Li Haiyu’s heartbreaking tale of revenge began in December of 1992 when the woman’s father and another man started arguing about wages. Things got so heated between them that at one point, the other man decided to get back at Haiyu’s father by kidnapping his 9-year-old son, Li Huanping, as he left school. Police were called and a search for the boy and his kidnapper was organized in the area around their village in Hunan Province. Li Huanping’s clothes were found on the outskirts of a nearby village, but his body was only found in February of the following year, by which time his kidnapper had disappeared. The police report concluded that he had been stabbed and abandoned in a sugarcane field, but his father didn’t tell his wife and five daughters the truth until his dying day, letting them hold on to the hope of one day being reunited with Li Huanping.

According to the Xiaoxiang Morning News, Li Haiyu started searching for her younger brother in 1997. She knew he had been abducted and traveled to the provinces of Yunnan, Sichuan, Guizhou and Guangxi to find him, facing all sorts of challenges. She was cheated by people looking to take advantage of her desperation to find Li Huanping and almost abducted herself on at least two occasions. But she never gave up hope.

It was only in 2014, when her father took his own life leaving behind a note for his family, that Li Haiyu learned about her little brother’s fate. Her father wrote that he had never given up the search for his son’s killer, but after years of fruitless searching, he just couldn’t bear waking up every day. At first, Haiyu was angry about her father’s deceit, but later understood his desire to protect them from the cold hard truth of her brother’s brutal death, and decided to carry on the search for his killer.

In his final note, Li Haiyu’s father revealed the name of his son’s murderer, Yi Mouqing, as well as his home town and details about his appearance, so the woman moved to Ningbo, in Zhejiang, and waited there until she found someone fitting Yi’s description. Da Wan News reports that Li Haiyu struck up a conversation with the man under pretext of looking for a job, and managed to learn his name, Yi Mouhua. It was close enough to raise suspicion, but not enough to alert the authorities, so Li Haiyu stayed in touch with him in order to learn more information.

Despite being sick to her stomach about acting friendly to her brother’s murderer, Li Haiyu spent roughly three years talking to Yi Mouhua, getting to know him and trying to earn his trust. Then at one point, when the opportunity presented itself, she asked him if he was Yi Mouqing or Yi Mouhua, because she had heard people call him both, to which he casually answered: “My name is Yi Mouhua, but Yi Mouqing is my childhood name. Two names, but one person.”

Li Haiyu bit her tongue with excitement when she heard her brother’s killer confirm his identity, but she didn’t let it show, for fear of raising suspicion. She then contacted the police and accompanied them as they arrested the runaway criminal just so he could see who had orchestrated his capture. The arrest was inducted in 2020, but a Chinese court ruled that there wasn’t enough evidence to convict the suspect. In November of 2022, the Procuratorate overruled the previous decision and in September of this year, Li Huanping’s killer was once again brought before a judge.

Yi Mouqing admitted to luring his rival’s son with apples on that fateful day in 1992, but Li Haiyu, who spent most of her life chasing him all over China, thought his attitude in front of the Court was arrogant. “I felt that he was judging us, not the court judging him,” she told reporters, adding that she hoped Mouqing would get the death penalty for his crime. Se now plans to bring her brother’s remains back to her hometown, so he can finally rest in peace.

On February 16, 1999, Givaldo José Vicente de Deus was shot and killed after a heated argument at a bar in the Brazilian city of Boa Vista. He had gotten into an argument with one Raimundo Alves Gomes over a debt of 150 Brazilian reals (the equivalent of $29 in 1999) that Givaldo reportedly owed Gomes. At one point, the latter walked out of the bar for a few minutes, then came back in with a gun and shot the father-of-five in the head at point-blank range. Gomes fled the scene and although an arrest warrant was issued in his name, he was never caught. Givaldo’s grieving family never gave up hope of bringing his killer to justice, and his eldest daughter, who was only nine at the time of his death, dedicated her life to catching Gomes.

[Gomes] left behind a broken family, with five children, and our mothers had to fight hard to raise us. This event could have led us down other paths, but our mothers always taught us to follow the right path,” Gislayne Silva de Deus told Brazilian news outlet Nova1.

As the eldest of five children, Gislayne had to help her mother take care of her younger siblings and also do chores around the house, but she never neglected her studies. Her father had always encouraged her to study hard and was always ready to help her with her homework, and she didn’t want to disappoint him. She put in the work and dreamed of one day bringing closure to her entire family by catching her father’s killer.

At age 18, after graduating high school, Gislayne was accepted into law school and became a licensed lawyer seven years later. However, in 2022, she gave up on her law career in order to become a police officer, and two years later, on July 19, 2024, she passed the exam and was officially appointed as a State Police investigator. She immediately requested a position in the Homicide Division, which gave her an opportunity to pursue Raimundo Alves Gomes.

In 2013, Gomes was sentenced to 12 years in prison for the killing of Givaldo José Vicente de Deus, but since he had never been apprehended after the crime, the sentence was never carried out. His lawyers appealed the decision in 2014 and 2015, but both appeals were rejected by the High Court of Justice. The most recent arrest warrant for Gomez was issued in 2019, so the statute of limitations runs out in 2031, meaning that the faster Gislayne could find Gomes, the more time he would have to spend behind bars.

On September 25, just two months into her career as a police officer, Gislayne Silva de Deus fulfilled her dream of bringing her father’s killer to justice, after a long 25 years. She and her team found him hiding on a farm in the Nova Cidade region near Boa Vista and arrested him.

“When I saw him at the police station, I made a point of telling him who I was and that I had been responsible for carrying out the arrest warrant,” Silva de Deus said. “I shared the news with my family, and everyone felt a great sense of peace and justice. We waited a long time, and even though we were in disbelief, we managed to reach this moment. I cried with relief because after so long, it felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders.”

 

Gislayne’s story and her dedication to honoring her father and bringing her family peace touched the hearts of millions in Brazil and the whole of South America since the news was first reported last month.