China’s ‘Jack the Ripper’ gets death sentence

BEIJING: A serial killer dubbed China’s “Jack the Ripper” for the way he mutilated several of his 11 female victims was sentenced to death, three decades after the first murder.

Gao Chengyong, 53, robbed, raped and ultimately murdered 11 female victims more than a decade ago, prosecutors from Baiyin City in northwest Gansu province said yesterday.

He was found guilty by the Baiyin City Intermediate People’s Court and handed death sentences for both robbery and intentional homicide, and lesser sentences for rape and dishonouring corpses.

Gao targeted young women wearing red and followed them home, often cutting their throats and mutilating their bodies, according to state media reports.

The youngest victim was eight years old.

Some victims had their reproductive organs removed, the Beijing Youth Daily said when Gao was arrested in 2016. The court found Gao guilty of those crimes.

“To satisfy his perverted desire to dishonour and sully corpses, many of his female victims’ corpses were damaged and violated,” the court said in a post to its official Weibo social media account.

“The motives of the defendant’s crimes were despicable, his methods extremely cruel, the nature of the acts vile and the details of the crimes serious,” the court said.

Gao “poses a grave threat to society and an urgent danger to others and should be severely punished”.

The murders were carried out in Gansu and the neighbouring region of Inner Mongolia from 1988 to 2002.

Police had been hunting Gao for years.