Chapter 1455: The Truth

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

The swat raid was very quick, and the people inside were still eating and watching TV when it took place. They knew how to deal with police interrogations, and thought they could easily fool the cops this time as well.

Therefore, they weren’t even prepared.

Of course, in front of the swat team, their guard was useless. The support group of officers outside was ready with flash and smoke bombs, and once the exchange of fire happened, they would immediately start a battle.

The youths were arrested, and the police began a search with the dogs they had brought in.

Several Labradors ran up and down the building, wagging their tails, and led the officers to some clothes and tools with an unusual smell.

These tools, which had been used to make illicit products, had been broken and stashed away in a failed attempt to conceal them.

The hole in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the room was also discovered. The officers took the stolen goods and got them. The serious case was quickly solved.

As the criminals were led out, Li Du saw Benedict. Their eyes met, and Benedict cried, “You found us?”

Li Du didn’t answer. He didn’t want to be a.s.sociated with these people.

Benedict screamed, “It must be you, it must be you! You found the pa.s.sage, right? I knew I shouldn’t have dealt with you on the first night. You must have been on your guard when you first moved in. d.a.m.n it! These fools! These fools!”

One of the officers bundled him into a police car, where he became even more agitated, punching the window and yelling.

There were no reporters on the scene, and the police were not civilized in enforcing the law. When Benedict kept storming and raging, the police opened the door and shoved their batons into his sides.

Benedict shuddered a few times before collapsing in the back seat.

The villa was cordoned off, and one police car was left to guard the door, while the others roared away.

They went as quickly as they came.

The drug dealers were taken to the police station, and Li Du did not know the rest.

However, the raid soon became the talk of the entire neighborhood. Many policemen cooperated during the event, and it was said that a local gang named Seridela was destroyed. They were engaged in making the drugs, and the cottage was their base camp.

Santa Monica’s Dripping Blood gang was also implicated, and the local police went to the hospital and took some gang members away.

Li Du had guessed before that the Dripping Blood Gang must be involved in the drug industry. They did not make their own dope, so where did drugs they were dealing in come from?

Since Bel Air was so close to Santa Monica, and since the locals had their drug market, they would surely get a share of the profits. Selling drugs in the neighborhood was easier and safer and they would not pa.s.s on this opportunity.

Two or three days later, follow-up reports began to leak out.

The public found out that the Bel-Air police smashed the drug nest, the largest discovered in California in the current century. The large underground cave area was set up as a complex laboratory that could produce a variety of drug products.

In the last two years, several new drugs have appeared in the California market, and now the police were able to trace their origins.

The dealers were not just involved in drug cases, but also in murders.

In recent years, security in the Los Angeles area has been getting worse and worse. People have long been dissatisfied with the ability and att.i.tude of the police.

As a result, the case has become a lifeline for the police, with Bel Air, Los Angeles, and even the California state police department looking to the case as a benchmark for a turnaround.

With this in mind, the police took the case very seriously. They sent a team of experts to investigate it, got a lot of information, and kept giving press conferences.

The case was divided into two parts. One part was related to financial independence. At first, two undergraduate students majoring in chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles, could not earn enough money in the legal job market.

They made a lot of money from their drug products, and when they wanted to scale up, they enlisted the help of a few trusted cla.s.smates.

It turned out that they had grown too big, and they were discovered by a local gang called Seridela. The gang took control of them, and soon it developed into a situation of co-dependence.

The cave and villa were found by Seridela. The area was very secluded and very seldom visited by people, let alone the police. Therefore, it was suitable as an underground factory, and the youths moved in.

The second part was related to the murder case. After all, the youths were not professional criminals. About four years ago, they accidentally incriminated themselves and their neighbor, an old lady, noticed them.

The old lady wanted to expose them, and after the Seridela gang knew it, they went along the pa.s.sage and killed her.

They put poisonous gas under the door to stun the two old people, then killed the old woman and blamed the old man.

However, they were in a rush for time and did not take care of the details, and now the police uncovered it all.

Two years ago, the old gentleman who owned the cottage got old and sickly, and he was ready to sell his house. The house was in high demand and people came to see it in an endless stream.

Seridela’s boss was worried about too many contacts and figured out a way to stop it.

They surrept.i.tiously released a new synthetic hallucinogenic gas while the old man was asleep, then printed pictures of the old woman and placed them in different locations to induce hallucinations.

They even used a projector to create the illusion of the old lady walking against the wall, which made his hallucinations worse.

They did not think that the old man missed his wife because the hallucinations had always distressed him, rather than working as benevolent apparitions.

Eventually, trapped in hallucinations, he couldn’t bear it and shot himself one night.

Since then, rumors about a haunted house have emerged.

Li Du was wrong. The rumor was not spread by the traffickers and gangs, but by the local people themselves, who had nothing to do but gossip.

The peddlers and gangs got an idea when they heard about the story and decided to use it to their advantage and put an end to people’s desire to buy the house.

Without neighbors, their illegal businesses would be safer.

So they found a couple with four children to live in the house. Both husband and wife were addicts, and Seridela reached an agreement according to which the two would cooperate with the gang to spread more haunted house rumors, while the gang would supply them with drugs in return.

In other words, the husband and wife’s stories were false and were just made up by them and the gang.

The two children’s deaths were real. They could not afford to raise four children due to dire economic circ.u.mstances and mental pressure. They wanted to abandon two of the children at first and did not hesitate to sacrifice them for the sake of their sick addiction.