Reference: International Culture Publishing Company, Zhang Bin's "Famous Detectives in Jiangnan"
Nanchang Building, Maoming South Road
Nanchang Building Excellent Historic Building Nameplate
At about 12:00 noon on March 31, 1955, Duan Mu Hongyu, deputy chief of the Police Law Section who was on duty at the Criminal Police Department of the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau, received a report that the person who lived in the Nanchang Building on Maoming South Road (formerly known as the Astrodlet Apartment, designed by foreign architect Levin, was completed in 1933, and its biggest feature was the separate design of the nanny building and the apartment building and the master and servant, and in 1994, the Nanchang Building was selected as the second batch of outstanding historical buildings in Shanghai, and the Peking Opera Yu Sect old student Chen Da wat, plastic surgery expert Zhang Disheng Zhu Zhonggang, director of the dermatology department of Ruijin Hospital, Ding Xingxian, a piano educator, Tang Zhenduo, a gastrointestinal expert, Tang Junyuan, an industrial and commercial figure, and other celebrities have lived here, and can live in Dr. Mu Ruifen of Nanyang Hospital (now Luwan District Central Hospital) on the 7th floor of Nanchang Building, which means a symbol of status at that time. He said that he came home in the morning and did not see his wife to open the door, his maid looked around for a morning and did not see anyone, and after opening the door with his own key, he found that his wife Hu Shuzhen died on the bed in his bedroom. After 20 minutes, Duanmu Hongyu drove to Dr. Mu's house in Nanchang Building with his scouts.
A hospital bill for the old Nanyang Hospital, dr. Mu, one of the victims of this article, is a doctor at Nanyang Hospital
When they arrived, the maid opened the door, Dr. Mu was sitting on the sofa in the outhouse, his mood had stabilized a lot, and he saw Duanmu Hongyu come in and try to get up, but was stopped by Duanmu Hongyu. Then Duanmu Hongyu came to the scene of the crime - the bedroom, stood in the doorway and looked inside, and found that the bedroom was already a mess, obviously artificially flipped, and the deceased Mu's wife, Hu Shuzhen, was lying on her back on the bed, and the blood had stained the white sheets under her body. Duanmu preliminarily judged that this was a door-to-door robbery and murder case.
Duanmu Hongyu in the 50s, a table of talents, good looks
According to Dr. Mu's recollection, after he got up in the morning to wash up, the maid Tan Xiuling had prepared breakfast, and after he and his wife had eaten together, her wife cleaned up for him and sent him out, and told him to go home early for lunch. He nodded in agreement and said, "At noon, he asked the maid to prepare two more dishes ('one' and 'only' are not divided when the Quantifier of the Shanghainese dish is used), and then took the small leather bag handed over by his wife to work, and everything was no different from usual.
Because there were not many patients that morning, only 3 patients were received, at 10:35, Dr. Mu said hello to Dr. Liu and went home in advance, because the distance between Nanyang Hospital and Nanchang Building is not far (about 1 km walk along Nanchang Road), so after walking for 20 minutes, Dr. Mu stood downstairs, looked at the watch at 10:55, and then entered the upstairs elevator.
An old photograph of a hospital in Shanghai in the 1950s can be used to imagine Dr. Mu's working environment
The main entrance of nanchang building
After the elevator reached the 7th floor, Dr. Mu stepped out of the elevator and walked to his door and knocked twice on the door, but no one agreed; and after knocking twice on the door, no one responded. At this time, he felt strange, because usually his wife would open the door to welcome him home as soon as he heard his footsteps after leaving the elevator, and his wife also specially told him to go home early that morning. He thought that his wife might go out to the nearby delicatessen to buy his favorite pig's tail, but he thought it was unlikely, usually this kind of thing is called maid, this time the maid should also clean up at home, but now the maid is not at home.
When he was ready to take out the key to open the door, the maid came back in a panic and said, "In the morning, after you and your wife finished breakfast, I went to the street to buy small dishes, and when I left, my wife took care of it, saying that I would cook a few more dishes at noon, I came back from buying vegetables, my wife's door was closed, I knocked for half a day and did not see my wife open the door, I was in a hurry to go to the street to find it, but I did not find it when I looked for it." ”
At this time, Dr. Mu said to himself, "Strange, where will the wife go?" ”
Then the maid advised him that "the wife will come back when she goes out", and asked him to open the door first so that she could go in and make lunch. When Dr. Mu took out the key and opened the door, he smelled a bloody gas inside, the doctor's instinct made him immediately run to the bedroom in the inner room, and found his wife lying on her back on the bed, half covered with a quilt, a large piece of blood under her body, Dr. Mu immediately stood on the spot, and the maid was already frightened, and she ran out with a rolling belt to call people.
……
The floor plan of the murder scene drawn during the investigation of the scene shows the location where the deceased Mrs. Mu was lying
Transcript of Dr. Mullivan's statement
After listening to Dr. Mu's account, Duanmu Hongyu became more and more certain of his previous judgment that this was a door-to-door robbery and murder case, and then he asked Dr. Mu to take stock of what was missing in the house. Dr. Mu woke up from his confusion, counted them, and said: "The family was robbed of two and a half carats of diamond rings, two watches, a camera, and 700 yuan in cash, just these (the first set of 700 yuan bills was not much for Dr. Mu's family, but diamond rings, watches and cameras were valuable items of great value at the time, so the loss of items was very heavy). ”
Schematic diagram of the lost watch as stated by Dr. Mullifern
Schematic diagram of the lost diamond ring as stated by Dr. Mullifern
The autopsy of the deceased, Mrs. Mu, showed that the deceased had a blunt wound to the head and a sharp object wound to the chest that was right in the middle of the heart, which was a fatal wound. In addition, the investigator in charge of the mass investigation reported that the master in charge of operating the elevator said that no raw faces had ever sat on the elevator since the morning, and all of them were familiar faces living in the building.
Finally, Dr. Mu also said a detail: his wife's vigilance is still quite high, she can't hear the voices of acquaintances, and generally won't open the door, which is a habit she has developed since she was a child. The wife has a strong ability to distinguish between different people, can hear the different footsteps of different people, and has been able to accurately hear the footsteps of him and the maid before and open the door in advance. This was also confirmed by the maid, who said that the wife's ears were really good, and which footstep was hers and which footstep was the gentleman's, could be heard as soon as she heard it.
Part of the original nanny room of nanchang building (now five floors, then four floors)
According to this detail, and further investigation shows that the indoor doors and windows are intact, the outdoor walls have no climbing marks, the door locks have not been pried, Duanmu Hongyu judged that this door was opened by the deceased Mrs. Mu herself, and the case is more likely to be an acquaintance who committed the crime and roughly outlined the criminal process: the criminal did not take the elevator when Dr. Mu walked out of the building and the maid went out to buy vegetables, but took the stairs to the 7th floor to knock on Dr. Mu's door, and then took advantage of Mrs. Mu's lack of preparation, knocked her unconscious with a blunt instrument, and then carried her to the bed with a quilt and turned over the cabinet to find the property. In the process, Mrs. Mu woke up and tried to scream, and the criminal stabbed Mrs. Mu in the heart with a sharp object to kill her on the bed. Judging from the route chosen by the criminal, it shows that there is a considerable degree of familiarity with the Nanchang building; judging from the degree to which the scene was overturned, the murderer has at least two people; and from the perspective of the looted objects, the murderer has a considerable cultural level and is relatively knowledgeable.
At first, some investigators suspected the perpetrator Dr. Mu and the maid Tan Xiuling, but soon Duanmu Hongyu rejected this idea, Dr. Mu and Mrs. Mu Hu Shuzhen have been married for many years, and their feelings are very deep, which can be confirmed by the neighbors in the building. Dr. Mu did not mess with flowers and grass outside, Mrs. Mu did not steal at home, Dr. Mu did not have any motive for committing the crime, not to mention that Dr. Mu was sitting in the hospital at the time of the crime, and there was no time to commit the crime.
Tan Xiuling, a 54-year-old maid at the time, came to Shanghai from her hometown in northern Jiangsu to help after liberation for three years. Before serving Dr. Mu's family, he served 4 families. For the sake of prudence, the investigators successively found 4 households that Tan Xiuling had served for questioning, and the heads of these 4 households unanimously gave Tan Xiuling a five-star praise, saying that she worked hard during the service period, and people were loyal and honest; 2 of the 4 families had to terminate the employment of Tan Xiuling because of the death of the service object, and 2 families had to terminate the employment of Tan Xiuling because of the move. In addition, it was also learned that Tan Xiuling was alone in Shanghai, unaccompanied, living in her employer's home and not having her own residence, so the suspicion of maid was also ruled out.
A wax figure depicting the costume of a Shanghai maid in the 1950s
Subsequently, the investigators checked the residents who stayed at home in the Nanchang building on March 31, and found that the residents in the building at the time of the crime were all old, weak, sick and disabled with limited mobility, and the adults went to work, and there was no possibility of committing crimes at all. In short, the investigation lasted for 10 days, and there was still no clue at all.
On April 10, Duanmu Hongyu, who had only been married for a year and a half and had just become a father, did not return home (on November 7, 1953, Duanmu Hongyu and Wang Junfang, a female police officer in a substation, tied a knot, and in early 1955, the eldest daughter of the two was born), and he was alone in the office smoking cigarettes one after another while meditating all night, and on April 11, when his investigators arrived, Duanmu Hongyu, who had black eyes, assigned them a new task: to leave immediately. Quickly find out the families of the Nanchang building that have moved out of the building since liberation, and continue to strictly investigate the whereabouts of the Mu family's lost diamond rings, watches and cameras. The scouts were confused, but they quickly dispersed to carry out the order.
Duanmu Hongyu and Wang Junfang
The documentary scene showing Duanmu Hongyu and Wang Junfang falling in love is restored, and the slogan on the wall is a bit of a gang
The next day, the Old Gate Sub-Bureau came a message, they arrested a special suspect named Le Junqing, in the body search actually found that this person's left hand on the arm bend with a watch, the watch is not worn on the wrist, but worn at the arm bend, which itself is questionable, most likely do not want others to find him wearing a watch, which means that this watch may not come from the right way. Duanmu Hongyu immediately rushed to the Laozha sub-bureau to interrogate Le Junqing, and Le Junqing quickly confessed that the watch was sold to him by Yang Shifeng and Yang Shikui's brothers. This watch was identified by Dr. Mu as one of the two watches that were snatched.
The excited Duanmu Hongyu immediately informed the subordinates who were investigating the original occupants of the Nanchang Building to stop the investigation in other directions, specifically to check whether Yang Shifeng and Yang Shikui were once residents of the Nanchang Building.
The results came out quickly, and it really was!
The father of the Yang Shifeng and Yang Shikui brothers was originally the owner of a textile factory, and the family was quite solid, originally living in the Nanchang building. Because of the doting of their parents, the brothers have been idle since childhood, eating lazily, spending money like flowing water, and a "small opening" style. Boss Yang died of illness in the first year after liberation, the brothers were unable to operate, and the factory closed down and was accepted by the people's government. Less than a year later, Boss Yang's original family foundation was squandered by Yang Shifeng and Yang Shikui brothers, and there was no other source of income, so he had to move out of the Nanchang building with his family.
Idle, spending money like flowing water, economic tension, urgent need for money, and familiar with the situation of the Nanchang building, and the Mu family is an old neighbor, which is perfectly in line with Duanmu Hongyu's previous portrayal of the murderer. Therefore, Duanmu Hongyu ordered: Arrest Yang Shifeng and Yang Shikui!
The two brothers, Yang Shifeng and Yang Shikui, were quickly arrested and brought to justice, and as soon as they passed the court, where the billets of the two young masters were opponents of the people's police, they immediately confessed the fact that they and Le Junqing conspired to go to the Mu family to rob and kill people.
Yang Shifeng and Yang Shikui explained that when their father was still alive, they got to know Le Junqing, and the three of them smelled the same and played well. After their father died and they were forced to move out of the Nanchang building, they were momentarily nervous, and the two of them were accustomed to spending money like water, and the life of frugality made them miserable. At this time, Le Junqing was also short of money on hand, so he proposed robbery. So the three of them got together to discuss, the Yang brothers felt that the neighbor dr. Mu in the Nanchang building was very rich, usually Dr. Mu went to work, and only Mrs. Mu Washu Shuzhen at home, and they also recognized Mrs. Mu and could trick the door open. So on March 31, the three of them carried two pistols and a sharp knife provided by Le Junqing, and when Mr. Mu was working, the maid Tan Xiuling sneaked into the Nanchang building when she went out to buy vegetables, went up the stairs to the 7th floor, and was tricked by the Yang brothers to knock on the door of the Mu family, and the three of them immediately entered the room, knocked Mrs. Mu Shuzhen unconscious with the handle of the pistol, and carried her to the bedroom and put her on the bed, and then covered with a quilt and began to rummage through the boxes and cabinets. But during this period, Hu Shuzhen woke up and shouted for help, the three people immediately put down the "live" in hand and pounced on Hu Shuzhen, and Le Junqing stabbed Hu Shuzhen on the heart with a knife and killed Hu Shuzhen on the spot, and then the three did not dare to stay, grabbed a diamond ring, two watches, a camera and 700 yuan in cash and fled, and did not forget to close the door of the Mu family when fleeing.
According to the Yang brothers and Le Junqing's account, the investigators found another watch, diamond ring, and camera at the Yang brothers' residence (the money had been spent by them). At this point, the burglary and murder case of the Mu family in the Nanchang Building was announced to be solved only 12 days later, and the murderers Yang Shifeng, Yang Shikui and Le Junqing were finally sentenced to death and shot. However, at this time, Duanmu Hongyu, who was silent in the joy of breaking another murder case, would not have thought that less than two months later, an unexpected follow-up related to the case would almost ruin him.