Chinese grocer Gao Chengyong might seem like an unassuming candidate to be China's "Jack the Ripper", but a local court says the 53-year-old was responsible for the brutal murders of 11 women and girls.
A court in Baiyin City, located in the country's north-west, sentenced Gao to death in 2018 and he was executed on Thursday.
Between 1988 and 2002 the city was plagued by gruesome killings targeting young women and girls, often with victims raped prior to their deaths, and their bodies later defiled.
The court found that the grocer was responsible for cutting off the hands, ears and genitals of his victims.
Writing on Weibo, the court said his behaviour was "to satisfy his perverted desire to dishonour and sully corpses".
"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," the court said.
Relative responsible for Gao's capture
In 2004, local police offered a reward of more than $40,000 for details regarding the killings, which were then still a mystery.
Gao eluded police until a distant relative was arrested for bribery, allowing investigators to hone in on him as a result of DNA evidence.
The South China Morning Post reported that Gao's modus operandi was to target women alone, with many of his victims wearing red clothes.
Gao admitted to the acts in Baiyin city in Gansu Province and Baotou city in the northern region of Inner Mongolia and was sentenced to death in March 2018.
The court did not announce how the execution was carried out, and China's capital punishment remains opaque — in 2016 Beijing executed more people than the rest of the world combined.
