Ancient Chinese criminal investigation methods are divided into eight types, namely: face-watching, torture, ghosts, dreams, experiments, bookshots, reasoning, and the use of criminal psychology. The use of criminal psychology in ancient times to solve cases is not the same thing as modern ones, it is more like using some psychological characteristics of criminals to "dig a pit" and make them throw themselves into the net. The following is a classic method of using this method to crack a strange case in ancient China - touching the clock.
Shen Kuo, a great scientist of the Song Dynasty, recorded a story called "Stating ancient captures" in the "Mengxi Pen Talk".
Shugu's real name was Chen Xiang (陈襄), a Song Dynasty Marquis (present-day Minhou of Fujian), who served as a Privy Counsellor and was in charge of ShangshuDu. When he was serving as the county commander of Pucheng County, Jianzhou (建州, in present-day Jian'ou, Fujian), a wealthy local family was stolen at night, lost a large amount of property, and arrested many suspects, but did not know who the real culprit was.
The ancient statement said: "There is a bell in a certain temple, and the spirit can distinguish thieves." Then he sent someone to carry the bell and place it in the back of the attic, and first performed a ritual sacrifice, and then "led the prisoner to the front of the bell," saying to them, "The magic of this bell is that if it is not a thief, it will not make a sound if it is touched, but if you steal something, you will make a sound when you touch it." ”
Then, Shu Gu led the county officials to solemnly pray to the "god bell", and then "surrounded it with a drapery", and then led all the criminal suspects into the curtain one by one to touch the bell. After all touched, the bell did not ring, at this time the statement Gu let everyone raise their hands, most of the people's palms are black ink, "a prisoner alone without ink, but to see the real thief" - the original statement Gu in the curtain after the curtain let people smear ink on the bell, and the real thief is afraid to touch the bell sound, so dare not touch, so the two clean palms exposed his criminal facts.
The Qing Dynasty notebook "Records of Hearings" also recorded a strange case.
There was a strange case in a county where a woman drowned in a water tank on a sunny day. At first, everyone thought that the woman was not careful, and her body lost its center of gravity and fell into it when she was fetching water, but soon a small child came out to testify that he saw that a neighbor A had pushed the woman into the water tank while she was drawing water.
Unexpectedly, after A was escorted to the official palace, he shouted injustice. The prefect called witnesses to confront him. The little child still bitten to death "by seeing his neighbor die." The prefect summoned the child to the office and cajoled him with food, but still did not get anything of value. Everyone else felt that since this was the case, the case could be closed with A deliberately killing people, but the prefect always felt that A did not look like a murderer.
So he took all the people involved in the case to the City God Temple, painted the inside of the big bell in the temple with coal ash in advance, and then conducted an interrogation, and halfway through the trial, suddenly all the people involved in the case hung their hands into the bell. The prefect particularly emphasized: "Last night I had a dream, and I dreamed that the city god told me that although this case is strange, he is willing to help me, and he can write the name of the murderer on the palm of his hand, and after you put your hand into the bell, you can take it out in a moment, but you are not allowed to stick your palm on the clock, otherwise the city god will not be able to write." ”
When the prefect asked the people hanging in the bell to take out their hands, something happened that made everyone stunned, everyone spread out their innocent and clean palms, only the woman's father-in-law's palm was black, and the prefect immediately ordered him to be taken down: "You killed your daughter-in-law!" ”
And the old man also immediately confessed guilt, it turned out that he had a conflict with a certain A, and he always looked at his daughter-in-law unfavorably, that day "saw his daughter-in-law drawing water in the water tank, with her hand raised backwards, and his daughter-in-law turned into the water tank and died." Then he bribed the teenager to commit perjury and framed his neighbors for murder, but in the end he did not dare to let chenghuang write on his hand, and put his palm in the bell.
Of course, the ancients used criminal psychology to solve cases, not only the trick of "touching the bell", such as the "rich room death gold noodles" case recorded in the "History of The Song Dynasty" recorded in taixing County, which was similar to the "touching the bell".
A rich family lost a valuable gold noodle, and at that time there were only two maids in the house doing housework, so they suspected that they were guarding and stealing, so they arrested and sent them to the officials.
Both maids cried out that if they were left to other officials, they would be directly sentenced, while Liu Zai rarely used torture to extract confessions in the case. He sent a reed pipe to the two suspects and said, "This is 'Shen Lu, there is a role that can distinguish the true from the false, each of you take one home, tomorrow to take it back, there is no one who stole the gold noodle, the reed pipe will be as long as today, and the person who stole the gold noodle, tomorrow the reed pipe will grow two inches." ”
The next morning, the two maids took their own reed pipe back to the county, Liu Zai took a look, one of them remained the same, the other was exactly two inches shorter than yesterday, it turned out that the maid who stole the gold noodle was worried all night, worried that the reed pipe would become longer, just today the drought cut off two inches, but it led to her own exposure.
There was also a case that occurred in Taiyuan, a family, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law are widows, mother-in-law Xu Niang is half old, all day long to show off the style, "village scoundrels frequently do it", the daughter-in-law can not see it, often drive away those hooligans who gather at the door of the house.
The mother-in-law suspected that the daughter-in-law was bad for her own good deeds, so she wanted to drive her out of the house, the daughter-in-law of course refused, the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law made trouble in the county court, the mother-in-law actually bit back and said that the daughter-in-law was "unchaste", and the daughter-in-law was angry and stunned.
This kind of "family ugliness" is the most difficult to say clearly. Taiyuan Fu also felt that it was difficult to deal with, and heard that Linjin County made Sun Liu good at judging cases, so he assigned him this job.
After Sun Liu's preliminary examination, he asked ya to prepare broken stones and knives. The next day, when everything was in place, Sun Liu summoned some of the most famous local flower-seekers to ask Liu, asked them to kneel, and then said to the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law: "The adulteress in this case is undecided, but the adulterer can't run away from them!" Your family was originally a clean white family, unfortunately lured by bandits for a while, and the mistakes were all on them, and now there are stones and knives in the hall, and this official allows you to take your own tools and kill these adulterous thieves! ”
Upon hearing this, the daughter-in-law jumped up, "holding up a boulder with both hands, hating not immediately killing it", while the mother-in-law "only hits the hip leg with a small stone", the daughter-in-law can not lift the big stone, at a glance at the knife, grabbed a knife and was about to poke into the heart of the rogue, while the mother-in-law "did not go down". In this kung fu, Sun Liu had already ordered the servants to stop their daughter-in-law, and then said, "I already know who is a virgin and who is an adulteress!" Upon hearing this, the mother-in-law helplessly lowered her head...