Gansu Baiyin Police Solve 16-Year-Old Murder Case, Four Suspects Apprehended

On July 26, the Gansu Provincial Public Security Department disclosed via its official WeChat account that the Baiyin City Pingchuan District Public Security Bureau has achieved a major breakthrough in a cold case investigation, successfully solving a 16-year-old murder case and apprehending four suspects.

On the afternoon of July 23, the task force for the "2010·04·07" cold case in Baiyin City's Pingchuan District returned triumphantly, with the involved criminal suspects successfully escorted back.

On April 7, 2010, an intentional injury resulting in death occurred in the Pingchuan District of Baiyin City. The crime scene was secluded, with no video surveillance available, and the physical evidence that could be collected at the scene was scarce. Due to the limitations of forensic technology at the time, the case investigation never achieved a substantive breakthrough.

Over the past 16 years, the criminal investigation departments of the Baiyin City and Pingchuan District Public Security Bureaus have worked in relay to tackle the case, forming specialized teams to repeatedly review physical evidence from the scene, check remaining clues, and travel thousands of kilometers for investigation and evidence collection. Particularly this year, in strict accordance with the cold case crackdown deployment from the Ministry of Public Security and the Gansu Provincial Public Security Department, the public security bureaus at both the city and district levels have deeply integrated traditional investigation methods with modern technical analysis. They again reviewed and tested the physical evidence collected from the scene, ultimately identifying a suspect surnamed Zhao.

After obtaining key evidence in the case, the task force police acted decisively and successfully arrested the suspect Zhao in Bazhong, Sichuan, on the afternoon of July 21. During interrogation, Zhao truthfully confessed to the crime of beating the victim to death in collusion with others in the Pingchuan District of Baiyin City. The task force followed up on this lead and apprehended all three remaining suspects involved in the case. Currently, the case is under further investigation and prosecution.