A discarded train ticket helped find the murderer.

On the evening of September 26, 2015, the police in Liuhe County, Jilin Province, China received a report that someone had discovered a body in a cornfield in a rural area. After two hours of driving and walking, the investigation team arrived at the scene.

The informant said that he went up the mountain to pick mushrooms in the afternoon, and when it was almost dark, he took a shortcut home. Passing a cornfield, he saw many fallen trees. Out of curiosity, he went in to look and discovered the body of a woman.

The cornfield was located in a relatively remote area, with only one crop a year, so farmers rarely visited. The police immediately assumed that the victim or perpetrator was a local, since outsiders would not know about the area.

Police determined that the victim was about 40 years old, with a relatively fresh scar on her lower abdomen, possibly from an appendectomy within the past two years. There were signs of murder on her neck, and she was wearing a thin dress that was not suitable for the cold climate in northeastern China. The victim was not wearing shoes, and there were clear drag marks from the edge of the cornfield to the middle of the field, so police speculated that this was just a place to dump the body, not a crime scene.

Because the victim’s clothes were wet, investigators took them home to dry and then checked them, and discovered a very small folded train ticket in the left pocket of the shirt. The information on the ticket showed that the departure point was at 4:00 a.m. on September 21, 2015 in Shenyang City (Liaoning Province), and the destination was Xiong Yue City (also in Liaoning). The name of the person who bought the ticket was Li Jian, and the ID number was attached.

The police asked: The train ticket did not belong to the victim, so why was it in the pocket? What was Li Jian's connection? Was he the murderer? The place where the body was found was Jilin Province, but both the departure and destination points on the train ticket were in neighboring Liaoning Province. Was the victim murdered in Liaoning or Jilin?

From the ID number on the ticket, the police verified that Li Jian was also a police officer, his residence was Shenyang but his unit was in Xiongyue, so he often traveled between these two places. Surveillance cameras at the train station showed that on September 21, 2015, Li Jian indeed boarded the train in Shenyang and got off at Xiongyue, and from start to finish, he was alone, without anyone else.

Li Jian confirmed that the ticket belonged to him, but had no idea who the victim was. Unable to rule out suspicion, the task force invited Li Jian to Jilin to cooperate in the investigation. Because Li Jian was a police officer, the investigation team had to go to his unit to complete the relevant procedures, and unexpectedly learned the victim's identity as a result.

During the investigation, Li Jian's deputy team leader said that a few days ago, someone reported that his sister had been missing for six or seven days, which coincided with the time of the victim's death. Thanks to the deputy team leader's contact with the reporter, the investigators learned that the missing person had just had an appendectomy more than a year ago. The police later identified the victim as the missing person - Min Xiaowei, a 41-year-old Liaoning resident who was divorced.

The victim’s younger brother said that his sister met someone through WeChat, with the intention of getting married. Meanwhile, Li Jian’s unit confirmed that Li Jian had never been to Jilin, nor did he have any acquaintances in Jilin, so he was temporarily eliminated as a suspect. The police speculated that the victim might have gone to Tonghua County to meet his lover and was murdered there. There was no train from where the victim lived to Tonghua, only a bus, and he had to change buses at Xiongyue.

Reviewing the surveillance video at Hung Nhac bus station, the police saw the victim get on the bus there. Surveillance video at Thong Hoa bus station showed the victim getting off the bus and a man coming to pick her up, this could be her boyfriend and also the main suspect.

Continuing to ask taxi drivers near the body dump, the police received information that early in the morning of September 22, 2015, a man was taken from the roadside nearby to an ATM. Looking at the surveillance video of this ATM, the police discovered that he took a bank card from a woman's handbag that looked very similar to the victim's and withdrew 1,500 yuan. The bank's system showed that this was the victim's card.

At this point, the culprit was revealed. He was Han Lin, from Tonghua, who had been in prison for robbery more than 10 years ago and was living in poverty in Liaoning. By chance, he became friends with Min Xiaowei, who lived in the same city, through the WeChat app. Seeing the gold necklace around Min Xiaowei's neck in her profile picture, he planned to commit the crime.

After only one month, the relationship between the two people progressed rapidly. Han Lam proposed to marry Man Tieu Vi and invited her to his hometown to meet his parents. Man Tieu Vi accepted, but Han Lam did not return home to Thong Hoa but hid his whereabouts, then went to pick her up and carried out the plan to kill her and dispose of her body.

The case was closed, but the Investigation Committee still could not clarify why Li Jian's train ticket was in the victim's pocket. They only knew that the police officer had conveniently thrown the ticket away after getting off the train. The train station was 500 meters away from the bus station. Why did the victim pick up this used ticket? Perhaps only the victim knew the answer. However, thanks to this action, the police were able to find their way to Liaoning Province, the victim's hometown. What was even more coincidental was that the ticket they picked up belonged to the police, and the police unit had received a missing person report about the victim...