The crackdown on organized crime began with the arrest of the mother-in-law.

Chapter 1197 Motive and Circumstances of the Murder

Watching Zhao Lei being led into the interrogation room, Li Ming said to Xiao Zhou, "You've worked hard, three days and three nights without sleep, and finally caught him." Xiao Zhou shook his head: "This is what we should do. Next is the interrogation and securing of evidence so that Zhang Juan's family can get an explanation as soon as possible."

After Zhao Lei was taken into the interrogation room, Xiao Zhou and his team did not rest. Instead, they immediately sorted out the evidence collected during the arrest and sent items such as the black cloth bag, blue shirt, steel pipe, and bank cards to the technical department for further testing to ensure that each piece of evidence could form a complete chain of evidence.

As the sun set, the lights in the Criminal Investigation Division gradually came on. Zhao Lei's arrest brought a breakthrough to the Zhang Juan murder case. The upcoming interrogation would be crucial; only by getting Zhao Lei to fully confess to the crime and the whereabouts of the embezzled funds could the truth of the case be completely revealed, giving the victim and her family a just explanation. Xiao Zhou stood outside the interrogation room, looking at Zhao Lei inside. He knew in his heart that this battle against evil was not over yet, but justice would ultimately prevail.

The incandescent light in the criminal investigation branch's interrogation room was glaringly cold. Zhao Lei sat on a metal chair, his hands cuffed. Mud stains on his black jacket hadn't been cleaned off, and bits of grass stuck to his trouser legs rubbed against the edge of the chair. His head was bowed low, his bangs obscuring his eyes, revealing only his slightly trembling chin—from the moment he was brought into the interrogation room until now, he had remained silent, his fingers repeatedly rubbing the edge of the handcuffs, as if trying to conceal his inner turmoil.

Xiao Zhou sat opposite Zhao Lei and pushed a glass of warm water in front of him, the bottom of the glass making a slight sound as it hit the table. "Zhao Lei, we have all the evidence," Xiao Zhou said in a flat voice, his gaze fixed on the evidence bag on the corner of the table—it contained a blood-stained blue shirt, a steel pipe covered in cement dust, and a bank card with 65 yuan in it. "Now you have a chance to explain how you murdered Zhang Juan and where the 80 yuan of public funds went. This is your only chance to get leniency."

Zhao Lei's throat bobbed, and when he looked up, his eyes were bloodshot. He picked up his water glass and took a sip; the warm water seemed to ease his tension. After a moment of silence, he finally spoke: "I killed Zhang Juan, and I embezzled the 80 yuan..."

The story begins in June 2024. Zhao Lei was in charge of raw material procurement for the East Suburb Cement Plant. In order to pay off his gambling debts, he decided to embezzle public funds. "The first embezzlement was on June 5th. I forged a procurement contract with 'Changsheng Building Materials' for 200,000 yuan, and used fake invoices and approval forms to get away with it," Zhao Lei's voice was hoarse. "At the time, I thought I would embezzle it for emergency use and pay it back when I won money, but I didn't expect to lose more and more gambling, and the hole got bigger and bigger. Later, I forged contracts four more times, embezzling a total of 800,000 yuan."

Zhang Juan, the cashier in the finance department, discovered an anomaly while checking documents in July. "She came to me with the documents and asked me, 'Why are all the invoices for Changsheng Building Materials photocopies? The signatures on the delivery slips are also wrong,'" Zhao Lei recalled. "I panicked and said, 'It might be a problem with the supplier. I'll go ask them again,' trying to fool her. But I didn't expect her to not believe me at all and was secretly checking information about 'Changsheng Building Materials'—I later found out that she had already discovered that 'Changsheng Building Materials' was a shell company."

At 3 p.m. on August 14, Zhang Juan approached Zhao Lei with the complete verification records, clearly stating that she would report it to the factory manager. "She slammed the records on my desk and said, 'Zhao Lei, you've embezzled public funds. I have to report this, otherwise you'll be an accomplice,'" Zhao Lei's body trembled slightly with anger and fear. "I begged her for more time, saying, 'I'll return the money immediately, don't ruin me,' but she disagreed, saying, 'Financial regulations cannot be broken, you must be responsible for your actions.'"

After the argument failed, Zhao Lei had the idea of ​​killing her to silence her. "I knew she would go to the scrap yard to check the raw material inventory every day at 5 pm, so I waited for her there in advance," he paused, his eyes filled with remorse, "I even brought a steel pipe from home, thinking that if she still insisted on reporting, I would... teach her a lesson. I never thought I would end up killing her."

At 5:10 p.m. on August 14, Zhang Juan arrived at the scrap area on time. "She was surprised to see me and asked me, 'What are you doing here?' I told her, 'Let's talk this out, don't report it,' but she was still adamant and said, 'I've already made an appointment with the factory manager to submit the records first thing tomorrow morning,'" Zhao Lei's voice grew softer and softer. "I got anxious at that moment, picked up a steel pipe and hit her neck. She screamed and fell to the ground."

Seeing Zhang Juan fall to the ground, Zhao Lei panicked. He knelt down and checked her breathing, finding she was still faintly breathing. "I was afraid she would wake up and call the police, so I picked up the steel pipe again and hit her chest twice more until she stopped moving completely," he said, covering his face and crying. "I didn't mean to kill her, she forced me to. I don't want to go to jail..."

After the murder, Zhao Lei began planning how to dispose of the body. "I first dragged her body to a corner of the scrap yard, covered it with a tarpaulin, and then drove home to get a rope and a black cloth bag," he said, wiping away his tears. "At 9 p.m., when no one was around in the factory, I put her body into the bag, tied her ankles with a rope to prevent her from slipping, and then moved it to my silver van—a van I borrowed from a friend, and I made the fake license plates myself so I wouldn't be discovered."

The location for dumping the body was a well-thought-out plan by Zhao Lei. “Waste is transported away there every day, and there are few surveillance cameras. I figured if I dumped the body there, it would eventually be transported away as waste, and no one would ever find out,” he said with a wry smile. “After I threw the body into the material pile, I even covered it with a dust net and cleaned up the traces on the truck, thinking that this would be foolproof.”

As for the black car that picked me up, Zhao Lei confessed that it was his gambling friend Wang Hao. "After I killed Zhang Juan, I was scared, so I called Wang Hao and asked him to come and pick me up," he said. "Wang Hao knew about my embezzlement and had helped me transfer money a few times. He was afraid that I would implicate him if I was arrested, so he agreed to come and pick me up. He drove outside the wall and waited for me, and then took me home."

Regarding the whereabouts of the 80 yuan in public funds, Zhao Lei confessed that 50 yuan was used to pay off gambling debts, 15 yuan was given to Wang Hao as a "kickback," and the remaining 15 yuan was hidden under the bed at his sister Zhao Mei's house in the countryside. "I originally planned to take the money and run away to another place to hide for a few years after things calmed down," he said, looking at the bank card on the table. "The 65 yuan in that card is what I haven't had time to use yet. 50 yuan was what I planned to return to the factory, and 15 yuan was for my sister's living expenses. I didn't expect that I would be caught by you before I even had a chance to use it."