Chinese ‘Jack the Ripper’ serial killer caught

A SERIAL killer branded China’s “Jack the ripper” for the way he murdered and mutilated 11 women has been arrested after almost 30 years on the run.

In a statement on the weekend, the Ministry of Public Security said Gao Chengyong, 52, a married father of two, was detained after a tip-off at a grocery store at the Baiyin Industrial School on Friday morning and admitted killing a total of 11 people in Baiyin and Baotou, in neighbouring Inner Mongolia, between 1988 and 2002.

Gao is alleged to have targeted women dressed in red, following them home or luring them back to his grocery story, where he raped and killed them, usually by slitting their throat. The youngest victim was just 8 years old. Shanghai based web portal, thepaper.cn, said “the suspect was very cruel, he raped and murdered women, and cut women’s reproductive organs off”.

In 2004, the police offered a reward of 200,000 renminbi, now worth about NZ$41,000, for information leading to the killer’s capture, the state-run news agency Xinhua reported at the time.

The killer’s modus operandi triggered comparisons with Jack the Ripper – a 19th century serial killer active in impoverished areas of east London who is believed to have mutilated and murdered at least five women. The brother of one of the victims, Cui Jinping, who died in 1998, told China Daily that he’d begun to believe the murder would never be solved-parts of her body were never recovered.

Gao Chengyong, 52, was arrested thanks to a relative’s transgression: His uncle had his DNA collected following an arrest and officials realized a relation of the man was the “Jack the Ripper” they have been seeking, the BBC reports.

Gao’s first alleged killing took place in May 1988, which is the same year his son was born.

Police had said at the time of the murders that “patience” was one of the killer’s traits as he waited to pounce on the most vulnerable victims. He has confessed to his crimes, the police announcement said.

The police had been hunting “Jack the Ripper” for a generation. These three victims were first named in the British press in 1988: Annie Chapman, Mary Ann Nicholls and Elizabeth Stride.