董文语, a drifter from Pingyang County in southern Zhejiang, was linked by police in the summer of 2006 to a run of break-ins in eastern China that had left six people dead. He was 28 when he was caught that November, the Zhejiang Legal System Daily reported. Between March and May of that year, according to the Zhejiang Legal System Daily, five cases in three provinces were tied to one man: two in the city of Jinhua, in central Zhejiang, one in Fuding, in Fujian, and two in Shangrao, in Jiangxi. Six people were killed, one was seriously injured and one was lightly injured.
The Ministry of Public Security issued an A-level wanted notice for him on July 6, 2006, and police across the country joined the search. He was caught on the morning of November 16, 2006, in Yibin, in Sichuan, far to the west. On June 8, 2007, the Jinhua Intermediate People's Court convicted him of intentional homicide, with other charges, and sentenced him to death.
He was born in 1978 in Pingyang, in Zhejiang, into a farming family, the Procuratorial Daily reported in June 2007, drawing on the case files and on interviews with the prosecutors who tried him. A CCTV.com feature published in January 2007 gave his birthday as November 26, 1978, as his mother remembered it. The Zhejiang Legal System Daily gave his home as a village in Pingyang's 龙尾乡, 百尖村. The CCTV.com feature described him as a slight man, under 160 centimeters tall.
His father gambled, and his parents quarreled often before they divorced, according to the Procuratorial Daily. He had a brother three years older. The CCTV.com feature said the boys were largely brought up by their grandparents while their parents worked away from home, and that his grandfather, the relative who stood up for him most, died when he was seven or eight. Speaking later to investigators, he said he resented his parents for leaving him but remembered his grandmother with affection, because she had been kind to him.
He had three years of primary school. In 1989, at about 11, he left home and began to wander. He lived by picking through rubbish for things to sell, moving from Jinhua to Hangzhou to Shanghai and on to Guangzhou. For a few months he went back to Pingyang and worked with his parents, then left again. At 15, the Procuratorial Daily reported, he set off with a little over 400 yuan to learn martial arts at the Shaolin Temple and was cheated out of the money on the way. He drifted through Beijing, Hebei, Wenzhou and Guangzhou, and for more than a year he lived as a monk in a temple. At different times he worked in an electrical appliance factory, a shoe factory and on building sites, and he left each job because the work was hard or the pay came slowly, prosecutors said.
In 1998, in Wenzhou, he injured a man in a quarrel at a video arcade. On January 21, 1998, a district court in Wenzhou (温州市鹿城区法院) convicted him of intentional injury and sentenced him to one year and six months. Soon after his release he was convicted again: on December 7, 1999, a district court in Hangzhou (杭州市滨江区法院) sentenced him to two years and six months for theft. Police records cited by CCTV.com put his last release from prison in 2002. The Zhejiang Legal System Daily said he also had records for other offenses in Jinhua, Dongyang and Fujian.
From 2004, according to the Procuratorial Daily, he was stealing again, moving between Yiwu, Dongyang, Jinhua and Hangzhou. The Jinhua police, CCTV.com reported, believed that his hostility toward Jinhua in particular went back to the way he had been treated during an earlier arrest in the city.
In Shangrao, in Jiangxi, a husband and wife were injured during a break-in that police labelled the "3·4" case, the Zhejiang Legal System Daily reported. Police later linked the case to the others.
On March 11, 2006, in Jinhua, two people were killed: a man of 21 and a woman of 22, whom the Procuratorial Daily described as a young couple.
About ten days later he went to see his mother, whom he had not seen for seven years. She had remarried and was living in a village in the Wenzhou area. According to the CCTV.com feature, he arrived on March 21 and stood behind her for a long time before she realized who he was. He stayed about seven days, smoked and said little to the villagers, and did not want to talk about his work. Early on March 27 he left without saying where he was going.
Two days after he left, CCTV.com reported, a 16-year-old girl was killed in Fuding, in Fujian, in the case police labelled "3·29". In April two sisters were killed in Jinhua; the Procuratorial Daily dated that case April 9, while the Zhejiang Legal System Daily called it the "4·4" case. In the case labelled "5·25", a woman of 27 was killed in Shangrao. CCTV.com counted five attacks in three provinces within two months.
The Procuratorial Daily gave the victims' ages as ranging from 15 to 26, a span that differs from the ages printed by the Zhejiang Legal System Daily. In five cases, six people had died: the couple, the sisters, the girl in Fuding and the woman in Shangrao. None of the six was named in the reports, which gave only their surnames and ages.
The killings frightened people in Jinhua, Fuding and Shangrao. The Procuratorial Daily wrote that many residents, especially women, stopped going out at night and avoided staying home alone while the man responsible was at large.
The Zhejiang Provincial Public Security Department, the Jinhua Municipal Public Security Bureau and its Jiangnan branch formed a joint task force after the Jinhua killings. Forensic specialists examined traces from the Fuding case and concluded that the killer had left them. Through technical comparison police linked the Fuding case to the two killings in Jinhua and to the two cases in Shangrao, and concluded that one man had committed all five.
On July 4, 2006, criminal investigators of the Jiangnan branch matched the technical evidence to a man using the name 涂典波. The task force then established that his real name was 董文语. Two days later, on July 6, the Ministry of Public Security issued its A-level wanted notice. On July 12 a video conference brought together police from 13 provinces and municipalities, and a nationwide search began.
He was on the move through those months. A notebook he carried, as CCTV.com described it, showed that he was angry about the bounty placed on him, reported as 100,000 yuan. He wrote that he had tried to head for the border with Myanmar but had run short of money and had turned back toward western Zhejiang.
He was arrested in Yibin, Sichuan, on the morning of November 16, 2006, the Zhejiang Provincial Public Security Department's press office announced, as reported by the Zhejiang Legal System Daily. Officers from the provincial department and from Jinhua left for Sichuan that afternoon to bring him back to Zhejiang. He was returned to Jinhua three days after his capture, according to the Procuratorial Daily.
On November 17, 2006, the Jiangnan branch of the Jinhua Public Security Bureau placed him in criminal detention on suspicion of intentional homicide. On December 20, 2006, the procuratorate of Jinhua's 婺城区 district approved his formal arrest on suspicion of intentional homicide, robbery and another offense, CCTV.com reported.
CCTV.com counted him among the killers whose cases marked 2006, beside 石悦军 and 邱兴华, and noted that both of those men had been executed in December 2006, 石悦军 on December 20, the day the arrest of 董文语 was approved.
On April 17, 2007, Jinhua prosecutors indicted him on five counts: intentional homicide, robbery, theft, insulting a corpse and one further count. The Jinhua Intermediate People's Court heard the case in closed session on May 15, 2007.
He admitted the facts. 李克勤, a deputy chief prosecutor of Jinhua who appeared for the state, told the Procuratorial Daily that the defendant was icy throughout, seemed proud of what he had done and showed no remorse. The lead case handler was 陈世河.
On June 8, 2007, the Jinhua Intermediate People's Court found him guilty on all counts. It combined the punishments and sentenced him to death, with deprivation of political rights for life and confiscation of all his personal property. He showed no reaction when the sentence was read, the Procuratorial Daily reported.
In interviews with investigators and prosecutors, as reported by the Procuratorial Daily, he described a life in which no one had cared for him. Relatives, he said, treated him well when he had money and mocked him when he did not. He said he acted out of hatred for society. A person in despair, he told them, could either kill himself or kill others, and he had chosen to kill. Under questioning he said that other people lived better than he did, and that the sight of their comfortable homes made him angry.
The two prosecutors offered the Procuratorial Daily their own reading of the case. 陈世河 described a "problem family" that had produced a "problem youth": a boy who grew up without love after his parents split. 李克勤 said children raised that way were prone to feelings of inferiority, quick anger and hostility toward society, and that he saw all three in this defendant. In their account, leaving home at 12, hardship, being cheated and repeated failures led him into theft, and each arrest and prison term deepened his sense of inferiority and his defiance.
They also pointed to his own part. He had little education and a weak sense of the law, they said, and he was extremely selfish and narrow-minded. 陈世河 said that the defendant used his unhappy childhood as an excuse, and that this itself showed how self-centered he was. Ending the interview, 李克勤 said that selfish, narrow thinking led only to a dead end, while honest effort brought its own rewards.
The reports differ on several details. The Procuratorial Daily dated the second Jinhua case April 9, 2006, while the Zhejiang Legal System Daily called it the "4·4" case. The Procuratorial Daily wrote that the cases in Fuding and Shangrao followed the two in Jinhua, while the Zhejiang Legal System Daily listed a Shangrao case under the label "3·4". The Procuratorial Daily gave the victims' ages as 15 to 26; the Zhejiang Legal System Daily gave the girl in Fuding as 16 and the woman in Shangrao as 27. The prosecutors' analysis had him leaving home at 12, while the same article and the Zhejiang Legal System Daily said he left at about 11, or in his third year of primary school.
His date of birth rests on his mother's memory as reported by CCTV.com. CCTV.com gave the bounty of 100,000 yuan as a reported figure, without naming the authority that offered it. The court's judgment itself was not published in the reports on the verdict, and the victims were identified only by surname.
1978: Born in Pingyang County, Zhejiang (November 26, by his mother's account).
1989: Leaves home at about 11 and begins drifting.
January 21, 1998: Sentenced in Wenzhou to one year and six months for intentional injury.
December 7, 1999: Sentenced in Hangzhou to two years and six months for theft.
2002: Released from prison.
2004: Begins a new round of thefts in Yiwu, Dongyang, Jinhua and Hangzhou.
March to May 2006: Five break-ins in Zhejiang, Fujian and Jiangxi; six people killed and two injured.
March 11, 2006: A man of 21 and a woman of 22 killed in Jinhua.
March 21, 2006: Arrives at his mother's village in the Wenzhou area; leaves early on March 27.
Late March 2006: A 16-year-old girl killed in Fuding, Fujian (police label "3·29").
April 2006: Two sisters killed in Jinhua (April 9 in one report; labelled "4·4" in another).
Spring 2006: A married couple injured in Shangrao (label "3·4"); a woman of 27 killed in Shangrao (label "5·25").
July 4, 2006: Investigators match evidence to the name 涂典波 and identify him.
July 6, 2006: Ministry of Public Security issues an A-level wanted notice.
July 12, 2006: National video conference with 13 provinces and municipalities.
November 16, 2006: Arrested in Yibin, Sichuan.
November 17, 2006: Placed in criminal detention by the Jiangnan branch of the Jinhua Public Security Bureau.
December 20, 2006: Formal arrest approved by the 婺城区 procuratorate in Jinhua.
April 17, 2007: Indicted on five counts.
May 15, 2007: Closed trial at the Jinhua Intermediate People's Court.
June 8, 2007: Convicted of intentional homicide, with other charges, and sentenced to death at first instance.