Seventeen long years after witnessing the brutal murder of her husband Li Guiying’s struggles have finally borne fruit – she has managed to track down four of his five killer and provide enough evidence to have them locked up. 58-year-old Li doesn’t plan on stopping until she finds the last killer as well.

The determined widow’s sad story began in the winter of 1998. Li, her husband Qi Yuande, and their five children were a happy family living in Xiangcheng city, China’s Henan province. But things went wrong when an argument broke out with a neighbor named Qi Xueshan, who feared that she might start complaining about him to the local authorities. To ensure this wouldn’t happen, he invited the couple to his house under pretext of having a civilized conversation, but attacked them as soon as they arrived.

Li claims that four of Xueshan’s relatives attacked her with daggers and cleavers, and as her husband charged to defend her, they stabbed him to death. Li, who was seriously wounded in the altercation, managed to escape after helplessly watching as the assailants murdered Yuande. Aware of the consequences of their actions, the five killers left town the very same day. She went to the police, but since there weren’t any eye witnesses, there wasn’t much they could do. They told her they wouldn’t pursue the case unless she had solid evidence to support her claims.

But Li wasn’t one to give up. She has spent every waking moment since then tracking down her husband’s killers and gathering evidence against them, often at the cost of spending time with her own children. She combed 10 of China’s provinces in search of the five men, saving every train ticket to keep track of locations she had visited. Many of the people she encountered on her epic journey called her ‘crazy’ or ‘psychotic’, but she never let that bother her, focusing instead on fulfilling her mission.

In 2011, she got hold of one of the attacker’s mobile phone number, and found him living in Beijing. Over the next four years, she used information from his testimony to track down three of his accomplices and bring them to justice. All four men were convicted of premeditated intentional homicide, based on witness accounts of the argument that had taken place 17 years ago, place before the attack.

Despite her monumental achievement, Li says that she doesn’t consider her struggle a success, because she had to miss so much of her children’s life in the process – their childhood, teenage and university years. Nonetheless, she does not intend to stop until she finds the fifth killer. “I did not catch the last one, I have to chase him down,” she said.

Photos: Qiz35.cn

Sources: Next Media (Chinese), Daily Mail