Serial killers and true crime

Shanghai police finally tracked down a serial killer suspected in four unsolved cases dating back to 1981, after matching anold partial finger print of his to another eerily similar print found in a police data base system two months ago, local media reported Wednesday.

Suspect Ai Hongguang, a 60-something Jiangxi Province native, confessed to three murders and one attempted murder, after he was caught by police at a Jiangxi construction site in April. DragonTV reported that Ai thought he could “kill people just like fish farmers harvest fish with electrocution.”

Of his alleged murders, Ai is accused of electrocuting a hotel guest to death during a robbery in Jing’an district more than 30 years ago. In August of  1981, police were only able to find a partial fingerprint of his at the crimescene, where some wires – the suspected murder weapon – were also left behind. 

Ai is suspected of posing as a medical professional at a hotel, where he killed his roommate (it was common for traveling business men to share rooms with strangers at the time) after stealing his belongings and 200 yuan, considered a large sum of cash back then.

Police later found that Ai’s identification had been faked. After trying to match the partial print to some 400,000 hard copies of recorded fingerprints, they came up empty. Their investigation had no better luck, but lead police to believe that he was also behind three other similar cases that occurred in nearby areas over the next two months and resulted in two more deaths.

In April this year, police found a finger print in a police data base system, which was taken from a man who served three years of jail for robbery in 1983. It matched their partial print – and was found to be Ai’s. They used the identification to locate his where abouts.

Impressive. That is old fashioned police work! I am surprised that he confessed, I would think after all this time he would figure that the evidence had to be thin.

Electrocuted to death! Jeeze! What a horrible way to go.