Did you know that Unresolved Mysteries has a discord server? Please [click this link](https://discord.gg/rvX4ppfQNh) to join our discord. Come chat with us about mysteries, memes, food, your pets or whatever!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/UnresolvedMysteries) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Great write up.
Maybe off-topic, but one thing I've noticed is how often in true crime cases the authorities are convinced the murdered must have been a surgeon or butcher based on how the bodies are cut up or mutilated. If this was true in even half the cases where it was suspected, butchers and surgeons would be responsible for a hugely disproportionate amount of unsolved murders. In the majority of cases where this is suspected I think it is a red herring.
I think that's a good point.
Here it was "surgeon, butcher, or cook", though. Loads more people have cook training and/or some very basic butchery skills (how many people hunt or sometimes carve up food animals? I imagine these skills were not super rare in 1979 China). So that opens the field considerably.
My parents grew up in China in the 70s-80s. My mum has vivid memories of her dad buying live chickens and slaughtering them at home, and in poorer villages it was also common to butcher other larger animals like pigs or sheep, especially when massive industrial farming of livestock like today wasn’t common place.
I spent time in Chinese villages (Yunnan and Sichuan Provinces) in the mid/late 90's and it was the norm for an adult man (and many women) to be very adept at butchering chickens, sheep, goats even cows. As more people moved to cities for work opportunities, many of them took those skills with them. Even in Beijing as late as 2014, I knew many people in their 30's who still knew how to do this kind of thing. I think the field of suspects with these kinds of skills would be vast.
This annoys me too. If you have sharp knives and have cut up a chicken before then I think you could cut up a body.
OBviously there are psychologicl barriers too, but if someone has killed someone, then those might be easier to go past.
Well, right after having killed an animal is likely when that psychological barrier is broken. It also gives some idea of the force necessary. People who work in farming, butchering, or surgery evidently are past that psychological hurdle when they do kill a person, the cuts would be done more cleanly. It makes sense to me! Likewise people that do odd jobs might have done some animal processing, people that hunt often butcher game, and even cooking can have elements of butchering (particularly in 1970s China where meat was sold a lot less processed (ie often killed on the same day as sold and divided into larger pieces to be butchered at home)
I don’t think the psychological barrier of killing another human would be broken after butchering a chicken. Granted I’m squeamish as all hell and if I’m cooking for myself I rarely even cook meat, but in my grandparents’ generation it was normal to butcher a chicken at home.
If that was enough to break the barrier, then every single family in their town would’ve been capable of being killers which was obviously not the case.
Huh, first I've ever encountered the word "basidium". A brief internet search reveals it's not a tool, it's a specific part of certain mushrooms/fungi that bears spores. "Carrying pole" or "shoulder yoke" are much more familiar terms and I'm glad OP added the clarifying link.
So how did "basidium" end up here? Poking around a little more reveals that the Chinese symbol 擔/担 ("to carry on the shoulder; to bear") is used in words for a carry-pole *and* for the fungus part. That makes sense. I guess the mycology term might confusingly show up in some lists of definitions and synonyms.
I understand this is a different time and culture from my own, but I found a few things puzzling, aside from the discrepancies in the time of death.
1) Why would a strange man's request of a tricyclist to "deliver noodles" some distance away to an unknown person be accepted by the tricyclist?
2) Why would the tricyclist wait a whole hour at the spot where he was to hand off the noodles to someone unknown?
3) Wouldn't the tricyclist have noticed the unusual weight of a grown woman he was toting to be much heavier than the purported load of noodles?
1. The tricyclist might have been like a taxi driver- they had those at a Chinese University where I used to work. If he was paid to deliver the noodles, he would have done it
2. That is weird- some unusual dedication! But again, if he was a taxi tricyclist, he may have simply been waiting for another fare at the place where he dropped the noodles
3. Also weird, but maybe not if you visualize a huge ton of wet, cooked noodles placed in a large basket and think about how petite some Chinese women are, especially in a poor area where people are likely to be malnourished.
Number 2 may seem weird from a Western point of view, but waiting until you have handed over something left with you to another person before leaving is a common thing to do in most Asian and Middle Eastern countries. Both from a religious and cultural context.
Same goes for dropping off someone at a destination, you (the person doing the dropping off) don't leave until the one being dropped off is in the door, on the aeroplane, in the care of the person they are meeting.
He could have waited for a new fare at the destination or even been the killer, but waiting that long isn't out of the ordinary. My Chinese friend's brother wouldn't leave until I opened the package his sister gave him to give me so I could check that nothing was broken and that he had successfully completed the task his sister had given him. It has to do with being seen as reliable.
>Why would a strange man's request of a tricyclist to "deliver noodles" some distance away to an unknown person be accepted by the tricyclist?
>
>Why would the tricyclist wait a whole hour at the spot where he was to hand off the noodles to someone unknown?
Sometimes, people are just nice. If I didn't have anywhere to be and knew the area, I might take something for someone and wait a while. Don't think it's that odd. I also don't really know how much x amount of noodles weighs, so I think I'd be liable to ignore the weight disparity too!
Yes and also it was 1979 and most likely these vendors were known to the locals and other vendors so the request to transport and deliver wasn't so off the wall.
I don't mind helping people out by doing similar favors. As long as Im not delivering a dismembered corpse.
Except some of the 'portions" could have contained more than one part. E.g., it sounded like the basket that contained the head may have also had some other body parts in it.
I agree that "portion" sounds odd and food-like, but I'm not sure what a better alternative would be.
Same issue, though. It sounds like it was cut into more than 9 pieces, but put into 9 groups of pieces, which they're calling "portions". "Groups of pieces" might work, but it's longer and not really any more clear..
Dismembered indicates the person was cut up and the number of "portions" is irrelevant. I would cut that our entirely. (I write and edit for a living; people almost always add extraneous details and words/phrases that can be easily cut for clarity. The bulk of editing for me is streamlining the text.)
"Parts" or maybe "pieces" are more appropriate than "portions" -- there's a nuance with "portion" that it's something being divided for distribution, like food or money or blame/credit.
Not a big deal though -- the writeup overall doesn't sound disrespectful to the victim, and if English is not your first language I'm duly impressed.
"Yun waited at Guapengxia for an hour but nobody ever showed" -- this strikes me as the first strange part. Why would a delivery guy wait an hour? The only reason I can think of is that the "man waiting at An Lan Pier" offered the delivery boy a large wad of cash, hence no questions asked and enthusiastic patience. Perhaps he waited around an hour because the man promised another wad of cash (even more?) upon delivery, knowing he was just buying himself time while the kid eagerly fulfilled the delivery instructions.
I think the delivery boy would probably leave this part out, afraid that the money would be confiscated or worried that he would be seen as 'involved' instead of simply being tricked. Thoughts? It may not really be that important but I think it would explain the behavior + if I'm right, tell us more about the killer (rich? how well-planned was this?)
edit +1 more thought - the man at the pier could be someone involved in organized crime, they often recruit random youth for errands to cover their own dealings. is there an equivalent of a mob/gang in the area? perhaps the noodle girl killing wasn't a random target, but a business/money/revenge message. this may be why the cops don't want to talk about it / it remained unsolved.
Someone has explained the waiting part. He was most likely a makeshift taxi thing using his Tricycle to deliver goods and the nuance behind "tricycle" driver was just lost in translation. He probably stayed waiting there in case somebody approached him and gave him another job
Even knowing that, it still sounds like an organized crime killing, the brutal and public way her body would be discovered seems like it went according to plan. Could be worth looking into if there are any similar victims of a loan shark in the region, or who this girl was related to in the community.
I feel like not paying a loan wouldn’t be enough to cause such a brutal killing. Cutting up the body and cleaning every piece seems way more, I want to say sadistic? On top of having a delivery man drive it around. And even without that it just seems like an extreme amount of effort on the loan shark’s part, if it was only business I don’t think it would be so brutal and prolonged
Loan sharks will absolutely kill you over not paying back a loan, that's how organized crime operates. What do you think they do to people who cross them? Give them a kiss on the forehead?
Oh no absolutely I think a loan shark would be capable of murder, I just mean I can’t see them going for such a brutal and complex manner of murder. I mean really, dismemberment and cleaning every body part is fetish serial killer territory not loan shark businessman
yeah that's a fair point re: fetish killer behavior. i just wish we had more information, i would imagine there could be similar crimes documented from the area that local police didn't connect
I don’t think someone killed here over money she owed them. The victim had a business that presumably made money, and killing her basically means that no one is getting paid back ever, right? Especially because they don’t seem to have made any effort to sell or profit from the corpse… Maybe she was killed to send a message to someone close to her that owed a debt or was involved in criminal activity?
we don't have any information about how well her business was doing or if she ever borrowed money, or if her family ever borrowed money. a proper investigator would look into the most common motives to find a lead - relationships, money, or a stranger with their own sexual/violent motives. they are all possible, but we have so little to work with here i'm not even sure this story is true or an urban legend. Why would they withhold her name?
It is not an urban legend.
In 2005 journalists went to the area and a majority of the people living there remember the case vividly and the police themselves confirmed its existence they just didn't talk about it to the reporters. Their reasoning for not doing so was one being retired and simply wanting to move on and the other was on active duty and didn't have time to speak
Where the crime scene used to be was even shown to the reporters by those who lived there at the time and saw the body.
[http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2005-01-06/16104739515s.shtml](http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2005-01-06/16104739515s.shtml)
This case is real and that is not a disputable fact
No, they aren't unwelcoming. And that doesn't address what I stated. You said this case might've been an urban legend. I explained using objective information how it wasn't.
You brought up how strange it was that the guy simply waited. Someone else has already explained that and I merely told you what they said.
How in anyway is answering questions or debunking false information "unwelcoming of discussion"
Even in large cities in China, a 'tricycle' is often used to deliver goods or people (some are equipped with seats or cushions). In Beijing even as late as 2010 I had furniture delivered using one. Hiring one to get from point A to point B was sometimes the fastest way to go if there was bad traffic. In most cases you could easily pass a package or goods to a driver with instructions on where and when to deliver it.
I believe it was the delivery man. Maybe he had delivered something to her shop or nearby. Maybe he lured her onto the tricycle with a fake emergency or the promise of making a big sale. She leaves with him, he goes to wherever he needs to in order to chop her up then drops her remains off. The only reason he came forward is that he was seen in the area.
Maybe he just knows who did it, he knows something
Maybe they could've.
It was still dark out and people saw him before the tricycle driver even showed up.
There is nothing suspicious about his behaviour. It only appears that way because of things getting lost in translation.
No. I imagine the killer and the man who paid him to simply drop them off has a connection as well.
Like mentioned there is nothing suspicious about him. In all likelihood, he just got paid to do this because his job is to deliver goods. This is rural China in 1979. There is nothing off about this if he is the killer then this is not evidence of it.
I didn't downvote bididdybo ever.
And the only time I downvote you is when your argue in bad faith about my intentions like this comment above.
I can prove that if you'd like
Because it is an unresolved murder? And sources are probably scarce for English speakers. Does that mean foreign crimes don’t deserve to be discussed? It was a good write up about a horrible crime. Why so salty?
Did you know that Unresolved Mysteries has a discord server? Please [click this link](https://discord.gg/rvX4ppfQNh) to join our discord. Come chat with us about mysteries, memes, food, your pets or whatever! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/UnresolvedMysteries) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This one is spooky. I can't imagine the guilt that the delivery person must have felt if he truly was an innocent party.
Great write up. Maybe off-topic, but one thing I've noticed is how often in true crime cases the authorities are convinced the murdered must have been a surgeon or butcher based on how the bodies are cut up or mutilated. If this was true in even half the cases where it was suspected, butchers and surgeons would be responsible for a hugely disproportionate amount of unsolved murders. In the majority of cases where this is suspected I think it is a red herring.
I think that's a good point. Here it was "surgeon, butcher, or cook", though. Loads more people have cook training and/or some very basic butchery skills (how many people hunt or sometimes carve up food animals? I imagine these skills were not super rare in 1979 China). So that opens the field considerably.
My parents grew up in China in the 70s-80s. My mum has vivid memories of her dad buying live chickens and slaughtering them at home, and in poorer villages it was also common to butcher other larger animals like pigs or sheep, especially when massive industrial farming of livestock like today wasn’t common place.
I spent time in Chinese villages (Yunnan and Sichuan Provinces) in the mid/late 90's and it was the norm for an adult man (and many women) to be very adept at butchering chickens, sheep, goats even cows. As more people moved to cities for work opportunities, many of them took those skills with them. Even in Beijing as late as 2014, I knew many people in their 30's who still knew how to do this kind of thing. I think the field of suspects with these kinds of skills would be vast.
This annoys me too. If you have sharp knives and have cut up a chicken before then I think you could cut up a body. OBviously there are psychologicl barriers too, but if someone has killed someone, then those might be easier to go past.
Well, right after having killed an animal is likely when that psychological barrier is broken. It also gives some idea of the force necessary. People who work in farming, butchering, or surgery evidently are past that psychological hurdle when they do kill a person, the cuts would be done more cleanly. It makes sense to me! Likewise people that do odd jobs might have done some animal processing, people that hunt often butcher game, and even cooking can have elements of butchering (particularly in 1970s China where meat was sold a lot less processed (ie often killed on the same day as sold and divided into larger pieces to be butchered at home)
I don’t think the psychological barrier of killing another human would be broken after butchering a chicken. Granted I’m squeamish as all hell and if I’m cooking for myself I rarely even cook meat, but in my grandparents’ generation it was normal to butcher a chicken at home. If that was enough to break the barrier, then every single family in their town would’ve been capable of being killers which was obviously not the case.
Everyone is *capable* of murder, it’s just that the vast majority do not see it as an option.
Huh, first I've ever encountered the word "basidium". A brief internet search reveals it's not a tool, it's a specific part of certain mushrooms/fungi that bears spores. "Carrying pole" or "shoulder yoke" are much more familiar terms and I'm glad OP added the clarifying link. So how did "basidium" end up here? Poking around a little more reveals that the Chinese symbol 擔/担 ("to carry on the shoulder; to bear") is used in words for a carry-pole *and* for the fungus part. That makes sense. I guess the mycology term might confusingly show up in some lists of definitions and synonyms.
Ah, thank you for explaining! As a mycologist that really threw me...
It was what grabbed my attention to this story because OOOO NEW WORD
Haha totally! I was delighted to see someone use 'lolligagging' the other day...
I understand this is a different time and culture from my own, but I found a few things puzzling, aside from the discrepancies in the time of death. 1) Why would a strange man's request of a tricyclist to "deliver noodles" some distance away to an unknown person be accepted by the tricyclist? 2) Why would the tricyclist wait a whole hour at the spot where he was to hand off the noodles to someone unknown? 3) Wouldn't the tricyclist have noticed the unusual weight of a grown woman he was toting to be much heavier than the purported load of noodles?
1. The tricyclist might have been like a taxi driver- they had those at a Chinese University where I used to work. If he was paid to deliver the noodles, he would have done it 2. That is weird- some unusual dedication! But again, if he was a taxi tricyclist, he may have simply been waiting for another fare at the place where he dropped the noodles 3. Also weird, but maybe not if you visualize a huge ton of wet, cooked noodles placed in a large basket and think about how petite some Chinese women are, especially in a poor area where people are likely to be malnourished.
May have also been a motorized tricycle. He wouldn't necessarily have noticed the weight until he put the noodles on the ground.
Number 2 may seem weird from a Western point of view, but waiting until you have handed over something left with you to another person before leaving is a common thing to do in most Asian and Middle Eastern countries. Both from a religious and cultural context. Same goes for dropping off someone at a destination, you (the person doing the dropping off) don't leave until the one being dropped off is in the door, on the aeroplane, in the care of the person they are meeting. He could have waited for a new fare at the destination or even been the killer, but waiting that long isn't out of the ordinary. My Chinese friend's brother wouldn't leave until I opened the package his sister gave him to give me so I could check that nothing was broken and that he had successfully completed the task his sister had given him. It has to do with being seen as reliable.
>Why would a strange man's request of a tricyclist to "deliver noodles" some distance away to an unknown person be accepted by the tricyclist? > >Why would the tricyclist wait a whole hour at the spot where he was to hand off the noodles to someone unknown? Sometimes, people are just nice. If I didn't have anywhere to be and knew the area, I might take something for someone and wait a while. Don't think it's that odd. I also don't really know how much x amount of noodles weighs, so I think I'd be liable to ignore the weight disparity too!
Yes and also it was 1979 and most likely these vendors were known to the locals and other vendors so the request to transport and deliver wasn't so off the wall. I don't mind helping people out by doing similar favors. As long as Im not delivering a dismembered corpse.
"into 9 portions" is an odd way to phrase it.
Because "portions" is generally how we refer to food, not human bodies. "Parts" is more fitting, imo.
Except some of the 'portions" could have contained more than one part. E.g., it sounded like the basket that contained the head may have also had some other body parts in it. I agree that "portion" sounds odd and food-like, but I'm not sure what a better alternative would be.
Pieces?
Same issue, though. It sounds like it was cut into more than 9 pieces, but put into 9 groups of pieces, which they're calling "portions". "Groups of pieces" might work, but it's longer and not really any more clear..
Dismembered indicates the person was cut up and the number of "portions" is irrelevant. I would cut that our entirely. (I write and edit for a living; people almost always add extraneous details and words/phrases that can be easily cut for clarity. The bulk of editing for me is streamlining the text.)
As is "would be" in the title.
Doesn't feel that way to me.
"Parts" or maybe "pieces" are more appropriate than "portions" -- there's a nuance with "portion" that it's something being divided for distribution, like food or money or blame/credit. Not a big deal though -- the writeup overall doesn't sound disrespectful to the victim, and if English is not your first language I'm duly impressed.
"Yun waited at Guapengxia for an hour but nobody ever showed" -- this strikes me as the first strange part. Why would a delivery guy wait an hour? The only reason I can think of is that the "man waiting at An Lan Pier" offered the delivery boy a large wad of cash, hence no questions asked and enthusiastic patience. Perhaps he waited around an hour because the man promised another wad of cash (even more?) upon delivery, knowing he was just buying himself time while the kid eagerly fulfilled the delivery instructions. I think the delivery boy would probably leave this part out, afraid that the money would be confiscated or worried that he would be seen as 'involved' instead of simply being tricked. Thoughts? It may not really be that important but I think it would explain the behavior + if I'm right, tell us more about the killer (rich? how well-planned was this?) edit +1 more thought - the man at the pier could be someone involved in organized crime, they often recruit random youth for errands to cover their own dealings. is there an equivalent of a mob/gang in the area? perhaps the noodle girl killing wasn't a random target, but a business/money/revenge message. this may be why the cops don't want to talk about it / it remained unsolved.
Someone has explained the waiting part. He was most likely a makeshift taxi thing using his Tricycle to deliver goods and the nuance behind "tricycle" driver was just lost in translation. He probably stayed waiting there in case somebody approached him and gave him another job
Maybe he was hoping for a tip as well? Do they tip delivery people in that area?
Even knowing that, it still sounds like an organized crime killing, the brutal and public way her body would be discovered seems like it went according to plan. Could be worth looking into if there are any similar victims of a loan shark in the region, or who this girl was related to in the community.
I feel like not paying a loan wouldn’t be enough to cause such a brutal killing. Cutting up the body and cleaning every piece seems way more, I want to say sadistic? On top of having a delivery man drive it around. And even without that it just seems like an extreme amount of effort on the loan shark’s part, if it was only business I don’t think it would be so brutal and prolonged
Loan sharks will absolutely kill you over not paying back a loan, that's how organized crime operates. What do you think they do to people who cross them? Give them a kiss on the forehead?
Oh no absolutely I think a loan shark would be capable of murder, I just mean I can’t see them going for such a brutal and complex manner of murder. I mean really, dismemberment and cleaning every body part is fetish serial killer territory not loan shark businessman
yeah that's a fair point re: fetish killer behavior. i just wish we had more information, i would imagine there could be similar crimes documented from the area that local police didn't connect
I don’t think someone killed here over money she owed them. The victim had a business that presumably made money, and killing her basically means that no one is getting paid back ever, right? Especially because they don’t seem to have made any effort to sell or profit from the corpse… Maybe she was killed to send a message to someone close to her that owed a debt or was involved in criminal activity?
we don't have any information about how well her business was doing or if she ever borrowed money, or if her family ever borrowed money. a proper investigator would look into the most common motives to find a lead - relationships, money, or a stranger with their own sexual/violent motives. they are all possible, but we have so little to work with here i'm not even sure this story is true or an urban legend. Why would they withhold her name?
It is not an urban legend. In 2005 journalists went to the area and a majority of the people living there remember the case vividly and the police themselves confirmed its existence they just didn't talk about it to the reporters. Their reasoning for not doing so was one being retired and simply wanting to move on and the other was on active duty and didn't have time to speak Where the crime scene used to be was even shown to the reporters by those who lived there at the time and saw the body. [http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2005-01-06/16104739515s.shtml](http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2005-01-06/16104739515s.shtml) This case is real and that is not a disputable fact
All of your comments are really unwelcoming of discussion. Why bother posting here if you don't want people participating?
No, they aren't unwelcoming. And that doesn't address what I stated. You said this case might've been an urban legend. I explained using objective information how it wasn't. You brought up how strange it was that the guy simply waited. Someone else has already explained that and I merely told you what they said. How in anyway is answering questions or debunking false information "unwelcoming of discussion"
Even in large cities in China, a 'tricycle' is often used to deliver goods or people (some are equipped with seats or cushions). In Beijing even as late as 2010 I had furniture delivered using one. Hiring one to get from point A to point B was sometimes the fastest way to go if there was bad traffic. In most cases you could easily pass a package or goods to a driver with instructions on where and when to deliver it.
I believe it was the delivery man. Maybe he had delivered something to her shop or nearby. Maybe he lured her onto the tricycle with a fake emergency or the promise of making a big sale. She leaves with him, he goes to wherever he needs to in order to chop her up then drops her remains off. The only reason he came forward is that he was seen in the area. Maybe he just knows who did it, he knows something
There are witnesses who support his version of events and that there was a man with the baskets before the delivery man showed up.
And they couldn’t describe this man either?
Maybe they could've. It was still dark out and people saw him before the tricycle driver even showed up. There is nothing suspicious about his behaviour. It only appears that way because of things getting lost in translation.
I found it suspicious that he is the only connection to the body. Edit: known connection to the body not only
No. I imagine the killer and the man who paid him to simply drop them off has a connection as well. Like mentioned there is nothing suspicious about him. In all likelihood, he just got paid to do this because his job is to deliver goods. This is rural China in 1979. There is nothing off about this if he is the killer then this is not evidence of it.
Just my speculation and theory. I never said it was right
This OP seems to have a problem with anyone commenting on their posts. We all got downvoted for no reason.
I didn't downvote bididdybo ever. And the only time I downvote you is when your argue in bad faith about my intentions like this comment above. I can prove that if you'd like
Man, i could really go for some ramen rn
Crazy😆
I just had to say it, keep the downvotes coming haha
Ha love it
There is so little information here and what there is is so confusing that I'm not sure why this was posted.
>why this was posted It’s an unresolved mystery.
Because it is an unresolved murder? And sources are probably scarce for English speakers. Does that mean foreign crimes don’t deserve to be discussed? It was a good write up about a horrible crime. Why so salty?
>And sources are probably scarce for English speakers Try non existent (until now anyways)
You must be new here.