CHINA – Li Haiyu traversed far and wide in search of the perpetrator who took the life of her 9-year-old brother, spending three years gathering information to assist the police. However, the body was never found, and the case went cold, leading to the suspect being released.
After years of complaints, on February 14th, Li Haiyu received notification from the People’s Procuratorate of Zhanjiang City, Guangdong Province. According to the notice, Dehe, the “culprit” whom Li Haiyu had pursued for over 20 years, had been handed over to the procuratorate for investigation and prosecution for the crime of intentional homicide.
After Dehe had been arrested and released multiple times, Li Haiyu hoped that justice would finally be served this time.
A Search Spanning Over 20 Years
In late 1992, Li Haiyu’s parents took up a sugarcane planting contract in Zhanjiang, hiring a fellow villager named Deqing, born in 1971, to work. He worked for one month, took two days off, and when his salary was paid, his money was deducted for two days, so he argued. Deqing ran to the school and lied that the boy’s mother was seriously ill to trick the 9-year-old boy named Li Huanping, Li Haiyu’s younger brother, into following him, on December 22, 1992.
On February 19, 1993, police discovered a heavily decomposed body in a sugarcane field not far from the school. At that time, Li Haiyu’s mother was in the countryside taking care of her sisters, and only their father and Li Haiyu’s elder sister went to identify the body. The body was incomplete and unidentifiable, but the clothes belonged to Li Huanping, and a six-fingered hand matched the boy’s description.
After the autopsy, the body was handed over to the family and buried by Li Haiyu’s father under a large tree by the road near the scene, awaiting transfer to their hometown. However, fearing for the health of his wife and children, Li Haiyu’s father kept Li Huanping’s murder secret, only secretly searching for Deqing. Meanwhile, the police’s hunt for Deqing yielded no results.
Li Haiyu always believed her brother had been kidnapped by Deqing. In 1997, at the age of 20, Li Haiyu worked odd jobs while keeping an ear out for news of Deqing. She traveled almost everywhere, including Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong, and Guangxi, searching for Deqing.
Li Haiyu was tricked out of money and almost kidnapped by human traffickers using the pretext of “searching for her brother.” After suffering many losses, Li Haiyu watched crime investigation movies and learned about scam techniques. She learned the local dialect and slept in parks or train stations to save money.
“Since my brother’s accident, my father has always been depressed, often leaving home alone for six months or even a year, and he passed away a few years later. I searched everywhere like a madman all year round, divorced my husband, and took my daughter with me. I always thought I would find my brother, and save money to build a two-story house but ended up building only half due to running out of money. I wanted my brother to have a home to come back to,” Li Haiyu said.
In 2016, while surveilling near Deqing’s house, Li Haiyu unexpectedly encountered him. At that moment, she was so agitated that she trembled, and had to bite her tongue to calm herself down. Li Haiyu pretended to be a colleague’s wife to strike up a conversation and get to know Deqing. When she befriended him on the WeChat app, she discovered he had changed his name to Dehe.
Li Haiyu spent three years chatting with Dehe online, often casually asking him about his whereabouts to monitor his movements. On March 5, 2019, Dehe admitted on WeChat that Deqing was his name during his school days.
In May 2020, Dehe was arrested by the police, confessing to the murder of Li Huanping, which was when Li Haiyu learned that her brother had long since passed away. Dehe expressed remorse: “I am sorry for that child. Being arrested is a relief.“
The suspect was not prosecuted due to the lack of evidence
On July 8, 2020, the Zhanjiang police excavated the burial site of Li Huanping but found no remains.
Li Haiyu’s elder sister had gone to identify the body back then, confirming that her younger brother had been murdered. However, she couldn’t locate the exact burial location because the area had undergone multiple plantings and road repairs. The police stopped digging after a few hours. Li Haiyu dug through the scene with her hands for a long time, hoping to find her brother, even if it was just a bone fragment.
Dehe was released six months after being arrested. In February 2021, the Zhanjiang City People’s Procuratorate issued a “Decision not to prosecute” Dehe. According to the decision, after being arrested, Dehe confessed to taking Li Huanping to the sugarcane field near Maixia Kham Village, Leizhou City, Guangdong Province, on the afternoon of December 22, 1992, stabbing the boy to death, and then fleeing the scene.
However, the evidence in this case consists only of Dehe’s confession, witness statements, and some documentary evidence. Among these, the statements of some villagers confirm that Dehe lured Li Huanping away, but there is no evidence proving that Dehe killed the boy. The commission of the crime is solely based on Dehe’s confession, with no other evidence available.
Li Huanping’s sister stated that the six-fingered hand found on the body discovered in the sugarcane field matched Li Huanping’s description. However, crucial pieces of evidence including the investigation records at the scene, autopsy reports, and the murder weapon found at the scene were all swept away by floods, unable to be supplemented or repaired. Additionally, there are doubts about the height and time of death of the body found in the sugarcane field.
During the case review process, the People’s Procuratorate requested the police to use all available means to supplement relevant evidence, including re-examining the body, but to no avail. Therefore, based on the existing evidence, it cannot be proven that the body found in the sugarcane field is Li Huanping’s. The evidence in this case cannot form a complete and conclusive chain of evidence and cannot eliminate reasonable doubts, thus insufficient to prove that Dehe intentionally committed homicide.
Upon learning this, Li Haiyu frequently suffered from insomnia, and her hearing began to deteriorate. “I raised more than 20 stray dogs in an unfinished house, thought about training them, then tricked Dehe to come and then kill him. But I still want him to face legal punishment. Over the past few years, I have continuously filed complaints to the Guangdong Provincial People’s Procuratorate,” Li Haiyu shared.
In November 2022, Li Haiyu received a “Notice of the result of settlement of complaints in criminal proceedings” from the Guangdong Provincial People’s Procuratorate. The People’s Procuratorate stated that some new evidence had been added during the case review process, concluding that the existing evidence was sufficient to determine that Dehe murdered Li Huanping, constituting the crime of intentional homicide, and decided to revoke the previous “Decision not to prosecute” and transfer the case to the Zhanjiang City People’s Procuratorate for prosecution according to the law.
Li Haiyu was not sure which new evidence had been added, only knowing that the local police returned to the old area to search for remains in February 2022. She was informed that Li Huanping’s body had still not been found, but the police found “four broken pieces” that may belong to a shovel buried with her younger brother.
On February 6th, Li Haiyu received a call from the People’s Procuratorate informing her that Dehe had been arrested for suspected intentional homicide and handed over to the People’s Procuratorate for prosecution. On February 14th, she received the official notification letter.
Li Haiyu stated that before passing away in 2014, her father left a note, instructing her to “definitely bring the culprit to justice.” Despite over 30 years having passed since the case occurred, the family will do everything possible to seek justice for Li Huanping.
