Today (December 27), the Intermediate People's Court of Liaocheng City, Shandong Province, publicly announced the verdict in accordance with the law in the case of child abduction and trafficking by the defendants Hu Fuji and Tang Lixia——
- sentenced defendant Hu Fuji to death with a two-year reprieve, deprivation of political rights for life, confiscation of all personal property, and restriction on commutation of defendant Hu Fuji's sentence for the crime of child abduction and trafficking;
- Defendant Tang Lixia was sentenced to life imprisonment, deprived of political rights for life, and confiscated of all personal property for the crime of child abduction and trafficking;
- At the same time, the defendants Hu Fuji and Tang Lixia were ordered to jointly compensate the plaintiff in the attached civil lawsuit for material losses of more than RMB 50 yuan.
The court found through trial that between 1997 and 1998, the defendants Hu Fuji and Tang Lixia abducted and trafficked four children, Li Mouhui, Guo Mouzhen, Yang Mouhao, and Li Mouhao, for the purpose of betrayal. In 2001, the defendant Hu Fuji conspired with others to abduct and sell the child Yang Mouyu for the purpose of betrayal. Defendants Hu Fuji and Tang Lixia jointly committed the act of abducting and trafficking four children for the purpose of selling, and Hu Fuji conspired with others to abduct and sell one child for the purpose of selling, and both of them constituted the crime of child abduction and trafficking. The court made the above judgment on the basis of the facts, nature, and circumstances of the two defendants' crimes.
Case review
According to previous media reports, on September 21, 1997, Guo Xinzhen (also known as Guo Zhen), the two-year-old son of Guo Gangtang and his wife in Liaocheng, Shandong Province, was taken away at the door of his home and his whereabouts are unknown. In the more than 20 years since then, Guo Gangtang has ridden more than 500,000 kilometers to find his son, traveled to dozens of provinces, and scrapped 10 motorcycles.
In 2015, the movie "Orphaned" was released, which attracted the attention of the outside world to families looking for relatives. In the movie, the prototype of the child-seeking father played by Andy Lau is Guo Gangtang.
An old photograph, an atlas
Uncover important clues
On the evening of September 21, 1997, Guo Gangtang's two-and-a-half-year-old son, Guo Zhen (Guo Xinzhen), was abducted by a strange woman while playing near his home. Since then, in order to find his son, Guo Gangtang has traveled all over China on a motorcycle with a flag printed with a missing person notice.
In 2021, the Ministry of Public Security launched a "reunion" operation with the main content of cracking down on abduction and family search, and listed the "Guo Zhen (Guo Xinzhen) abduction case" as a case for supervision. In June of the same year, the Ministry of Public Security organized experts to use the latest comparison and search methods to find clues suspected of Guo Zhen (Guo Xinzhen) in Henan.
According to the clues provided by Guo Zhen (Guo Xinzhen), the police locked on a man named Hu Fuji. Hu Fuji's hometown is in a village in Linzhou, Henan Province, and is currently uninhabited. According to the police investigation, Hu Fuji is now in a detention center in Jinzhong, Shanxi Province, for being involved in another child abduction and trafficking case.
Shandong Liaocheng police sent case-handling personnel to Shanxi overnight to investigate. When Hu Fuji was first interrogated, he denied having been to Shandong in 1997 and had denied any involvement in the abduction and trafficking of Guo Zhen (Guo Xinzhen).
According to the police's analysis, it was a female criminal suspect who abducted Guo Zhen (Guo Xinzhen) back then, and what was the relationship between her and Hu Fuji? How did the two divide the labor in the abduction and trafficking case? Can they solve the problem by finding the connection between them? So, the investigators went to the old house where Hu Fuji once lived, and began to search the dusty room and the messy items.
During the search, the police found some photographs. The lower right corner of the photo developed by an old-fashioned film camera usually has a shooting time, so the photo from around 1997 has become a key item in the search for the connection between Hu and the female suspect. However, in the album, there are four photographs of women from this period, and almost all four of them match the descriptions of eyewitnesses of the year.
At this point, the background of the photo releases crucial information. Three of the four women are in Beijing, and only one is shown in Shandong. "It's the Confucian Temple of Confucius. We looked at these backgrounds and were sure that we had been to Shandong at that time. And from the purse searched out some tickets like Confucius Mansion and Confucius Temple. The police said.
In addition, investigators also found a traffic atlas published in 1997, which confirmed from one detail that Hu Fuji had been to Shandong. "This page of the map of Shandong and the entire atlas are torn, indicating that the map of Shandong has been turned more and more attention has been paid to. ”
The trafficking suspects are couples
The police confirmed the trajectory of the movement at the time of the crime
At this time, a group of police officers in charge of the investigation came with news that through the investigation of nearby people, it was learned that in 1997 and 1998, Hu Fuji had led a woman named Xiao Tang to live in his home many times.
Through technical means, it took two days and one night for the police to finally confirm the true identity of the woman Tang Lixia in the photo, and mastered Tang Lixia's movement trajectory in 1997 and the intersection with Hu Fuji. The police also found that Tang Lixia also had a criminal record of child abduction and trafficking, and the special case team rushed to Yuci, Shanxi, to arrest Tang Lixia.
With the arrest of the two traffickers, the story of their abduction of Guo Zhen (Guo Xinzhen) has finally come to light.
According to the investigation, in 1997, Hu Fuji and Tang Lixia met and fell in love, and in September of the same year, the two planned to abduct and sell children for money during a trip to Shandong.
On September 21, the two fled to Liaocheng, Shandong, Hu Fuji waited near the bus station, Tang Lixia went out to find the target of the crime, and took Guo Zhen (Guo Xinzhen), who was playing alone at the door of the house, and then returned to Henan by long-distance bus with Hu Fuji, and Guo Zhen (Guo Xinzhen) was sold by Hu Fuji.
After analysis and judgment, the police who handled the case believed that Hu Fuji and Tang Lixia had nearly two years from the gangup to the final breakup, and combined with the modus operandi of the two, they should have abducted and sold more than one child Guo Zhen (Guo Xinzhen).
After further investigation, the police solved two more cases and reunited the two children with their families.
24 years of bumpy
Guo Gangtang talks about the five links in the chain of trafficking
Guo Gangtang is 53 years old this year, and he was 27 years old when his son was abducted.
"My child was sold not just once, then to one family and then to another. I really don't know what exactly my kids are going through. Guo Gangtang said.
But Guo Gangtang often lamented that he was a lucky person, because compared to those orphaned families who still haven't found their children, he has at least now ended his journey to find his children.
Before the verdict of the first instance was announced, Guo Gangtang said in an interview with a reporter from Nandu: "I only hope that human traffickers will be severely punished by the law." Much of the discussion now focuses on the legal responsibility of those who buy trafficked children, but Guo Gangtang stressed that every link in the entire chain of trafficking is important, and no one should be involved in every link.
In his opinion, there are five links in a chain of abduction: "The first link is stealing, abducting, cheating, and robbing; the second is trafficking, and the child must be shipped out after it is obtained, but the trafficker is not necessarily the person who stole the child; the third is the intermediary, and the introducer has taken advantage of the benefits, and has they been held accountable? The fourth is the 'buyer'; the fifth is legalization, and many people have to participate in the process of bleaching the 'black household', can we be vigilant and discover it in time?"
Guo Gangtang. Photo courtesy of the interviewee
Nowadays, the relevant laws on the mainland have made it clear that in reality, there is less and less room for buying and selling abducted children, and there are more old cases waiting for clues to be solved than new cases of theft, robbery, abduction and trafficking. Guo Gangtang hopes that "buyers" and more people in the know can come forward and provide effective information to help more families reunite as soon as possible. He has also repeatedly called on children who doubt their origins to go to the blood collection points of the "Reunion" operation across the country as soon as possible to receive free DNA collection. ”
Source: CCTV News, China News Network, Southern Metropolis Daily, Criminal Investigation Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security
Editor-in-charge: Li Jiani
Editor: Anne Xu