5 men accused of kidnapping, killing man and leaving his body in a forest

01/12/2023

BOSTON (WMUR) – Five men from New York are facing kidnapping and murder charges, accused of beating a person and then disposing of the body in New Hampshire.

Security footage shows two men, identified by prosecutors as Donxing Zheng and Dong Liu, inside a Home Depot late in the morning on July 19.

Prosecutors say just hours before, the two men, along with three other accomplices, kidnapped Peng Cheng Li in New York. They planned to hold him for ransom, before beating him to death and dumping his body in New Hampshire.

“We’re close by. These are New England states we’re talking about within driving distance,” said Richard Mello, a law enforcement analyst. “They were obviously looking for someplace rural and out of the way.

And they came to our great state.”

According to court records, the men placed an order at a restaurant where Cheng Li worked as a delivery driver to lure him out.

Stills from security footage shows the suspects getting into the victim’s car.

Prosecutors said there was a struggle between the men and someone in the back seat.

Cheng Li was reported missing two days later day by multiple friends.

Investigators used cellphone data and the car’s license plate to track their movements throughout New York City, Massachusetts and eventually New Hampshire.

Mello said that digital evidence is one of the most powerful tools for investigators.

“And they can also go to the cell carrier and get a whole host of data points from them on that particular device, where it was going, how it was triangulated and their location moving along minute by minute,” Mello said.

Three days after the alleged kidnapping, federal agents and state police discovered Cheng Li’s body in Twin Mountain, naked with a fractured skull and other injuries.

The shallow grave was found close to where Zheng’s cellphone location had stopped for several hours.

According to court documents, the suspects stopped on the highway on their drive back to New York and were approached by a New Hampshire state trooper.

That interaction was caught on the trooper’s body camera before the suspects got back on the road.

If convicted, the five suspects could face the federal death penalty or life in prison.