Diary of a Criminal Investigator-Chapter 301: Basic Information

"Zhou Yang... he was mischievous when he was little, growing up with his grandma. We were busy with school matters and didn’t have time to look after him."

"Later, when he entered elementary school, he was in my class, but he didn’t like to study."

"He was okay in elementary school because I was watching over him. He just didn’t do well academically, but once he got to middle school..."

From the information provided by Zhou Yang’s father, it can be deduced that Zhou Yang was actually pampered from a young age.

His parents were both teachers. When they first started working, they had stable salaries, and the family was relatively well-off.

However, being a teacher’s child doesn’t necessarily mean being a good student.

Zhang Hui once had a classmate whose mother was a teacher. That classmate also didn’t do particularly well in school and relied on the fact that his mother was a teacher, almost becoming a school bully.

Zhou Yang was in a similar situation. He didn’t study hard back then, and it got worse in middle school, with skipping classes to go to internet cafes becoming routine.

During the high school entrance exams, he didn’t get into the local high school and had to attend a vocational school.

"He didn’t learn much of value at vocational school either, but he did make a lot of bad friends, and later..."

Zhou’s father sighed repeatedly, "We just couldn’t control him. We sent him some money every month. This apartment... he never told us the exact location. Today is actually our first time here."

In fact, Zhou Yang’s father doesn’t know much about Zhou Yang.

In their impression, Zhou Yang still seems to be the well-behaved child from elementary school. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

"Does Zhou Yang have any particularly good friends, or a girlfriend?"

"Girlfriend... we don’t know. He only calls his mom when he needs money each month."

"As for friends, he has a childhood friend who went to vocational school with him, named Wang Zhi."

"Do you have a phone number for him?"

"We don’t, but we know Wang Zhi’s parents and have their contact information."

...

On the rooftop.

Lu Chuan and Liu Guodong braved the increasing sun, thoroughly sweeping the entire rooftop.

They collected over thirty evidence bags.

"Master, that’s about it. I’m heading back to do evidence analysis."

Liu Guodong hadn’t worked outdoors for this long in a while, and his old back was starting to ache.

"In hindsight, we should have asked Old Yang and the others to join us."

In fact, the workload of crime scene investigations in the past wasn’t as intense as it is now.

For a site like the rooftop, they would have been done in about one or two hours previously.

There was even uncertainty about whether they would find the wiped drag marks.

Lu Chuan’s joining has undoubtedly raised the technical level of Haizhou City’s Criminal Investigation Team’s crime scene investigations by more than one tier.

Old Yang and Old Bai weren’t idle in the team either, preparing for trace evidence analysis.

Since the establishment of the trace evidence laboratory, Lu Chuan has been teaching Liu Guodong and the others how to operate the equipment whenever he has time.

After a period of practice, Old Yang and Old Bai have become proficient in trace evidence analysis.

Of course, this is just on a technical level, and the focus of trace evidence analysis is still to combine it with the crime scene.

"Brother Yang, you start with the trace evidence analysis. I’ll go up to do the footprint and fingerprint identification."

"Alright, don’t worry. We’ll have results in about two to three hours."

Lu Chuan’s workload was still the largest.

Footprint identification analysis and fingerprint identification analysis.

On the aluminum door, seven fingerprints were collected, but none were found on the rooftop.

This is not good news.

If the perpetrator didn’t wear gloves during the crime, there would not only be fingerprints on the door but also on the rooftop.

However, if the fingerprints are only on the door, it’s very likely they belong to others who accessed the rooftop.

The specific situation is still uncertain, pending the identification analysis results.

If there are unfamiliar fingerprints, it might be necessary to collect fingerprints from the entire apartment’s residents.

Lu Chuan first tackled fingerprint identification analysis.

In any case, fingerprint identification and comparison tend to provide relatively quick clues.

Most fingerprints on the aluminum door were collected from the door handle.

Because of the irregular shape of the handle, the pressure on the fingerprints was significant, making it difficult to process.

Fortunately, Lu Chuan has advanced fingerprint identification and analysis skills, so it only requires more time and never fails.

In fact, this is now Haizhou City’s Criminal Investigation Team’s biggest advantage.

In other places, even if they collected fingerprints in a homicide case, successful identification was not guaranteed.

For instance, fingerprints collected from door handles mostly resulted in identification failures.

Soon, all seven fingerprints were identified.

But the results weren’t encouraging.

Among the seven fingerprints, three individuals were matched.

Two of them were women in their fifties, likely cleaning staff of the apartment.

The other person was twenty-three, shown in the system as an employee of a security company.

In that case, it’s likely the fingerprints were left during a security patrol.

However, Lu Chuan didn’t take it lightly and immediately forwarded the information on the three individuals to the two action groups in the investigation line.

"Brother Sun, there are three people in total. Please check if there are any issues on your end."

"Alright, don’t worry. I’ll verify it now."

After hanging up, Lu Chuan focused all his efforts on the footprint identification analysis.

Looking at the scene, these footprints were regularly distributed around the wiped drag marks left by the perpetrator.

The footprint patterns were the same and consistent in size, confirming that they were left by the perpetrator.

Lu Chuan held high hopes for these footprints.

"Lu, how’s it going?"

Liu Guodong came up from the basement just in time to see Lu Chuan measuring footprint data.

The work downstairs was nearing completion; most of the trace evidence had completed chemical processing and was on the equipment.

Old Yang and Old Bai were monitoring below, expecting results in about half an hour.

"Fingerprint identification is finished. I’ve sent the results of the seven fingerprints to Group Leader Sun for verification, but..."

Lu Chuan pointed to the shoe print model that had been imprinted.

"The fingerprint owners are two women in their fifties and a young man of twenty-three."

"However, at a glance, the shoe prints seem to belong to a male, around 175 cm tall, but older, likely over thirty."

"So we can basically exclude the possibility of the fingerprint owners being the perpetrator?"

"Pretty much, and the footprint identification work is almost done. It’ll be ready in half an hour."

Forty minutes later, Qin Yong received the footprint identification analysis report from Lu Chuan on his phone.

"Male, height 173 to 176 cm, weight around 70 kg, aged between 34 to 38 years."

"Shows a slight outward gait and missing a little toe on the left foot!"