Yang Liu | Truth About My Murder | FilmRise True Crime | Forensic Files

[suspenseful music] [gunshot cracking] - When a murder's committed, it's always a race against time,
to find the truth, to separate fact from fiction, to catch the killer, and to make sure that justice is served.
What happens when the truth vanishes with the victim? I'm Dr. Richard Shepherd, and I've spent my entire career as a forensic pathologist,
performing nearly 23,000 autopsies, including on some of the most high-profile cases
of recent times. I've learnt that the dead don't hide the truth, and they never lie.
Through me, you'll be hearing directly from the victim from a state-of-the-art laboratory
with groundbreaking technology that uses digitally scanned sample bodies. I'll be investigating a series of intriguing murders
where, from the victim's bodies, I'll be revealing to you the truth behind those horrific crimes. [camera shutter clicking]
[somber haunting music] [birds chirping] On 10th of October, 2016, a dismembered and badly burnt body was found dumped
at the side of the road in the Peak District National Park. The police investigation would reveal a trail of deception
and greed that led to this murder. But what could the victim's body reveal about their death?
- I was working as a detective chief inspector, and I was in charge of a team that was responsible
for the investigation of homicides. The call came in that a body had been found on the A628,
and that is the most northerly part of Derbyshire. [engrossing music] [birds chirping]
[truck humming] The A628's a main road that goes between Manchester and Sheffield, so it's a very busy road.
But here into the Peak District, it's a very scenic, very picturesque area, certainly nowhere that you would consider
to be a crime hotspot. So it's a most unusual call to get. [suspenseful music] Probably took about two hours to get there,
and there's quite a lot of things rolling around in your head as you're driving,
what I'm going to do, what my plan is. Is this exactly as it's reported to be? - [Richard] Up in the Peak District,
the crime scene manager was already securing the site. - So we turn up at the scene.
It's basically a small car park that's used by people going out for a walk across the moors,
so, hill walkers, so not sort of normal dog-walking territory. We've cordoned off the area,
so police officers at the front to make sure that people aren't gonna be pulling up,
turning up, et cetera. To the left of the car park is basically a burnt mound, which is the remains of this burnt torso.
And we then go through a process of clearing that area, putting up some tents, et cetera,
to protect some of the bits of evidence that we might need to worry about later but with the objective to get up to that body
to see what's actually going on here. - [Richard] Tony had to secure any vital evidence
that might uncover the truth. - We've got a small parking area off a main road, so we've got other vehicles.
Do these other vehicles belong to a suspect or not? Have I got tire marks? Has a vehicle turned up to dump a body here?
Have I got footwear marks that everybody's busily going to go and stand on? So those are all things that I need to protect.
So finally we got to the position where we got up our approach to basically go and look at the body to see if that told us anything.
- When I arrived at the scene, I was presented with the torso of a man. The head had been removed.
The arms or parts of the arms had been removed, and parts of the legs had been removed.
The body was in what appeared to be a suitcase, and it had been set on fire. - [Richard] The burnt-out remains of the body
were obviously going to be difficult to identify. However, the way it had been left
still gave the police information. - What was very clear to me was that this was unlikely
to be the site where the murder had taken place. So this was gonna be a deposition site,
somewhere where the body had been placed after the murder had been committed. [solemn intriguing music]
[water splashing] - At the start of the investigation, the burnt suitcase was found
to contain the dismembered torso and upper legs. The head, arms, and lower legs had been removed using a sharp implement.
We know it wasn't a saw because that would've left specific marks in the bones cut through.
So there's been a serious attempt to prevent identification of the body by removing the teeth and the fingerprints.
Clearly this points to a murder investigation with dismemberment and attempt to destroy the body by fire.
The police had a body. They didn't know who it was, but they could see that it was a male.
We don't yet have an established cause of death, and that is where they begin on this really difficult dismembered and burnt body.
[troubling music] Crime scene manager Tony Coombes was progressing with the investigation.
- Just from a very general point of view, starting to think about the scenarios as how has this guy come to be here,
one of the obvious questions there is, "Okay, so where's the arms, legs, and head?"
I'll be looking for another suitcase. You know, is there any other fires that are going on?
- My concern was there were other body parts that had been disposed in the immediate vicinity,
and what I really didn't want was a member of public finding those. So they were quite substantial land searches.
We used drones to try and cover large areas in the hope that if there had been a secondary deposition site,
then we would be able to find it and recover further body parts. - A pathologist is faced with a whole series of problems
when there's a body like this that's been dismembered and burned. Initially, you're going to try
and work out who the person might be. No teeth, no fingerprints, so DNA here is clearly going to be crucial
in establishing that identity at some point in the future. Then the full postmortem will look
for any injuries on the surface. And of course injuries could be partly hidden by smoke,
damage by deep burning of the bodies 'cause when the skin is burned, it starts with the external surface,
and it goes deep, deep into the tissues. And we can look at the sample body on the table here,
how this fire will actually work its way through the body if it continues long enough.
So initially the skin is burnt off, and then the muscles are damaged. Then the holes appear in the abdominal wall.
The bowel can herniate through that. The internal organs are increasingly damaged
as the process of incineration continues. In this case, I don't think the fire was too bad,
so the body was burnt externally, possibly obscuring some injuries. [mysterious haunting music]
- One of the main lines of inquiry to look at who the victim was was the National Police DNA Database.
And generally you are, as a senior investigation officer, you're quite optimistic
that that person's DNA might be on that database. [somber music] - [Richard] Unfortunately there wasn't a match,
but the body had still left something that might help identify him. - Well, one of the sort
of breakthroughs that we had forensically was that there was a small protected area underneath the body
where the torso had pressed onto the soil underneath. We found out there was a small fragment of skin
that came back definitively being Chinese in ethnicity. So suddenly we're looking
at somebody perhaps from that community or at least who's associating with this person.
And obviously we've got some work that we then can look at around this suitcase.
So, you know, have we got a type of suitcase? And we already know it's a Samsonite.
We've got a black strap, and we found some wheels. That's a wheeled suitcase. We found some red fibers,
which were noted as a bit of an oddity, doesn't fit with this environment. So why have we got, you know,
red fibers on a burnt suitcase? - First we heard about this case was a brief statement
from Derbyshire Police, but there's enough detail in it to pique the media's interest.
I mean, it's not often you come across a case as memorable or gruesome as this, with a torso, headless and limbless,
in a suitcase dumped in a beauteous park. When I went to the scene, there was police forensics
and scenes-of-crimes officers there, lots of police vans, lots of unmarked police cars.
You could tell this was a major investigation. Obviously someone had been murdered,
and police at the time didn't know the identity of the murder victim and didn't know who the culprit was.
[suspenseful music] [vehicle humming] - [Richard] The police turned to the public for help.
They set up checkpoints along the road where the body was dumped and asked for motorists to come forward with information.
- We put out lots of requests for things like dash cams that people may have in their vehicles
or people who were in the vicinity. What we did find out was that somebody had seen a fire set,
which was very late into the evening the day before, and that really helped us understand
when the body might have been there and the narrowing down the times that we'd got.
- [Richard] They also pursued missing persons records in the hope they would provide some leads,
but there would be a lot of ground to cover. - Is this somebody who's missing from Derbyshire,
or is it somebody who's missing from the Greater Manchester Police area, or is it somebody who's missing
from South Yorkshire Police area? Or is it somebody that's missing from somewhere completely different in the country?
- [Richard] But over the coming days, the lines of inquiry dwindled considerably.
- The DNA work, the missing person work, hadn't resulted in anything positive that'd allow us
to make an identification of the victim. Got to a point where I was wondering where the inquiry was going
and where I was gonna be able to reinvigorate it and make some progress with it.
- [Richard] Just as David thought the investigation was stalling, he received some game-changing information.
- Out of the blue, we got a phone call from South Yorkshire Police that absolutely threw the case wide open.
[dramatic music] [haunting music] [fire crackling] - A burnt, dismembered body had been found
in the rural beauty of the Peak District National Park. Though the body would give some clues
about what had happened, it wasn't possible to identify the victim at autopsy. At this stage, we don't have an established cause of death.
Was there any natural disease? Could something normal have happened to this person?
That doesn't seem to be the case. Next thing is to exclude the possibility that there had been fire before the death.
And that's done by taking blood samples looking for carbon monoxide. Despite the burns caused by fires,
most people actually die as a result of inhaling the noxious fumes as the fire is burning.
The most important poison that's breathed in is carbon monoxide, and this blocks the transport of oxygen
by the hemoglobin in the red blood cells, which stops oxygen getting to the brain and the heart,
and that results in the individual's death. The other thing we look for very carefully is the evidence
of inhalation of fumes and soot. The lungs themselves may be blackened, but most importantly,
throughout the trachea and the bronchi, there's little particles of black soot deposited
that show someone was alive at the time the fire was burning. On this burnt torso, the airways were clear,
and that proved the victim was already dead before the fire started. But with the autopsy unable to identify the body,
Senior Investigating Officer David Cox was quickly coming to a dead end. Then a week after the body was found,
he received a phone call that could change everything. - South Yorkshire Police told us
that there was an ANPR camera that was on the A628, [traffic humming] [intriguing music]
and they gather data about vehicle that are passing. But this one camera in particular didn't actually belong
to Derbyshire Constabulary, even though it was on Derbyshire Constabulary's force area.
It belonged to South Yorkshire Police. They'd put a camera on the A628 in 2012 because of the Olympics,
and the cycling road race was in that area at that particular time. Unfortunately, the first results I got back from it
was that the camera hadn't been recording, and there was no data on it. So I asked that the camera get removed,
and it get taken away and get forensically examined. - [Richard] David's persistence paid off.
Further analysis retrieved data from the night the body was dumped, and there were hundreds of hits.
- There was simply too much data on there to go through it line by line. So what we decided to do was to set some parameters
around the information that that camera was able to give us. [flames roaring] We knew that a fire had been set the night before,
so that gave us some sort of idea as to when the body had had been put there. What I did notice was that this road
between Sheffield and Manchester, there wasn't a great deal between those two points.
There was some cottages and some farms, so I took the view that if somebody had to go into the vicinity of the scene
and then come out of the vicinity of the scene, then there must have been a reason
for them to go in there in the first place. So I decided to, instead of just looking at the vehicles that had hit once,
to look at the vehicles that had hit twice on it around about the time that the fire had been set.
[jarring music] - [Richard] And that highlighted one vehicle in particular, an uninsured car from the Manchester area belonging
to a man called Ming Jiang. - So that gave me something to sort of go and explore a little bit,
and it gave me something by which I could go and examine that vehicle. [suspenseful music]
- [Richard] With the assistance of the Greater Manchester Police, the vehicle was tracked down, seized,
and forensically examined. [siren wailing] - With cars, you might take sweepings from footwells.
You might look for fingerprints everywhere. And you might look on the tires and in the wheel arches
for signs of a particular kind of soil if the car's supposed have been driven somewhere.
And in relation to tire tracks, you might make reference tracks from reference tire marks from the wheels
and see if they matched anything you'd found at a scene that you were particularly interested in.
So there are all sorts of things that you can do with vehicles that are really important.
And so if you were looking to see whether or not the the body or the torso had been carried in it,
then obviously you'd be very interested in things like whether there was any blood in there.
That would be one of the first things you'd look for. [jarring music] - This is when the case really started to come together.
There was a single blood spot in the boot of this vehicle, and straightaway I was really excited about that.
And what we've got an opportunity to do there is fast-track the DNA. I want to compare that with the body of the man
that we've got at the deposition site. Even at this point now, I don't know who my victim is,
but all of a sudden now we've got something tangible that might be able to help me with the inquiry.
- When someone has spent so much time dismembering the body the way we can see on the digital table and then burning it,
clearly they've worked really hard to try and hide the identity of the person. And that's where even the smallest amount
of blood can be crucial. In this case, a smear of blood was found in the boot of the car,
and when that blood was sampled and analyzed by the laboratory, it was possible to link the DNA that was present
in that blood smear in the car to the body that was found dismembered and burnt in the suitcase.
[plaintive music] - That was the longest day you could ever imagine. It was sat by a telephone waiting for it to ring.
I go walking into the office asking if anybody's rung, as if somebody would've rung and given the result,
and nobody would've told me. Of course they would. Just really, really impatient
pacing up and down the corridor 'cause I was so excited about this, and I really wanted to get that information back.
- Basically another eureka moment. We've got a small trace of blood, fantastic. You know, again, this may not be our deceased's blood,
so let's not get excited, everybody, but this is a potential breakthrough moment.
- The great news was that this came back positive. The blood spot in the boot matched the body
that we'd found at the deposition site. So this was really great information for me,
and it told me Ming Jiang was now a suspect in this inquiry, and he wasn't just somebody
that may have been in the vicinity at the same time. The body from the deposition site had been
in the boot of the car, and that was really important news for us. - [Richard] Forensic investigators
also revealed some evidence that was of particular interest to crime scene manager Tony Coombes.
- They said there were red fibers on the carpet inside the boot. That takes me back to my initial observation at the scene,
these odd red fibers on the inside of the suitcase. This is a gray carpeted Mercedes.
Why has that got red fibers on the bottom? Is there, you know, a link there? - [Richard] With Ming Jiang now a suspect,
could this help identify the victim? - We found some documentation in Ming Jiang's vehicle
to a guy called Yang Liu, who lived in Salford, and we started to make inquiries there at his apartment
to see if we could locate him. Unfortunately, we weren't able to find him, and we made the decision that we were gonna force entry
into his apartment. We found nothing particularly remarkable in there, but what it did give us was the opportunity
to take some things where we might be able to get DNA from, so, toothbrush, hairbrushes, that sort of thing.
And I added that to the requirements around the DNA profiling. - [Richard] This was the breakthrough needed.
The DNA taken from the apartment was a match with the torso. It was confirmed the victim was Yang Liu,
a Chinese national. - Yang Liu was described as a very kind and gentle and friendly.
He was born in Beijing, and he was brought up in Beijing, and his family is very,
the whole family is very well educated. He came to the UK in 2000, and he studied in the University of Leeds.
And after he finished his studying, and he decided to stay in the UK, he owned his flat in MediaCity,
Salford Quays in Manchester. - Yang Liu was a successful trader in stocks and shares.
That's how he earned his money. That's what was his job, and he had a very comfortable life doing that.
Yang Liu regularly went to casinos in Manchester. There's quite a large Chinese community in Manchester,
and casinos as well as the gambling appeared to be something of a gathering place,
a social setting where lots of Chinese nationals went. One person who Yang Liu had a sort of friendship with
at the casino was Ming Jiang. They even shared some tables sometimes while gambling.
- [Richard] But Ming Jiang was heavily in debt to the casinos. - Ming Jiang decided
that the only way he can solve his financial problems is by hatching a plan. [cards fluttering]
[unsettling music] [fire crackling] - A breakthrough in the police investigation had put a name
to the burnt and dismembered body found dumped on a rural road, Chinese national and Manchester resident Yang Liu.
At autopsy, the body had shown that Yang was dead before he had been set on fire.
The prime suspect was his former friend, Ming Jiang. With a wealth of evidence against him,
it was time for the police to move in. 10 days after the torso was found in a suitcase,
police arrested Ming Jiang. [suspenseful music] - I made the decision to get him arrested at the earliest opportunity
and get him in custody. With the assistance of Greater Manchester Police, we managed to find him and track him down to a casino.
[traffic humming] He has some documentation, passport, some other items of paperwork
in the name of Yang Liu on him at the time of his arrest. - [Richard] With Ming Jiang in custody,
they carried out a thorough forensic search of his flat. - [David] On first look, it was a clean and tidy,
unremarkable apartment. But as soon as the forensic guys got to work, there was lots and lots of traces of blood in that.
- They would be very interested in blood, and it is extremely difficult to clean up a crime scene
of all blood, especially where quite a lot has been shed, and so it proved in this particular case.
A lot of blood was found. There was evidence of cleanup, apparently, but there was a lot of blood found on the floor.
It had seeped into this laminated flooring and also into the cushions on the sofa.
So there was, you know, a remarkable amount of blood. Blood pattern analysis is incredibly important
in understanding crime scenes where blood has been spilled, and it can show you, you know, where the main force
of the attack happened, obviously, and the types of injury. For example, if you breach an artery,
then you can see that from the kind of arterial spurting that you will get all over the nearby surfaces.
If they've wondered about dripping blood, you can see that. You can see pools of blood where they may have lain.
If they've been stabbed, then there's another kind of pattern that you'll get of blood staining,
perhaps cast-off droplets of blood that fly onto the wall and surrounding surfaces
and land there. We have some really powerful blood enhancement techniques these days
that can show bloodstains and bloodstained footwear marks, even when they've got too faint see it with the naked eye.
So some really powerful techniques are used in connection with some of these observations.
- [Richard] As well as blood, crime scene manager Tony Coombes wanted to know whether there was any evidence of red fibers
at the property that he could link with those found in the boot of Ming Jiang's car
and at the dump site. - There was a red sofa in the address, and when they opened the zips on the sofa cushions,
these red fibers came spilling out from inside the cushion cover. But on the foam on the inside of the cushion cover
there was blood staining, so these cushion covers have obviously been washed to clean them.
When we looked around the edges of the sofa, you could still see blood spatter. It became apparent the walls had been painted,
and there was potentially blood underneath there, but there were parts of the wall which hadn't been painted.
Again, there were small spots of blood that we could see. - From senior investigation officer's point of view,
I'm really interested then to know if the blood in the apartment is the same that's in the car
and is the same that's at the deposition site. So, DNA samples taken from there,
and I get the news that the blood that is in the suspect's apartment is the same that's in the car
and is the same that's at the deposition site. And really good news at this point,
and the investigation's really, really gathering momentum now. And that then starts to give me some information
that the scene of the murder might be Ming Jiang's apartment. - Ming Jiang dismembered Yang Liu's body in his apartment,
and that would've resulted in quite extensive blood losses. The limbs and the head were cut off.
But the sharp implement is difficult to use if you don't have the anatomical knowledge.
And we can see this on the digital table. Looking at the head, the vertebrae had been cut through.
Now these are really difficult to cut because they're folded structures that fit together in a complex way.
At the other end of the body down at the knees, cutting through those bones is very difficult
because they're incredibly thick and firm bones that require a lot of force. And the same is true of the shoulder.
If you don't know the anatomy of the shoulder, it's very hard to remove the arms.
There was nothing to suggest that this killer had any anatomical knowledge, and it would've been impossible
to contain the amount of blood lost from the body. He tried to clear up as best as he could,
and he tried to redecorate places and cleaned all the surfaces. But when the head was cut off,
and the limbs were removed, their major blood vessels would've been cut through,
and blood would've leaked passively out of the body, causing extensive blood staining of the area.
It was the finding of the blood in the apartment that was the crucial clue in this case.
[intriguing music] - We knew who the people involved were. We knew who the perpetrator was.
We knew who the victim was. We knew perhaps some of the basic understanding of how it had taken place.
- [Richard] With a wealth of evidence against him, Ming Jiang was charged with the murder of Yang Liu,
but Derbyshire Constabulary wouldn't be taking the case any further. - This was a murder that took place in Greater Manchester.
[tense music] - [Richard] Two weeks into the investigation, Greater Manchester Police took over the case.
It was now down to them to gather all the extra evidence needed to prove the case in court.
- The investigation was passed over to me and my team, and we commenced the important critical inquiries
the needed to be done. The critical issue from my point of view was time. The closest you are to an offense being committed,
the more likely you are to detect it. And 14 days had passed since the deposition had taken place.
We really had to get a fast start on the evidence that was likely to be lost because of the time lapses.
That was particularly the case around CCTV and telephone evidence. The big area was around CCTV.
Now what we had to do there was put a team on that, and we worked on two basic strategies.
That was look at the movements of the victim and look at the movements of Ming Jiang, the offender.
- [Richard] They knew Yang Liu's address. They knew Ming Jiang's address. And they knew the casino they both went to.
- So we would pick up CCTV from those locations and try and work out routes that have been taken,
particularly on the night of deposition. We're able then to track the offender pretty much all the way up
to the scene of the deposition site and pretty much all the way back. And on top of that, the most important thing was making sure
that the family were informed in China. - [Richard] They also needed to understand
who Ming Jiang was and what his motive was. - Ming Jiang was 43 years of age. He was a Chinese national living in Beswick
in East Manchester. He had quite a transient lifestyle. He moved around from place to place.
He mainly worked in the travel industry. He'd worked for Lufthansa, the German airline.
He'd been convicted of credit card fraud in 2002 while working in Germany. In this period, he'd also worked in Scotland
and been involved in identity theft and credit card fraud there, but he wasn't convicted of those crimes.
- The other interesting factor about him was that he didn't work, and he didn't claim benefits.
So the big question there was, well, where was he getting his income from? [ominous music]
- I suppose the outstanding feature about him is that he was a bad habitual gambler
who gambled almost every day. - We knew that he was a big gambler. He was kind of a Jekyll and Hyde in relation to that.
So in some casinos he was banned because of his behavior. When he lost money, he was quite abusive,
and as a result of that, they kicked him out. However, in others, he was treated as a VIP guest
due to the fact that he spent a lot of money there. - [Richard] It was Ming Jiang's gambling habit
that would put Yang Liu in danger. - Ming Jiang had an insatiable thirst for cash.
He had a severe gambling addiction. He was gambling thousands of pounds each day in casinos.
He had accumulated losses across several casinos in Manchester amounting to 273,000 pounds.
He was being chased by creditors, and he was having to pawn some of his designer watches to raise money.
He pawned 16,000 pounds worth of watches just to raise a bit of cash. - [Richard] But that was just a drop in the ocean compared
with what he actually owed. - The reality was, at the time of Yang Liu's death, Ming Jiang literally was teeming in debt,
and that was almost certainly the big motivation, we believe, for the murder. He simply didn't have money to gamble,
and that seemed to be his lifeblood. [ominous music] - Ming Jiang has obviously looked
at his friend who's wealthy and decided that the only way he can solve his financial problems is by hatching a plan,
and it's cold and calculated and ruthless. - [Richard] Ming Jiang had hatched a plan to kill Yang Liu
and steal his money. Investigations looking into their phone records showed Ming Jiang arranging
to meet up with Yang Liu at his apartment five days before the body was found. - We strongly suspected that the murder took place
on the 5th of October. The reason for that was because the way we'd built up the evidence.
CCTV footage showed Yang Liu leaving his apartment in the afternoon of the 5th. He then took a tram,
and we tracked him to the VeloPark tram stop, which is close to the address belonging
to Ming Jiang in Beswick. And then what we saw on a longer shot CCTV were two figures meeting.
One of them was clearly the victim because we tracked him from Beswick CCTV coming off the tram stop.
And then the other figure clearly matched the description of Ming Jiang both in terms of his build and his height.
And the two of them then headed off in the general direction of Ming Jiang's address on Falconwood Way.
Added to that was information from the telephones. So what we had just before the meeting was contact
from Ming Jiang to Yang Liu, again suggesting that there was gonna be some contact.
And from that point onwards, the phones remained together for the whole time. - [Richard] This would be the last time
that Yang Liu was seen alive. - It was quite clear that Ming Jiang would do anything
to fund his gambling habit. - I suppose in a way it was the biggest gamble of his life.
[somber music] - Police were close to solving the case of the burnt torso found in a lay-by
on a road in the Peak District. DNA from the body had matched blood found in the boot of the car belonging to the suspect Ming Jiang.
It had also identified the victim as Yang Liu, despite the killer's best attempts to conceal the identity
of the victim by dismembering the body. But dismembering a body is really quite difficult.
Ming Jiang used some sort of sharp object, although we don't know exactly what he used.
And the complexities of cutting up the body led to inevitable blood loss, which was easily found by forensic teams in his apartment.
Police believed this revealed the truth and would lead to a conviction backed up by CCTV
and digital forensics, all of which linked Ming Jiang to the crime scene. As the investigation progressed,
more evidence came to light when police discovered that after Yang Liu had been murdered,
Ming Jiang took over his identity. - Ming Jiang only seemed to be interested in one thing,
and that was accessing and cleaning out the funds of Yang Liu in any way that he could.
He'd ascertained all his bank credit card details and systematically started emptying his accounts.
He would be going in buying various items, often with Yang Liu's credit cards. So for example, he'd go into Selfridges,
or he would go into B&Q. In fact, he actually used the victim's car to buy cleaning items and paint
in order to cover up the scene. Not only did he seek to remove every last penny that he had,
he also tried to generate loans and even sell his house. One thing that was really interesting from the CCTV
from the victim's home address was we saw on numerous occasions him heading down to that flat
and then coming back out again. So, you know, our inference from that was that he was obtaining items, personal items,
so that he could commit his fraud. In addition to that, we saw him coming out with numerous suitcases.
We knew that Yang Liu had some quite expensive clothing, and what we discovered was his flat was almost empty.
So Ming Jiang really went to great depths and extents to steal every item of value that Yang Liu had.
It was quite clear that Ming Jiang would do anything to be able to realize funds to get back to the casino
and basically fund his gambling habit. One of the most callous things that Ming Jiang did was once he'd taken possession
of Yang Liu's phone, he'd obviously gone through it and discovered a message from Yang Liu's mother over in China.
As a result of that, to cover his tracks, he sent a message back saying just the words, "I okay,"
effectively to say that there was nothing wrong with Yang Liu. But at that point, he was almost certainly dead.
- [Richard] The evidence just kept piling up against Ming Jiang. When police analyzed Yang Liu's phone data,
they discovered there was regular contact between the two men before the murder.
But that all stopped after the 5th of October, the day police believed Yang Liu was killed.
- When he was arrested, Ming Jiang even had his victim's passport and mobile phone on him in the casino when he was held.
- [Richard] And there was one piece of CCTV footage that was particularly chilling.
- One critical piece of evidence we got just beforehand was a trip to a petrol station where, in fact,
Ming Jiang not only bought a petrol can, but filled it up presumably then to use that
to set fire to Yang Liu's body during the deposition. - [Richard] And when interviewed by the police in custody,
Ming Jiang kept changing his story. - Some of the more disturbing aspects of the interview involved Ming Jiang
explaining Yang Liu's background, which were completely false. So he claimed that they were in a relationship,
which they weren't. He claimed that Yang Liu was an escort, which he wasn't, and he often went off with older Chinese men.
Again, completely untrue. But this was the kind of explanation that he was making
to explain the disappearance of Yang Liu. He also used that relationship status in order to suggest
that that's why he had access to his funds and his property. And again, it was just a way of him covering up his lies.
- [Richard] One of the key lines of questioning the police put to Ming Jiang related to the blood found
in the back of his car, and this is when he came up with a new story involving a mysterious character
by the name of John Wong. - His explanation was that he'd come back to the flat,
and suddenly he found two men in there. One's a guy called John Wong, and the other one is somebody he doesn't know.
So he had John Wong and another Chinese male, and he had two suitcases. Again, the inference was
that one suitcase contained the torso and one suitcase almost certainly contained
the other body items. And this is his explanation, which went some way to mitigating
that this was these two people who were involved in this crime instead of him. - [Richard] Ming Jiang continued
to frame the mysterious John Wong, saying he had put the suitcase in the back of his car.
- He went on to explain that John Wong ordered him to take his car and directed him to a location,
which presumably the inference was that that was in Derbyshire at the deposition point.
He said at that point, John Wong got out of the car, took the suitcase out, and he was directed to leave.
The reality was, once you pieced together the evidence, the CCTV said it was solely Ming Jiang.
We got him filling up with petrol. We got him always on his own. We never detected another male
at all involved in the offense. We worked very hard to establish that person's identity,
but quite frankly, John Wong never existed except in Ming Jiang's mind. - [Richard] On the 3rd of April, 2017,
Ming Jiang faced trial at Minshull Crown Court in Manchester for the murder of Yang Liu.
- Ming Jiang came across in court as being completely cold and emotionless throughout.
He didn't betray any sort of any feelings, and he certainly didn't show any remorse.
And he came up with some quite ridiculous and bizarre alibis. He claimed that he and Yang were lovers,
that they were in a relationship, that the reason why he was transferring so much cash
from his victim's bank accounts to his was because they were planning a civil partnership,
that Yang was in trouble with some Malaysian betting syndicates. And there wasn't a shred of evidence for any of this.
- [Richard] The prosecution presented to the jury that Ming Jiang invited his friend Yang Liu over
to his flat with the sole purpose of killing him for financial gain. - Even after he had murdered Yang Liu,
he carried on gambling. In fact, if anything, his gambling accelerated. He was betting bigger and bigger sums.
And using his victim's money, he spent around 185,000 pounds on casino chips in the two weeks after the murder.
- He maintained his account that John Wong, this mysterious John Wong, was responsible for the crime.
And even when he was given evidence during the trial, he maintained that account.
But it just simply was incredulous and bizarre. And in fact, the jury, having sat for four weeks,
only took four hours to give their judgment. It's quite unusual. You would normally expect one day's deliberation
for each week, and, in fact, instead of taking four days, the jury took just four hours.
That just shows you the overwhelming amount of evidence that he faced at the trial.
[jarring music] - [Richard] On the 2nd of May, 2017, Ming Jiang was convicted of the murder of Yang Liu.
He was sentenced to life in prison. The judge said if parole was ever to be considered,
they must look at the danger Ming Jiang presents to society. - I watched Ming Jiang's reaction,
and there was simply nothing. He was completely cold and emotionless, and it was almost like it was just another day,
nothing had happened. - Ming Jiang never admitted what he'd done. He maintained his innocence throughout.
He's never given a full account of what took place in his flat. And before his arrest, he just continued to gamble, in fact.
This murder was motivated completely and totally by greed. - To this day, Yang Liu's hands, head,
and feet haven't been found. Would these discoveries have changed the investigation?
The complete body could have established a cause of death, but in the end, how he was killed could only be speculation.
But the body gave enough truth, even in its dismembered state. You don't always need to know exactly how someone died.
Parts of a body can be enough to seal a conviction for murder. [dramatic music]

Forensic pathologist Dr. Richard Shepherd investigates the murder of Yang Liu, a Chinese trader, who was killed for his money by someone who was his supposed friend, Ming Jang.

In The Truth About My Murder, Dr. Richard Shepherd showcases a state-of-the-art digital autopsy table featuring digitally scanned sample bodies to investigate a series of intriguing murders where the victims' bodies help reveal the truth behind horrific crimes.

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Brief Summary

A dismembered body leads to a murder investigation revealing greed and betrayal among friends.

Key points

The Investigation Begins. Detective Chief Inspector David Cox leads the investigation into the gruesome murder.
A Body Found in the Peak District. A dismembered and burnt body is discovered in a scenic area, leading to a complex investigation.
Breakthrough in Identification. DNA from a vehicle links the suspect to the victim, revealing a crucial connection.
Ming Jiang Arrested. Police arrested Ming Jiang, the prime suspect in the murder of Yang Liu, after gathering evidence.
Blood Evidence Found. Forensic teams discovered extensive blood evidence in Ming Jiang's apartment, crucial to the investigation.
Trial and Conviction. Ming Jiang was convicted of murder after a swift trial, sentenced to life in prison.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This was unlikely to be the site where the murder had taken place.

Richard's insight on the crime scene

4:43WatchFeb 9, 2026

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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