How Chinese murder victim’s nail polish led to her suspected killer

Police identified a murder victim dumped in a river in eastern China by her nail polish, manicure and tattooed brows, eventually leading them to her suspected killer, according to a news website report.

The body of the woman was found in the river in Jiaxing in Zhejiang province on March 19, Thepaper.cn reported.

The corpse was badly decomposed and impossible to identify by its features, according to the article.

“The body was found in a major shipping channel. It had no distinctive features other than the nail polish and tattooed eyebrows, creating a huge challenge for us to solve the case,” Song Shu, deputy chief at the public security bureau in the Xiuzhou district of Jiaxing, was quoted as saying.

Police speculated the woman lived in Honghe or Tongxiang in the southwest of Jiaxing as her nail polish patterns were only available in salons in that area.

Cao Ming, director of criminal cases at the bureau, told the website: “The dead person had red nail polish on both her hands, with butterfly-shaped patterns on her thumbnails. We found out the pattern was quite unique after visiting the related nail salons.”