Local police has sealed the door of the house, where the freezer contained the three elderly people's bodies were discovered. Photo: Screenshot of video by The Paper

A strange series of tragic events involving dead bodies in a freezer, a suicide death and a long-lost teenage daughter's sudden return home has gripped netizens who are calling for a better explanation to the morbid mystery.   

The key player seems to have been a middle-aged woman surnamed Qian from Nanjing, East China's Jiangsu Province. 

In July 2018, Qian took her parents, an elderly neighbor and her 19-year-old daughter on what was supposed to be short trip. Only the daughter returned home alive 10 months after they left on their mystery trip. 

While they were supposedly traveling, the three older people died over a period of several months from different causes. Qian's mother was the last of the three elderly to pass away, apparently from starvation in February. 

Their bodies were discovered locked in a freezer in a rental home in late May during a police investigation into Qian's suicide on May 12, far from Nanjing,

Police said none of the older people were murdered. Qian's father and the neighbor appeared to have succumbed to different diseases.

Another relative said that Qian had tried to coax her daughter to jump off a building with her, but the teenager refused, according to a report by The Paper on Wednesday.

The report suggested Qian had quarreled with other family members about money and care for the aging parents. The daughter's current condition was not mentioned in the report by The Paper.

The mysterious case has sparked a lot of speculation on Chinese social media about how the tragedy might have been prevented. 

The Paper