In the spring and early summer of 2001, a series of night-time knife attacks on women in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province in central China, set off a rumor that spread across the city. People said a killer was looking for women dressed in red. The local papers printed almost nothing, and the rumor filled the gap.
In August 2001 Wuhan police arrested Duan Guocheng (段国诚), a man from Yueyang, across the provincial line in Hunan. Chinese newspapers reported that he had confessed to stabbing 13 young women to death, most of them in his home province, and that he was suspected of dozens of armed robberies. His trial in Wuhan began on December 16, TIME magazine reported in January 2003, and was expected to end in February. The killings linked to him are accusations, backed by what police said was his confession; no court finding on them had been reported by early 2003.
Duan grew up in Yueyang, in Hunan province. TIME magazine, which interviewed his parents for a long report published in January 2003, described a cramped three-bedroom apartment where he still lived with them as an adult. He was the fourth and last child. His father collected trash for a living, and Duan blamed him for the family's poverty. The father told TIME that his son used to compare him with other men: other fathers earned money, the son would say, while his own could not read and could do nothing.
His mother had doted on him, according to TIME. She told the magazine that he used to confide in her about his frustrations with women, and that they talked about it often. Only once did he bring a woman home, she said, and the woman left him after she saw that the family had no money.
TIME described him as something of a dandy, fond of neatly pressed Western-style suits. At the time of the killings he was working as a security guard.
He already had a criminal record. Reports in August 2001, drawing on the Beijing Youth Daily, said that he had been sent to a juvenile corrections institution at the age of 13 and that in the mid-1990s he had been sentenced to five years in prison for robbery. People's Daily Online wrote that the juvenile term lasted seven years; UPI gave no length. TIME said he had twice been sentenced to jail for robbery.
By early 2001 police in Yueyang had settled on him as a suspect. In February 2001, TIME reported, six Yueyang officers went to his parents' home and stayed the night, waiting for him. When he came back the next morning he looked in through a window, saw them, and ran; he got away through a vegetable market.
The officers told his family that they suspected him of killing nine women, most of whom had been wearing red, TIME wrote. Police then held his mother for a week in a cell with prostitutes and drug users, hoping she would say where he had gone. She did not. Yueyang police sent out a nationwide bulletin with his details.
The figure of nine Hunan killings appears in the 2001 reports as well. UPI, citing the Beijing Youth Daily and People's Daily, said that nine of the 13 women he was accused of killing died in his native province. People's Daily Online wrote that police also wanted him for the killings of nine young women in 1999 and about 50 robberies in his birthplace. Both reports printed the birthplace as "Qiuyang"; no place of that name appears in TIME, which gives his home as Yueyang. The Hunan victims have not been named, and the dates of their deaths have not been made public.
Duan made his way to Wuhan, the capital of neighboring Hubei province. TIME reported that he stayed in Wuhan hotels costing about five dollars a night, registering under his mother's surname, Hu.
The Wuhan attacks began in May. TIME wrote that a woman was stabbed after midnight on May 7 on her way home from work, and that in early May Wuhan police formed a special investigation team that eventually grew to more than a thousand officers. By early June, three women had been killed and three more had survived attacks of the same kind, all within a few kilometers of one another, according to TIME. Elsewhere in the same article TIME counted six women attacked that summer, four of them fatally.
People's Daily Online, reporting the arrest in August 2001, put the Wuhan toll at four murder-robberies in May and June, all late at night on dark streets or alleys, and said he was also charged with wounding three other women. UPI wrote that investigators said most of the women were killed on dark streets and alleys in the middle of the night, and that all were women in their twenties.
TIME named one of the Wuhan dead. Wang Guiyu was 41. She was walking home after her regular Thursday-night game of mah-jongg when she was attacked and killed. Her husband, a truck driver, told the magazine that if they had known a killer was in the area, they would have been more careful.
The night after Wang's death, TIME reported, a 20-year-old woman from Hunan was killed in Wuhan. She had come to the city three weeks earlier to work and was washing dishes at a night market. A few hours after midnight on June 4, a waitress at a Sichuan restaurant was killed. TIME did not name either woman.
The Wuhan papers carried little or nothing about the attacks. TIME reported that local reporters' stories were spiked and that information went only to city officials in internal reports. Into that silence came the rumor that gave the case its name. Word spread that the attacker was choosing women in red, and residents began calling him the Red Dress Killer. A tomato seller in Wang Guiyu's neighborhood told TIME that everyone was badly frightened of the Red Dress Killer, and so people "started wearing a lot of blue."
Years later, in 2016, the People's Daily overseas site Haiwainet recalled the same story in a roundup of serial killing cases: a rumor had spread through Wuhan's three towns that a killer in Wuchang slept by day and came out at night, looking for women in red with long hair, to kill them and rob them.
TIME reported that the special team worked overtime and canceled vacations, and that young female officers walked empty streets at night as bait.
Whether the women attacked had in fact worn red is a separate question. Yueyang police told Duan's family that most of the nine Hunan victims had been wearing red, according to TIME. The 2001 reports from Beijing describe the victims only as unaccompanied young women out late at night.
TIME's report was largely a critique of how the police handled the case. The magazine wrote that Wuhan police did not ask neighboring cities, Yueyang among them, for similar cases, even though a nationwide bulletin on Duan had already gone out from Yueyang. A source told the magazine that Wuhan police routinely ignored bulletins from other provinces. Inspector Zhang Dehua admitted to TIME that officers had not searched the cheap hotels in his district, where Duan was staying.
On August 10, about three months after the attacks began, Wuhan police at last sent a bulletin describing the cases to nearby cities, including Yueyang. Yueyang police recognized the pattern and identified Duan, including the alias he was using: Hu Cheng.
Wuhan police found a guest registered as Hu Cheng at a military-run guesthouse in Wuchang, a few minutes from Inspector Zhang's police station, TIME reported. Zhang and two other officers went into the room and found him in his underclothes. He fought them, and it took all three to hold him down, Zhang told the magazine. Duan said, "I robbed people."
Police found bloodstained clothing and shoes that matched a footprint left at the scene of the last Wuhan killing, according to TIME. The reports from Beijing in August 2001 said footprints at four Wuhan murder scenes from May and June matched shoes found in his hotel room. Police said he confessed a few hours after his arrest, TIME wrote.
UPI and People's Daily Online, both relaying a Beijing Youth Daily report published on a Wednesday in mid-August 2001, said he had been arrested at a hotel in Wuhan "on Monday" and had confessed to the killings and robberies. People's Daily Online placed the hotel in Wuchang district. The reports gave his age as 28 and said he was suspected of up to 70 armed robberies.
The day after the arrest, TIME reported, Wuhan's main newspaper ran the story on its front page, hailing the capture of the "Psycho Killer" accused of murdering 13 women. Police lifted the news blackout. At a ceremony after the arrest, Chen Xunqiu, Hubei's top police official, handed reward money to Inspector Zhang and his colleagues and called the case "a typical example" of breaking a case "using high-tech methods and strategies." TIME called that an exercise in public relations, given how the case had actually been solved.
Duan was charged with what TIME called the "Red Dress Murders." By the time the magazine went to press in January 2003, he was being held at the Wuhan No. 2 Detention Center. His trial had begun on December 16 and was expected to end sometime in February, TIME reported, and the magazine expected a conviction and a quick execution.
His family had almost no contact with him. On Christmas Eve his mother brought clothes to the detention center; all she received back was a receipt signed by her son, the only contact the family was allowed. The family did not know whether he had a lawyer, TIME wrote.
The formal charges in the court's own words and the name of the trial court were not made public, and no verdict had been reported by early 2003.
TIME placed the Wuhan case in a larger argument about crime in China. The magazine said that the loosening of social controls after Mao, together with the movement of tens of millions of people around the country in search of work, had given criminals an anonymity that the old system of tight neighborhood supervision had denied them. A criminal investigator, Wang Dazhong, told the magazine, "We've reached the age of serial killing in China." He added that killers had learned to change shoes for each crime.
The magazine noted that Chinese police claimed to solve about 85 percent of ordinary murders but struggled with serial cases that crossed jurisdictions. It set the Duan case beside others: Hua Ruizhuo, a cement-truck driver executed the year before for killing 14 women in Beijing, and a four-man gang in Henan that killed 77 people in 2000 before police in different areas managed to work together.
Victim counts. The August 2001 reports give 13 women killed, nine of them in Hunan (UPI). People's Daily Online counted four murder-robberies in Wuhan and wanted him for nine killings in Hunan in 1999, with three more Wuhan women wounded. TIME gave two Wuhan figures in the same article: three killed and three survivors by early June, and six attacked over the summer, four fatally, with a further killing on June 4. TIME also reported that Yueyang police told his family in February 2001 that they suspected him of nine killings. No court ruling on any of these figures had been reported by January 2003.
The red clothing. The nickname came from rumor, not from the police. TIME reported the rumor and quoted Yueyang police as telling the family that most of the Hunan victims were in red; the reports from Beijing in 2001 say nothing about clothing.
His age and birthplace. He was 28 in August 2001 according to the Beijing reports and 29 in January 2003 according to TIME. The Beijing reports printed his birthplace as "Qiuyang"; TIME gives his home as Yueyang.
The juvenile sentence. People's Daily Online says he spent seven years in juvenile corrections from the age of 13. UPI reports the committal at 13 without a length.
1. Mid-1990s: Duan Guocheng is sentenced to five years in prison for robbery (UPI; People's Daily Online). 2. 1999: Police in Hunan later link him to the killings of nine young women and about 50 robberies in his home area (People's Daily Online). 3. February 2001: Six Yueyang officers wait overnight at his parents' home; he sees them and flees. Police hold his mother for a week, then send a nationwide bulletin (TIME). 4. Early May 2001: Wuhan police form a special investigation team that grows to more than a thousand officers (TIME). 5. May 7, 2001: A woman is stabbed after midnight on her way home from work in Wuhan (TIME). 6. May and June 2001: Four murder-robberies and attacks on three more women in Wuhan, according to police (People's Daily Online). Wang Guiyu, 41, is among those killed (TIME). 7. June 4, 2001: A restaurant waitress is killed in Wuhan (TIME). 8. August 10, 2001: Wuhan police send a bulletin on the cases to nearby cities; Yueyang police identify Duan and his alias, Hu Cheng (TIME). 9. August 2001: He is arrested at a guesthouse in Wuchang district, Wuhan; police say he confessed (TIME; UPI; People's Daily Online). 10. August 15, 2001: Chinese papers report the arrest and the count of 13 women (UPI; People's Daily Online). 11. December 16: His trial begins in Wuhan, as TIME reported in January 2003. 12. Christmas Eve: His mother brings clothes to the Wuhan No. 2 Detention Center (TIME, January 2003). 13. January 27, 2003: TIME reports that the trial is expected to end in February.