Man Thought to Be China’s Jack the Ripper Is Arrested

Man Thought to Be China’s Jack the Ripper Is Arrested
By MICHAEL FORSYTHEAUG. 29, 2016
Photo


The courtyard of Gao Chengyong’s family home in Lanzhou, China. He is suspected in nine deaths in the city of Baiyin and two in Inner Mongolia. Credit China Foto Press
HONG KONG — Gao Chengyong led a quiet life in a small city in western China. A onetime migrant laborer, he raised two boys who went to college. He enjoyed ballroom dancing with his wife.
But the police say Mr. Gao also had a gruesome secret that he kept from his family, as China’s state news media have reported in recent days. He is suspected of raping and killing 11 women and girls over a 14-year streak starting in 1988, sometimes cutting off body parts such as breasts, hands and ears, or slitting their throats. The youngest victim was 8.
On Chinese social media, the suspect has been labeled China’s Jack the Ripper, after the serial killer, never caught, said to have murdered women in Victorian London.
On Friday, the police arrested Mr. Gao, 52, after matching his DNA and fingerprints to evidence found at the scenes of the killings, nine in the small city of Baiyin in Gansu Province and two in Baotou, a city in Inner Mongolia. Mr. Gao, who was taken into custody in the grocery shop he operated, confessed to the killings, Beijing News reported on Monday.
The police had been hunting for the killer for a generation. The first victim, 23, was found in her home on Aug. 25, 1988, with 26 stab wounds, Beijing News reported. Mr. Gao’s first son was born that same year, the newspaper reported.
In 2004, the police offered a reward of 200,000 renminbi, now worth about $30,000, for information leading to the killer’s capture, the state-run news agency Xinhua reported at the time.
The killings, the last in 2002, had several characteristics in common. The killer tended to single out women who were wearing red. He is said to have followed them home, usually attacking them during the daytime. Sometimes he raped them before stabbing them to death, and sometimes he did so after they had died, Xinhua reported.
Despite the forensic evidence, Mr. Gao eluded the police for so long partly because, as the resident of a small village, he managed to avoid the requirement that all Chinese must now submit fingerprints when applying for their national identity cards. But this year, his uncle was arrested on a minor offense and a sample of his DNA was taken. The police then determined that he was related to the killer, China Daily reported, citing Yin Guoxing, a DNA expert.
News of Mr. Gao’s arrest and confession appears to have caught his family by surprise. One son, interviewed by the news website Everyday Portfolio, which did not disclose his name, said he was “appalled,” adding, “I didn’t know what to say, or how to deal with it.” The suspect’s wife, surnamed Zhang, who worked with Mr. Gao at the small shop, was said to have wailed when she heard of his arrest, Beijing News reported.
A person answering the telephone at the Baiyin police station Monday afternoon would not comment on the case, and no one could be reached at the Gansu provincial public security bureau.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/30/world/asia/china-jack-the-ripper-gao-chengyong.html?smprod=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share&_r=1&mtrref=t.co