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Huozhou John Doe was a male whose skeletal remains were discovered in the Yellow River following a confession made to police. He was initially misidentified as Baozi Yue, who was suspected to have been killed and dumped in the river, but this was later disproven when Yue was found alive in Taiyuan. His remains are reported to have been exhumed at some point, but no further information in his case has been released.
Case[]
In the spring of 2004, a teenage boy named Baozi Yue disappeared from his home in Qianxiaocheng with 400 yuan in his possession. His disappearance was publicized in his village through the use of several missing posters, though a break would not come in his case until a couple of days later when his neighbor, Tuyuan Yue, notified police that he may know where Yue had gone. Tuyuan has been stated to have no relation to Yue, and the boy's family does not trust him due to his criminal record. Though, an agreement was made to reward Tuyuan with 15,000 yuan if he could lead them to Yue.
After Tuyuan had seemingly gone out to search for Yue and returned alone, he was detained under suspicion of causing Yue's disappearance. He is reported to have been interrogated and confessed to Yue's murder, with Tuyuan claiming he was beaten severely by police while in their custody. He told investigators that he had led Yue to the Jundu Yellow River Bridge and strangled him before dumping his body in the Yellow River. Police immediately began investigating the area and discovered a human skeleton belonging to a male in the river near Huozhou. A DNA test was quickly ordered and the body was confirmed to belong to Yue due to it having matched the mitochondrial DNA of Yue's mother. Tuyuan would be formally charged with Yue's murder on June 23rd, 2004.
However, Tuyuan was approached for a second interrogation in February 2005 and notified that he was going to be tried for fraud instead of Yue's murder. He was asked to revise his confession following a report that Yue had been found alive in Taiyuan, the capital of their province, that same month by a friend. Yue was convinced to return to the village and a DNA test confirmed his identity, proving that Tuyuan had not killed him. All homicide charges against Tuyuan were dropped, though he was still tried and charged with fraud before this case too was dropped under the claim that the wrong person had been prosecuted. Tuyuan was awarded compensation for the abuses he suffered but is reported to still be looked down upon for Yue's supposed murder.
The skeleton found in the river was reported to have been exhumed sometime after Yue was found alive, but it is unclear what testing was done on it. No further details have been released about the decedent, and it is unknown if he was reburied or if his remains are being held elsewhere. It is unclear why the decedent's DNA was reported to have matched with the mitochondrial DNA of Yue's mother, but is suspected to have been a result of police bias.