Double murder suspect found after 28 years

SHANGHAI police have caught a fugitive who has been on the run for 28 years.

The man was wanted for the double murders — a woman and her 3-month-old baby — in suburban Shanghai, police said yesterday.

The suspect, surnamed Wang, has reportedly owned up to the murders, which he said occurred when he was stealing a game machine from the woman’s house.

The murders took place on June 14, 1990 in a residential complex in Qingpu Town of Qingpu County, now known as Qingpu District.

Wang, who was a vocational school student at that time, was soon determined as a suspect in the case but he had left Shanghai before police could catch up with him.

Qingpu police said they had listed him as a top fugitive in 1998.

Investigations accelerated last year when a new criminal investigation technology was introduced by the Ministry of Public Security, which the police said directly led to Wang’s arrest.

By the end of last year, police had used the technology to determine 16 people who could possibly be Wang.

In early March this year, they received a note from police in Ningguo City, east China’s Anhui Province.

Ningguo police informed them that a person called Xu Tao had moved to the province from out of town and was roughly the age of Wang.

Qingpu police said they managed to obtain the biological information of the man with the help of local police, and successfully matched it with Wang a few days later.

Wang was caught on March 21 and has since been under detention, police said.

Police said they had never given up hope and credited latest technologies for the arrest.