The Paper's reporter Ming Que
[Editor's Note]:
They are a group of children, but not quite like the other children.
In their most important period of growth, their parents are not around to accompany them, life is mostly difficult, and they are stigmatized because their parents are in prison, and they are in a state of loneliness, confusion, inferiority and even resentment for a long time, until some adults cannot let go and reconcile with fate.
Outside the high walls of their parents' prison sentences, to some extent, they also live in an invisible prison and suffer. Their "sentence" may be longer than their parents.
At the same time, they are on the fringes of social assistance. Official data on this group remain stuck in the 2005 Justice Department investigation of "more than 600,000." And for this group of relief, there are still de facto legal and policy gaps.
Inspired by a wife murder case, the surging figures decided to pay attention to the group of minor children of prisoners to reach more forgotten corners.
This is the first of three articles in this feature, which is about the family tragedy of a father of two children killing his mother.
"I tell you, Mom and Dad are dead, they're gone." Chen Yang, 6, said to his brother.
On the afternoon of August 27, the fan on the table was "whirring" and the TV was "Peppa Pig". Chen Yu, 3, did not watch TV, played with toys there by herself, and did not care what her brother said. Nearby, 61-year-old Chen Jianguo heard his grandson's words and squatted on the floor and cried.
"Grandpa cried, Grandpa was blind." Chen Yu said while laughing.
Since suffering from an eye disease a few years ago, Chen Jianguo's life has darkened. Now that his son has been arrested for the murder of his ex-wife, his entire world has collapsed.
Soon, Chen Yu's attention shifted to the toy. He jumped around and scattered toys all over the floor, red, green, blue... Suddenly, he picked up a bouncing doll and pressed it with his hand, only to hear a "bang", and the doll flashed purple light towards the ceiling.
Chen Yang temporarily forgot about his parents and stared at the ceiling.
abnormal
A deep pit was dug out of the bamboo forest, next to a shovel, several snakeskin bags, and all kinds of white garbage, emitting a pungent smell.
On the afternoon of August 23, the police dug up a rotting corpse in the bamboo forest, and the face was not clear. A day earlier, Chen Xiaofeng, 35, had confessed to killing his ex-wife Yang Jia in the early hours of July 15.
At the end of August, the soil of the bamboo forest was cut open, leaving only a shovel. The pictures in this article are all the surging news reporter Ming Que figure (unless noted)
According to the police and Yang Jia's family: On the evening of July 14, Chen Xiaofeng and Yang Jia had an argument. In the process of snatching Yang Jia's mobile phone, Chen Xiaofeng strangled Yang Jia with his hand. It was early in the morning, and two children were asleep in their rooms. The next day, Chen Xiaofeng hid the body in the closet all day. In the early morning of the third day, he quietly transferred the body to the bamboo forest.
Chen Xiaofeng's home is about 500 meters away from the bamboo forest, and it takes two or three minutes to walk out of the back door of his house, bypassing two village roads. The bamboo forest is 200 meters uninhabited, and several old houses have been abandoned for many years. Chen Xiaofeng knocked down an abandoned dry toilet and buried the body under the mound.
This road, except for the people who grow vegetables, is rarely passed.
After Chen Xiaofeng was arrested, people in the village remembered him and thought he seemed normal, but he behaved strangely: In early August, some villagers saw him riding an electric car in the direction of the bamboo forest. "There were 5 times, about 5 minutes each time, and then hurried back."
In the memory of friends, during that time, Chen Xiaofeng went to the market during the day and had dinner with friends at night, as usual. But he also has some abnormalities - suddenly go to bars, KTV, and even travel to Nanning, Guilin, Guizhou and other places. Previously, he had never been to a bar, never been out of Yulin City, let alone traveled.
"I thought he had gambled and made money." One of Chen Xiaofeng's cousins recalls.
Soon, rumors in the village were flying all over the place, some people said that they saw him go to the bamboo forest to spray flower dew, and some people heard him crying in the burial ground. Some people speculate that Chen Xiaofeng gambled and owed debts, asked for money from his ex-wife, and the other party strangled the person to death without giving it; some people suspected that the two sides clashed because of emotional discord.
In the eyes of the villagers, Chen Xiaofeng is introverted, weird, and timid, "not even daring to kill chickens." No one thought that he would do such a thing. Yang Jia's mother, Liu Li, remembers that at the beginning of this year, Chen Xiaofeng went to Wuzhou to help her move goods and pay her wages, he did not want to, saying, "I didn't buy anything for the New Year, just give you the New Year's fee." ”
Liu Li couldn't understand why the seemingly honest former son-in-law had killed her daughter, "There are two more children, what should they do?" ”
quarrel
In 1985, Chen Xiaofeng was born in Lin Village. This small village in the northwest of Yulin City is close to hongjin wholesale market, the most important agricultural and sideline products distribution center in south China. Since opening in 2009, many people in the village have done business here or helped people with odd jobs.
In the past, her mother Li Cuihua made clothes for people, and Chen Xiaofeng helped nail 100 or 200 buttons every day. After Chen Xiaofeng graduated from junior high school, he helped people deliver grain and oil, and his salary was two or three hundred yuan a month. Until the opening of the Hongjin wholesale market, the Chen family rented a paving shop in the market, sold water and tobacco, and weighed people's vegetables, "once weighed a piece of fifty cents."
Chen Xiaofeng often helps his parents to watch the paving, he is one meter sixty-five, not fat or thin, sitting quietly under the canopy, watching the people in the market.
Yang Jia is a native of Wuzhou and was born in 1988. At that time, she came to Hongjin Market every day to wholesale vegetables, followed the car from Wuzhou to Yulin in the morning, arrived at the wholesale market at noon, picked a cart full of vegetables in the afternoon, and then followed the car back to Wuzhou in the evening. Every time Yang Jia picked vegetables, she would take them to Chen Xiaofeng to weigh. Over time, the two slowly became acquainted.
At night, the Hongjin wholesale market is still bustling with people.
In 2012, Yang Jia's car had a problem. She followed Chen Xiaofeng back to Lin Village, and then lived in his house and stopped running back and forth with the car. At the beginning of the following year, the two married and held more than thirty tables in Lin Village.
In the same year, the Chen family built a new house, five floors, and renovated two floors, costing a total of 400,000 yuan. Li Cuihua said that when Hongjin market was developed, it expropriated their family's land and compensated 220,000 yuan. The construction of the new house mainly relies on this compensation, and Yang Jia also paid a part of the money.
Next door to the forest village, high-rise buildings have risen from the ground.
Yang Jia only reads until the fifth grade of primary school, but she is willing to suffer hardships, bold, and her mouth can speak. Ten years ago, she returned from working in other places and took over her mother's business, from the beginning of the wholesale of a few tons to a dozen or twenty tons of vegetables, with the family to make the business bigger and bigger.
Previously, Liu Li mainly bought vegetables from the countryside to sell in the market, and her son Yang Jun helped pull goods. Three years ago, Yang Jia changed into a pickup truck and bought a large truck of more than a dozen tons. "You can earn tens of thousands of dollars a month, and when it's easy to do, you can earn more than 100,000 a month." Liu Li said.
When they first got married, the couple had a good relationship, and Chen Xiaofeng went out at nine o'clock in the morning to help his wife get and load goods. Yang Jia didn't come out until two or three o'clock and went home at eight or nine o'clock in the evening. At that time, Liu Li occasionally went to her daughter's house, and Chen Xiaofeng did not say much, politely calling her "Mom".
After the birth of the child, Yang Jia was busy, and most of them were Chen Xiaofeng with the children, cooking and washing clothes at home. Two years ago, Liu Li's legs were sore, and Chen Xiaofeng drove an electric car to take her to the massage parlor for a massage, and then picked her up after the end.
Until May this year, Chen Xiaofeng went to Wuzhou to find Yang Jia to remarry and was rejected. Liu Li learned that the two of them had divorced at the beginning of this year, the two children were raised by Chen Xiaofeng, and Yang Jia gave 3,000 yuan in maintenance every month.
Liu Li said that her daughter told her that Chen Xiaofeng often abused her domestically, pinching her neck and making her unable to move. Once, Yang Jia was pinched to the point where she couldn't breathe, and her son Chen Yang shouted next to her: "Daddy, you don't strangle your mother, you don't strangle your mother..." Chen Xiaofeng let go.
In fact, the relationship between husband and wife has long been a problem. Chen Jianguo said that the two had a bad temper, often quarreled, and quickly reconciled after the quarrel. Once, they quarreled very badly, Yang Jia called the police, the police came, Chen Xiaofeng did not open the door, and finally failed.
Two years ago, Li Cuihua saw the receipt for paying rent and utility bills, and only then did she know that her daughter-in-law was renting a house outside alone. But she did not dare to ask her son or her daughter-in-law. "You scold when you ask, and they quarrel."
She thought that it would be good for the husband and wife to quarrel, but she did not expect such a thing to happen.
missing
July 13 is Chen Yangman's 6th birthday.
At noon that day, Yang Jia rushed back to Yulin from Wuzhou, and after arriving at Hongjin Market, she called Chen Xiaofeng and asked the other party to take the two children out. Yang Jia took her two sons to play for half a day. In the evening, she went to buy a cake, and the mother and son returned to Lin Village together.
The next morning, Yang Jia sent two children to kindergarten. In the afternoon, she picked up her two children and went to the wholesale market again. In the evening, Yang Jun saw his sister leading two children over, so he asked her if she wanted to return to Wuzhou. She said she was going to stay another night and take a little greens back to cooking.
Starting that night, Yang Jia could not get through the phone.
After that, Yang Jun asked Chen Xiaofeng where his sister had gone. Chen Xiaofeng said that he came home late that night, and when he arrived home, he did not see Yang Jia, and he did not know where she went.
Liu Li contacted her daughter several times without success. At more than 4:00 a.m. on July 17, she received a WeChat reply from her daughter: Her daughter went to scatter her heart, divorced, and fell in love with someone else's husband, is it stupid.
Previously, Yang Jia almost never sent text, because she read less and did not read much, she generally made pronunciation. After Liu Li saw the information, she felt strange and suspected that her daughter had been kidnapped, and immediately replaced the two-dimensional code for the payment. They wholesale more than a dozen tons of vegetables every day, and their income is tens of thousands of yuan a night, most of which enter Yang Jia's WeChat wallet by scanning the code.
On The day of July 17, Yang Jun went to the police station to report the case, and Chen Xiaofeng also went with him. In addition to the phone can not be called, Yang Jia did not disappear on WeChat, so the police suspected that Yang Jia ran away from home.
After the incident, Yang Jia's backpack landed in a corner of the room.
In fact, after Chen Xiaofeng strangled Yang Jia, he has been using her WeChat to reply to her mother's family, creating the illusion that she is still alive.
The next day, "Yang Jia" Replied to her mother on WeChat that she was pregnant again. Liu Li and her family were confused, and they suspected that Chen Xiaofeng had kidnapped Yang Jia. On July 21, Liu Li confronted Chen Xiaofeng, who insisted that she did not know where Yang Jia was and accused her of having a man outside.
During that time, Yang Jun went to the Chen family four times, and only met Chen Xiaofeng once: he sat on the sofa, said lightly that he did not know, and then rode away on an electric car.
The Chen family's house is 21 meters long and 5 meters wide, and each floor has a living room, a kitchen, and two rooms. Yang Jia and Chen Xiaofeng live on the third floor, and Chen Jianguo and his wife live on the second floor. Chen Jianguo said that on the night of the incident, he did not hear any noise. Li Cuihua went to the supper shop to wash the dishes and returned home at six o'clock the next morning.
Liu Li was not at ease, she went to the Chen family twice, but did not see Chen Xiaofeng. She rummaged through the whole building, the cabinets, the bathroom, under the bed, on the roof... No trace of the daughter was found. Liu Li had no way to get a customer to send WeChat to Yang Jia. The reply was: Where am I shutting down your ass, why do you care about me so much?
In the vegetable wholesale markets of Wuzhou and Yulin, Yang Jia is notoriously able to talk and do business, and it is impossible to be so rude to customers.
On July 26, Liu Li sent a video to her daughter, in which she kept crying. "Yang Jia" WeChat reply: Mom don't want this, the daughter is sorry for you, don't do (just) rest.
On July 30, Liu Li sent a WeChat message and asked: If you don't come back, our business will not be done. Why did you just walk away? In the early morning of the next day, "Yang Jia" WeChat replied: Mom, I am sad and do not want to say.
On August 17, Liu Li sent a WeChat message to Chen Xiaofeng: You think you killed her, you are better off, you can't go, wait. Chen Xiaofeng still insisted that he did not know where his ex-wife had gone.
40 days of "honest people"
Seven or eight years ago, Chen Xiaofeng partnered with someone to do the green onion business.
Partner Chen Hao said that Chen Xiaofeng has a 30% stake, and when the business is booming, he has an income of more than 100,000 yuan a year. In recent years, the business has not been easy to do, and he also has tens of thousands of yuan in dividends every year. In addition, from February to June every year, Chen Xiaofeng also sells Beihai vegetables on behalf of him, which can also earn tens of thousands of yuan.
Chen Xiaofeng took all this money to play cards.
In Liu Li's memory, Chen Xiaofeng has always liked to play cards, and every time she came to the Hongjin wholesale market, she saw Chen Xiaofeng sitting at the card table, sitting for an afternoon. Later, when Yulin City rectified gambling, Chen Xiaofeng moved to online gambling. But no one knows how much he loses in a year.
Earlier, Yang Jia told her mother that Chen Xiaofeng often asked her for money, two thousand, three thousand at a time... In addition, Chen Xiaofeng borrowed money outside, and the creditor called and threatened Yang Jia to repay the money and make her look good if she did not pay it back. Liu Li said that her daughter helped him pay back at least two or three times, each time it was 10,000 or 20,000.
Chen Hao is both Chen Xiaofeng's partner and his uncle. In his eyes, Chen Xiaofeng does not smoke, does not drink, is timid, has a big temper, and has a small belly, which is not suitable for business. In 2018, Chen Xiaofeng was not good at playing cards, and ran to the Hongjin market to scold customers. After that, Chen Hao did not want him to come, telling him to "just wait for the dividend."
In recent years, Chen Xiaofeng has often advanced money to him in advance, one moment for three thousand, one moment for five thousand... Spend the dividend early on.
Li Cuihua felt that since two years ago, her daughter-in-law Yang Jia had changed her heart, she wiped lipstick, drew eyebrows, dressed beautifully, and often did not go home to live. Since then, the couple's relationship has deteriorated, and Chen Xiaofeng has become more and more addicted to gambling.
However, Liu Li believes that in the past two years, her daughter's business has become bigger and bigger, Chen Xiaofeng's ambitions have expanded, and the amount of gambling has become larger and larger, resulting in the deterioration of the couple's relationship.
On July 15, after Chen Xiaofeng strangled Yang Jia, he successively transferred 150,000 yuan from his card.
At first, no one noticed anything unusual, except Chen Hao. He couldn't remember what day it was, but found that Chen Xiaofeng's circle of friends was suddenly set to three days visible, and he sent a lot of photos of playing in the bar. Chen Hao felt strange: His nephew asked him for money a few days ago, how did he suddenly become rich?
Yang Xu, who grew up together, also discovered the changes in Chen Xiaofeng. But he thought that Chen Xiaofeng had figured it out, looked away, and was happy for him. More than half a year before, Chen Xiaofeng was immersed in the pain of divorce, and the circle of friends sent "the misfortune of marriage, worrying about what to do with two children..."
A staff member of the market also said that after looking at Chen Xiaofeng's circle of friends, he thought he was suffering from depression.
At the beginning of August, Chen Xiaofeng went to Guizhou to play and took photos and sent them to the circle of friends. Courtesy of respondents
On August 5, Chen Xiaofeng wore a white T-shirt, denim shorts, and a pair of slippers on his feet. He came to the market to find Chen Hao to get the key to the warehouse. Chen Hao found that Chen Xiaofeng dodged and did not dare to look into his eyes. But he was busy selling green onions, gave him the key and left.
Soon, Chen Xiaofeng traveled to Guilin, Guizhou and other places, and posted photos and videos in the circle of friends. Li Cuihua called him after he found out, and he said that he went outside to buy a driver's license and would come back in a few days.
On August 21, Chen Xiaofeng said in an interview with The China Business Daily that at the end of June and the beginning of July, his ex-wife blocked his mobile phone and WeChat, and the two did not contact each other again. After his ex-wife disappeared, he and his two children were also worried. He also mentioned that in July this year, a stranger added his WeChat and sent him a marriage certificate and divorce certificate for him and his ex-wife, as well as a photo of Yang Jia in the hotel. He didn't know what the other person meant.
The next day, Chen Xiaofeng was taken to the Public Security Bureau. Yang Xu said that after learning that Chen Xiaofeng was the murderer, he did not sleep well for several days.
Questions from your child
Floor-to-ceiling windows blocked out the sun, the room was a mess and there was a lady's backpack on the table. "This is Mom's room." Chen Yang, 6, told reporters.
"Don't Mom and Dad sleep together at night?"
"Not together, Dad went to work far away, Mom was at Grandma's house."
After the incident, the two children rarely went up to the third floor and slept with their grandparents at night.
At the end of August, the third floor of Chen Xiaofeng's home was no longer inhabited.
Seeing the clothes scattered in the room, Chen Yang said, "It was dad who broke it." Suddenly, he asked thoughtfully, "What happened?" Why doesn't it feel right? ”
Chen Yu, a 3-year-old younger brother, saw a red envelope bag and kept shouting: "Gifts, gifts for me, here are gifts..."
It was August 27, more than 40 days after their mother disappeared and almost a week after her father was taken away.
Chen Yang realized that something had happened at home, but he didn't know exactly what was going on. "Mom and Dad are not at home, and I feel like they're dead, or have they gone to work far away?" I do not know. He bowed his head and said to himself, "Mommy and Daddy, must be dead, right?" ”
Every time Chen Jianguo heard it, he couldn't help but shed tears. Chen Jianguo, 61, is skinny. A few years ago, he had an eye disease, and the doctor said that he could not have surgery and could only take medicine for treatment. Later, I stopped the drug without money, and my eyesight became worse and worse. Now, he can only sit on a stool and scold his grandson.
Chen Yang still remembers that his mother took him to the playground to play, there was a big slide, blocks, sea balls, everything, and a big basketball court...
Chen Yu flipped out the toy while introducing: "This is bought by dad, dad bought a lot of toys, this building block was sent by his cousin... There is also a Pig Man. ”
Chen Yang's father and mother.
Today, Li Cuihua only has a salary of more than 2,000 yuan per month to support a family of four. She is not in good health, has high blood pressure, and has to take medicine every day. On August 30, the staff of the Lincun Village Committee introduced that Li Cuihua had applied for a minimum guarantee and that they were going through the procedure.
Liu Li thought about taking a child back to Wuzhou. But Li Cuihua is reluctant to give up her grandson, she only hopes that the other party will forgive her son for the sake of the child and "let him go."
"When he killed people and destroyed corpses, how come he didn't think about children?" Liu Li could not forgive Chen Xiaofeng.
For two young children, life changes are inevitable. For the long years to come, what awaits them will be a childhood without the love of their parents, and a cruel truth that has not yet been known.
One day, Chen Yang stole milk, and Li Cuihua beat him with her hands, making him scream "wow wow". Chen Yu sat next to him and said softly, "I think of my mother, and my father." ”
"That's how Dad laughed." Chen Yang said as he sipped his mouth and pretended to be his father.
Editor-in-charge: Zhang Xiaolian
Proofreader: Luan Meng