The elderly leader with gray spots, the humble face with wrinkles, and the worn-out cotton clothes... No one would have thought that Lao Gong, who had been farming for nearly 20 years in Shangfeng, Jiangning, Nanjing, was actually an escaped convict.
After drinking tea, fingerprints were left on the glass cup...
On December 10, community police officers visited Du Xianxue's home under the guise of conducting a household survey. Du Xianxue, seeing the police, engaged them in casual conversation. When he enthusiastically offered tea to the officers, they asked him to pour himself a cup as well. Subsequently, the police quietly retrieved fingerprints from the glass cup Du had used.
Fugitive Caught
Half a month ago, the Shangfeng police station in Jiangning received an assistance call from the Chuanan Prison of Sichuan's Gong County. The prison claimed that Du Mou, an inmate who had escaped 32 years ago, might have settled in the Shangfeng area, but his current identity information and address were still uncertain. After further investigation by the police, it was learned that the Sichuan police obtained clues about Du's whereabouts from his relatives. Originally, after being imprisoned in 1976, Du's wife divorced him, leaving their son Xiao Fei (a pseudonym) to wander and beg in their hometown in Sichuan. The Sichuan police discovered that recently Xiao Fei suddenly registered in Nanjing, and his relatives said he went to join his father.
Unlike many other fugitives, Du Mou refused to deny his criminal acts when caught by the police. When reporters met him at the Jiangning detention center yesterday, he refused to communicate with anyone and pretended not to understand Mandarin or Nanjing dialect. "He was pretending to be confused; before we visited his home, he chatted warmly with us, but this day, after being taken to the police station, he changed completely and did not cooperate," the police officer said.
Police learned from village cadres that when Du Xianxue moved to Shangfeng, he came with his wife and two children. After settling down, they rented several acres of farmland and had never quarreled with anyone in the nearly 20 years since. Now, he has become a grandfather, enjoying family happiness.
His Past
Selling his "wife" for 40 yuan plus 5 pounds of grain tickets
Soon, Du Xianxue's fingerprints were sent to the Sichuan police. On December 11, Chuanan Prison confirmed: Du Xianxue's fingerprint characteristics matched those of the fugitive Du Mou.
Between 1971 and 1974, Du Mou conspired with others to abduct and sell five women, for which he was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 1975. During his imprisonment, while working as a miner digging coal, he found an opportunity to hide in the mine tunnel and escape. Half a month ago, Du Mou's son registered in Nanjing, exposing his father's whereabouts. Subsequently, the Jiangning police visited Du's home under the pretense of a household survey, collecting fingerprints from the glass cup he used during tea-drinking, successfully capturing him. Yesterday, Du Mou was handed over to the Sichuan police.
Yesterday, the Shangfeng police station handed over Du Mou to the Sichuan police. One of the officers escorting Du back to Sichuan was the same prison guard who once supervised him. Reporters saw Du's original judgment document — he was a human trafficker who also raped abducted women.
To further confirm Du Xianxue's identity, the police contacted the Sichuan authorities again.
It took ten days of reviewing archives to find the information.
In the 1970s, Du Mou, then in his twenties, was lazy and unemployed in his hometown in Sichuan. Relying on his good looks and eloquence, he traveled between Sichuan and Chongqing, deceiving some women into selling them in Guizhou. The judgment document showed: after abducting one woman, Du Mou received 40 yuan in cash and an additional 5 pounds of national grain tickets. "This was quite a 'huge sum' at the time," the investigating officer said.
"If no online records are available, check the old migration archives. We must capture this fugitive," Pu Qihua said. Subsequently, the police station pulled out the original migration documents of people moving to Shangfeng from 1980 onwards. After ten days of review, they finally discovered a suspect among tens of thousands of records: Du Xianxue, 61 years old, who migrated from Wusheng County, Sichuan, to Shangfeng in April 1992.
Upon learning this, the experienced Chief of the Shangfeng Police Station, Pu Qihua, immediately instructed the officers to investigate the registration information of Xiao Fei and Du Mou. Through online searches, they found Xiao Fei's registration information, but there was no mention of Du Mou, making it impossible to determine if Xiao Fei lived with his father.
The police compared the photo provided by the Sichuan police of Du Mou with the photo on Du Xianxue's ID card. Due to the passage of more than 30 years, it was impossible to tell from the photos alone whether they were the same person. "The only resemblance is in their ears," the investigating officer told reporters.
According to the Sichuan police, during his imprisonment, Du Mou mainly worked as a coal miner. One day in 1979, after descending into the mine, he never came back up. Because there were numerous tunnels underground, the prison authorities searched for days without finding him, concluding that Du Mou had hidden somewhere in the mine and slipped away unnoticed. Starting from 1980, the Sichuan police had tracked Du Mou's movements, but whenever they arrived at his location, he had already left. Since then, Du Mou remained missing.
Yesterday at 1 PM, Du Mou boarded a train back to Sichuan with the police, awaiting legal punishment.