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

26:19There was a vertical incision on her stomach in between her breast. So it started up in between her breast, 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 Gao'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.

26:54And 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 crisscrossing each other. It is clear that whoever did this is very sadistic, but it gets a bit stranger. So initially, authorities assumed that the SA 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.

27:37and they theorized that someone wanted to assault her, could not maintain the correct amount of blood flow, got very angry and started punishing Gao 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 reports 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, Gao 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.

28:17But they didn't because she's not alive. Authorities are pretty certain that the red broom handle that was found underneath her body was used. So you're talking full on necrophilia. Lastly, there were large red patches covering her waist, thighs, and butt everywhere. And Gao's 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.

28:54so they're less like a chair-shaped toilet but 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 would someone organize that afterwards?

29:30Exactly. 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 issue. Nobody was flushing 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, Gao's underwear was found in a poem, some sort of letter. It was addressed to Gao and it reads, If a drop of water represents a blessing, I give you the East China Sea.

30:05If 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 embodies health, I give you Mount Tai. 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 a plastic bag. With her underwear. Did they keep that? They studied the handwriting because that's like stalker behavior, right? Yeah. And Gao would have died before Chinese New Year. Now, Gao's parents refused to pick her up from school. They wanted answers and they wanted justice.

30:45and they believe 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 Gao.

31:15And they had four main suspects, Gao'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 restroom.

31:43Let'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 a class flower. She was the class flower. 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 mean that they're talking to each other more than others.

32:17They're sharing lunches and waiting for each other in the hallways, but they don't really go on dates. They don't really like do stuff outside of school. So Gao 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 scolding Brian about how he shouldn't play with her emotions and she doesn't like him being with other girls.

32:52So you're saying the information was leaked. Yeah. So their friends thought that Gao was very, very much into Brian but he was just this toxic, toxic boy and he would hit on other girls knowing that Gao would find out and Gao'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 Gal's classroom is on the second floor. She was found dead on the third floor where Brian's class is. It was speculated that maybe Gal went to go see Brian and see if he's in class instead of the assembly.

33:30But 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.

34:06They'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 Gao was missing? They were just looking for Gao. 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.

34:41And second of all, there was blood splatter on the walls near one of the lower bunk beds. So the new running theory was that Gao 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 Gao'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 Gal's homeroom class.

35:11They had been interviewed when Gal went missing and they all said they had no information on where Gal could be. Like they knew nothing. They knew nothing. But after finding Gal'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.

35:49He was laying in bed, and then around 6.23 a.m., 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.

36:26But 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.

36:58And 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 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 with Zhang. Anyway, Zhang lived on the second floor and he had his classes on the third floor.

37:30So they meet on the stairs. They run into each other. And 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 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're 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.

38:52he 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 don't really, 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.

39:22Later, 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 Zhang 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 into the restroom, the restricted restroom, and the main door to the toilet still appeared to be closed.

39:53He 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 zhang and kenny leave and peter's like weird later that day he runs into Zhang again and asks him once more, what were you doing in front of that restroom on the third floor?

40:41And he just said, oh, you know, goofing around with my girlfriend. Last Peter remembered, Zhang 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.

41:14They 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.

41:50His 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? Was Jason so sick that maybe he tuned out the screams? Police didn't really know, but they did want to investigate Zhang and Kenny, the two boys outside the restricted restroom. So Zhang 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 Zhang was kind of their hope in life.

42:25He 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 at 1 in the morning police start bursting in through the family door and they're surrounding 15-year-old Zhang's bed and arresting him for murder. He was brought in for questioning and initially Zhang 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. Wow. There is a short storybook series in China called Horror Stories.

43:00It'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 an American equivalent. But yeah, it's like a weekly series. There's many volumes and the short stories of random little things, right? Zhang 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, it's just a prank. Maybe one of the guys snuck in there and is screaming trying to freak people out.

43:36But 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.

44:12The 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 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.

44:49He 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 Gao Ting. 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.

45:22And 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.

46:01And 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 Gao's body inside, brought in all of her things, and he rushed out of the bathroom and ran straight into Kenny. Now, thankfully, Zhang and Kenny had been friends since middle school.

46:34And Kenny was curious. He's like, what are you doing in there? Zhang told him what happened. He's like, I just wanted to SA a girl, but she ended up dying. And Zhang'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. Zhang brings in a new padlock, locks it up, and the two go back to their morning classes. That afternoon, Zhang said that he bought like 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.

47:07He brought it, went back into the toilet to wrap Gao's upper body in it. But he didn't stop there. The next day, while everybody else is in class, Zhang 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 sodomize 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.

47:45He 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? Zhang's mom just wanted to know how and why.

48:25Because 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. And others just felt angry for raising a son like this and still taking his 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. Zhang's mom remembers, no, but it just doesn't make sense. During parent-teacher meetings that winter, she was walking through the hallways with Zhang.

48:57And 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 Zhang 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.

49:25Just 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 hid her body in the school bathroom. But that wasn't him. He never did that.

50:04The 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, Zhang 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.

50:54Nine 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 Gao's murder likely happened while everyone was at the morning assembly Monday morning.

51:33The timing made the most sense, but also Gao's stomach was empty, which if you remember, she and Didi were running late so they didn't have time for breakfast. So again, very likely the murder occurred during the morning assembly. Zhang 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 Zhang starts heading back to the main building at 6.20 a.m. with all of his classmates' jackets.

52:06Albert and Peter said they heard screams at 6.23 a.m. That would have been very difficult. Physically very difficult for Zhang to even run to the main building and run up three floors in just three minutes. And then fully attack Gao to the point where she's screaming for help? Yeah, and earlier they said that he didn't attend the 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 zhang just standing outside the restroom looking all chill already had killed gao so he ran from the lap area into the building up three floors killed gao 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.

53:09But let's say he could. Who's to say that Gao was even able to get to the third floor by that time? So Gao got to school at around 6.13 a.m. She was still with Didi 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 a.m. Remember Zhang was bringing up the jackets around 6.20 a.m.? So he would have likely made it into the main building after Gao.

53:40And 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 3am. And to add to that, there was evidence tested from the crime scene, biological evidence, and none of them matched Zhang. There was literally no physical evidence tying Zhang 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.

54:13It 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 Gao. The second point that the attorneys made is the police stated Zhang 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 Gao was found, not near the sinks.

54:54So 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 Gao 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 assembly is about to be over the assembly does not last long exactly and there's always students that skip assemblies yeah there's teacher there's like workers yeah according to zhang's confession he kicked open the padlock door which people have a hard time believing that.

55:49Netizens 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 Janitor 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 Zhang's confession claimed, it would still have been pretty loose when Janitor Lam went in to break the new padlock.

56:24So the latch would have broken before he broke the padlock. But it didn't. Leading Zhang's attorneys to believe that the padlock had to have been unlocked with a key and not broken. And Zhang 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 roommate stated that he didn't hear any screams that morning. And another thing about their statements, Zhang's attorney argued in Albert's statement, he said that he didn't even know who was standing in front of the bathroom.

56:59He just could see their height. That was the only defining characteristic that he could give. He said the tallest one was 5 '6". Zhang was 5 '9 and 200 pounds. The attorneys 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?

57:33We 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? yeah 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 oh it's like scary stories in the dark you guys know that series that's what i'm saying like there's no way yeah like these books are mainly purchased by like middle schoolers high schoolers like there's no sexually explicit content the titles are like ghost mirror, the creepy school fortune teller, don't take pictures at the graveyard.

58:16These 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 Zhang himself admitted to the crime. Why is he suddenly taking it all back six years later? Zhang's attorney argued that he was coerced by the police into confessing.

58:49He was interrogated as a 15-year-old for over 30 hours with no parents or attorneys present. Zhang 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 nonstop until he gave them whatever answer they wanted.

59:20For instance, they asked him what color jacket Gao was wearing that day. Zhang 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 Zhang's face with the bottom of their dirty soles. 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 Zhang pleaded with them to stop and said, please, I just don't remember. They would nicely state, well, Zhang, we're trying to help you remember.

59:53And 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. 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.

1:00:26Kenny, Zhang'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, Zhang confessed to the entirety of the crime when he was 15. After 30 hours of physical and mental torture, Zhang 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?

1:01:15Zhang 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, Zhang 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.

1:01:53And 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 mom I can't remember and Zhang'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 Zhang 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 still full of mystery.

1:02:35After Zhang 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. Netizen suspect number one was the best friend Didi. She was the last one to see Gao 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. Didi was the last person to hang out with Gao.

1:03:07Maybe she secretly hated her. Maybe she was jealous of her. Another odd thing was Didi kept insisting that the last time she saw Gao, Gao was wearing a yellow winter jacket. But Gao'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 Didi's jacket discrepancy, they thought maybe Gao 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 Didi knew that Gao was going to leave the school and run away to be with a guy.

1:03:41And maybe Didi 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, Gao got dressed in a red jacket, was murdered, and then brought back on campus. A lot of things don't make sense with this theory. One, everyone who knew Gao 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? It just didn't make any sense.

1:04:11Two, 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 Didi was involved in helping Yao 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.

1:04:41Then we have suspect number two. Janitor Lam was the one who found the body. Netizens had questions about why Janitor 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 is 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 Gao? 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.

1:05:15They have a lot of other duties and they're actually pretty involved in the students' 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 Gao 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 Lam, if he had killed Gao, 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.

1:05:55So 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 janitors 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 Gao, he would probably want to find Gao's body and not let Janitor Lam do it. Then we have the liar, suspect number four, Peter.

1:06:28Peter, the guy who saw Zhang outside the restroom 30 feet from his dorm room, one of the strongest witnesses that put Zhang 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 Gao's class. Peter was Gao's class president. And it's so interesting because he has two completely different statements during the course of the investigation. When Gao initially went missing, she was just a missing person. And Peter's statement was, oh, yeah, a few days ago before Gao went missing, there was a shift in her demeanor.

1:07:00I 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 tried to hang out with her. when i called her by her nickname which is cao cao 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 gal 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 nicknamed like cao cao like so chinese what they do is like let's say your 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 your little nickname it's like steffy steff like even more like steph steph steph like like that very cute you don't call that just a classmate that you kind of know you must be really close to them for you to call them that or not really close like you got to have some more of a relation 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 gal goes 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 Zhang.

1:08:39When 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 homeroom teacher, Mr. Fu. The night that Gao went missing, Gao's dad had rushed to the school because of her milk that was left on the table, remember? And one of the first people that he wanted to talk to was Mr.

1:09:11Fu. And not necessarily because he thought Mr. Fu was bad or had anything to do with Gao's disappearance. Mr. Fu was Gao'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 U.S., you go from class to class as a student and your teachers constantly change. And you maybe spend like 30 minutes with your homeroom 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 homeroom teacher.

1:09:42Everything is like very stable. And your homeroom teacher almost becomes like your parent. So if you are late, you're tardy, you're absent, you go to your homeroom teacher. And the right hand man or woman for this homeroom teacher is the class president. So we can assume if anyone was close to Mr. Fu, it would be Peter. So if he was talking about any teacher and any teacher's good, it would be Mr. Fu. So Gao's dad is trying to talk to Mr. Fu that night, but turns out Mr. Fu left early. School officially ends at 9.30 p.m., but he left at 5 p.m. He gets Mr. Fu's number from the administrators, and he's not picking up his phone.

1:10:18They even pulled Mr. Fu's emergency contact list to ask, hey, family members of Mr. Fu, where's Mr. Fu? And nobody is getting responded calls. The next morning, January 11th, Tuesday morning Mr. Fu shows up to work And Gao's dad has been waiting for him He starts asking him about yesterday Where was Gao? What happened yesterday? Why didn't you pick up your phone last night? To which Mr. Fu 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 Gao, she wasn't in class yesterday Which was Monday And I haven't seen her since Friday So before the weekend What?

1:10:51Later, Mr. Fu was interviewed by the police And he stated that he did notice some weird behavior from Gao 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. 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 Gao, he said, I personally think the odds of her leaving on her own without telling anyone are high.

1:11:28This is when she was just missing. I don't think she had enemies. I don't think anyone would want to hurt her. So all of this, I mean, nothing's really that creepy. But netizens now analyze Mr. Fu's statement about what he did on January 10th. He said, on January 10th, I woke up at 6 a.m. When the school's wake-up bell rang. The school gathers for the flag-raising ceremony at 6.15 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.

1:11:59I joined the run at the very end, but I didn't see Gao Ting and I didn't pay much attention. After the morning exercise, they had morning classes. Mr. Fu did not see Gao Ting, but he just assumed, well, 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. Fu decided I'm 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 p.m.

1:12:54He left the school around 5 p.m. Then he would have to show up to school the next day at 6.15 a.m. So just to be safe, he would have to leave his girlfriend's house the next morning at 3.30 a.m. Would he really spend six hours traveling just to spend eight hours with his girlfriend on a school day? Netizens 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 Gao's parents to ask if she was at home or if she was feeling okay when she's gone from class?

1:13:26That's the standard protocol for homeroom teachers. Yeah. So Mr. Fu, the day Gao went missing, not only did he not alert Gao'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 Gao? 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.

1:14:00And the blunt force trauma on Gao'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. Fu 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.

1:14:35The glass shattered and some of it embedded into her forehead. Now, why is the flashlight important? Typically, the homeroom 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 homeroom teacher doesn't answer phone call theory because my aunt is a homeroom teacher it's like they're kids basically you're responsible for everything about them yeah especially boarding school like 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 u.s 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'll 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 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 what if something happened regardless all of this is i guess circumstantial evidence but the weirdest part is that after gal disappeared before her body was found students reported mr foo telling them passionately that if anyone asks about gal's incident they should just tell them that gal ran away the netizen theory is that Mr.

1:16:06Fu took a liking to Gao and perhaps he even wrote that letter. We don't know. Or he found that letter and was upset that Gao 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.

1:16:38Perhaps Peter and Albert did hear some screaming, but Mr. Fu told Peter that if he shuts his mouth, Mr. Fu will give him privileges and help him become successful and get him into a better college. And in places like China, going against your homeroom 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 mentioned screaming when the police first investigated Gao's disappearance. And he's switching up his story. He's throwing Zhang under the bus. Like, none of it is adding up. Then Mr. Fu replaced the padlock just to make it harder for the other teachers, students, or janitors to get in if they wanted.

1:17:12And even visited Gao after her passing to commit more heinous acts is the theory. But because the police aren't really investigating, Mr. Fu 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. Wow. 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 Gao 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.

1:17:53As for Kenny and Zhang, the two wrongfully convicted of the murder, Kenny spent three years in prison which isn't as long as Zhang'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 I'm not saying that's not a real job but I'm saying it's a rough job yeah, just the whole life is ruined yeah, I mean his whole family was shamed you know, 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 as for Zhang 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 passings 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 remorse no 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.

1:19:47But if your kid didn't do it and they're paying the consequences and in 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 lawyered 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 and like 2020. And he's like, I don't know any of this technology stuff. I feel like I'm living in the future.

1:20:22Like 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. 12 officials were investigated in the connection to this case. And we still don't know who killed Gao Ting. 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