China’s ‘era of serial killing’

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/04/2006 (7099 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ABOUT all Gong Runbo has to look forward to is a few more weeks in prison before being shot in the back of the head.

Gong, 32, an Internet café worker, is accused of luring 28 children to his apartment, where they were sexually assaulted and murdered. According to media reports, police were led to the scene by a 14-year-old boy who escaped after being held captive.

Investigators found a gruesome collection of rotting corpses and bones in Gong’s apartment. The bodies of four boys were in Gong’s bed. Police also recovered 28 pairs of children’s shoes that were on display as trophies.

Unfortunately for Gong, China’s state-controlled media have already pronounced him guilty and his trial will be a short, well-scripted formality. China’s legal system is an unreconstructed relic of communism. The party controls the police, the prosecutors and the judiciary. Once the People’s Procuratorate charges someone in a case of this magnitude, it would be unthinkable for the People’s Court to return a verdict of not guilty.

After his trial, a single photo of Gong dressed in prison overalls and flanked by unsympathetic policemen will appear in newspapers. A week or so later, his appeal having been refused, the People’s justice will probably be served by the preferred method of capital punishment in China: a pistol shot to the back of the head.

It will be ignoble treatment for a man who would have enjoyed years of infamous celebrity if he had been from, say, Jackson, Miss., instead of Jiamusi, China.

While the likes of Karla Homolka, John Wayne Gacy and Dr. Harold Shipman have attracted global cult followings, China’s killers go largely unnoticed abroad. And during the past few years, China has produced more than its share of lurid murders.

Take Yang Xinhai, the so-called “monster killer.” After being dumped by his girlfriend, Yang went on a four-year-long rampage, killing 65 people by the time he was arrested in 2003. He would attack victims in their homes with axes, meat cleavers and shovels.

Huang Yong, 29, dubbed the “thrill-killer” in the Chinese press, was executed in 2003 for strangling 17 teenage boys he met using the Internet. He told police he had become addicted to the thrill of killing.

Then there was Hu Wanlin, often referred to as one the most prolific serial killers of recent time. Falsely claiming to be a traditional Chinese doctor, Hu was arrested in 1999 and accused of killing 190 of his patients. He was convicted of illegally practising medicine and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Peng Miaoji and six members of his gang were executed in 2000 for butchering 77 people with meat cleavers and scissors. During a one-year crime spree, Peng and his gang carried out 38 home invasions, robbing and killing their victims. They cut off the genitals of four of their victims using meat cleavers.

Peng was dubbed a “devil” by the Beijing media due to the ferocity of the attacks.

Ma Yong, 43, and his female accomplice Duan Zhiqun, 20, were executed in 2003 for murdering 12 female migrant workers in the city of Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong. Ma and Duan posed as staff at a recruitment agency and lured women to a rented apartment, where they killed them. Ma told his trial that after killing his first victim he found there was no turning back, and killing the next one became much easier.

A truck driver named Hua Ruizhuo killed 14 prostitutes near the Great Wall Sheraton Hotel in Beijing, handcuffing them in his van and sexually assaulting them before the murders. He was executed in 2002. That same year, in the northeastern province of Jilin, Piao Yongzhi murdered an undisclosed number of women and kept locks of their hair in his home. He cut off the face of one victim and ate it.

The spate of violent crimes has been the subject of debate in a nation where, until recently, such incidents were unknown. Some say that in a country of 1.2 billion people, you are bound to have a few axe-wielding psychopaths. Others say the killers are a symptom of deeper problems with a society undergoing massive upheaval as it makes the transition away from communism.

Until recently, the communist party’s neighbourhood committees and work units were so invasive into people’s lives, no stranger went unnoticed and any suspicious activity was reported. Crime was rare and people considered to be anti-social elements were rounded up and sent to mental hospitals or labour camps.

But as China liberalizes its economy these controls have eased or vanished altogether, creating large populations of migrant workers for killers to prey on and cities where they can vanish into anonymity. At the same time, the decline of the de facto state religion — communism — has left people in a moral vacuum.

One prominent police official recently declared these conditions have caused China to enter “an era of serial killing.”

The inept performance of the Chinese police has not helped, either. According to the families of Gong Runbo’s alleged victims, local police received the first reports of missing children more than one year ago, but they didn’t issue a public warning for fear of causing panic.

As is often the case, the officers only wanted to release information about the crimes after they had been solved. The lack of warning, coupled with the fact that Gong’s home is reportedly 200 metres from a police station, has prompted the victims’ families to file a lawsuit.

Doug Nairne is a former Free Press reporter who

now lives and works in Hong Kong.