Murder of Shao Tong
41°38′07″N 91°29′58″W / 41.63539°N 91.49937°W
Shao Tong | |
---|---|
邵童 | |
blunt force trauma | |
Body discovered | September 26, 2014, Iowa City, Iowa |
Nationality | Chinese |
On September 26, 2014, police found a body later identified as 19-year-old Shao Tong (
Shao had last been seen on September 7 at a hotel outside Nevada, Iowa, a small town east of Ames, where ISU is located. She had been spending the weekend there with her boyfriend, Li Xiangnan (Chinese: 李向南), a student at the University of Iowa, located in Iowa City. Her car and body were in the apartment complex he lived in.[4]
Li was not present. Police believe that after abruptly checking out of the hotel the following morning, he had used her phone to text her friends that she was going to be away for a while and that Li had to return to China for a family emergency. While there was no evidence of Shao's purported travel, Li had flown back to Beijing, but beyond that point his whereabouts were unknown.
Early in 2015, authorities in
Background
Shao was born in the coastal Chinese city of
Yuming students routinely perform well on China's
She decided to study in the U.S. instead, which she was able to do because her parents had saved over US$100,000 toward her education.[8] In 2011 she went to Beijing to take a preparatory course for the Test of English as a Foreign Language. There she met Li Xiangnan, three years her senior, from Wenzhou. Shao's mother says he developed a crush on her daughter, which was not unusual—many other young men had shown such an interest in her daughter. She met him once when he came to Dalian, and recalls him as shy. Although he seemed to be from a rich background, she and her husband did not think he was right for their daughter.[1]
Shao was accepted at
Li and Shao continued to socialize in Iowa. According to her friends, he seemed to believe he was her boyfriend, although others who knew her said she had ongoing relationships with other men as well, not all of whom were aware of the others. He moved in with her in summer 2013, to the great annoyance of her roommate. "He didn't clean up. It's just not normal that a boy lived in a girl's dorm," she told a Chinese news outlet. "We tried to kick him out, but he wouldn't leave."
Shao's other friends shared the same low opinion of Li, to the point that Shao avoided talking about him in their presence. A cousin in China noted that on visits home, Shao seemed more withdrawn than she had been in the past.[1]
Disappearance
On September 3, 2014, Karen Yang, a friend of Li, got a call from him. He said that he had called Shao. For some reason she did not answer the phone, but he could hear her conversing with another boy about him, making disparaging remarks. After calling Yang, he posted "fuck my life" in Chinese to his page on Renren, a social networking site popular with Chinese college students. It was his last post to the site.[1]
Nevertheless, the two took advantage of the ensuing weekend to spend some time together. Since his presence was not desired by her roommates,[8] they got into the beige 1997 Toyota Camry she had bought during a summer internship in Kentucky[9] and checked into the Budget Inn off U.S. Route 30 near Nevada, Iowa, a small town east of Ames,[10] on September 5. The hotel owner, Ken Patel, recognized them from two earlier stays over holiday weekends.[4]
The following night, Patel says he saw Shao come to the lobby alone. It would be the last time anyone other than Li saw her alive. On the morning of September 7, Patel said that he woke and saw that Shao's gold car, in which the two had come from Ames, was already gone. This was unusual, he later stated, because on the couple's previous stays he had had to go to their room after they missed the 11 a.m. checkout time. While the hotel had a
That night, Shao's father sent a text to her phone from China. He wanted to know if she had had any success replacing a pair of glasses she had told him several days earlier that she had lost. The responding text said that she had borrowed a pair from a friend. He asked if they could video chat; she said she was too busy at the time. In retrospect he believes that those messages actually came from Li.[8]
Another text, purportedly from Shao, was sent from Li's phone to one of Shao's roommates. It said that Li was going back to China due to an "emergency" and that she was going to take a bus to Minnesota and visit some friends from China there in the next week. The following day, Yang sent Li a text asking how things were going with Shao. "Fine for now", he responded.[8]
A week later, on September 16, Li's birthday, Yang sent him a text. He did not respond. "He was never like that," she recalled later to a Chinese publication. "He replied [to] messages promptly." She began to suspect that something was wrong.[1]
Around that time, Shao's roommates began to wonder when she was planning to return as the week had passed and they had not heard from her. Through social media, they contacted her friends in Minnesota. None of them had seen her. "That's when we started to get really worried," one said. They reported her missing to Ames police on September 18.[8]
Discovery of body
Ames police were unable to find any evidence that Shao had taken a bus to Minnesota.[11] They searched Shao's apartment the following week. They found a receipt for the Toyota Camry Shao had purchased in Kentucky, which still had that state's license plates on it. On September 26 they made the description and plate number of the car available to other police departments.[12]
Police in Iowa City had also obtained a search warrant for Li's BMW the previous week, parked near his apartment off U.S. Route 6 on the eastern outskirts of the city. On the evening that their Ames counterparts posted the information about Shao's car, they found it nearby. Residents of the complex said it had been there for some time, and complained of the smell emanating from it.[11] After a warrant was obtained, police found a body in the trunk, its decomposition accelerated by exposure to the late summer heat.[8] It was later confirmed to be Shao.[9]
Investigation
Police immediately called the death suspicious. The
Also in the trunk were travel documents showing that on September 6, Li had booked a flight from
Three days after the body was discovered, a search warrant was executed on the hotel room in Nevada that Li and Shao had shared. In it they found "splatters and drips of various dried liquids", which they sought to test to see if they had been human bodily fluids. They came to believe that Shao had been murdered at the hotel before her body was placed in the trunk of her car and driven to the parking lot of Li's apartment complex in Iowa City.[14]
Upon further investigation, police learned of Li's September 3 "fuck my life" social-media post and the circumstances that gave rise to it. A Chinese friend of Li's in Iowa also reported that at a party a month before Shao's disappearance, Li had asked how long it would take the police to know if a person was missing. They found this odd because his question had no relation to the conversation they had been having. Iowa City police soon named Li a person of interest in the case.[1]
Police were unable to locate Li so they could talk to him, believing that as the evidence suggested, he had returned to China. They later received confirmation that he had cleared customs in Beijing on September 10.[11] Since then there had been no record of him anywhere in China or elsewhere.[1][8]
Chinese media had been following the case closely, since Chinese parents who send their children overseas to attend college are very concerned for their safety.
Arrest and charges
In an April 2015
Cooperation between the Chinese and American police eventually did increase. The Wenzhou police began monitoring Li around the same time. While they were occasionally able to find his whereabouts, he usually disappeared before they could get him under surveillance. They also lacked any evidence to charge him, since they were waiting for information from Iowa.[18]
Later in April, however, investigators from China flew to Iowa and, accompanied by their American counterparts, interviewed witnesses and studied the crime scene. They returned to China with this evidence. In mid-May Li turned himself in to authorities in Wenzhou. Using the evidence from Iowa, agents from the Bureau of Criminal Investigation developed a case against him while Li remained in detention. At the end of June the Ministry of Public Security announced Li's formal arrest on a charge of intentional murder.[18]
Li faced
Shao's father said he had been told that Li would be tried in China even though the crime occurred in the United States.
The case also recalls the similar murder of
Trial
In March 2016, Li pleaded guilty to the charge in Intermediate People's Court in Wenzhou. He called his act "irrational and impulsive", saying he had loved her but was unable to deal with her having affairs with other men. However, he denied that he had
Investigators from Iowa traveled to China to witness the proceedings. After they returned to Iowa, they revealed more details about the case in a
See also
- Crime in Iowa
- Deaths in September 2014
- Disappearance of Bethany Decker, 2011 Virginia missing-person case where friends of victim believe someone was trying to impersonate her on social media after she was last seen.
- List of solved missing person cases
Other homicides by Chinese abroad tried in China
- Trial of Xiao Zhen, in New Zealand
- Zhang Hongjie, a Chinese student in Australia whose death went unnoticed for seven months as her boyfriend, believed to have killed her, sent messages to her friends and family claiming to be her, then fled to China after the body was finally discovered.
- Fukuoka family murder case, committed by three Chinese students, Wei Wei, Yang Ning, and Wang Liang, in Japan. Wei Wei was tried in Japan, sentenced to death, and executed on December 26, 2019, at the age of 40. Yang Ning and Wang Liang fled to China, where they faced murder charges. Yang was sentenced to death and Wang was sentenced to life in prison. Yang was executed on July 12, 2005, at the age of 25.
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Zhang Han; Wang Lingyu; Zhong Ying (April 14, 2015). "In-depth: Uncovering truth behind murder of Chinese student in US". Sino-US.com. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved August 16, 2015.
- ^ The Gazette. Cedar Rapids, IA. Retrieved August 16, 2015.
- ^ berg, Zach (January 9, 2015). "Death of former ISU student found dead in IC ruled a homicide". Iowa City Press-Citizen. Retrieved August 16, 2015.
- ^ a b c d berg, Zach (January 16, 2015). "Tong Shao stayed in hotel with boyfriend days before going missing". Iowa City Press-Citizen. Retrieved August 16, 2015.
- ^ Aronsen, Gavin (July 2, 2015). "ISU student's suspected killer apprehended in China". Ames Tribune. Archived from the original on July 27, 2015. Retrieved August 16, 2015.
- ^ a b Lu, Shen; Hunt, Katie (March 23, 2016). "Boyfriend in Iowa killing pleads guilty; may face death penalty". CNN. Retrieved May 12, 2016.
- ^ Lu, Shen; Hunt, Katie (June 22, 2016). "China: Boyfriend in Iowa student killing gets life sentence". CNN. Retrieved June 23, 2016.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Drash, Wayne; Lu, Shen (April 3, 2015). "Killing in the heartland; heartbreak in China". CNN. Retrieved August 17, 2015.
- ^ a b c Schmidt, Mitchell; Klingseis, Kathleen (September 30, 2014). "Police: Body in trunk is missing ISU student". The Des Moines Register. Retrieved August 17, 2015.
- ^ Google (August 17, 2015). "Budget Inn and Suites, Nevada, Iowa" (Map). Google Maps. Google. Retrieved August 17, 2015.
- ^ a b c Berg, Zach (January 7, 2015). "Investigators say Tong Shao was not 'missing voluntarily'". Press-Citizen. Retrieved August 18, 2015.
- WHO-TV. Retrieved August 18, 2015.
- ^ Hermiston, Lee (January 9, 2015). "Medical examiner says Tong Shao died of suffocation; death now considered homicide". The Gazette. Archived from the original on June 29, 2015. Retrieved August 18, 2015 – via KCRG-TV.
- ^ Erickson, Melissa (January 15, 2015). "Nevada hotel connected to Shao murder case". Ames Tribune. Retrieved August 18, 2015.
- ^ Carlson, Mark (September 30, 2014). "Chinese media closely watching case of ISU student Tong Shao". KCRG-TV. Archived from the original on April 7, 2015. Retrieved August 18, 2015.
- ^ Hua Shengdun (April 6, 2015). "Report stirs up unsolved murder case". China Daily. Retrieved August 18, 2015.
- ^ Shen Lu (September 30, 2014). "Friends Of 'Person Of Interest' Respond To Chinese Student's Death". Iowa Watch. Retrieved August 18, 2015.
- ^ a b c Shen Lu (June 30, 2015). "Suspect in Iowa student murder charged after months on the run in China". CNN. Retrieved August 19, 2015.
- ^ "Iowa City Police and Chinese Police Make Arrest in Tong Shao Homicide" (Press release). Des Moines, IA. Iowa Department of Public Safety. June 30, 2015. Retrieved August 20, 2015.
- ^ Iowa Code 707.2.6: "Murder in the first degree is a class 'A' felony." Iowa Code 902.1: "[upon conviction or a guilty plea, the court] shall commit the defendant into the custody of the director of the Iowa department of corrections for the rest of the defendant's life. Nothing in the Iowa corrections code pertaining to deferred judgment, deferred sentence, suspended sentence, or reconsideration of sentence applies to a class 'A' felony, and a person convicted of a class 'A' felony shall not be released on parole unless the governor commutes the sentence to a term of years."
- ^ Carlson, Mark (March 28, 2016). "Back From China, Authorities Reveal New Details in Tong Shao Murder Case". KCRG-TV. Retrieved May 13, 2016.
- ^ Shen Lu and Katie Hunt (23 June 2016). "Boyfriend in Iowa student killing gets life sentence". CNN. Retrieved 2019-04-13.