The Strange Phone Call
On the afternoon of October 27, 2000, a secretary at a major electronics company in Taiwan answered a phone call at her desk.
Instead of a normal conversation, she heard frantic screaming.
The caller sounded like an elderly woman. She claimed that her grandson worked at the company and had become involved in a fight with another employee.
According to the woman, her grandson had planned to kidnap that employee as revenge.
But something had gone wrong.
He had allegedly kidnapped the wrong person.
The woman told the secretary that the victim was being held near a pond. She then gave an urgent warning.
The secretary should call the police immediately.
Then the woman hung up.
At first, the story sounded unbelievable. But the secretary knew something that made the call much more serious.
A deputy manager at the company had not arrived at work.
His boss had also tried to contact him without success.
The secretary began to wonder whether the missing manager was the person the caller had described.
She contacted the police.
Police Find a Body in the Pond
Police officers soon went to the nearby park.
They did not find a kidnapper.
They did find something else.
A large canvas bag was floating in the pond.
When officers pulled it from the water and opened it, they discovered a dead man inside.
The victim was identified as Chen RenCheng, the missing deputy manager.
His wrists and ankles had been tied. His injuries showed that he had been violently killed.
Detective Jean Gui began examining the scene.
The case immediately presented a difficult question.
Was Chen really the accidental victim of a kidnapping?
Or was the kidnapping story designed to hide a planned murder?
Chen’s Fiancée Arrives at the Scene
While police were investigating the body, a woman suddenly appeared at the pond.
She saw Chen’s body and collapsed.
Her name was Zhang Yiwen, and she said Chen was her fiancé.
The couple were supposed to get married in only 10 days.
Detective Jean asked whether she or Chen’s family had received a ransom demand.
She said no.
There had been no ransom call and no message from a kidnapper.
Yiwen also said she had last seen Chen two days earlier. They had stayed together at a hotel as a short getaway before their wedding.
She described Chen as a quiet man who mostly worked.
But there was one detail that caught the detective’s attention.
Chen had previously been involved in gambling.
Yiwen insisted that he had stopped.
She said he had paid his debts and promised her that he was finished with gambling.
Still, the detective wondered whether Chen had secretly returned to gambling.
The Kidnapping Story Starts to Fall Apart
The investigation soon raised more questions.
Police could not find evidence of an actual kidnapping.
There was no ransom demand.
There was no clear reason for a co-worker to kidnap Chen by mistake.
And the other employees who had been absent from work that day had alibis.
The elderly woman who made the original phone call also remained unidentified.
Police could not trace the call to her.
Detective Jean began to suspect that the kidnapping story was deliberately created to mislead investigators.
But if the kidnapping was fake, why was Chen killed?
The detective needed to find a motive.
A Note About Gambling Debt
The answer appeared to be inside Chen’s office.
While searching his desk, Detective Jean found a crumpled handwritten note.
The note appeared to remind Chen to calculate how much money he owed to a man named Shi Nan-fang.
That was important.
Yiwen recognized Shir’s name.
She told police that Shi was involved in gambling and that Chen had once owed him a large amount of money.
According to Yiwen, Shi had even threatened Chen’s life during the period when Chen owed him money.
But she believed Chen had eventually paid him back.
She also believed the debt was in the past.
Detective Jean was not convinced.
The note appeared to be recent.
He decided to question Shir.
The Suspect Has an Alibi
Shi Nan-fang. did not react as the detective expected.
When Jean asked about Chen, Shi said he did not know him.
Jean showed him the handwritten note.
Shi admitted that he was involved in illegal gambling and that other people owed him money.
But he insisted that Chen was not one of them.
He also claimed to have an alibi for the night of the murder.
Jean checked it.
The alibi was genuine.
Police then examined Shir’s phone records and bank information.
They found no evidence of contact between Shi and Chen.
The supposed gambling motive was falling apart.
There was only one obvious explanation left.
The note itself might be fake.
The Handwriting Changes Everything
Detective Jean returned to the documents from Chen’s office.
He compared the suspicious note with other examples of Chen’s handwriting.
Something was wrong.
The handwriting did not match.
The note had not been written by Chen.
Someone had planted it in his desk.
Jean now knew that the gambling theory had been deliberately constructed.
But who had written the note?
Police collected handwriting samples from people who could have accessed Chen’s office.
The result was unexpected.
The handwriting belonged to a woman named Luo Meiyun.
At first, she appeared to have no connection to the murder.
She was married to a local police officer.
Her husband had been working elsewhere during the investigation and was not involved in Chen’s death.
But investigators continued looking into Luo’s past.
They eventually found a connection.
Eight years earlier, Luo and Chen had both belonged to the China Youth Corps.
That connection led police to question her.
What she revealed changed the entire case.
Luo Meiyun Was Living a Secret Life
Luo confessed that she and Chen had known each other for eight years.
They had also been having a secret affair for all those years.
But Chen did not know the truth about Luo’s life.
She was married.
Her husband was a police officer.
Luo had hidden her marriage from Chen while maintaining a separate relationship with him.
She had built two different lives around two different identities.
The situation became even more complicated when she became pregnant with her husband’s child.
Luo needed to hide the pregnancy from Chen.
She told him she was going abroad to study.
When he became suspicious, she reportedly gave him another explanation.
She claimed she was an international spy and needed to leave the country.
Chen believed her.
The Wedding Threatened Her Secret
Eventually, Luo agreed to marry Chen.
But she was not using her real identity with him.
Chen believed he was going to marry Zhang Yiwen.
In reality, Zhang Yiwen was an identity used by Luo.
The wedding was only 10 days away.
That created a serious problem for her.
Marriage would require her real identity to be revealed.
Her eight-year secret life was about to collapse.
According to the investigation, Luo decided to prevent that from happening.
The Murder and the Fake Kidnapping
Police concluded that Luo had murdered Chen and disposed of his body in the pond.
She then created a false story to mislead investigators.
The phone call to the electronics company was part of that plan.
She pretended to be an elderly woman and claimed that her grandson had accidentally kidnapped the wrong employee.
She also planted the false gambling-debt note in Chen’s office.
The goal was to make investigators believe that Chen had been killed because of gambling debts.
For a time, the plan worked.
Police initially considered the possibility that Chen had been murdered because of gambling.
But the investigation eventually exposed the planted note.
The handwriting led them to Luo.
And her hidden relationship with Chen revealed the real connection.
How Police Solved the Case
The investigation unfolded through several important clues:
- The missing deputy manager: Chen’s disappearance made the strange phone call credible.
- The body in the pond: Police quickly confirmed that the case involved murder.
- The lack of a ransom demand: This weakened the kidnapping theory.
- The gambling note: It appeared to provide a motive.
- Shi Nan-fang‘s alibi: His story was independently verified.
- The handwriting comparison: The note was shown not to be Chen’s.
- Luo’s handwriting: The planted note was traced back to her.
- The secret affair: Investigators discovered her connection to Chen.
- The approaching wedding: Police found a possible reason for Luo to fear exposure.
What first looked like a bizarre kidnapping turned out to be a carefully constructed deception.
The Final Outcome
Luo Meiyun was eventually exposed and convicted of murder.
She was sentenced to life in prison.
The case had begun with a strange phone call about a grandson who had supposedly kidnapped the wrong man.
It then appeared to involve gambling debts and a dangerous creditor.
But the gambling evidence had been planted.
The real story was hidden behind years of lies, a secret relationship and a false identity.
The case shows why investigators cannot always accept the first explanation they are given. A convincing story can still be deliberately constructed to send an investigation in the wrong direction.
In this case, the smallest clue—the handwriting on a crumpled piece of paper—helped police uncover the much larger deception.