China executes 'Jack the Ripper' murderer who slaughtered 11 women and girls and cut out their reproductive organs after targeting people who wore red

  • Gao Chengyong, 54, raped and murdered 11 females between 1988 and 2002
  • Killer targeted young women and girls wearing red clothes and mutilated them
  • He was found guilty of rape, murder and dishonouring corpses in March, 2018
  • The same Gansu province court announced today that he had been executed

By AFP

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A serial killer dubbed China's 'Jack the Ripper' who raped and murdered 11 female victims - the youngest aged just eight - has been executed today.

Gao Chengyong, 54, slaughtered women and girls in China's Gansu and Inner Mongolia regions between 1988 and 2002, sexually assaulting his victims before cutting their throats and removing their reproductive organs.

After evading justice for 30 years, he was found guilty of rape, murder and dishonouring corpses by a court in the northwest city of Baiyin, Gansu province in March last year, and sentenced to death.

Killer: Gao Chengyong, 54, robbed, raped and murdered 11 women and girls between 1988 and 2002 in Gansu and Inner Mongolia regions in China. 

Killer: Gao Chengyong, 54, robbed, raped and murdered 11 women and girls between 1988 and 2002 in Gansu and Inner Mongolia regions in China. 

The court which handed him the death sentence announced today that the it had been carried out after approval from China's supreme court.

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.

'To satisfy his perverted desire to dishonour and sully corpses, many of his female victims' corpses were damaged and violated,' the court said on Weibo when he was convicted.

Gao targeted young women wearing red and followed them home, often cutting their throats and mutilating their bodies

Gao targeted young women wearing red and followed them home, often cutting their throats and mutilating their bodies

'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.'

Police had been hunting Gao for years.

'The suspect has a sexual perversion and hates women,' police said in 2004 when they linked the crimes for the first time and offered a reward of 200,000 yuan (£23,175) for information leading to an arrest.

'He's reclusive and unsociable, but patient,' according to the police profiling at the time.

A lead in the case came when police collected and tested the DNA of one of Gao's relatives over a separate minor crime, the China Daily had reported.

Police concluded the killer they had been hunting for 28 years was a relation, and Gao's DNA matched the murderer's.

The original Jack the Ripper was a serial killer active in east London in the late Victorian era, who is widely believed to have murdered five women, mutilating several of them. Those killings have never been solved.

MYSTERY THAT HAS LASTED MORE THAN 130 YEARS

Still from the 1959 Channel 5 television programme, Jack The Ripper: The Missing Evidence

Still from the 1959 Channel 5 television programme, Jack The Ripper: The Missing Evidence

Numerous individuals have been accused of being Jack the Ripper, who murdered five women in London's East End in 1888.

At the time, police suspected the Ripper must have been a butcher, due to the way his victims were killed and the fact they were discovered near to the dockyards, where meat was brought into the city.

There are several alleged links between the killer and royals. First is Sir William Gull, the royal physician. Many have accused him of helping get rid of the prostitutes' bodies, while others claim he was the Ripper himself.

Another book named Queen Victoria's surgeon Sir John Williams as the infamous killer. He had a surgery in Whitechapel at the time.

At one point, cotton merchant James Maybrick was the number one suspect, following the publication of some of his diary which appeared to suggest he was the killer, but some believe the text was a forgery.

Other suspects include Montague John Druitt, a Dorset-born barrister. He drowned himself in the Thames seven weeks after the last murder.

Some of the more bizarre suggestions include Lewis Carroll, author of the Alice in Wonderland books, and Winston Churchill's father Lord Randolph Churchill. 

China

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