Chinese Novelist Is Arrested in 4 Murders From 2 Decades Ago

The gruesome killings took place at a hostel in Huzhou, in neighboring Zhejiang Province, on a November night in 1995, according to a local security official quoted by the newspaper China Daily. Two men who spoke with Anhui accents checked in at the hostel reportedly with the intention of robbing other guests, the official said.

But when one guest, surnamed Yu, caught them stealing, the two men were said to have killed the guest. To cover up their crimes, they then beat to death the couple that ran the hostel as well as their 13-year-old grandson, according to China Daily.

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The police in Anhui opened an investigation into the killings, but the trail soon went cold.

“The biggest challenge was the suspects and the victims had no previous relationship,” said Xu Zhicheng, one of the local investigators, according to The Paper. “It was very difficult for us to follow the vine to find the melon.”

During his more than three-decade long career, Mr. Liu found modest success as a writer. In 2013, he was accepted into the official China Writers’ Association, and he was the recipient of a prestigious local literary prize, according to The Paper. But Legal Evening News, a Chinese newspaper, reported that Mr. Liu told the police that, for years after the killings, he found it difficult to sleep at night because of what he had done.

Equipped with new DNA technology, the police reopened the case in June. They began to zero in on Mr. Liu and his suspected accomplice, a man surnamed Wang. Several hours after taking Mr. Liu into custody, the police found and arrested Mr. Wang, now 64, in Shanghai.

Chen Hongyue, one of the arresting officers, told The Paper that by the time the police came to take Mr. Liu away, the writer had already prepared a one-page letter to give to his wife.

“I have been waiting for this day for 20 years and now it has finally come to an end,” he reportedly wrote. “Now I can free myself of this spiritual torment I’ve had for so long.”