Rotten Mango - #321: Girl went missing in boarding school, found dead in a LOCKED boy’s restroom 33 days later

Episode Date: December 18, 2023

16-year-old Gao was one of the most popular girls in the entire boarding school - till she went missing. All the students had their own little theories on what happened. Some believed she ran off with a guy she met online. Others speculated her ex-boyfriend had something to do with it. Or her best friend. Her best friend was the last one to see her alive. But they all agreed - wherever she was now… she was far away from the school. They couldn’t have been more wrong. Gao’s body was found in the locked boy’s restroom in the main building of the boarding school. Her body had signs of torture, SA, and even necrophilia. The students had been living with their dead classmate just 30 feet away from them. And now they were living with a killer. Full Source Notes: rottenmangopodcast.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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The winters were brutal at the Lin-Shiu boarding school in China. By January, it's usually around 20 degrees Fahrenheit, it is dry, frigid, and the wind makes it feel even colder than it actually is. So it probably feels like 10 degrees Fahrenheit. The sun sets really, really early, and sometimes the wind is so freaking strong, it sounds like someone is outside your window just screaming at you. This particular winter was probably the worst though, because one of the most popular girls in the entire boarding school had gone missing.

The last person to see the missing student was her best friend, Dee Dee. And I think that it's safe to say that Dee Dee has not been the same since the day that her best friend gal vanished. Neither of them actually dormed at the boarding school because they both lived 10 minutes away from campus, so it just didn't make sense to pay the boarding fees and their parents wanted them to stay home. So that night of January 9th, it's a Sunday

night, DD sleeps over at Gow's house. This is their first ever sleepover, and I guess both of them are busy staying up late and enjoying each other's company. Neither of them woke up to their alarm the next morning. So Monday morning alarm goes off, they gotta make it to school and they're sleeping in. Is this a middle school high school? High school, they're both 16. So instead, Gow's dad is shaking them awake, like, get up, get up, you're late, come on,

start getting ready. They check the time on the clock. It is 6 a.m. in the morning. They need to get to school by 6.15. They're throwing on their uniforms as fast as they can. They're grabbing their textbooks, shoving it into their backpacks. They skip breakfast. They run out the door without even properly saying goodbye to gauze parents. They have exactly 15 minutes to get to school and get in line for the morning assembly.

Side note about the morning assembly in China. It is a very serious thing. Every single morning, students have to sit down and say, to get to school and get in line for the morning assembly. Side note about the morning assembly in China, it is a very serious thing. Every single morning, students have to stand in line next to their classmates on the campus field. Usually, the line order is even determined, so it's not like you can just sneak in and stand at the end of the line, it's by height.

The class president of each class is usually standing at the front regardless of their height. You stand there at attention while the national anthem plays and the flag is being raised. And then every single student runs a few laps around the campus. This jogging experience isn't really that fun. I mean, it's more enjoyable than taking an exam, for example. But this is the last thing that kids want to do at 6.15 in the morning, especially in the frigid cold winter of northeastern China. It's like 10 degrees outside. They don't want to do this.

Almost all the schools in China do these sort of laps around the campus. The Chinese government makes some form of light exercise mandatory in all public schools. The jogs typically range from a quarter mile to three quarters of a mile, so it's not a marathon by any means. But missing this assembly without a teacher-approved reason is like the equivalent of skipping class. Gow and DD decide to both just hop onto DD's bike to save time. They didn't even talk all the way to school. It's like they blacked out just focused on getting to campus.

They end up reaching the edge of campus at exactly 6.13 a.m. and they know this because there's always a warning bell of sorts that rings two minutes before the assembly actually starts. It's like a nice little hint. Get your ass to the assembly now. But bikes are not allowed on the actual school campus. So they have to get off of D.D.'s bike and walk the bike to the designated bike location on campus then run

to the field. It's like a whole thing. They're still they're going to do this in two minutes. They're rushing. When they finally make it after sprinting to the designated bike parking spot, Dee Dee sweating, her best friend Gow is grabbing her purse and textbooks from the bike basket and she tells Dee Dee she's going to head up to class. Her home-room teacher gave her a pass to skip this morning's assembly because she's been sick for the past few days and it's outside in winter. Dee Dee is like half listening, she's training up her bike and then she's thinking, wait, I'm going to the assembly, my best friend Gow is not going so she can just take my stuff

up to the classroom so that I don't have to carry all of this to the assembly because I'm already late, right? This whole thought process is happening within like three seconds. Dee Dee turns around and she's like, wait, go! She's gone. They were standing in a pretty open area. She just walked off like two seconds ago. She isn't even walking off in the distance.

Dee Dee literally can't see her anywhere. She's gone. Just vanished into the morning fog. It was weird. But Dee Dee's like, okay, maybe she's sprint anywhere. She's gone. Just vanished into the morning fog. It was weird. But DD's like, OK, maybe she's sprinting. That's odd. DD rushes to get the rest of her stuff and she makes it to the assembly.

DD would not see Gowd the rest of the day, which is normal since they don't have any classes together. And they normally don't even cross paths with each other during meal break, so nothing is out of the ordinary. At least not until class is over. So the boarding school kids that dormed on the campus, they go wash up, they go to their dorms, they've got strict rules that everybody has to be in bed

at a certain time be knocked out by 10 p.m. Meanwhile, the non-boarding students, they find their own right home. And Dee Dee's out there waiting for Gal because she's thinking, you know, I'm the one that brought her to school so I should be the one to drop her off at school. I can't just like leave her hanging.

So she's waiting, she sees all the non-boarding kids walk out and gals not there. And Dee Dee's kind of like pulking her head around to see. Is she in the crowd? And then a girl passes by. This is a girl from Gow's home room class. And she's like, what are you doing, Dee Dee? I'm trying to wait and see if Gow needs a right home. What? She was not school today. the right home. What? She was not school today. Didi was so confused. I literally just saw her. I was the one that dropped her off at school. That's so strange. So coupled with Gow's random vanishing act this morning, Didi felt like she's losing her mind. She almost started second-guessing herself. Did I even come to school with Gow morning? Like, maybe I was so asleep

deprived that I hallucinated all of that. But that doesn't even make sense. Gal would never come back to school. She was officially missing. Some of the students at the boarding school thought Gal ran off with some new boy from a different school. Others thought that she ran away to scare her parents into, I don't know, carrying more about her, giving her more allowance. They all had their own little theories. But I don't think that anyone was expecting that. 33 days later, Gow's body would be found in the restricted area of the boarding school. She would be found half naked, brutally assaulted, tortured, murdered, and even after she passed, there was evidence that the killer

or the killers continued to essay her corpse. The boarding school was not only dealing with the killer now, but a necrophiliac. She was found 30 feet away from the dorms in the main building. And everyone in that school, staff, teacher, students, her boyfriend, her best friends, the class presidents, they would all become suspects. We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mango to support the Innocence Project, the leading non-profit and criminal justice reform. They've been working for over

three decades to free the innocent, prevent wrongful convictions, and create fair, compassionate, and equitable systems of justice for everyone. The sub-subsisting partnerships have also made it possible to support Rottlingo's growing team of dedicated researchers, translators, while they focus on shedding light on stories from all over the world. We'd also like to thank you guys for your continued support as we work on our mission to be worthy advocates of these causes.

And as always, show notes or available at RottenMinglePodcast.com. Today's case happened in China. We had our Mandarin speaking researchers and translator help with gathering of the data on this one, but if there is anything that's lost in translation, miscommunicated, or if you have any additional information, please let us know in the comments. Now, just one quick disclaimer before we get started. Almost everyone involved in this case was given an alias. So we don't actually know any of the witnesses' real names.

And a lot of the alias' surnames were really similar or if not the same. So just to avoid any confusion, we will be giving them alias' of our own. So with that being said, let's get into it. The man was sitting down watching TV. This is like the only time during the day that he can truly escape and just forget about everything that's going on in his life. If he had a choice, he probably would not be watching this particular channel. He was not really a true crime fan, but there were a ton of other people in the room with him, and so it's not really up to him. So he sits there watching this true crime documentary. The focus was on a high school boarding student who went missing years ago.

There were so many twists and turns in her case, it made for a good documentary. Until they finally caught the killer. He was a man who read a horror story and got so inspired by this fictional creepy story about murder, death, and lust that he wanted to recreate the same exact scene with a real-life person. He wanted to participate in essay, torture, and necrophilia. And the man watching the TV? He was the man that they were talking about.

He was watching from prison. Just five years ago, the Lin-Shu boarding school was in full chaos. I mean, concerned parents are calling the school, some students are transferring to new, say first schools, classes are being interrupted as police officers are rushing through the main building, going room by room, dorm by dorm, searching for 16-year-old missing gal. They're checking the closets, they're checking under the beds, they even search the teacher's dorm rooms. But something about the search, it felt like the police were looking for a body and for whatever reason They believe that Gow the missing student was still on campus

Now Gow's parents they're very wealthy so the police are gonna leave no stone unturned So Gow's dad he's a prominent business owner who owned this mechanical company But he also has a strong political influence. He served as a representative of the People's Congress in Lin Yee. So the fact that his daughter is missing, like this is a big deal. And Gao, she was the flower girl in her class. Out of all the girls in school, a lot of the students said she was top three in terms of how pretty she was. So like the flower girl in Chinese schools refers to a girl that is not only the prettiest in class, but she's usually very smart, usually comes from a good family and she has no idea that she's the

flower girl most of the time. Or maybe she just doesn't have a... We call it class flower. Yeah. School flower. The school flower, yeah. She was the school flower. She was smart, which is important. She, her parents were wealthy and prominent. She just had everything. Inside note, she's not spoiled or rebellious by any means. Like, so don't think like a nepot baby. Her family actually had a chauffeur, full-time chauffeur. Gow never got chauffeur to school.

She's like, that's kind of dumb because then I would have to sit in traffic for 15, 20 minutes, but if I just rode my bike, I'd be at campus in like 10 minutes. So no, I don't need to sit in this fancy car, Dad. And that's just who Gow was and she was very likable and very, very responsible for person. And her parents were very present in her life, so they're not just like these wealthy

business owners that have no idea what's going on in Gow's life. On January 10th, the day that Gow vanished, Gow's parents were very quick to notice that things were weird. This is the day of. So every single day, without fail, Gow would come home for their lunch break at 12.20 pm. That day she didn't come home. She didn't even call to tell her parents that she was going to stay behind and study

or anything. This is very unlike her. Gow's house staff they noticed that her food was getting cold so they called Gow's dad who's at work and they're like, hey we don't know what to do. She's not here. Is it because she didn't bring her bike to school? So maybe she can't come home for lunch because no one can give her a ride. So in that case should we send the driver to go pick her up? And the dad's like you know it's a little weird, but she's a 16 year old, you know, and

she's at school. Maybe she's having lunch with someone at school. It's no big deal. You know what? Forget about it. We'll talk about it over dinner. They hang up. Now this part was shocking, but the boarding school ends class actually at around 9.20

pm. So they get a really long lunch, and that's why Gao goes home for lunch, but they've got these nighttime classes study sessions where you can get homework done, and it officially ends at 9.20 PM. Gao was always home at 9.30 PM on the dot every single night, like she is a creature of habit, she's got a routine that she sticks to. 9.30 PM on the dot, she would walk in, the staff or her parents would have a glass of worn milk on the table for her. She would grab it, walk into her room, exhaust it, and

start changing. At 9.40 pm, 10 minutes after she's supposed to be home, Gow's dad makes it out to the kitchen area, and he stops dead and in tracks when he sees on the table is the glass of milk. Maybe it's father's intuition. We don't know, but he felt that something was very, very, very wrong.

He went out looking for his missing daughter. And then the next day, something really odd happened. So Gow's still not home, nobody's seen her in school, he has no answers, he starts searching Gow's room looking for anything, any sort of clue, right or something that could point him in the right direction of where his daughter could be because nobody's helping. Everyone's like, I don't know, I didn't see her. Dee Dee's like, I dropped her off and then I was running to the assembly and she vanished. He's scavenging through her room and he finds a folded up piece of paper.

It's got a phone number and an address on there. He does not recognize this address, but it's in Shebo County, which is about 200 miles away. To get there, that's like a 3.5 hour drive. Gow's dad gets in the car and he starts driving. For 3.5 hours, he keeps wondering to himself, what is my daughter doing with this kind of address? Like, you know, you're 16. You don't just drive 3.5 hours.

You don't just take public transportation and get somewhere at 200 miles away. When he pulls up to the address, he parks the car, looks out the window, and he's like, is this the right place? It's a barbecue restaurant. Not even a famous one, it's just like a random hole in the wall barbecue restaurant. Gow's dad goes inside and talks to the owners. The owner's daughter actually knew Gow and said, you know, Gow is actually talking to one of my guy friends at my school They had met online and that's how I know gal But they've never actually met in person and I don't think they've even spoken on the phone in the past few months That's all the information he got

Yeah, but what would she have the address on a paper exactly? So it's the question of did she not throw away the restaurant address? Why did she have it in the first place? Did she plan on going to meet him? Or was there something going on with this boy? Like, what's going on? Is this where she came the day that she went missing? Gow is dead, didn't really know what to make of this, but he knew that he needed to find his daughter, right?

So he posted a $42,000 reward for anyone who could help locate his daughter. This is a crazy amount of money in this local town. I mean, it's a crazy amount of money anywhere, but the average monthly salary in this town was around $116 US dollars. The reward is $42,000 US dollars. A bowl of noodles only costs about 70 cents. For this town, $42,000 is life-changing money. It's not even retirement money.

It's like generational wealth money. Side note, it's actually so much money that there was a heated discussion in the community about the wealth gap. Because of how much... A lot of... The reward was, yeah. I'm sure it's even more now if you factor in inflation

because this took place in 2005. So without amount of money on the line, I mean, a lot of tips are coming in. All sorts of crazy plots, conspiracies, shadowy figures, organizations, lots of people throwing random ideas out there. But for some reason, Gow's parents feel like someone in that school knows what happened to their daughter. It's not going to be some random person in the community.

It's going to be someone in that school. February 11th, 2005, janitor lamb was walking down the empty halls of this boarding school. The dorms, the classrooms, the hallways, they're all empty, which I don't know, maybe it's more peaceful, maybe it's more eerie, I'm not sure. The students had all gone home for lunar new year break. They're all due to come back in just four days. So it's janitor lam's job to get the entire school cleaned up before school is back in session. So that's why he's in school on the third day of Lunar New Year that year. Typically this is a big celebratory day that he's supposed to spend with family, but instead he's walking through the hallways trying to figure out what needs to be cleaned. There typically isn't too too much to clean in the boarding school

The students in China are mostly in charge of maintaining their own classrooms and their own dorms But the shared spaces so the hallways the restrooms. That's where janitor lamb is gonna focus on today And he just had this sneaking suspicion that the old restrooms the out-of-service restrooms are gonna be the hardest part to clean that the old restrooms, the out-of-service restrooms, are gonna be the hardest part to clean. Now, I'm gonna quickly give you the lay of the land. The main building is the academic building as they call it. It's five stories high, and it consists of all the classrooms, teachers' offices, and about half of the dorms.

So it's a mixed-use building. Then on campus, you have another building that's got a few other offices and rooms, but it mainly serves as a primary dorm building. And I believe that's where all the girls are. And of course you've got the basketball court, the field, the parking lots, all of that, but the academic main building is the one that we're going to focus on today. So each floor of that building has old and new restrooms. Most of the old bathrooms in the building are considered restricted, and students are not allowed to use them anymore. But you are allowed to go in and use the sink, which

makes it sound like it's not that restricted, right? But let me give you some context. So the bathroom layout is a bit different from what we're used to. You know how in most public restrooms, you walk in, and there are a few sinks out in the open. Then you have almost this hallway of toilet stalls that are lined up next to each other on either side. And then you have to walk out of that little hallway out of the stall to wash your hands. Well, at this school, the old restrooms had that, but they also had a door blocking the actual restrooms stalls from the sinks. Okay.

So separate the hand washing and the actual toilet. Yeah, and it's like a full-sized door, so you know, it's not going to have the giant gap at the bottom or the top. Like, it's like a full, full frame door where every part is covered. So if you want to use the restroom, you would have to open that door and then you would be facing all of the toilet stalls. And because that door is there and all the toilets are out of order due to water pressure issues, the janitors, they went through and they padlocked all of the doors that lead into the toilet stalls. So truly, you can only go in and use the sinks. You can't even go hang out in the toilet stalls. It's padlocked. Well, before the break, the students considered the

sink area of the old bathrooms, their personal closet, their personal trash can. So before break, everyone's like, go clean your dorms and the kids are like, you know what? I'm going to go just dump all of my trash in the sync area of the bathrooms. That's what they were doing. So I mean, I guess you could argue that they thought it was okay. Yeah. So most of the trash were, do you know what wheat huskies? In Korea, we have these pillows as well,

where they're like almost grain pillows. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like dry wheat type of pillow, yeah. Yes. So they would have all of that stuff in their pillow, and I guess they're trying to get rid of it before the break is over, because the teachers will get rid of your pillow stuffing.

So they threw a bunch of the pillow stuffing down the sink, because they're like, oh, this is organic matter. It should be okay It was a little odd. So janitor lam starts cleaning and his coworker janitor Huang So the these are the two janitors that manage the entire campus, right? janitor Huang told them hey if it's messy in the old bathrooms again like it is every time before break Just throw everything out the window like it is every time before break, just throw everything out the window.

It's a little odd, but bear with him. J'ennard or Huang is saying, most of the time, they're throwing away like the wheat straws, the wheat husks, right? It's organic matter. So just sweep it all up into a broom and then throw it out the bathroom window since it's a little odd.

Since all of the bathrooms are on the same spot on each floor plan of every single floor, there's no other windows beneath the old bathrooms. So instead of like lugging around a giant trash bag and then like putting in the weed husk, just throw it at the window. We can have a pile at the bottom of the window on the ground floor outside.

I will funnel it into these trash bags and then go take it to the dump site. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, so gendered or hung is like, hey, whenever you get a chance to break, go in and do that. And then before school starts, I'll come in and clear up all the debris.

Gendered or lamb goes in alone and he starts, you know, it's an efficient idea. He thinks, okay, this is smart. So he starts going from bathroom to bathroom. Now here's the thing. The window is at the opposite restricted area. So you know how that door leads to the toilet stalls and at the very end is the window. There's no other window.

So he has to unlock every single padlock and then drag it through the toilet stalls and then out the window. Generator Lamb gets to work on the old bathroom on the first floor. It was messy just like they suspected. And once he was done, he made his way up to the old restroom on the second floor. And then the third, he gathered up all the trash around the Sink area on the third floor old restroom. But when he went to go unlock the padlock

to get to the window, it's not opening. And he's like, oh my gosh, is this the wrong key? He tries another key. And then another key, because he has one of those like stereotypical janitor keys, where it's just like 50 million keys, and he tries every single one of his keys and none of them are working and none of this is making sense. Gendered or lamb had been the one, personally, the one to install all of these

metal padlocks in the restrooms and he distinctly remembered adding a key onto this key chain. This is the only key chain he has. And he's standing there for a brief moment, hands on his hips, confused. Like, is there some sort of glitch in the universe? This is so odd. But then he notices, wait, that's not the padlock that I left. It's a different padlock. Maybe it's a different brand, maybe it looks different.

He's like, I just know that's not the one that I had. So who would do that? Why would they take away my padlock? How would they even get my padlock open and then replace it with their own padlock? Yeah, they have to remove it first. Yeah, and he's like, okay, weird, but maybe janitor Huang replaced it because it broke or something and he just forgot to tell me? Who knows? janitor lamb went to the storage room and found a pair of pliers. He runs back to the old restroom on the third floor and starts working to break off the metal lock. He gets it open in maybe like three or four minutes, the door slowly creaks open, and

the toilet area somehow has been completely trashed. This restricted area that nobody's allowed in is trashed. The area is filled with random junk pieces of wood, clothing, fabric, glass, unwanted papers, empty water bottle, lids, plastic bags, random empty tubes of toothpaste, but even through all this trash, janitor lamb could see at the very last stall near the end. Sticking out from the stall was just a pair of white pale legs on the ground. And they were not moving. Once he processes that information, he, you turns it out of there and starts running down the hallway.

The school is so empty. He keeps running all the way to the teacher's offices just in hopes that some of the teachers had come into work to prepare for the kids coming back soon after break. He runs to the other side of the building, swings open the teacher's office door, and they're like, what is going on? There's like one teacher in there. You look like you've seen a ghost. He gets two teachers.

He's like, we need to find everybody else. He gets two teachers to come back to the third floor restricted restroom with him. And he's like, okay, maybe the pair of legs are gone now. Right, that would be the best case scenario. Maybe I thought someone is dead, but it's just all a harmless prank, or maybe it's like a drunk student that somehow got into the restricted area, passed out. I opened the door and then they got up and walked off, right?

The legs were still there. An emergency call was placed at 2.04 pm from the boarding school. Because it was Lunar New Year, only one police officer was able to make it out to the school. The school faculty rushed him into the restroom and on the third stall on the left, there was a dead body. The body belonged to Gow Ting, the 16 year old student who is missing since January 10th.

For over a month, students at Lin Shu's second high school were studying and living amongst a dead body. For 33 days, she had been in the restricted restroom on the third floor just 30 feet away from the dorm rooms. She was found in the bathroom stall, face down, naked from the waist down. Above her waist, she was wearing a two-layer thermal bra.

The rest of her clothing was off, but someone had wrapped her torso in like a white plastic bag, and around her neck was her scarf. The scarf was still tied very tightly around her, and it looked like someone did or tried to strangle her with her own scarf. The bottom half of gau was covered in dirt, underneath gau's body was a red puffer jacket, her blue cashmere sweater, and a red pole. It looked like a mop handle without the mop head, so like think of like a broomstick. And all over the bathroom stall, there was just a ton of blood. There was blood on the clothes, on the walls, on the floor.

Some of the dried blood stains had hair, clumps of hair just dried up in it. Just going off forensics and the damage done to Gow's body, a really just strange, dark picture starts to emerge. So Gow is found naked from the waist down. Someone strangled her with her own scarf. Gow's left cheek had four visible finger indentations on them. So it looked like someone had either slapped Gow with so much force that it left an imprint

on the side of her face, or it looked like someone side of her face, or it looked like someone was grabbing her face, like gripping her face. Her skin had abrasions and bruising all over her face, and in the center of her forehead, she had a wound that contained tiny glass fragments inside. Most of the injuries were on her forehead and on the right side of her face near her temples. It was clear that she put up a fight. When forensics later unwrapped her

from the white plastic bags, she had these neat, meticulous cuts on her torso. There was a vertical incision on her stomach in between her breast. So it started up in between her breasts like literally in the center of her torso and then it went all the way down to the top of her belly button It was about seven inches in length. It's like they wanted it to be very very very straight

There was another much shorter vertical cut right next to the main one and on Gow's lower abdomen There was a fully open wound that went from underneath her belly button Diagonally towards the right side of her groin. It was deep. You could basically see her internal organs from how deep it was. And all over her thighs, she had these smaller, vertical, and horizontal cuts. They were not as deep as the one on her abdomen, but they were just like criss-crossing each other.

It is clear that whoever did this is very sadistic, but it gets a bit stranger. So initially authorities assumed that the essay was going to focus on a very specific region in her body, like the one that you would immediately think of. And they did find evidence of assault, but they stated that her hymen was still intact, and they believed that there was no full penetration prior to death. Some experts stated that perhaps whoever did this had plans to assault her, but then realized that he wasn't able to sustain the correct amount of blood flow down there.

And they theorized that someone wanted to assault her could not maintain the correct amount of blood flow, got very angry and started punishing Gow for his own incapabilities by slicing up her body and ultimately strangling her with her own scarf. Another forensic detail that could maybe be used to bolster this theory is translated report state that her private back region was in a quote open state and that the muscles around her region were quote loose.

This indicates that after her death, Galau had been essayed back there by foreign objects. The reason being that if it happened before her death, more likely than not, her muscles would have contracted back to her normal resting state, but they didn't, because she's not alive. Wow. Authorities are pretty certain that the red broom handle that was found underneath her body was used. So you're talking full on Neckrophilia. Lastly, there were large red patches covering her waist, thighs, and butt everywhere. And gauze belongings were also found in the restrooms. Her English textbooks were neatly placed on the left side of the toilet,

like stacked on top of each other. And she had two textbooks, so the bigger textbook was underneath the smaller textbook. So it just felt very organized. Someone placed it there. Yeah, and side note, these are squatting toilets. So they're less like a chair-shaped toilet, but more like a, more or less a hole in the floor with plumbing and her textbooks are found next to that

on the floor. Her shoes are found pointing towards a wall, side by side, very neat. Almost like you take them off when you enter someone's home. Inside each shoe was a sock. Her shoe and her socks had dirt on them. As if in some sort of fight she slipped off her shoes, her socks got dirty and then someone organized it afterwards.

Because there's no reason for someone to take off your shoes and your socks in a restroom. But why was someone organized that after a word study? As for her jeans, they were found draped over the stall wall with dirt around the knee area. Now this is interesting, but inside the toilet there were also other things. So the toilets, like I said, there was water pressure issued. Nobody was fleshing anything down this sewage line. So they were found stuffed in the toilet, but they weren't taken down into the septic tank.

There were four new plastic bags. When they opened up one of the bags, Gow's underwear was found. And a poem, some sort of letter. It was addressed to Gow, and it reads, If a drop of water represents a blessing, I give you the East China Sea. If a star symbolizes happiness,

I give you the Milky Way. If a tree signifies a longing, I give you the East China Sea. If a star symbolizes happiness, I give you the Milky Way. If a tree signifies a longing, I give you a whole forest. If a stone in body's health, I give you Mount Thai. May you receive my new year wishes. I hope for your joy and happiness. Happy new year. And the name? It's not signed.

So it's a love letter that was wrapped up in the plastic bag. With her underwear. Did they keep that? They study the right handwriting because that's like stalker behavior, right? Yeah. And Gal would have died before Chinese New Year. Now, Gal's parents refused to pick her up from school. They wanted answers and they wanted justice, and they believed the fastest way to get that was to leave her body on the third floor restroom For as long as possible There would be no way for the school to brush it under the rug or come up with some sort of excuses or move on with life as normal And I know some people might think that this sounds really callous like why would you want your loved one to be in that state for any longer

Like they need to be laid to rest right? So we can all have our own opinions on this, but it did get the job done. There was immense pressure on the school, the police department to figure out who did this to Gau, and they had four main suspects. Gau's boyfriend and the four male roommates that lived in a dorm 30 feet away

from the restricted restroom. To give you context, that's like walking 12 steps. 30 feet sounds like, that's 12 steps. 12 steps away from the restricted restroom. To give you context, that's like walking 12 steps. 30 feet sounds like, that's 12 steps. 12 steps away from the restroom. There's a few things that you can expect when you come over to our house. My dog, Mango, will bring you every single one of her toys, every single one, like the whole collection.

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Canva.me-roughton. Let's start with Brian, the boyfriend. Now those who knew the couple said, Brian was not a great boyfriend. Technically, Gao could have any guy that she wanted in the school. Like you said, it's class-fower. She was the class-fower. Boys from other classes would even go out of their way to walk past her classroom just to get a glimpse of her. And yet, Brian never treated her like a flower. Side note, they are called boyfriend and girlfriend a lot in a lot of sources,

but for a lot of Chinese high schoolers, they're usually not officially a boyfriend and girlfriend. So dating in Chinese high schools might just means that they're talking to each other more than others. They're sharing lunches and waiting for each other in the hallways, but they don't really go on dates. They don't really do stuff outside of school. So Gow and Brian, they weren't getting along. It's speculated by classmates that Brian cheated on Gao and dumped her for another girl.

So two to three weeks before Gao's disappearance, Gao asked her class president, so the president of her little classroom to pass a letter on to her boyfriend, since he's not in the same class as her. And I guess the class president read it and told some people about it because it was Gao's scolding Brian about how he shouldn't play with her emotions and she doesn't like him being with other girls. So you're saying the information was leaked? Yeah.

So their friends thought that Gow was very, very much into Brian, but he was just this toxic, toxic boy and he would hit on other girls knowing that Gow would find out and Gow's mood would just swing back and forth depending on how her relationship was going. They said it was very weird because Brian was the one that relentlessly pursued her, but now they're together and he's honestly treating her like trash. Now, another interesting detail is, Gow's classroom is on the second floor. She was found dead on the third floor where Brian's classes. It was speculated that maybe Gow went to go see Brian and see if he's in class instead of the assembly, but instead, she ran into her killer, whoever that may be, Brian or

not. But to the police, for some reason, they didn't really want to base their investigation off of relationship rumors. They're like, first of all, we don't even know that they were dating, and second of all, you don't just like kill someone after you cheat on them, that's weird, especially a high school kid. And they couldn't really find evidence against Brian at the time. I don't know if he was at the assembly that morning or not, but they couldn't find evidence against him. So they start following other leads,

like the four roommates of the dorm closest to the restroom. Albert, Peter, Jason, and Sammy. They're immediately suspects because their dorm room is so close, but also because authorities went into their dorm room to do another in-depth search. So remember how they were searching all the dorm rooms prior when Gow was missing? They were just looking for Gow. So they're like looking under the bed, looking in the closet. They're looking for a person or a body and they're not looking at minute details on the wall. This time they do an in-depth search and they find that one, someone moved the bunk beds. They thought that was weird. Why did you move the bunk beds?

Like kids usually just don't like randomly rearrange their rooms, at least not in these dorms. And second of all, there was blood splatter on the walls near one of the lower bunk beds. So the new running theory was that Gow was killed in the dorm room and then dragged into the restroom afterwards. But when they tested the blood on the walls, it wasn't Gow's. And as for the bunk bed being moved, one of the roommates had a very pretty legitimate

reason of like why he had to move it because he had to move luggage around. It was a whole thing. And his parents were there when he moved it. So the police dug a bit deeper into these four roommates and most of them, they were in Gow's home room class. They had been interviewed when Gow went missing and they all said they had no information on where Gow could be like they knew nothing, they knew nothing. But after finding Gow's body, now they knew something.

Now they're like, you know what? Actually I do know something. Side note, Sammy was quickly ruled out as a suspect because he was at the assembly that morning. Albert, Peter, and Jason were not at the assembly that morning. So let's start with Albert. Albert told authorities that the morning of January 10th, he was in the dorm room. He was given explicit permission to skip the school assembly because of a foot injury

that he had, so he can't run laps around the campus. He was laying in bed, and then around 6.23 AM. The other students are jogging and it's quiet. He hears a series of increasingly loud screams coming from outside. It sounded like someone was in distress. And at the very end, he said that he could hear someone screaming something along the lines of,

what are you doing? Albert wanted to jump up and run outside, but foot injury. Remember, it was going to take him quite a bit of time to put on his shoes. Thankfully, his roommate Peter is in the dorm room with him. Peter is fine. He puts on his jacket, runs outside to investigate. Albert puts on his shoes as quickly as he can, but he's like, he's following out after Peter. He's late. Once he opens that door, he can see Peter standing in front of the restricted restroom, talking to two male students. Now, if you had to take a guess, it looked like the two guys

had gotten out of the restroom, and they're trying to act chill outside of the restroom. It was kind of weird. And Peter was asking them, hey, did you guys hear the screams? And Albert can't really see them. He can't really hear them, he's just limping closer and closer to them, and by the time that he gets there,

the two guys had walked away. So now he's alone with Peter again, and apparently it was just nothing much to see. Albert didn't really think much of it, he just kind of shrugged it off, he went back to the dorm room and started getting ready for the first class of the day. So they live on the third floor,

but their main classes are on the second floor, so they've got to take the stairs down. And while they're going down, he said that he ran into us, another student named Zhang. Everyone had at least heard of Zhang because he was the class president for class number 24, and Albert had actually gone to middle school as Zhang. Anyway, Zhang lived on the second floor, and he had his classes on the third floor. So they meet on the stairs. They run into each other. They cross paths and Albert casually asked Zhang, like, hey, were you at the assembly this morning because I wasn't and I heard some screaming.

Did you hear any screaming? He said that Zhang said yes. And that was it. He was like, that's so interesting because it seemed like the screams probably weren't loud enough to be heard on the second floor. And also why wasn't Zhang at the assembly at the time then? Police asked Albert was Zang one of the guys that Peter was talking to in front of the restroom? I'm not sure. All I remember is I think that one of the guys was really tall, maybe like five six.

The other one was a bit shorter like five four. So he knows their heights, but he doesn't know any other identifying factors about them. So Albert injured his leg. Yeah. He didn't see the two people, but Peter did. Peter was talking to them. So why didn't they just ask Peter? I guess Albert, oh, the police are gonna ask Peter in a second. But I guess Albert didn't ask Peter

because he's like, I don't know who they were. Yeah, he's like, I don't know. It was way too early in the morning and the lights in the hallway were dim. So I didn't get a good look at the boys But Peter did he's the one talking to them so Peter tells authorities that he was skipping the assembly that day too They like why he stated because he's a little chubby. That's what he stated He's plus size. He struggles with body image and his teacher lets him skip the morning jogs

So he's staying in the dorm room with Albert and just like Albert at around 6.23 a.m. he hears screaming. And he said there would be like a scream and then 10 seconds of silence and then a scream and then 10 seconds of silence. And then finally the last scream was something along the lines of what are you doing? Help! By that point Peter was already putting on his clothes to go investigate. So he runs out of the dorm room and he says I saw two guys standing in front of the restricted restroom and one of them was Zang. But the other guy, Peter, was like, I'm not familiar with this guy. He's not in any of my classes.

All I remembered was that it's a guy that wears glasses. Later Peter would be shown class photos to ID the second guy outside of the restroom and it was a student named Kenny. So Kenny and Zang are standing outside the restroom but it looked like they're kind of facing the restroom. Like it looked weird. It's like, what are you doing outside this restroom right now? There's an assembly going on. Why aren't you at the assembly?

Peter said he asked them, what are you doing? And Zhang just responded, we're not doing anything. Peter thought it was so strange that he kind of stuck his neck in to the restroom, the restricted restroom, and the main door to the toilet still appear to be closed. He didn't see if it was padlocked or not because, you know, why would he? But everything seemed normal in the restroom. So he turned to the other two guys outside and said, who was the one who just screamed? And he said that Zhang responded so bizarrely. He said, just some female ghost.

What? Female ghost. Or some beautiful girl. Peter's like, what are you saying? And then he's like, I'm kidding. It's probably nothing. And then they walk off. And Peter thought they were so weird.

Like maybe they just have an odd sense of humor, but that's so weird. He didn't even have a proper response. And then Albert catches up, Zang and Kenny leave, and Peter's like, weird. Later that day, he runs into Zang again and asks him once more, what were you doing in front of that restroom on the third floor?

And she said, oh, you know, goofing around with my girlfriend. Last Peter remembered Zang didn't have a girlfriend. So he's like, what is this guy saying? It was just weird. Initially, Albert and Peter seemed like very credible witnesses, right? Both of their stories, I mean, they're a little bit different because Albert didn't see anyone or didn't see the exact people standing outside the restroom, but the event seemed to be the same.

But what is weird is that both of them completely failed to mention a third roommate that's in the dorm room with them at the time. Like it's very odd, you would think that that's something you remember. They just took it out of their testimonies. You would have no idea that Jason was laying in bed in the dorm room. He wasn't even asleep. He's right there with them. Why would they not mention that he was in the room? Didn't he run out too? He just lay there the whole time?

Jason's story doesn't add up either. Jason was questioned by the police and he said that he was skipping the school assembly because of a stomach ache. He said he was laying on the top bunk waiting for classes to start and that's it. Yeah that's it. Then he went to class. He makes no mention of any screaming, no mention of people running out his dorm mates He's like, I don't know what you're talking about. I was just laying there and then classes started so I went I didn't hear any screaming It was just weird is Jason lying are the others lying with Jason so sick that maybe he tuned out the screams

Please don't really know but they did want to investigate Zang and Kenny, the two boys outside the restricted restroom. So Zang is 15. He is a year younger than Gao. He was the opposite of Gao in terms of family wealth. He came from a not so wealthy family. They often struggled to put food on the table, but Zang was kind of their hope in life. He studied really hard to get good grades and even became the class president.

So his parents put a lot of faith in him and it was shocking to him when February 13th that one in the morning police start bursting in through the family door and they're surrounding 15 year old Zang's bed and arresting him for murder. He was brought in for questioning and initially Zang and Kenny they're denying the whole thing. But the officers are basically telling him, look, the jig is up. After a 30 hour interrogation, they both confess to the heinous crime. There is a short storybook series in China called Horror Stories. It's really popular. My husband said that you read the series? Yeah, it's like a weekly or monthly. Yeah, I'm trying to find like a American equivalent, but yeah, it's like a weekly series.

There's many volumes and the short stories of Brandon Little Things, right? Zeng said that he was reading horror stories, a little short story collection, and in there, there's a short story called Vampire. And he's like, come on, this is all going to make sense. It's about a group of friends at school who keep hearing a girl screaming from the restroom. And initially they think, oh oh it's just a prank. Maybe one of the guys snuck in there and is screaming trying to freak people out. But throughout the day, more students hear the screaming, and they all think about investigating,

but they're all kind of scared, so they don't. By the end of the day, most of the students have heard the screams and they're all whispering about, okay, well let's come up with some spooky theories. At the end of the story, the students find out that one of the girls in their class was in the restroom when her body was abducted by a ghost. A ghost took her soul and her body was just left behind lying lifeless on the toilet. That's what they said. But the truth was, when police came to investigate, it was not a female ghost that sucked the soul out of her

The police concluded that the victim was killed by a male student who wanted to fulfill his perverted wishes and kill a girl in the restroom This is all a story. Yeah Which sounds like a lot of eerie parallels here, right? Is it a strange coincidence or was Gau's murder inspired by this story? Is it a strange coincidence or was Gow's murder inspired by this story? Zhang confessed the morning of January 10th He woke up late so he missed the morning assembly and since he already missed it He might as well hang out in his dorm before classes start So he's sitting there flipping through you know pages of his horror story book

And he starts getting excited by the explicit content in the book and it makes him want to try it out for himself He wanted to have sexual relations with someone. And he said, after reading horror stories, I wanted to have intercourse. So he ran up to the third floor, he ran into gout team, and look, he's not seeking her out or anything, it was just a happy coincidence. At the time he didn't even know her name, but he thought that she was pretty. He reached into his pocket and grabbed his pencil knife. So pencil knives are used commonly in China, it's like a box cutter, but it's used to sharpen wood pencils.

He creeps up behind her and he holds it to her neck, drags her into the restricted restroom, pins her down on the ground. And he said she started screaming, what are you doing? Help! Two or three times. So he quickly used his left hand to cover her face, like grip her face, and she stopped breathing. He also used another hand to strangle her with her own scarf. He was just trying to get her to stop screaming. That was his main motive. Afterwards, she's not screaming anymore. He tugged her pants down and squatted above her trying to essay her, but quote, because it was my first time, I didn't really know how to do it, so I was struggling. But then her two hands started coming grabbing up on me and I placed my left hand more firmly

against her nostrils. Because now she's like fighting back again. And I realized that she had stopped breathing. So at the time I was very scared. He said he was so freaked out, he decided that he was going to put her body in the restricted stall of the restroom. He got up and started kicking the metal padlock until the door latch fell off. So the padlock was in place but the latch fell off.

All he would have to do is nail the latch back on with a new padlock. What? That's what he said. He dragged Gow's body inside, brought in all of her things, and he rushed out of the bathroom and ran straight into Kenny. Now thankfully, Zang and Kenny had been friends since middle school, and Kenny was curious. He's like, what are you doing in there? Zang told him what happened. He's like, I just wanted to essay a girl, but she ended up dying. And Zang's like, I just have a quick favor. Please, can you just watch the door while I go buy a new padlock for

the bathroom? Kenny agrees and stands guard near the toilet stall. Zang brings in a new padlock, locks it up and the two go back to their morning classes. That afternoon, Zhang said that he bought one of those white plastic bags from his classmates. It's a big bag. It's kind of like a burlap sack, but it's white. So imagine like a rice bag, that size. He brought it, went back into the toilet to wrap gauze up her body in it, but he didn't stop there. The next day while everybody else is in class, Zeng said that he went back to the restricted restroom and he just couldn't help himself.

So he engaged in necrophilia, forced activities with the corpse's mouth, the body's mouth, then used a mop to sawdemise the corpse. He started using his pencil sharpening knife to make cuts all over her body and he said, I was annoyed because I wanted to have intercourse with her and all of the other things like using the blades to cut her, the necrophilia, all of those were learned in the book. He continued, eventually, this is after she's passed. Eventually I have finished and I wrapped it all up in a tissue because I was afraid that someone might find out and I learned that from a TV show. That was his confession.

March 3rd, only a month after Gao's body was found, Zhang was tried and sentenced to life in prison for a sexually motivated homicide. Kenny got three years for obstruction of justice. And my question is, can a mother ever accept the fact that her 15 year old son is a necrophiliac? That she raised a necrophiliac that's capable of essay and murder? Zang's mom just wanted to know how and why, because she couldn't believe it, like she's trying, but she can't believe it. I mean, she would argue with people, he is a piece of meat that fell from me.

He's kind, he's timid, I know he wouldn't do such a thing. Some people felt bad for her for being so blind to her own son, others just felt angry, for raising a son like this and still taking a side, enabling him. This is the reason he turned out the way he is because you can't see the truth in your own kid. Zang's mom remembers no, but it just doesn't make sense. During parent teacher meetings that winter, she was walking through the hallways with Zang and she was feeling anxious because all the other parents were talking about the missing girl that was from the school.

So she turned to him and said, hey honey, have you heard anything about this missing girl from school? Should I have anything to be worried about? Are you going to be okay? And he said, I don't even know the girl. I don't know what you're talking about. But now he's in prison for her murder. She's like something's not adding up. Every chance she got, she would visit 15 year old Zang in prison and every meeting was the same. She would sit there in front of him with a crumpled up tissue begging him to just tell me what happened on January 10th, just what happened. And he would sit there. He wouldn't even look at her. Not a single sound was coming out of him,

just tears quietly streaming down his face. And for six years, he didn't tell her a single thing about January 10th. Until 2011, he saw himself on the crime show, on the TV prison. And he realized, this is what the whole world probably thinks of him, a monster. And he just couldn't do it anymore. He was listening to these reporters and documentary makers talk about how he essayed and murdered

a teenage girl and how he hit her body in the school bathroom. But that wasn't him. He never did that. The next time his mom came to visit, a now 21 year old Zhang told her for the first time in six years, Mom, I didn't do it. I didn't do it. I was framed and his mom believed him.

For the next 10 years, the two of them would appeal his sentence. Just to give you a timeline, the crime took place 2005. 2011, Zang decides to speak up against what he believes was a wrongful conviction. 2012, their first appeal was rejected. 2012, their second appeal was rejected. 2018, their appeal was finally accepted by the Supreme People's Court for a hearing. But that hearing was postponed over and over until the court finally saw his case January 13th of 2020.

Nine years after he told his mom, I didn't do it. And that's after six years of already sitting in prison. At this point, Zhang was 30 years old and he had spent half of his life in prison. The Shandong higher people's court reviewed his case. Zhang and his attorneys who were really competent, by the way, and his attorneys were taking his case pro bono. He had two attorneys that believed in his innocence so much that they actually self-funded the case and spent like $100,000 of their own funds

to fight for him. And they argued a few key points to the appeal judge. They said, first of all, forensic and authorities have agreed that Gow's murder likely happened while everyone was at the morning assembly Monday morning. The timing made the most sense, but also Gau's stomach was empty, which if you remember, she and DD were running late so they didn't have time for breakfast. So again, very likely the murder occurred during the morning assembly.

Zeng was one of the class presidents. He was in attendance at the morning assembly, but he skipped the jogging part because it was his duty to bring his classmates' jackets back up to the classroom because they get hot when they jog. The morning jog starts at around 6.20 a.m. So Zang starts heading back to the main building at 6.20 a.m. with all of his classmates' jackets. Albert and Peter said they heard screams at 6.23 a.m. That would have been very difficult, physically very difficult for Zang to even run to the main building and run up three floors in just three minutes.

And then fully attack Gow to the point where she's screaming for help. Yeah, and earlier they said that he didn't attend assembly, he was in the door, so that's not true. Exactly. And Peter stated he put his jacket on first. And maybe that took about two minutes, right? So let's add an extra two minutes to the three minutes. That's five minutes. And then he sees Zeng just standing outside the restroom looking all chill, already had killed Gau. So he ran from the lap area into the building up three floors, killed gal in four minutes, maybe five. What did he do with all the other jackets? That doesn't make any

sense. He not only killed her, but he kicked open the latch of the locked door and dragged her body into the toilet area, walked out, and then him and Kenny were standing there without even breaking a sweat. But let's say he could, who's to say that Gow was even able to get to the third floor by that time. So Gow got to school at around 6.13 AM. She was still with DD at the bike area, which is on the outskirts of the campus. So let's be fair, let's say she ran to the man building,

even though she was sick and allowed to skip assembly. But let's say she ran for whatever reason. It would take her at least five minutes to get to the main building. So now we're talking about like 6.18 am. Remember Zang was bringing up the jackets around 6.20 am, so he would have likely made it into the main building after Gao. And now Gao is running faster, booking it up, like stair master level, three flights of

stairs. That would still take a while. But the roommates heard screams at 6.23 a.m. It just doesn't make sense that either of them are on the third floor by 6.23 a.m. And to add to that, there was evidence tested from the crime scene, biological evidence, and none of them matched Zang. There was literally no physical evidence tying Zang to the crime scene or the crime, which was honestly really messy, so it's not like someone meticulously wiped down every little thing and made sure nothing was left behind. It was just odd.

So now, witnesses can't even pinpoint him there at the right time because the timing doesn't make sense. DNA can't pinpoint him there, so nothing can pinpoint him to be in the restroom at that time to kill Gau? The second point that the attorney's made is the police stated Zang went to go buy a new padlock from the school store before morning classes while Kenny was standing guard. But the school store doesn't open until 7.15 a.m., which is after morning classes are over. And there's a whole padlock saga online.

Not only did it not make sense how he was able to buy a padlock when the store wasn't even open, but forensic evidence seemed to point in the direction that the crime itself likely happened in the toilet stalls where Gow was found not near the sinks. So there wasn't really signs of struggle near the sink. And just psychologically speaking, experts said most killers choose secluded areas to commit their crimes. They want to feel comfortable, especially if it's their first time. So that means someone would have had to unlock that door first, whether by breaking it or having the key, then drag Gal in there, then assault and

strangle her, which that doesn't make sense in terms of timing. So he's super speed, he's running up three floors, getting there, unlocking the door, then grabbing Gal, then dragging her like what? That's just crazy. Like you're in a school, you know there's people walking around like everywhere. And the assemblies about to be over. The assembly does not last long. Exactly. Exactly.

And there's always students that skip assemblies. Yeah, there's teachers, there's like workers. Yeah. According to Zang's confession, he kicked open the padlock door, which people have a hard time believing that. Netizens start doing experiments with similar padlocks and door latches. They try kicking and kicking and half of them said it's possible but not likely. The other half of them said it was impossible without at least damaging the door itself.

And there were no reports that the door was damaged. And think of how hard it is to get the padlock open. Remember Jandran or Lam? He still had to use tools multiple times to get the padlock open. Remember, gendered or lamb, he still had to use tools multiple times to get the padlock open, the new one. I mean, sure, maybe the new one is better than the old one, but still. And if the latch on the door had been broken like Zang's confession claimed,

it would still have been pretty loose when gendered or lamb went in to break the new padlock. So the latch would have broken before he broke the padlock. But it didn't. Leading Zang's attorneys to believe that the padlock had to have been't. Leading Zang's attorneys to believe that the padlock had to have been unlocked with a key and not broken. And Zang would not have a key to that.

Right. And third point has to do with the two main witness statements from Albert and Peter. They aren't the most reliable. Those two didn't even mention that there was another roommate in the room with them, who by the way, the other room it stated that he didn't hear any screams that morning. And another thing about their statements, Zeng's attorney argued, in Albert's statement, he said that he didn't even know who was standing in front of the bathroom, he just could see their height. That was the only defining characteristic that he could give.

He said the tallest one was 5'6". Zeng was 5'9 and 200 pounds. The attorney's argued he's pretty recognizable in the school. Adding to that, Zhang and Albert were friends in middle school, so it'd be kind of strange that he wouldn't even be able to recognize him even if it was a little dark in the hallway. And the last issue with the two quote witness statements was when Gao went missing,

they never mentioned any of these things. Not the screams, not the restroom, not seeing Zhang, nothing. It was only after her body was found 30 feet away from their dorm rooms that they were like, you know what, we did see two guys standing outside the bathroom and we heard screaming. Going by common sense, if someone went missing and you heard weird screams that morning, wouldn't that be the first thing that you tell the police? And there is another thing, smaller detail than the others, but you know how Zang confessed that he was turned on after reading the sexually explicit content in the horror stories book?

There is no sexual content in that book. It's your typical high school horror book. The titles are like, the new student doesn't have legs. It's like scary stories in the dark. You guys know that series? That's what it's like. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like, there's no way.

Yeah. Like, these books are mainly purchased by like middle schoolers, high schoolers. There's no sexually explicit content. The titles are like ghost mirror, the creepy school fortune teller, don't take pictures at the graveyard. These are the types of stories we're talking about, none of it was sexual. It seemed like the police didn't even read the book. And they just thought, you know what, we'll blame the book.

Like how some adults will try to blame violence on video games. They're like, well, I don't have an answer, so let's just blame it on that. Just say he read the book and say he got turned on. That's what the attorneys believe. But what about the confession? Everything else can be argued back and forth, but Zang himself admitted to the crime. Why is he suddenly taking it all back six years later?

Zang's attorney argued that he was coerced by the police into confessing. He was interrogated as a 15 year old for over 30 hours with no parents or attorney's present. Zang said, in the 30 hours he was stuck in that room, he was beaten, electrocuted, slapped, and abused. He said he was so beat up that he couldn't even stand on his own by the end of it. His body was covered in bruises and electrocution marks. He said that the police would ask him a question, and if he answered honestly, and they didn't like his answer, they would beat him up. Then they would keep asking him the same question over and over again beating him up non-stop until he gave them

whatever answer they wanted. For instance, they asked him what color jacket Gow was wearing that day. Saying had no clue, he didn't even know her. He never saw her that day. So he guessed white. The police took off their shoes and slammed it across Zang's face with the bottom of their dirty souls. They were slapping him so hard he was seeing stars. And they're like, let me ask you again what color was her jacket. He just kept guessing random colors until he finally guessed red. If Zang pleaded with them to stop and said, please I just don't remember, they would

nicely state, we're trying to help you remember. And then they would slap him. But it wasn't just the police there. Forensic technicians were also there to either guide Zhang in the right direction or even change their reports to match his quote confession. They're basically writing history. After his arrest, Zhang would meet up with prosecutors. So this is not the police, but they work with the police, you know, prosecutors. basically writing his story. After his arrest, Zang would meet up with prosecutors, so this

is not the police, but they work with the police, you're not prosecutors. And he's trying to tell them, please, like, I want to recant my entire confession, I was coerced into making it up. I'll give you my DNA, like, you can, can you please prove that this isn't me? It's not me. They refused and they dragged him back to the police who smacked him around some more. Kenny Zang's accomplice went through the same thing. He got three years and he stated that his confession was coerced. He said it was like quote filling in the blanks for the officers. Eventually Zang confessed to the entirety of the crime when he was 15. After 30 hours of physical and mental torture, Zang said even when he heard the full confession

come out of his mouth, he wanted to die. He said to confess to those types of crimes at 15, 16 years old, do you know what that's like? If they let me go at that time, I think I would have just wanted to die anyway. Like really, what's the point of living after admitting doing something like that? You can crush your fingers and all your toes during a data center migration. You can knock on wood, pluck a dozen four leaf clovers or look to your lucky stars for a successful office expansion. You could hold your breath, shut your eyes, and say all the well wishes to help avoid cyber

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only at your super holiday store. See flyer for details. Zang was now a free man. After being labeled an R-worder, killer, necrophiliac for 15 years. The judge cleared his name. Wow. When he stepped out of court, he yelled to the reporters, Zeng is innocent. And the first thing that he did was go back to his old family home that he grew up in. And it had been 15 years since he had been back. They were recording his reaction. And I don't know what I was expecting. I guess I was expecting sadness, but also some sort of silver lining.

Like he's home now, right? It is such a depressing clip. He's walking through the old house and he starts tearing up, almost panicking. And at first, he just says, I can't remember anything, but the more he walks into the house, he almost becomes scared and frantic.

He just keeps crying. I can't remember anything. I can't remember this. I can't remember anything. I can't remember this. I can't remember any of things I can't remember mom. I can't remember And Zang's mom runs over and hugs him and says it's okay. It's okay. It doesn't matter if you don't remember my son. It's okay This clip is one of the reasons that this case went viral recently The murder itself took place in 2005 and it was widely talked about amongst true crime communities and

place in 2005 and it was widely talked about amongst true crime communities and Zang was released in 2020 and because of this emotionally charged clip everyone wanted to know the backstory again. But nobody expected the backstory to be stole full of mystery. After Zang was freed, another question developed, then who the hell did it? Because they've been free for 15 years. It didn't seem like the police were investigating anymore, nor could they really be trusted, so netizens came up with their own list of suspects. Netizens suspect number one was the best friend Dee Dee. She was the last one to see Gow alive. She said that she just vanished when she was putting her bike away.

That's weird, how does someone just vanish? Or do you just not have a better explanation so you come up with this very loose description? Dee Dee was the last person to hang out with Gow, maybe she secretly hated her, maybe she was jealous of her. Another odd thing was, D.D. kept insisting that the last time she saw Gow, Gow was wearing a yellow winter jacket, but Gow's body was found with her red puffer jacket underneath. Not yellow, red. Which added confusion to the investigation. At one point, the investigators,

because of Dee Dee's jacket discrepancy, they thought maybe Gow left the campus. That's why she disappeared. And she went to go meet up with a boy, maybe barbecue restaurant boy. She liked making friends online. Maybe Dee Dee knew that Gow was going to leave the school and run away to be with a guy.

And maybe Dee Dee had a plan to help her skip classes to go run off with him. And now she's too scared to talk. That's why she remembered a yellow jacket but after leaving, Giao Giao dressed in a red jacket, was murdered and then brought back on campus. A lot of things don't make sense with this theory. Everyone who knew Giao said that she would never run off with a guy. Her parents were wealthy, she was not easily swayed or impressed by some money, and if it was love, it probably wasn't because she was head over heels for Brian. So like, why would she run off with another guy? Just didn't make any sense. Two, if she did run off with another guy, why would they bring her body back to campus? It's a boarding school. Like, why would you risk that?

Wouldn't it make more sense to hide a missing student's body, say somewhere deep in the woods, versus the restricted restroom that hundreds of students pass by every single day. And three, even if DD was involved in helping Giao run off with a guy, I would hardly say that's a crime and she does seem like a good friend. It just doesn't seem like there's any reason for her to not say anything. And about the jacket color discrepancy, maybe it was just too dark to remember. Then we have suspect number two.

Gendered our lamb was the one who found the body. Netizens had questions about why Jandida Lam chose to come in on that specific day to clean the restrooms. It was the middle of the New Year break. Everyone was spending time with family, and Lunar New Year has taken very seriously in China. Why did he leave his family to come clean bathrooms? When he could have maybe done it a day before the school opened,

did he want to make sure that he was the first one to find gal? Make it seem more natural since nobody else would be around so he doesn't have to put on a show. It was also argued that the janitors of the boarding school, they don't just maintain the cleanliness of the school. They have a lot of other duties and they're actually pretty involved in the student's lives. Like they have to enforce curfew when they're on their shift, they sleep in the faculty

dorms as well. So maybe he knew Gal, and maybe he liked her. And he had planned all of this. He has the key to the third floor restroom, and maybe he thought this was the perfect crime. Janitor Lam would argue that his family were big drinkers, and they were always pushing drinks on him. So he left Lunar New Year celebrations to skip that. And it was really, really cold at the time, so it would make sense for janitor lamb if he had killed gau to wait until it gets a bit hotter so that the body can decompose and be discovered later and there would be way less evidence preserved.

So he was kind of ruled out by most netizens, but what about janitor Huang, the other janitor, he also has keys to the padlocks. He was suspect number three. Now there isn't really much evidence towards him. I think Netizens had to consider him purely based off the fact that he had a set of keys to the restroom. But other than that, he was one of the genders that really wanted to clean the restroom's ASAP. So it just didn't make sense for him. And if he was the one that killed Gau, he would probably want to find Gau's body and not let gender alarm do it. Then we have the liar, suspect number four. Peter. Peter, the guy who saw Zang outside the restroom 30 feet from his dorm room, one of the strongest witnesses that put Zang behind bars,

well he was a little liar. Peter isn't even just some student that resides 30 feet away from the crime scene. He was the class president of Gow's class. Peter was Gow's class president and it's so interesting because he was two completely different statements during the course of the investigation. When Gow initially went missing, she was just a missing person and Peter's statement was, oh yeah, a few days ago before Gow went missing, there was a shift in her demeanor. I thought that she looked kind of like she was under a lot of pressure. She always looked shaken up, constantly putting her head down on the table, you know, trying to lay down. It was weird.

I used to always be able to joke with her, but a few days before she vanished, she got mad anytime I try to hang out with her. When I called her by her nickname, which is Tauttow. Tauttow, grass grass. Grass grass. She was annoyed. She always thought it was funny, but like randomly she's annoyed. Just seemed like she was on edge, you know? Personally, I don't think that anything happened to Gow. I think that she ran away or maybe she went into hiding. When police asked him why, he said he didn't know.

That was just his theory. Just one thing I want to point out, calling someone nickname like Tata, like, so Chinese, what they do is like, let's say your name is three letters. We will usually take the last letter and double it. So it's almost like a nickname. Your parents will call you.

Someone very close call you endearingly, like you're a little nickname. It's like, steffy, steff, like even more. Like steff, steff, steff, steff, like that. Very cute. You don't call that just a classmate that you kinda know. You must be really close to them for you to call them that. Or not really close, like you gotta have some more of a relationship.

You don't just come to someone say, what's your name? Oh, Steph Steph. Like you don't do that. Yeah. Okay, interesting. And that makes it more interesting because this is what he's saying after Galgos missing, no mention of screaming in the restroom.

No mention of anything. Right. He's just like, oh yeah, she seemed on edge. I called her grass grass and she didn't seem happy about it. And then now that Gal's body is found, he's got a whole other story about being in the dorm room, investigating screams coming out of the restroom and running into Zang. When authorities asked him, why didn't you tell us about the screaming earlier? He just said, for the teacher's good. For the teacher's good?

And everyone was like, what does that even mean? The police didn't even further ask questions. Like, why would he say that? Like, what does that mean? He doesn't elaborate further, so netizens came up with their own theory. Suspect number five, the home-room teacher, Mr. Foo. The night that Gal went missing, Gal's dad had rushed to the school because of her milk that was left on the table. Remember?

Yeah. And one of the first people that he wanted to talk to was Mr. Fu. And not necessarily because he thought Mr. Fu was bad or had anything to do with Gow's disappearance, Mr. Fu was Gow's homeroom teacher. Now just to give you some context, homeroom teachers in China are basically your parent at school, because you know how in the US, you go from class to class as a student and your teachers constantly change

and you maybe spend like 30 minutes with your home-room teacher. In China, you stay in the same class with the same group of people and the teachers go class to class. So you're at the same desk with the same neighbors, same kids, same home-room teacher. Everything is like very stable.

And your home-room teacher almost becomes like your parent. So if you are late, you're room teacher, everything is like very stable and your home room teacher almost becomes like your parent. So if you are late, your tardy, your absent, you go to your home room teacher. And the right hand man or woman for this home room teacher is the class president. So we can assume if anyone was close to Mr. Foo, it would be Peter. So if he was talking about any teacher and any teacher's good, it would be Mr. Foo. So, Gallows dad is trying to talk to Mr. Foo that night, but turns out Mr. Foo left early. School officially ends at 9.30 pm, but he left at 5.00 pm.

He gets Mr. Foo's number from the administrators, and he's not picking up his phone. They even pulled Mr. Foo's emergency contact list to ask, hey, family members of Mr. Foo, where's Mr. Foo, and nobody is getting responded calls. The next morning, January 11th, Tuesday morning, Mr. Foo shows up to work, and Gow's dad has been waiting for him. He starts asking him about yesterday, where was Gow? What happened yesterday? Why didn't you pick up your phone last night? To which Mr. Foo apologizes for not picking up his calls. He said that he went to his girlfriend's house and didn't think to check his phone. And as for Gau, she wasn't in class yesterday,

which was Monday, and I haven't seen her since Friday, so before the weekend. What? Later, Mr. Foo was interviewed by the police, and he stated that he did notice some weird behavior from Gau before she went missing. He said, a few days before she vanished, she received a letter.

Remember the letter in the toilet? How would he know that? That's not something students share with teachers. She received a letter. Remember the letter in the toilet? How would he know that? That's not something students share with teachers. Yeah, he said he saw it. He said, I don't know who or where the letter came from, but she looked very serious and then tore it to pieces. That's all. That's all we have on that.

When police asked what he thought happened to Giao, he said, I personally think the odds of her leaving on her own without telling anyone are high. This is when she was just missing. I don't think she had enemies. I don't think anyone wanted her to. So all of this, I mean, nothing's really that creepy, but netizens now analyze Mr. Foo's statement about what he did on January 10th.

He said, on January 10th, I woke up at 6am. When the school's wake up bell rang. The school gathers for the flag raising ceremony at 615 every Monday and that morning I had a headache and I woke up late. So when I got up, the flag raising ceremony had already ended and students had already started the morning jog. They had already run like half a lap. I joined the run at the very end but I didn't see gouting and I didn't pay much attention. After the morning exercise they had morning classes., but I didn't see Gouting and I didn't pay much attention. After the morning exercise, they had morning classes. Mr. Food did not see Gouting, but he just assumed she had been sick the past few days, so maybe

she just didn't make it to school. After breakfast, he went back to afternoon classes, and she's still not there. And then in the afternoon, Mr. Food decided, I'm going gonna leave early at 5pm to go visit my girlfriend. Now, he went to go stay with his girlfriend that night. He slept over. That's why he didn't check his phone. And he came back via the bus the next morning to attend to his classes. On surface level, maybe it's normal, like nothing to see here, but a few odd things. His girlfriend lives in a town that would take two hours by public transport to get there. No freaking way. Probably even more.

So like a two and a half hour journey. Two hours like now. I'm sure back then the transport wasn't as good. So he said he arrived at his girlfriend's house around 8 pm. He left the school around 5 pm. Then he would have to show up to school the next day at 6.15 am. So just to be safe, he would have to leave his girlfriend's house the next morning at 3.30 am.

Would he really spend six hours traveling just to spend eight hours with his girlfriend on a school day? Netizen said it's very hard to imagine a teacher doing this, considering that it was just the weekend, so wouldn't he have just spent time with her through the weekend? But maybe he missed his girlfriend so much. Still a bit strange. Why would he still not at least contact Gow's parents to ask if she was at home or if she was feeling okay when she's gone from class That's the standard protocol for home room teachers. Yeah

So Mr. Food the day Gow went missing not only did he not alert Gow's parents But he ditched school at 5 p.m. When the day officially ends at 9.30 p.m He took a three hour train ride to visit his girlfriend turned off his phone and knew nothing about what happened to Gow Yeah, that makes no sense. Then remember the padlocks, how the janitors have the keys? Well, they have three sets of keys, and each padlock has three keys, so they put a key on each one, and these janitors don't really take these keys home. They have them locked in the staff room, which a lot of staff could have access to.

And the blunt force trauma on Gau's head, it stated that it could have been inflicted by an object like a flashlight. Remember how I said there was little pieces of glass embedded into her forehead? The glass cover of the flashlight. This one is iffy, not a lot of netizens believe in the flashlight theory, even if they think that Mr. Foo is guilty. They think that he could have committed that type of trauma, injuries with other things. But some people think that he was trying to hit her with the brunt end of the flashlight. And then when it wasn't working

and she was still screaming the flashlight, he turned it over and started hitting her with the glass part, the glass shattered and some of it embedded into her forehead. Now, why is the flashlight important? Typically, the home room teachers at the boarding school, they all had flashlights on them all the time because they were in charge of monitoring the halls at night to make sure that no students

were out of bed or sneaking around. I don't believe in the home room teacher doesn't answer phone call theory because my aunt is a home room teacher. It's like their kids basically. You're responsible for everything about them. Especially boarding school. I just don't see that happening. Yeah, and from what I can tell, I wonder if it's kind of like Korea.

So I know in the US, like in the Western world, when you're off, you're off, like that's kind of the sentiment. In, so in China, home teacher is always responsible. If you're out, you always have someone replace you. So you have like a math teacher saying, hey, he will be the temporary home teacher. So anybody needs anything approval. You need to go home early.

You need you have emergencies. Talk to this person. Hmm. They're that important. Yes. You don't just leave in the middle of the day and expect nobody needs anything. Because there's always something needs approval from your teacher. Yeah.

And the phone thing, yeah, the phone thing is kind of weird, especially if you leave early, you would pay attention to your phone because you're like, I left early. Man, the phone thing is kind of weird. Especially if you leave early, you would pay attention to your phone because you're like, I left early, man, what has something happened? Regardless, all of this is, I guess circumstantial evidence, right? But the weirdest part is that after Gowd disappeared before her body was found,

students reported Mr. Foo telling them passionately that if anyone asks about Gowd's incident, they should just tell them that Gowd ran away. The netizen theory is that Mr. Foo took liking to Gow and perhaps even wrote that letter. We don't know. Or he found that letter and was upset that Gow was seeing someone else and he felt territorial over her. So he decided he was going to assault her.

He knew that she wasn't going to the morning assembly that day because she had gotten his permission last night or like the weekend before because she was sick. He could have easily asked her, hey, can you help me upstairs on the third floor with something? He could have already unlocked the padlocks to the third floor restricted restroom and he would start assaulting Gao and lead to her death is the theory. Perhaps Peter and Albert did hear some screaming, but Mr. Food told Peter that if he shuts his mouth Mr. Food will give him privileges and help him become successful and get him into a better college.

And in places like China going against your home room teacher can result in your academic life going down in the gutter. So maybe he made up a random story to give to the police, which explains why he never mentions screaming when the police first investigated Gow's disappearance. And he's switching up his story, he's throwing Zang onto the bus like none of it is adding up. Then Mr. Foo replaced the padlock just to make it harder for the other teacher, students, or janitors to get in if they wanted, and even visited Gow after her passing to commit more heinous acts is the theory.

But because the police aren't really investigating, Mr. Foo is a free man, and we don't know if he did it or not, it's just a theory. And he's still a teacher. And everybody else? Still free. Experts say that whoever committed this crime, the necrophilia aspect, the slicing of the knife, it pointed to a very scary profile of a killer, likely someone who has some sort of erectile dysfunction or performance anxiety, who tried to assault Gau but failed and that triggered this rage inside of them. So to further feel that power and humiliation they killed and performed acts of necrophilia to redeem themselves from being weak and unable.

As for Kenny and Zang, the two wrongfully convicted of the murder, Kenny spent three years in prison, which isn't as long as Zang's 15 years, but the course of his life completely changed. He couldn't go to college, he couldn't get hired for any real jobs, he could only do hard manual labor. And not saying that's not a real job, but I'm saying like, it's a rough job. Yeah, just the whole life is ruined. Yeah, I mean, his whole family was shamed in Asia.

It's like your family is part of you too. He's a criminal. Yeah, and not just a criminal, it's a pretty bad crime. Yeah, yeah. As for Zang Like, it's a pretty bad crime. Yeah. As for Zang, his life isn't any easier now. His father passed away from brain cancer. His grandparents are dead. His only living grandfather doesn't even recognize him

because he's like, I don't remember you. That was so long ago. And he looks so different now. And the only one that ever believed in his innocence, his mom, she's got a full head of gray hair and she spent most of her life in pain. He said every one of their pastings was like torture to me Even though I didn't commit the crime my case contributed to their early death. I can't even see them one last time That's my biggest regret

Zang filed for financial compensation for the wrongful conviction. He requested a million dollars for 15 years Which isn't a lot and a reputation trashed. He was only given $465,000. And when he was handed a check from the court, they literally just looked at him and said, sorry about that. Wow, I'm just... No more more snow understanding.

Nothing. And in prison, he had to work 10 hours a day, every single day since he was 15. It was rough. And he said the worst part is, for six years, he never told his mom that he was innocent because how would that help? He knew that the police were terrifying. He knew that the prosecutors were in on it. So were the forensic experts. If he told his mom, his mom would only feel more heartbreak, feeling the injustice. It's one thing if your kid did something wrong and they're now paying the consequences, but if your kid didn't do it and they're paying the consequences and an Asian culture,

a lot of parents blame themselves if they're not financially capable. They feel like if I just had some money, if I was a better parent and could provide more money, maybe I could have loyered up and they wouldn't be here. So he didn't want that for her. That's why he didn't say anything. He also said it was kind of a wake up call. He said it's like waking up in a fantasy land. He went into prison 15 in 2005 and he came out in like 2020

and he's like, I don't know any of this technology stuff. I feel like I'm living in the future. Like you see those movies and you don't know how to use any of these like flying cars That's what it feels like But at least the world knows that he's not a monster Twelve officials were investigated in the connection to this case and we still don't know Who killed Gouting?

Because whoever did it is free Please let me know your thoughts in the comments Please stay safe and I will see you guys on Wednesday for the main episode. Bye Please let me know your thoughts in the comments. Please stay safe, and I will see you guys on Wednesday for the main episode. Bye!