In the 1980s, a scientist named Peng Jiamu disappeared in Lop Nur, Xinjiang, and his body was never found. However, in 2016, a forensic scientist revealed the true cause and circumstances of the death of the man, who was named as a “moving figure in China”.
Mysterious Disappearance
Born in 1925, Peng graduated from the College of Agriculture of National Central University in his early years and later taught at the College of Agriculture of Peking University. After the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, he worked successively at the Institute of Biochemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and in 1979 he also served as president of the Xinjiang Branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 1979, he also served as president of the Xinjiang branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He entered Xinjiang more than a dozen times to help set up research bases, mainly for research on plant viruses, but he once went into the nuclear test site of Lop Nur, to help the Chinese Communist Party find heavy water for nuclear tests.
On 24 June, Chinese radio broadcast for the first time a press release written by Zhao Quanzhang, a journalist with the Xinjiang bureau of the Xinhua News Agency, which read.
Peng Jiamu, a famous scientist and vice president of the Xinjiang branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has been missing for seven days after a scientific expedition in Xinjiang.
Peng in early May led a scientific expedition of more than 20 people to study Lop Nur, based in Milan Farm, Xinjiang General Bureau of Agricultural Reclamation. According to preliminary understanding, Peng Jiagi missing after: recently he led four members of the expedition, riding by two drivers driving two cars, leaving Milan set out to work, the original plan to return to Milan, a week around the Lop Nur, the end of the expedition.
In the early hours of June 17, the remaining personnel at the base camp received a sudden distress signal from them over the radio, reporting that they had lost their way, their cars were out of fuel and their people were without water. On the morning of the 18th, Urumqi troops sent two planes to the Lop Nur area to look for rescue, one of which found six people near Kumkuduk and air-dropped water, food, gasoline and other supplies to them. The six men were the four expedition members and two drivers led by Pangamu. Pangamu went out to look for water at 10:00 a.m. on the 17th, had left them a note that read: “I left here to look for water in the east”, but has not returned.
Repeated search to no avail
Since then, the Chinese Communist authorities have sent a number of aircraft and ground troops to the Lop Nur area in succession to search for the site, such as the fourth search from 10 November to 20 December 1980, which involved 69 men and 18 Land Cruisers for a total of 41 days. The search area was centred on Pangamu’s camp before his disappearance – Kumukuduk and the place where his footprints disappeared, along the Shule River route, 6 kilometres west of Tuya and 10-20 kilometres north-south to Koshukuduk in the east, covering a total area of 1,011 square kilometres, but no trace of Pangamu was found. Downward spiral.
In addition to the massive official search, the private and personal search continues, but with the same result.
Where exactly is Pangamu? No one can say for sure.
In October 1981, the Chinese Communist Party officially confirmed that he had died after being buried by quicksand while searching for water, and the Shanghai municipal government posthumously recognized him as a martyr and held a memorial service without his remains.
The body was found
In January 2016, a forensic scientist named Zhu Mingchuan posted an online article revealing the truth about Pangamu’s death, which was left behind by the forensic scientist surnamed Deng who worked on the case back then.
Deng’s diary details the events leading up to and following his autopsy of a dried corpse in 2006. This dry corpse is in April 11, 2005, Dunhuang City, Qili Town, a desert expedition team found in the northwestern Kumtag Desert, there were two, because the authorities suspected that it was the body of the missing Peng Jamu, so the concealment of only one body.
At that time, Coroner Deng and another coroner were notified and immediately went to Dunhuang to remove hair, bones and skin from the dried corpse to take back to the laboratory in Beijing to prepare the samples for analysis. After the analysis, they found Peng’s relatives through channels to provide DNA samples, but the process did not go smoothly.
Eventually they were able to get DNA samples from Pangamu’s children. After comparison, it was confirmed that the dry corpse was Pangamu himself.
It was definitely not a natural death.
However, Pangamu’s death was due to a different cause, not natural, because Coroner Deng found body wax on the dried corpse, which is very rare, and this is most strange.
Corpse wax is most commonly found on corpses immersed in water or buried in moist soil, rich in calcium and magnesium. Under such an environment, the subcutaneous fat of the corpse will decompose fatty acid and glycerin, and the ammonia in the fatty acid and protein decomposition products will combine to form ammonium fatty acid, which will then combine with calcium and magnesium in the water to form a grayish-white wax-like substance, which is called corpse wax.
However, if Pangamu had died because he was out looking for water and was buried by running water, his fat would have disappeared completely, especially if the dried corpse had spent 25 years in the desert in gale force winds, bright light and high temperatures, which means that very rarely would corpse wax appear under such circumstances.
Of course, Coroner Deng pointed out that although body wax is less common than dry corpses, body wax can still be formed, and the changes in waxing are usually seen only in the skin and subcutaneous fat, because during the waxing process, most of the corpse’s decay is still going on, and after the partial formation of body wax, most of the other tissues of the corpse, especially the internal organs, have been destroyed. Experts believe that this is due to the fact that, although the environment is dry, the moisture in one part of the body is sufficient for the wax formation in the other part of the body.
The process of forming dried corpses is effective in preserving certain personal characteristics and traces of violent action (such as injuries and cable grooves), and therefore has some forensic significance. In the case of Pangamu’s body, forensic pathologist Deng found obvious signs of violence: 3 blunt force injuries on the head, 11 sharp force injuries on the limbs, and 27 sharp force injuries on the chest, abdomen and back. If not for the fact that the person is dead and the body is a dry corpse, then the murder scene must be extremely bloody and horrific. Therefore, he judged Pangamu to be an unnatural death.
The real cause of death
So who’s the killer? Dr. Deng deduced that the perpetrators were members of the scientific research team. The authorities quickly arranged a meeting between Dr. Deng and the 10 surviving members of the team.
Dr. Deng briefly explained to them the results of the autopsy of the dry corpse and the analysis of the case, and they panicked at once. After a long plea, they knew they couldn’t hide it, and that’s when they told the shocking truth.
According to the statement of those 10 people, Deng forensic medicine learned that Peng Jiamu had suffered from two kinds of cancer, weak body, bad temper, stubborn person, and get along with the team members also bad. At that time, the team’s supplies are not enough, but Peng Jiamu insisted on going deeper into the Lop Nur, which is to bring everyone into the situation of death. The science research team members think, you have a terminal illness, can not live, but we still have a way to live, no need to follow you to seek death.
At that time, the scientific research team wanted to ask the military for help, but Pangamu said that it was too expensive to transport water by helicopter. The helicopter flight one hour, it will cost more than two thousand yuan (note: this is the price at that time), from the nearby garrison base to fly to here, back and forth for several hours, a trip to transport water will cost the state tens of thousands of yuan of funds, we can not stand on our own, find water nearby? However, the water in the Lop Nur is more erratic than a ghost, today there is water in the well, tomorrow may be dried up. Naturally, they pressed the map, they did not find a well, one of the hydrogeologists engaged in the analysis of the team, that a piece of the place can not have water, scientific research team since then in a desperate situation.
In that kind of environment, human nature is often tested, and the relationship between people becomes very delicate. Pangamu had a bad temper and often quarreled with his team members, and his risky behavior had already led to deep resentment between him and his team members. On June 16, 1980 (the day before Peng’s disappearance), the expedition found Peng a hundred meters west of the camp, covered in blood and already dead.
The person who killed Pangamu could only have been one or more members of the team, but none of them admitted it. After the incident, the members of the science team struggled for a night and finally decided to hide the truth and make up a lie to deceive the world. So they buried the bodies, falsely claiming to have seen footprints, etc., which is why only the science team had seen the footprints.
In fact, it was the scientific research team who changed the date from 16 to 17 in order to stall for time and cover up the lie.
In the meantime, instead of tracking down the murderer, they hardened the drama.
The forensic lament
Coroner Dunn, after hearing the statement, had mixed feelings. As to who was the real murderer, Coroner Deng’s conclusion was that all 10 people were murderers. The reason was that they defended each other, and if a single person committed the crime, it would be impossible not to be noticed in that environment, Pangamu also had the ability to call for help, he was attacked, he would always make a sound, and the people in the campsite would definitely notice.
However, killing someone was wrong, but how was it different from murder if you didn’t care about the safety of your whole team? In a desperate situation like Robbo, running out of supplies is deadly, and none of them would have gotten the 250 kilograms of water had the team not telegraphed for help after the disappearance.
In the end, the case Pangamu disappearance case was not pursued any further. The restoration of today’s truth in the return and Peng Jiamu justice at the same time, but also completely destroyed the image of its “moving Chinese characters”. And who made such a person?
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