Draft:Jia Wenge

Jia Wenge (pseudonym)
Born	1958-1959 Nehe, Heilongjiang, China
Died	January 24, 1992 Nehe, Heilongjiang, China
Cause of death	Execution by shooting
Criminal status	Executed
Spouse	Li Xiaofang (deceased)
Convictions	Murder, robbery, rape, kidnapping
Criminal penalty	Death
Details
Victims	42+
Span of crimes	1990–1991
Country	China
States	Heilongjiang, Zhejiang, Jiangsu
Date apprehended	22 October 1991 Suzhou, Jiangsu

Jia Wenge (Chinese: 贾文革; died 1992) was a Chinese serial killer and the leader of a murder-robbery gang that killed at least 42 people in Nehe County, Heilongjiang, between 1990 and 1991. The case, known as the Nehe Massacre or the Cellar Murders, is one of the deadliest known in modern Chinese criminal history. Jia and his accomplices lured victims – predominantly out-of-town merchants and lone travellers – to his rented farmhouse under the pretence of employment or business opportunities, then robbed, raped, and murdered them. The bodies were concealed in two deep cellars beneath the living quarters. The crimes came to light only after a coerced female accomplice, Xu Li, confessed to police in Hangzhou, nearly 3,000 kilometres away, triggering an investigation that unearthed 41 skeletons and shocked the nation.

Jia Wenge was executed in early 1992. His wife and accomplice Li Xiaofang committed suicide on the day police discovered the cellar. The case had far-reaching consequences for the surviving investigators, particularly Hangzhou police officer Huang Guohua, whose life was irrevocably altered by his encounter with Xu Li, and for the forensic doctors who endured severe physical and psychological trauma during the excavation of the bodies.

Early life

Jia Wenge in police custody, 1991. (Source: Heilongjiang Provincial Public Security Bureau)

Jia Wenge lost his parents at a young age and grew up in Nehe, a small county in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang. As a child, he was regarded as intelligent and well-behaved, serving as class monitor in both elementary and junior high school, where he was considered a model student. After graduating from junior high, he was assigned to a local factory as a sand dumper. Coworkers later described him as scheming and noted his chaotic love life. Against his master’s wishes, Jia became romantically involved with his master’s adopted daughter, Li Xiaofang, whom he would later marry.

Jia eventually quit the factory and worked as a butcher, a job that paid relatively well. He used his savings to rent a house in Nehe, registered a business licence under the name "Wenge Candy Factory", and began using the factory as a front to lure unsuspecting victims.

Modus operandi

Jia’s crimes were meticulously planned. Operating primarily at the Qiqihar and Nehe train stations, he and his accomplices approached lone travellers, especially male merchants carrying large sums of cash for purchasing local soybeans and potatoes. Posing as the owner of the Wenge Candy Factory, Jia offered jobs (e.g., accountant, cashier, warehouse keeper) or business deals. Victims were persuaded to stay overnight at his farmhouse, which doubled as the factory premises.

Once inside, victims were drugged with oral anaesthetics mixed into food or drink. Men were immediately robbed, then strangled with nylon ropes or wire. Women were raped before being killed. After each murder, the body was stripped of valuables and thrown into a large cellar originally built to store two tons of potatoes. When the main cellar filled, Jia dug a second, narrower pit approximately 50 cm from the first.

The gang operated with a division of labour: Jia acted as the ringleader and chief executioner; Li Chuan and Sun Qingyuan assisted in subduing and killing victims; Li Xiaofang handled domestic tasks and kept watch; and after 1990, Xu Li was forced to act as bait, luring men from the train station to the house.

The cellars

The rented farmhouse had two secret burial sites. The primary cellar, capable of holding two tons of potatoes, was approximately 6 metres deep. By the time of the arrests, corpses were packed in layers, some piled to the top of the cellar opening. The second pit, roughly 1 metre square, was dug just over a metre from the first. It was accessed through a narrow hole and dropped straight down for 6 metres. The total number of bodies exhumed reached 41, though the incomplete state of many remains made an exact count difficult.

Above the cellars, Li Xiaofang slept on a heated kang (a traditional brick bed platform). She was reportedly aware of the murders, but lived in a state of terror, taking large doses of sleeping pills and spending days hiding at the county cinema when her husband was away.

Victims

The victims were predominantly out-of-town merchants, but also included solitary men and women lured by promises of employment. The confirmed dead totalled 42, including Li Xiaofang (who committed suicide). Among the identified deceased were a father and son, both soybean traders, killed when the son rushed back to save his father after being told to flee. Xu Li was forced to participate in stabbing them, cementing her complicity.

Two other victims – a Mr. Zheng from a flour mill in Jilin and a Mr. Zhang from a coal mine in Heilongjiang – were later identified through ID cards found in the gang’s travel bag. Their families had reported them missing months earlier, but without leads, the cases had gone cold.

Xu Li: the forced accomplice

Xu Li (a pseudonym), born in the Year of the Dragon, was 27 at the time of her execution. She was a former kindergarten teacher from Qiqihar and had been raised in extreme poverty by her eldest sister after both parents died young. In November 1990, following a heated argument with her husband, she left home and wandered to Qiqihar railway station. There, Jia Wenge approached her, claiming his candy factory was hiring women workers, and lured her to Nehe.

That night, Jia raped Xu Li, then bound her hands with wire, strangled her until she lost consciousness, and threw her into the corpse-filled cellar. She awoke several days later, covered in blood, and crawled out by pushing open the cellar lid. Jia, astonished at her survival, decided to spare her life on the condition that she join his gang. To ensure compliance, he travelled to Qiqihar to gather detailed information about her family, then threatened to kill her infant son and other relatives if she refused or fled.

Xu Li attempted to escape twice, but was caught each time, beaten, and locked in the cellar among the decomposing bodies. To further entrap her, Jia forced her to repeatedly stab the existing corpses while he photographed the acts, creating blackmail material. Eventually, Xu Li capitulated and was sent daily to the train station to seduce lone businessmen, bringing them back to the house where they would be murdered.

Despite her cooperation, Xu Li secretly released potential victims whom she felt she could let go safely, though many others died. In her final suicide note, she wrote, "I lost faith in life, became disheartened, and in a moment of despair, left home. By the time I regretted it, it was too late; I was already trapped in a quagmire."

Arrest and confession

On 22 October 1991, Jia Wenge, Li Chuan, and Xu Li were detained by railway police in Suzhou, Jiangsu, for suspicious behaviour. A search of their belongings revealed over 3,000 yuan in cash, several out-of-town ID cards, and oral anaesthetics. The case was initially treated as a drug-facilitated robbery and transferred to the Yongjin Police Station in Hangzhou’s Shangcheng District.

The task of interrogating Xu Li fell to officer Huang Guohua, a former military drill instructor who had transferred to the police academy. On 23 October, before questioning began, Xu Li requested sanitary napkins, having started her menstrual period. Huang Guohua immediately obliged, a gesture that profoundly moved her. During the interrogation, after the robbery case was resolved, Huang asked his routine final question: "Besides this case, is there anything else you need to explain?"

Xu Li responded: "I have another huge case, much bigger than this one. If I reveal it, I'll definitely be executed, and you'll be recognised for your merit. We killed more than 20 people in Northeast China." She then asked to see her three-year-old son and requested that she not be bound when executed. Over subsequent hours, she disclosed the full extent of the cellar murders.

Her confession was corroborated by Li Chuan, who was interrogated separately. On the evening of 23 October, a telegram was sent to the Nehe County Public Security Bureau. The initial reply stated "no such case found", as the local police could not locate Jia’s house. A second telegram to the Qiqihar Municipal Bureau prompted immediate action: officers found Li Xiaofang dead by suicide, and 19 bodies were uncovered in the first cellar. Xu Li then revealed the existence of the second pit, where 22 more bodies were excavated.

Crime scene excavation

The excavation, conducted in sub-zero temperatures, was one of the most gruesome in Chinese forensic history. Ten forensic doctors from provincial, municipal, and county levels worked for over a week, from dawn until dark, in conditions where the stench of decomposition lingered for miles.

Bodies at the top of the cellar were relatively intact and could be carried up by rope. Deeper down, the corpses had turned into a "sticky, greenish sludge." Forensic doctors, wearing only latex gloves in freezing weather, had to warm their hands in heated water basins to continue working. Five or six large iron pots were set up in the courtyard to boil human skulls for cleaning and identification, a standard procedure made extraordinary by the scale.

Yu Wenjun, a local Nehe forensic doctor, undertook the most dangerous task of entering the narrow second pit. The pit, 6 metres deep and barely wide enough for a person, functioned as a semi-enclosed chamber filled with noxious gases. Yu worked inside it without a functional gas mask, often fainting from the fumes. After one such collapse, he was hospitalised with severe cadaveric poisoning but returned the next day to continue. This exposure caused irreversible damage to his central nervous system; he later developed Parkinson's disease and required monthly stem-cell injections.

Gao Xinyu, a 23-year-old female forensic doctor on her first major case, remembered wearing a dead victim’s pink cotton-padded jacket for warmth because she had arrived without adequate clothing. A colleague pointed out a knife slit in the back. The psychological toll was equally severe: "What frightened me most wasn't the moment itself, but the nights… when I was awake and opened my eyes."

Trial and execution

In November 1991, a special escort team from Qiqihar, consisting of 14 officers, arrived in Hangzhou to transfer the three prisoners back to Heilongjiang. A chartered train carriage was used, with the male convicts placed in heavy shackles, helmets, and blindfolds. Xu Li was not put in heavy irons, a decision made by the escort leader in consideration of her cooperation.

Jia Wenge and Li Chuan were tried locally in Heilongjiang for multiple counts of murder, robbery, and rape. Jia was sentenced to death. At his execution in early 1992, reports circulated that he was shot 42 times – once for each victim – though this remains uncorroborated by official records. Xu Li, despite her cooperation and the recognition that she was a coerced victim, was also sentenced to death. The Hangzhou police had issued an official document attesting to her "significant meritorious service", but it did not save her.

Before execution, Xu Li was allowed to see her son one last time. Her eldest sister, Xu Ye, brought the child to the detention centre in the early morning. He was still half-asleep when placed in his mother's arms and was taken away before he could fully grasp the moment. Xu Li’s final words to her sister were, "Sister, I'm sorry." She was shot once, at approximately 27 years old.

Aftermath

Huang Guohua

Huang Guohua was awarded a First-Class Merit – the highest police honour – for his role in cracking the case. However, he received the award with deep ambivalence, believing his medal had been bought with Xu Li's life. On the Friday night after the commendation ceremony, he walked into a barbershop and had his head shaved. For the next 28 years, he shaved his head every Friday without fail, a private ritual of mourning and guilt.

He spent his career wrestling with the case, persistently questioning whether Xu Li should have been executed. His mental state deteriorated, and in 2012, at the age of 46, he applied for early retirement and left Hangzhou. In 2019, a non-profit organisation supporting retired police officers, Zhenshui Wuxiang, convinced him to travel back to Qiqihar. There, he met Xu Li’s elder sister, Xu Ye, who gave him Xu Li’s twelve-page suicide note. In it, Xu Li wrote to her sister: "You are a good policeman. I thank you on behalf of my sister. After reading this suicide note, let go of your worries. Don't shave your head anymore. We should all live well."

Forensic doctors

Yu Wenjun, the forensic doctor most severely affected by corpse poisoning, was awarded a Second-Class Merit. He lived with worsening Parkinson’s symptoms, unable to afford imported medications on his pension. Gao Xinyu received a Third-Class Merit. Both later received assistance from the Zhenshui Wuxiang Charity Foundation, which pioneered a forensic medical insurance programme in their honour.

Li Xiaofang

Jia Wenge’s wife, Li Xiaofang, had been aware of the murders and lived in constant fear. On the day police came to the house, she had been at the cinema; neighbours told her of the police visit, and she immediately ingested poison. A suicide note found at the scene denounced Jia Wenge.

Impact on Nehe

The case severely affected Nehe’s reputation. The county’s application to be upgraded to a city was postponed by six months. Local saying became: "If you don't want to live, go to Nehe." The original county bureau chief, political commissar, and director were dismissed from their posts. The case remains recorded in the Nehe County Annals.

Xu Li’s suicide letters

Before her execution, Xu Li wrote two long letters: one to her eldest sister and one to her son. The letter to her sister detailed her suffering and guilt, explaining how she was tortured and coerced, and how she secretly let some victims go when she could. The letter to her son, written with "elegant and vigorous handwriting", expressed her deepest maternal regret: "I hope you will listen to your grandmother and father, live an honest and down-to-earth life, be a strong person in life, and not become a stumbling block to the times. And don't be like your mother, taking one wrong step that leads to another, a single misstep that can cause eternal regret."

The letters were held by Xu Ye for 28 years until she shared them with Huang Guohua in 2019.

In popular culture

The case remains a staple of Chinese true crime lore, though it went largely unreported for two decades due to strict information control. The 2019 long-form documentary investigation by Huang Rong, published by the Zhenshui Wuxiang public welfare account and republished in English on multiple platforms, renewed public interest. The story has been referenced in Chinese-language books on criminal psychology and is cited as an example of the "white dove" baiting tactic (using women to lure victims).

See also

• List of serial killers in China
• List of serial killers by number of victims
• Capital punishment in China

External links

• Full investigative report at LaiTimes (in English)
• Original article at 163.com (in Chinese)
• Yeeyi summary (in Chinese)

Category:1990s murders in China Category:1990s missing person cases Category:1991 in China Category:1990 murders in China Category:1991 murders in China Category:Chinese serial killers Category:Chinese rapists Category:Chinese kidnappers Category:Executed Chinese serial killers Category:People executed by China by firearm Category:Chinese mass murderers Category:Crime in Heilongjiang Category:Qiqihar Category:Serial killer duos Category:People from Qiqihar Category:1992 deaths Category:Year of birth missing Category:Place of birth missing