Family’s hopes crushed as missing woman’s body found after 13 years

The body was found by Nguyen Van Quy, a local man, in an abandoned well in his backyard while looking for his dog.

DNA tests confirmed that it belonged to Nguyen Thu Thanh, who was reported missing all those years ago.

An abandoned water tank in Hai Phong City where the body of a woman was found on Dec. 6, 2023. Photo by VnExpress/Xuan Hoa

Thanh’s family lives in Lai Xuan Commune, Thuy Nguyen District.

She got married in 2006 at age 18 with a man named Tien from the same village. The couple ran a shop at home selling cooking gas.

On the afternoon of Dec. 3, 2010, Thanh had asked a neighbor to babysit her two-year-old son as she went to deliver a cylinder on her motorbike.

Her husband, who worked as an assistant on container trucks, had left for the south.

When Thanh did not return until late that day her neighbor informed her mother-in-law Duoc, who lived just 50 meters away.

Duoc recalls: “I could not contact Thanh. I was worried that she had some accident, so I asked the commune communications officials to raise an alert on public speakers, but I did not get any tip-off about her.”

The next morning people found Thanh’s motorbike next to a drainage cover near a lagoon, around 500 m from her house.

Local authorities deployed personnel to look for her along with her family. Her husband had rushed home on hearing the news and joined the search.

Phan Van Dat, his uncle, remembers it was freezing that day.

“We had to drink fermented fish sauce to keep warm and dive into the lagoon to look for her. But despite half a day of turning the lagoon upside down, we found no traces of her.”

The family then looked for Thanh in caves and mountains and cemeteries around the district.

They also sought the help of mediums but every effort was in vain.

Time passed by and the family did not get any more clues about Thanh’s disappearance.

There were even cruel rumors that Thanh had abandoned her family and left for China and she had eloped with a man.

“We didn’t find her but we were hoping she was still alive and would come back some day,” Duoc says.

But that hope was dashed on Dec. 6 with the discovery of her body in the tank 300 meters from home.

The police suspect that someone had killed Thanh and threw her body in the well, someone who knew the area well.

According to the authorities, at the time when Thanh went missing, Quy and his wife were in jail for illegal rock mining and production of explosives, and their property was empty.

The police have begun an investigation.