720, the beginning and end of the big case

Please let us take a look at the investigation of the theft of the Han tomb of Chuwang Mountain in Jiahe Township, Tongshan County, Xuzhou!

Introduction: On September 18, 2002, Liu Kunyu, one of the main culprits in the tomb robbery case of the Han Tomb of King Chu Mountain, was sentenced to a suspended death sentence by the Xuzhou Intermediate People's Court. So far, all the main people involved in the tomb robbery case of the Han Tomb of King Chu Mountain, which has attracted widespread attention from the society, have been brought to justice. In this case, a total of 19 people involved in the case, except for two death sentences, one with a suspended death sentence, and one life sentence, the rest of the sentences were more than 10 years.

According to information from Interpol, a nine-branch lamp stolen from the Han Tomb of King Chu was sold to Canada by cultural relics dealers through Hong Kong, and the price was as high as 5 million yuan, which was the first major case of tomb robbery in our city since the founding of the People's Republic of China.

The thousand-year-old royal tomb is mysterious

Chuwang Mountain is a historical mountain in Xuzhou, the earliest is called Ochre Mountain, produces five-colored soil, as early as the Shang and Zhou dynasties, it is used as an offering to the imperial court, used as an altar (altar of the earth), to worship the god of the land, and pray for the blessing of the country. Su Shi of the Northern Song Dynasty "Sending Zhang Shihou Poems" has the verse "Broken mountains do not cover the eyes of the west, and send the king straight through the Chuwang Mountain".

According to the local chronicles, in the Ming Dynasty, there were dozens of wells in the south of the Chu King Mountain, and there were dozens of mounds in the north of the mountain, and the folk then had the saying of "ninety-nine wells in front of the mountain and ninety-nine mounds behind the mountain". Due to the changes of history, the well in the south of the mountain has long been gone, and there is not much left of the mound in the north of the mountain. The earliest record of the Han tombs of King Chu Mountain can be found in the "Notes on the Book of Water" by Li Daoyuan of the Northern Wei Dynasty, and similar records are also found in the historical books and local chronicles of later dynasties.

After thousands of years of historical changes, the tomb group has four existing tombs, all have tall sealed mounds, from a distance, the sealed mound is covered bucket shaped, the plane is square or rectangular, the top is small and the bottom is large, and the surrounding is a block stone, so as to prevent the rain from washing the sealed soil. Of the four tombs, Tomb No. 1 is the largest.

Because of the large scale of the Han Tomb Group of King Chu Mountain, and it is said that it is the mausoleum of Liu Jiao, the king of Chu Yuan, it has important historical value, therefore, it was announced as the first batch of provincial key cultural relics protection units by Jiangsu Province very early, and in 1986, the Han Tomb Group of King Chu Mountain and other tombs of King Chu were announced by the State Council as "National Key Cultural Relics Protection Units".

The hand of sin reaches into the tomb

"If you want to get rich, dig ancient tombs and become 10,000 yuan households overnight", some people who dream of getting rich overnight have extended their evil hands to ancient tombs. The Han tombs of King Chu Mountain, which have important historical value, have also attracted the greedy eyes of criminals.

On the afternoon of January 7, 1997, a sheep herder drove a flock of sheep to graze sheep on Tomb No. 1, when suddenly, a sheep stepped on a hidden hole, and the sheep almost fell into the hole, and the tomb robbery was discovered.

When the public security organs investigated the scene, the surrounding people reported that in mid-December 1996, Liu, a villager in Zhakou Village on the north side of the tomb, was slashed with a knife by an unknown person at about 10 p.m. For a while, the people in the village were panicked and did not dare to go out after dark. Around December 24, a villager found new soil in the stone crevices on the slope of the main peak of Chuwang Mountain, and felt strange, but did not know the origin of this soil. The villagers also said that during this time, outsiders went to the quarry duty room on the east side of Tomb No. 1 at night to borrow fire and light cigarettes; During the day, it is often seen that outsiders drive to Chuwang Mountain to hunt rabbits. Investigators speculated that members of the tomb robbery gang were monitoring whether the cave had been discovered.

Tomb robbers are professional in their excavation methods and very ingenious. The entrance to the cave is located about 10 meters above the exposed section of the grave road, and there is a tree next to it to facilitate the tethering of ropes. The cave is very small, there is a 20 cm deep two-story platform around the entrance of the cave, and the wooden planks are just stuck on this two-story platform, and the wooden planks are basically level with the ground. There is a wire gripper at each end of the plank, which is easy to lift, and the cover is covered with stones during the day for camouflage, which is extremely difficult to find. The soil in the cave was transported to the slope of the main peak, 200 meters south of the cave, and the tomb robbers used the method of breaking the soil into pieces, pouring the soil into the crevices between the rocks, and even covering it with stones to prevent anyone from discovering it.

The cave is vertically downward, 1.2 meters long from north to south, 0.7 meters wide from east to west, and about 12 meters deep, with foot sockets on both sides. The robbery hole is excavated to the west at a depth of 12 meters into a horizontal robbery hole, and at the depth of 0.5 meters in the horizontal robbery hole, an ear chamber was found on the south wall, the soil in the ear chamber was basically hollowed out by the tomb robbers, and there were some porcelain and bronze fragments discarded by the tomb robbers on the ground, which may be that the tomb robbers found more precious cultural relics in the ear chamber. Therefore, in addition to continuing to extend westward along the south wall of the tomb, the horizontal robbery cave excavated a north-south robbery hole to the north. The robbery hole crosses the tomb and reaches the north wall for the ear chamber, which is about 7 meters long. The cave caused great damage to the burial goods, and the cave was littered with broken artifact fragments. The north-south robbery cave is about 10 meters long, and the western end is the end of the cemetery, and the well-preserved Yongdao entrance is exposed. Due to the sudden discovery of the entrance to the robber's cave, the robbers were not able to open the main burial chamber.

Because the tomb robbers did not expect to be discovered, all the tools of crime were left in the cave: specially made extremely sharp shovels, iron picks, and iron drills; There is a long cloth made of the rope for pulling soil, up and down people, the rope is connected to the nylon rope, the nylon rope is tied every 70 centimeters or so, so as to be easy to grasp, the lower end of the nylon rope is connected with a snakeskin bag, and the mouth is wrapped with a fine steel bar, so that the mouth is stretched open, and it is convenient to load the soil. Other items left in the cave were: torn towels, flashlights, batteries, gloves, instant noodle bags, mineral water bottles, drink bottles and cigarette butts. Since most of the items left behind by the tomb robbers were produced in Anhui, the public security officers speculated that the tomb robbers were likely to be from Anhui.

In view of China's current cultural relics policy of "protection first, rescue first", in principle, the tombs of God and princes and kings are not allowed to be excavated. The Han Tombs of King Chu Mountain are not only the tombs of princes and kings, but also the national key cultural relics protection units, so it is difficult for the Han Tombs of King Chu Mountain to be approved for excavation. For this reason, it was decided to immediately seal the entrance to the cave and completely seal it with stones and cement. In order to ensure safety, it was also decided to hire two part-time antiquities keepers to guard the cemetery and make daily rounds of the tombs.

At this point, the tomb robbery case has come to an end for the time being. But unexpectedly, after half a year, Tomb No. 1 was stolen again.

Again the tomb was robbed

In the summer of 1997, the city of Xuzhou was hit by heavy rains. On the morning of July 18, after a heavy rain, a villager went to Chuwang Mountain to collect land and found that a sunken round hole had been washed out of the road of the No. 1 tomb by heavy rain. When the two arrived at the scene, they found that there were fertilizer bags in the cave and confirmed that they had stolen the cave. At this point, the Han tombs of King Chu Mountain were stolen again.

According to the masses, in early July, there were rumors that the No. 1 tomb was stolen again in the village, and before the incident, strangers were often seen moving on Chuwang Mountain, which was speculated to be related to tomb robbery.

The robbery hole is located in the first robbery cave west 1.8 meters, the hole is very small, circular, the diameter is only 0.45 meters, with a snakeskin bag of soil for closure, the upper part is covered with soil and camouflaged, very hidden. Prior to this, the relevant personnel had visited the scene several times, but they were not found. The cave first went down, then sloped down to the west, and then vertically down, with a total depth of about 14 meters. Because the cave is so small, there is no room for maneuver in the cave, and people can't even bend their knees. There was once a policeman who wanted to go down to the cave, but because of his burly figure, he was stuck in the hole, unable to turn around, unable to go up and down, and was in a very embarrassing situation. It can be seen that the cave is so small that the tomb robbers cannot dig the soil manually. At that time, based on the size and shape of the cave and the surrounding soil conditions, it was inferred that the cave may have been blown up with explosives, which was later confirmed by the steel probe shovel casing (used as a shovel handle) and explosives found in the cave. (The probe shovel, also known as the "Luoyang shovel", was invented by the tomb robbers in Luoyang before the liberation, which was to use the shovel head to bring out the tomb soil, and understand the tomb situation through the analysis of soil quality.) The tomb robbers first used the Luoyang shovel to dig out the probing hole, and then filled the probe with explosives, and after the explosives exploded, the soil was squeezed into the surrounding area to form a spatial passage. This method not only saves time, but also does not need to transport the soil inside the cave out of the cave, which enhances the concealment.

With the experience of working for the first time, this time it was directly entered into the hole by professionals. Because the hole is very small, the people who enter the hole can not directly exert force, so they tie the rope around the waist, and use the rope to pull the rope on the hole to put people in or out. After entering the cave, it was found that the robbery hole was directly connected to the first horizontal robbery hole, and the two theft excavations were obviously carried out by the same group. At the bottom of the shaft were more than 10 tubes of explosives left by tomb robbers. After following the thief hole to the west to the Yongdao entrance, it was found that the Yongdao had been blasted open with a hole about 1 meter wide and 0.5 meters high, and the plug stone on the upper part of the tunnel was suspended in the air and supported by truncated sleepers. Due to the lack of light in the cave and the rush of time, the sleeper roof is not very firm, and it stands obliquely, giving people the feeling that it will collapse at any time. The cave is about 4 meters long (actually the length of the road) and leads to the main burial chamber in the west. The main burial chamber is magnificent, but because the position of the tunnel is too high, it is three or four meters high from the bottom of the main burial chamber, and it is very inconvenient for personnel to go down. In order to ensure safety, the engineers and technicians on the coal mine were first hired to re-support and reinforce the hanging Yongdao plug stones, and then hung a soft ladder, and a professional and a public security officer went down to the main tomb together. Except for the southwestern part of the main burial chamber, which has remained in its original state due to thick silt, the rest of the tomb has been largely turned upside down. There is a thick layer of rotten wood ash in the cave, and there are no burial goods.

After learning about the circumstances of the robbery hole, the structure of the tomb, and collecting the relevant criminal evidence left by the tomb robbers, the relevant departments quickly sealed the robbery cave and inlaid stones on the surface around the robbery hole.

Thousands of miles track to capture criminals

As a national key cultural relics protection unit, the Han tombs of King Chu Mountain were stolen twice in half a year, causing great shock among people. The leaders concerned demanded that efforts be concentrated to quickly crack the case, arrest the criminals, and recover the stolen cultural relics. The Criminal Police Brigade of the Tongshan County Public Security Bureau was responsible for the investigation of the case. The special case group worked day and night to basically find out the facts of the case in the past three months, arrested more than 10 suspects, including Wang Chunbao, Xu Guangshan, and Li Hezhuang, and reported the case to the Xuzhou City People's Procuratorate on 12 April 1999.

In fact, as early as after the criminals robbed the tomb for the first time, the relevant departments of our city have speculated through on-site investigation that the perpetrators should be habitual tomb robbers in the surrounding areas of Xuzhou, such as Anhui and Henan. However, because these tomb robbers often come and go without a trace, and rarely have a fixed place of residence, although the case-handling personnel have been tracking and investigating for a long time, there has still been no breakthrough in the investigation of the case.

Finally, an anonymous phone call broke the mystery of the case. The caller was a middle-aged man with a foreign accent, who clearly told the investigators that someone had stolen a lot of cultural relics from the Han tomb of King Chu Mountain, and one of them was a priceless nine-branch lamp. The tomb robbers were Wang Chunbao from Houma, Shanxi, Xu Guangshan from Xuchang, Henan, Li Hezhuang from Shangshui, Henan, and others. These people usually have no fixed residence, but when Wang Chunbao's younger brother got married two months later, they all have to go to Houma to attend the wedding.

The investigators analyzed that it was probably one of the people in the tomb robbery gang who made the call, and because of the uneven distribution of the spoils and his dissatisfaction, he reported it to the public security organs. As a result, the case-handling personnel worked day and night to quickly rush to Houma, Shanxi, to contact the local public security organs. According to the local public security organs, it is usually difficult to find Wang Chunbao, but coincidentally, now the Houma public security organs are pursuing him because of a small case, and Wang Chunbao is also preparing to turn himself in to the public security department in order to strive for leniency. In order to wait for the rabbit, the Houma public security cooperated with the city's case-handling personnel to block the news. On August 11, 1997, at the scene of Wang Chunbao's surrender, the investigators suddenly appeared and arrested him. During the interrogation, Wang Chunbao confessed to his crimes and confessed the whereabouts of the other members of the gang.

According to Wang Chunbao's confession, the case-handling personnel arrested Xu Guangshan in Xuchang on August 14, Zhang Zumin and Zhou Fangtian in Xiao County on August 16, and Li Hezhuang and Wang Jianguo in Taikang on August 18. Liu Kunyu, who is only one of the main culprits, has never been caught. After interrogation, the case of the theft of the Han tombs in Chu Wangshan has basically come to light.

According to the criminals' confessions, as early as 1995 and 1996, Liu Kunyu and Xu Guangshan, habitual tomb robbers, learned that there was a Han tomb in Chuwang Mountain in Xuzhou through Chen Mingxiang, who lived in the Shenzhuang mine in Xiao County. In October 1996, Wang Chunbao, Liu Kunyu and others gathered six people to discuss with Li Hezhuang's house in Zhengzhou, and formulated a detailed plan for tomb robbery. At the end of 1996, Liu Kunyu, Li Hezhuang, and Geng Shuanghe each contributed 10,000 yuan, and Chen Mingxiang, who was familiar with the situation, arranged room and board, and summoned a total of 19 people from Henan, Shanxi, and Anhui. This group of people gathered at the Shenzhuang mine in Xiao County, bought shovels, pickaxes, woven bags, flashlights and other tools for committing crimes, and began to rob tombs day and night. With years of experience in tomb robbing, Wang Chunbao accurately laid a robbery hole vertically down from the top of the mountain. They set off at eight or nine o'clock every night on a motorized tricycle arranged by Chen Mingxiang and returned at four or five o'clock in the morning. Seven or eight days later, they dug up the ear chamber and took from it more than 20 bronze utensils, including bowls and jars, including the priceless nine-branch lamp. The next day, Liu Kunyu and others rented a taxi, rushed to Tongcheng, Anhui Province, found a cultural relics dealer, and sold the nine-branch lamp at a price of 250,000 yuan. After returning, they told the accomplices that they had only sold 180,000 yuan, and each person was divided into 8,000 yuan, which aroused the suspicion and dissatisfaction of the accomplices. After working for a few more days, the gang found that the entrance to the thief cave had been moved, so they did not dare to dig it, and decided to temporarily "close the team".

After tasting the sweetness of the first tomb robbery, Wang Chunbao and Li Hezhuang felt that the tomb was profitable and decided to continue digging after the limelight passed. However, due to the uneven distribution of spoils for the first time, they each had a ghost and wanted to get rid of each other and do it alone. At the beginning of 1997, Chen Mingxiang called Li Hezhuang and Xu Guangshan to inform him that the time had come and that he could do it again. When Li Hezhuang and Xu Guangshan gathered nine more people to Xiao County to prepare for another theft, they found that Wang Chunbao had also come to Xiao County with a Beijing cultural relics dealer who was willing to contribute. Both sides thought that there were too many people and it was difficult to divide the spoils, and there were people around Chuwang Mountain watching the tombs, and the action was too dangerous, so both sides did not succeed.

In June 1997, Xu Guangshan found Wang Zhiguan and a group of Shandong people and came to Chuwangshan again. This time, they adopted the method of digging holes and entering the room, using Luoyang shovels to punch holes, using explosives to blow out the robbery holes and entering, and using explosives to blow up the plug stone and enter the main burial chamber of Tomb No. 1. Since there were two holes in the base of the tomb, they speculated that the tomb might have been stolen twice in ancient times, and they only found more than 200 pieces of jade in the tomb.

After Wang Chunbao, Li Hezhuang and others were arrested, in February 1998, they went to Xuzhou twice to step on the site and check the terrain. After raising 4,800 yuan, they prepared 40 kilograms of explosives, detonators, riot starters, shotguns, and other tools, and went to Xuzhou again to rob tombs. On March 4, 1998, when they chartered two taxis and carried tools, they were seized by the police on duty when they passed through the Nangang checkpoint on the Third Ring Road.

After investigation by the public security and procuratorial organs, the Xuzhou City Intermediate People's Court sentenced Wang Chunbao to death, Xu Guangshan to death, Li Hezhuang to life, and Wang Zheguan to more than 10 years in prison, and imposed corresponding fines. This is the first death penalty sentenced to grave robbery in our city since the founding of the People's Republic of China, and at the same time, it is also the heaviest sentence and the largest number of people. At that time, Liu Kunyu, who had slipped through the net, changed his name and surname, and when he was contracting a highway project in Henan, he was reported by the masses and arrested by the public security organs. On September 18 this year, he was sentenced to a suspended death sentence by the court.

Priceless Treasures Abroad

The reason why the tomb robbery case of Chu Wangshan is so interesting is closely related to the stolen nine-branch lamp. What do these nine lamps look like? According to the criminals' confession: "The nine lamps weigh about seventy or eighty pounds, the base is 1 inch thick, like an upside-down basin, a copper pipe about 1 or 2 meters long is connected to the base, and nine forks are issued on the copper pipe, and a copper bowl with a flat bottom and a large mouth is hung on each fork." ”

According to archaeologists, the nine-branch lamp, commonly known as the "cash cow", was later identified as a national first-class cultural relic by the national cultural relics department. According to a relevant person from the International Criminal Police Organization, the lamp was bought at a high price of 5 million yuan in Hong Kong and is currently lost in Canada.

Background information:

Regarding the Han tombs of King Chu Mountain, almost all the records in the historical books believe that it is the family cemetery of Liu Jiao, the king of Chu Yuan in the early Western Han Dynasty. In particular, the period in which Li Daoyuan and Liu Zhao lived was only about 300 years before the fall of the Han Dynasty, and according to the records of Liu Song Fu Liang's "Xiuchu Wangshan Tomb Teaching", until the Liu Song Dynasty, there were still five mausoleum households, which often sprinkled and swept the mausoleum and paid tribute on time, while Liu Song was only 100 years away from Xiao Liang, and the credibility of its record should be relatively high. The shape and structure of Tomb No. 1 and the burial utensils also clearly reflect the characteristics of the early Han Dynasty.

The sealed soil of the tombs of the Han Tomb Group in Chuwangshan is in the shape of a covered bucket, which is obviously influenced by the tomb of the Chang'an Emperor; Not only are the main tombs No. 1 and No. 2 large-scale, but also the scale of the No. 3 and No. 4 burial tombs is also very large, which is very rare in other Chu tombs, and the status of Liu Jiao, the non-Yuan king (the half-brother of Liu Bang, the ancestor of the Han Dynasty), cannot reach. From the perspective of its location and scale, Tomb No. 2 should be the mausoleum of Queen Yuan. Tombs 3 and 4 are far away, and the scale of the tombs is much smaller than that of tombs 1 and 2, so they should be burial tombs, and their identities may be relatives or close ministers, but their identities and status should be relatively high.

Curated by Ma Zhiren, written by Geng Jianjun, Li Lin, Gan Xiaomei

News source: Pengcheng Evening News

News author: Pengcheng Evening News