Banker jailed for killing
Poor families of two young victims tell of heartbreak and ask for compensation
ABRITISH banker was jailed for life yesterday for the horrifying murder of two Indonesian women at his upscale Hong Kong apartment, in a cocainefuelled rampage the judge called sickening in the extreme.
Cambridge University graduate Rurik Jutting, 31, tortured Sumarti Ningsih for three days – filming parts of her ordeal on his phone – before slashing her throat with a serrated knife and stuffing her body into a suitcase.
Days later, and with Ningsih’s corpse rotting on his balcony, the Bank of America worker picked up Seneng Mujiasih, intending to play out the same sick fantasies, but killed her when she started screaming.
“This must rank as one of the more horrifying murder cases ever to come to court in Hong Kong,” Judge Michael Stuart-Moore told the court.
Jutting’s crimes were sickening in the extreme and beyond a normal person’s imagination.
The judge described the case as touching the very depths of human depravity and said Jutting had not shown a shred of remorse.
“You go to prison for life,” Stuart-Moore said at the end of a case that has shocked and captivated the city.
The judge said Jutting was highly likely to kill again if ever freed.
Defence counsel Tim Owen had earlier told the court that Jutting would apply for transfer to a prison in Britain.
The former private school pupil remained almost expressionless during sentencing at Hong Kong’s High Court, only breathing out heavily as he left the dock.
In a 10-day trial, the jury heard how Jutting became obsessed with slavery, rape and torture – fantasies he had acted out on his first victim, Ningsih.
High on cocaine and alcohol, he tortured her for three days and recorded parts of her torment on his iPhone – footage the jury was forced to watch.
In a final humiliation, he made the young mother lick his toilet bowl before cutting her throat.
In hours of self-recorded ranting on his iPhone after that murder, Jutting described his attacks on Ningsih using pliers, sex toys and a belt.
Days later he murdered Mujiasih, slashing her throat in his living room.
He had prepared to torture her but killed her quickly when she began to scream after spotting a rope gag beside his sofa.
Both women were found dead in his flat which cost him $2 500 (R33 3000) a month.
Police discovered the victims after Jutting called them in the early hours of November 1 2014, shortly after killing the second victim.
Ningsih and Mujiasih were in their 20s and had gone to Jutting’s apartment after he offered them money for sex.
Jutting cut Mujiasih’s throat hours after meeting her at a bar near his home in the Wanchai district on October 31.
In a letter read to the court by his defence counsel after the verdicts, Jutting apologised to his victims’ families.
“The evil that I’ve inflicted cannot be remedied by me,” the letter said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry beyond words.”
But Stuart-Moore dismissed the apology.
“It’s the first mention of saying sorry about what he had done and I don’t accept it,” the judge said.
Both victims were from poor families in Indonesia and their relatives had relied on them for financial support.
Ningsih’s mother, Suratmi, 51, said yesterday she welcomed the verdict, but she would never recover. “I lost my child and the pain will never be cured,” she said from her home in Cilacap on Indonesia’s main island of Java.
She called for the Indonesian government to support her efforts to seek compensation from Jutting to help support Ningsih’s seven-year-old son, who lives with her.
Ningsih’s father, Ahmad Kaliman, 61, revealed new details, saying Ningsih had called him and said she was being haunted and threatened by an Englishman, Kaliman recalled
“She wanted to go home, leave Hong Kong because she felt threatened by an Englishman . . . Well it must have been Rurik, this Rurik guy.”
The family of Mujiasih said they had been devastated by her death as she was the main support for her parents, and they were also seeking compensation. – AFP