he was not criminally liable due to his age, he became the first youth from Guangping County to be sent to the youth detention centre in Tangshan City, Hebei Province. This was Wang Shujin’s first crime, in what was to become a one-way road to a life of crime.

Wang Shujin highly suspected after clearly identifying scene of crime

On 22 January 2005, deputy chief of the Guangping County Public Security Bureau Zheng Chengyue, criminal police squad leader Li Mengqui and deputy squad leader Ren Guichuan escorted the suspect Wang Shujin to one of the crime scenes, near Kongzhai Village in Shijiazhuang City, Hebei Province. Wang detailed how he raped and murdered a female victim at the crime scene.

In August 1994, Wang Shujin was in Kongzhai Village installing a heating pipe at a factory, next to which was a maize field. The maize had sprouted by then, and Wang noticed that a 30-something woman would regularly ride a bicycle alone along a path in the field each morning, midday, and afternoon. After observing the woman for a few days, Wang could no longer contain his impulses, and finally chose an afternoon to strike: when the woman rode back to Kongzhai Village that afternoon, Wang suddenly leapt from his hiding place in the maize field, pounced upon the woman from behind, shoved her off her bicycle, and strangled with his hands. When the woman ceased moving, Wang dragged her unconscious body into the maize field, and then he rushed back to haul the bicycle into the field as well. Seeing that the woman had regained consciousness, was sitting on the ground, and crying, Wang forcibly pinned her on the ground and raped her, after which he strangled her to death to prevent her from reporting to the police, and then left the scene.

A few days later, Wang Shujin went back to the Dongfeng Plastics Factory in Shijiazhuang City, after completing the heating installation at Kongzhai Village. Investigators on the rape and murder case did come to the Dongfeng Plastics Factory to question Wang, but Wang managed to deflect their inquiries. The investigators left him alone ever since. However, Wang became anxious that he would be discovered, and thus he began a decade on the run–leaving the region for Shanxi, Henan, and a string of other places.

In Wang Shujin’s words, he never had a night of good sleep while on the run, since each crime he committed kept replaying in his mind. He told the police that the factory where he installed the heating pipe was the Shijiazhuang Hydraulics Factory, and the crime scene was a maize field to the east of the factory, some 50–60 metres away from the perimeter fence. In between the two patches of maize fields was a dirt road that lead to Kongzhai Village. Guangping County police visited the site and found that it matched Wang’s description exactly.

According to the police, the parcel of land originally belonged to Ma Zhencai, a resident of Kongzhai Village. Ma told the police that a rape and murder case happened in this field a decade ago. The victim was surnamed Kang, who was a worker at the nearby Shijiazhuang Hydraulics Factory.

When this reporter visited the Shijiazhuang Hydraulics Factory (now called the Shijiazhuang Hydraulics LLC), a supervisor surnamed Wu confirmed Ma Zhencai’s account: one of the factories female workers, surnamed Kang, was the one who was raped and killed in the maize field in August 1994. One of Ms Kang’s relatives told us that she was the one who first realized Ms Kang was missing. After searching along Ms Kang’s usual commute route with her colleagues, they finally found a dress that she had worn a few days ago in a maize field between the factory and Kongzhai Village. The group then searched the surrounding area and found Ms Kang’s naked body 30 metres away from where they found the dress.

After his arrest, Wang Shujin said, “I’m particularly fond of forcing myself on other people, I find that more exciting.”

According to a police officer assigned to the case, “Our analysis shows that Wang Shujin is an extremely perverted manic criminal, and he could not have identified the crime scene so accurately if he wasn’t there and committed the crime himself.”

However, another young man named Nie Shubin had already been executed for this crime a decade ago.

Nie Shubin, a young man full of hope

During their investigation, the Shijiazhuang police were met with a shock. Local authorities had long claimed that they solved the case: Ms Kang was murdered by a man named Nie Shubin, who had already been executed on 27 April 1995.

But if Nie Shubin had already been executed and the case closed, what about the rape and murder that Wang Shijin confessed to at the very same location? When the police officers on this case contacted the Shijiazhuang Public Security Bureau’s Yuhua branch, an officer from the branch told them, “All murder cases under the jurisdiction of the Yuhua branch have been solved; there are no outstanding cases.”

When we visited the Shijiazhuang Public Security Bureau’s Yuhua branch on 6 March, a police officer at the branch’s political office, named Zhang Jianxun, told us that the western suburbs of Shijiazhuang were originally under the jurisdiction of the Public Security Bureau’s Qiaoxi branch. However, the Qiaoxi branch had now been merged with the Yuhua branch, while some of its officers were assigned to other branches. After phoning one of the higher-ups in the political office, Zhang Jianxun told us that the Nie Shubin murder case from a decade ago had already been closed. One of the officers on the case at the time, named Jiao Huiguang, had been reassigned to the Donghua Road criminal police squad at the Qiaodong branch. He was particularly knowledgeable about the Nie Shubin case.

Following this lead, we found Jiao Huiguang, who was now squad leader of the Donghua Road criminal police. According to him, “I was part of the investigation that solved the Nie Shubin rape and murder case, and I even wrote a report on the case, titled ‘The case of the green mosquito net’ or something like that. After the report was published in the Hebei Judicial Journal, I got into a lot of trouble for it.”

He then added in a heavy tone, “It’s already been a decade, so I don’t know why you are asking about it, you’re putting me in a difficult situation. I wrote that report, I know too much about the Nie Shubin case, but I can’t give you the details. You’ll have to go to the court to consult the documents.”

According to someone with knowledge of the case, “The Nie Shubin case was what insiders call an ‘upper submission’, meaning it was a particularly noteworthy case, and the court of first instance would have been the municipal intermediate court.”

When contacted by telephone, Guo Lianshen, the first criminal court judge at the Shijiazhuang Municipal Intermediate Court who tried the Nie Shubin case, told us, “The Nie Shubin case happened so long ago, I can’t recall any details. The case files are in the court archives.”

However, when we paid a visit to the Shijiazhuang Municipal Intermediate Court, an office director surnamed Yang said that the records could not be found, since the case happened so long ago, and staff at the court had changed multiple times since then. Furthermore, files related to death sentence crimes were all transferred to the Supreme People’s Court within a year after the case was closed.

After considerable effort, we managed to find the attorney who defended Nie Shubin. The lawyer, surnamed Zhang, was said to be close to Nie’s second uncle’s family, and Nie’s family hired him for 2,000 CNY. Although Zhang was reluctant to divulge details about the case, judging from what he said, we can confirm that Nie Shubin was indeed sentenced to death and executed because of the murder of Ms Kang. Separately, Nie Shubin never committed any other crimes. The crime scene that the prosecutors referred to was indeed the maize field on the east side of the Shijiazhuang Hydraulics Factory, located west of Shijiazhuang City proper.

Nie Shubin’s mother said that her son confessed to the crime under torture. The Nie family’s village is located in Luquan City’s Luquan Township, which neighbours Shijiazhuang City’s Kongzhai Village. In the Nie family’s village, which is at the foothills of a mountain, stands a pagoda tree that has withstood centuries of wind and rain. The convicted Nie Shubin, who was executed for “rape and intentional murder”, lived near this pagoda tree.

According to two elderly men in the village, Nie Shubin was his family’s only son. He was an honest boy of few words, and he never quarrelled with anyone. After graduating from middle school, he went to vocational school, and later on stayed at the school’s factory. When the news that Nie committed a crime reached the village, neither Nie’s parents nor anyone else in the village could believe it: “How could anyone so down-to-earth do such a despicable thing?” Amid their doubts, the villagers awaited a fair and just decision from the court.

No one expected that just before May Day in 1995, Nie Shubin’s elder sister and brother-in-law would come home crying, with an urn in their hands—Nie Shubin had been executed. Everyone in the village cried, in part lamenting the death of a young man not even 21 years of age, in part in sympathy with Nie’s parents, who had to deal with such misfortune.

Much as the villagers had worried, Nie Shubin’s father, who already suffered from ill health, was so devastated that he could not get out of bed. Unable to eat or drink, he could only call his son’s name while tears trickled down his face. Following local customs, the Nie family arranged a ghost marriage for Nie Shubin. Even so, the fact that their son died an unjust death weighed heavily on Nie’s parents. Unable to speak up, they lived each day as if in a daze, praying that time could deliver justice for their son.

Since Nie Shubin’s father was still quite ill, the mention of his son might be too much of a blow for him. With the earnest help of another lady in the village, we managed to contact Nie Shubin’s mother Zhang Huanzhi, and we conducted our interview with her in a neighbour’s house. After a period of silence, tears, and sobbing, Zhang Huanzhi dried her teary eyes and gradually began to talk.

Now 61, Zhang lost her son a full decade ago, yet she still feels that her son is with them. Even thought their son has long been deceased, they still cannot believe that he committed such a crime: their son was only 20 years old at the time, but from what they heard, the victim was already 38 years old. Zhang Huanzhi regretted not asking her son herself if he committed the crime. After their lawyer last met Nie Shubin, he told her that her son had confessed to everything, but his confession came after he had been beaten, and he could not withstand interrogation any longer.

Zhang Huanzhi believed her son’s account, that he confessed only under duress. After the trial, she requested to see her son, and the judge consented. But she only had a brief glance at her son. When Nie Shubin cried out, “Mom…,” the judge ordered the bailiff to take him away.

“My son clearly wanted to say something to me…”

According to Zhang Huanzhi, Nie Shubin suffered from stuttering since he was a child, and he would be unable to speak when stressed or anxious. When she saw her son for the last time outside the courtroom that day, she could see that he wanted to say something, but the bailiff did not give him the opportunity to do so. After that day, the family was never notified when he was sentenced to death nor when the sentence was carried out, neither did the lawyer give the family any notice. On 28 April 1995, when her husband went to the prison to bring Nie Shubin some food and clothes, the warden unexpectedly told him that Nie Shubin had been executed the day before. “My husband could hardly walk back home, and by the next day he could no longer get out of bed…”

Zhang Huanzhi said she only read about how her son raped and murdered Ms Kang in the Hebei Judicial Journal. According to Nie Shubin’s elder sister Nie Shuhui, even after a full decade, the family has never read the court’s judgment. They only heard that Nie Shubin was sentenced to death for rape and murder, but they had no idea how the police managed to arrest him, nor what evidence they had to convict him of the crime. The family never received any notice throughout, from criminal detention to formal arrest, trial, and conviction. Only a few days ago, she and her mother went to the Shijiazhuang Municipal Intermediate Court; after much convincing, they finally managed to read the final judgment issued by the Hebei Province High Court.

“In the court of first instance, the Shijiazhuang Municipal Intermediate Court sentence my brother to two death sentences for rape and intentional murder respectively. The Hebei Province High Court resentenced him to 15 years for rape, and death for intentional murder. This was combined to the death sentence. According to Nie Shuhui, the judgment outlined Nie Shubin’s crime as follows: On 5 August 1994, Nie Shubin was riding a bicycle along a path in Kongzhai Village, Shijiazhuang City. When passing by a maize field, he happened to see a woman, surnamed Kang, who worked at the hydraulics factory and was heading back to her dormitory. Nie used his bicycle to push Kang to the ground and proceeded to rape her. When Kang resisted, Nie used Kang’s dress to strangle her to death, proceeded to rape her corpse, and then fled the scene by bicycle.”

According to an unnamed police officer, “Judging from the fact that Wang Shujin has confessed to the crime, as well as other available evidence, the Nie Shubin case was likely a miscarriage of justice.” Many are awaiting the day when the truth comes out.

If the judicial authorities’ original opinion was that Nie Shubin committed the crime on Ms Kang, and the crime that Wang Shubin confessed to matched exactly the police investigation into the Nie Shubin case, is it possible that Nie and Wang were accomplices, or that they committed the crime one before the other?

The police believe this to be impossible. First, according to the original investigation, Nie Shubin was the sole perpetrator of both the rape and strangulation of Ms Kang. Moreover, according to Wang’s confession, he was the only perpetrator as well. In addition, according to Wang Shujin’s confession, he did not know Nie Shubin, and he pushed Kang from her bicycle onto the ground to rape her. This description matched records in the Nie Shubin case, which stated that he pushed Kang from her bicycle to commit the crime. Neither of these accounts leave room for accomplices or co-conspirators.

After Wang Shujin’s arrest and voluntary confession, from his description of the crime to identification at the crime scene, the police believe that Wang Shujin is highly likely to be the suspect in the rape and murder of Ms Kang.

However, the clearer the facts, the more frustrating things are for the police investigating the case. According to one of the officers, “If the Nie Shubin verdict is revoked, heads will roll from the public security bureau to the procuratorate and the court. In addition to finding who’s responsible, there’s also the issue of national compensation. This is really tough, we’re stressed out as well…”

But as veteran criminal police officers with decades of experience on the force point out, they will adhere to the facts, follow the law, and see that justice is carried out. During interviews, we have understood that prosecution authorities have authorised the arrest of Wang Shujin on suspicion of rape and intentional murder. Yet his case will be a difficult one to close, since the investigation into his confession has become stuck: the local police have refused to go into detail why the case of Kang’s rape and murder has been closed, nor have they released any evidence pertaining to the case. Without these crucial pieces of evidence, the rape and murder of Ms Kang that Wang Shujin confessed to will simply become “unresolved”, since charges can only come after investigations are closed, and even if the case is handed to the procuratorate, it will only be returned to the police for “additional investigation”.

What should be done? According to deputy chief of the Guangping County Public Security Bureau Zheng Chengyue, “I can only follow the directions of my superiors.” Because of this, the Guangping County and Shijiazhuang City authorities continue to be at odds with each other, and both Nie Shubin’s and the victim’s families still wait for justice. The Shijiazhuang police, public prosecutors, and courts responsible for the Nie Shubin case continue to remain silent on the issue.

More than a month after Wang Shujin was escorted back to Hebei Province from Henan Province, the Xingyang City Public Security Bureau in Henan Province has pressed the police in Guangping County numerous times for the relevant reports and documentation pertaining to the Wang Shujin case, but received no response. When reached by phone, an officer on the case said, “From what we’ve heard, the people at Guangping County found some problematic stuff that made things difficult for them.” When we contacted the Handan City Public Security Bureau’s political office for progress on the Wang Shujin case, the Guangping County police refused our interview request, on the basis that “we are currently conducting an in-depth investigation”.

According to an unnamed individual, “If the Nie Shubin case was indeed a miscarriage of justice, the deceased Ms Kang will not rest in peace. How can a person unjustly executed console her soul?”

And what about Nie Shubin? If he was indeed wrongfully executed, when can his name be cleared? Who can give him justice?

For those who received commendations and promotions by sending Nie Shubin to his death, shouldn’t they come to terms with the truth and bear their share of the responsibility?