Chen YONGFENG
AKA "The butcher"
Classification: Serial killer
Characteristics: Robberies - Dismemberment
Number of victims: 10
Date of murders: 2003
Date of arrest: May 24, 2003
Date of birth: 1983
Victims profile: Men (scrap merchants)
Method of murder: ???
Location: Wenzhou city, Zhejiang province, China
Status: Sentenced to death December 5, 2003
Chinese garbage collector gets death for killing 10
ABC.net.au
Dec 15, 2003
A garbage collector has been sentenced to death at an east Chinese court for killing and cutting up 10 co-workers, state media reported on Monday.
Chen Yongfeng, 20, was sentenced at Wenzhou city's Intermediate People's Court for a rampage that lasted from February to May this year, the Beijing Star Daily reported.
He would lure his victims from the trash collecting site and kill them at his home, the paper said, without explaining how the murders were carried out.
He would then chop the corpses into smaller, disposable pieces and dump them at about four different locations throughout the city.
After Chen was caught, police collected a total of 229 body parts from the various dumpsites, filling 29 bags, the paper said.
The motive seems to have been profit, as he stole a total of 10,032 yuan from his victims, according to the report.
However, in a separate civil lawsuit, he was told to pay about nine times as much in funeral expenses to the relatives of the people he killed, it said.
The case comes amid a slew of murder cases that have shaken the Chinese public's faith in the Communist Party's ability to keep law and order.
Scavenger-turned-killer butchers 10
Tue, 18 Nov 2003
A scavenger motivated by a desire to make money butchered 10 other scrap merchants, dismembering their bodies and tossing them in a river in the latest serial killing to shock China, state media said on Tuesday.
Chen Yongfeng (20) was put on trial on Monday in Wenzhou city, Zhejiang province, on charges of committing the murders in a three-month period from February 28 to May 24, the Guangzhou Daily reported.
Chen, nicknamed the "butcher" by Chinese media, robbed his victims of 10 032 yuan (US$1200), the report said.
Chen, who made money from collecting and reselling scrap goods, allegedly became motivated to kill after being angered that another scrap collector managed to buy a recyclable item he lacked money to purchase.
Realising fellow scavengers tend to carry all their valuables with them to avoid theft, Chen decided it would be easier to earn a living killing his colleagues and taking their money than relying only on scavenging, it was reported.
He tricked his victims to his temporary home, where he butchered them.
After successfully carrying out his first murder, Chen was motivated to carry out another a week later when he ran low on money.
He dismembered nine victims' bodies, throwing them in a river, the report said before being caught in the act on the 10th murder.
During the trial, Chen denied he committed the killings, but admitted to a majority of the evidence, the report said.
His lawyer tried to claim Chen suffered from mental illness because the methods he used were "more horrible than horror movies," but prosecutors argued he was sane and adept at dodging prosecutors' questioning.
Chen, a native of Zhejiang's Qingtian county, dropped out of school after graduating from elementary school and spent time doing a variety of odd jobs, including fluffing cotton for four years.
He went to Wenzhou city to scavenge this year.
State media in the past week has also reported the arrests of a man in northern China's Hebei province for knifing to death 65 people since 2001 and another man in central China's Henan province arrested for strangling to death 17 teenagers.
