Hua Ruizhuo was a cement-mixer truck driver in Beijing who confessed in 2001 to killing 14 women over three years. He told prosecutors that he had begun in July 1998 and continued until June 2001, picking the women up in Chaoyang district, on the city's east side. Twelve of the women were still unidentified when he went on trial at the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court in November 2001. Time magazine reported in January 2003 that he had been executed the year before.
The Beijing newspaper Life Times told the story at length as the trial opened, giving every person except Hua and the officials who handled the case a pseudonym to protect their privacy.
Hua came from Shuangcheng, in Heilongjiang Province in China's far northeast. In the autumn of 1993, when his father retired from a Beijing construction group, Hua took over his father's post and with it gained residence in the capital. He drove a concrete mixer for the group's Fifth Construction Company.
Life Times described him in November 2001 as 28 years old, with a capable wife and a son of just over two. His colleagues thought well of him, the paper said, and his parents considered him a good son. Yet by then, the paper wrote, he had killed 14 women.
In 1994 friends introduced him to a young woman, and the two began a relationship. They split up and reconciled repeatedly for more than a year, and Hua intended to marry her. One night, driving past the entrance of a large hotel, he saw her embracing an older man he did not know, and he realized that she was selling sex. Life Times wrote that he had put both his feelings and his money into the relationship, and that what he saw broke his sense of right and wrong.
He later told a prosecutor that the discovery, and the quarrel that followed, hurt him deeply, and that after it he lost contact with her. Over time the pain seemed to ease. In December 1998 he married a woman from Sichuan Province, and their son was born in 1999. The resentment, Life Times wrote, had only gone underground.
By his own account, the first killing came in July 1998, months before his marriage. He was driving his Korean-made Samsung mixer truck through Chaoyang district at night when he picked up a woman. When he looked at her face, he said, he saw the face of his former girlfriend. He told investigators that he strangled her.
When the first killing went unnoticed, he said, he wanted to kill again, and the urge kept returning. Each time, he told prosecutors, he drove back to the same part of Chaoyang district to find another woman. From 1998 onward, he said, he felt irritated whenever he saw a woman he took to be a sex worker, and he came to feel that such women should be killed. He said that he acted alone and that the total was 14.
Over the following three years, women were found dead in Chaoyang district at intervals of months. Life Times listed the cases that police later connected:
On September 21, 1998, a woman was found dead at Dongba, in Chaoyang district. She was not identified.
On July 31, 1999, a 22-year-old woman from Heilongjiang was found strangled in Chaoyang district. She was one of the two victims who were identified.
On September 4, 2000, an unidentified woman was found dead.
On December 19, 2000, another unidentified woman was found dead.
On April 12, 2001, an unidentified woman was found dead at Dongba.
On May 14, 2001, another unidentified woman was found dead.
Most of these women had no name that anyone around them could give to the police.
Only two of the 14 women had been identified by the time of the trial. Officials quoted by Life Times gave three reasons. Most of the women had come to Beijing from other provinces, and their families could not be traced. The way they earned a living meant that the people around them often did not know their real names. And many of them had been found long after their deaths, which made identification hard. Because the women had no names, their families could not be told, and no one could claim their bodies.
The first identified woman was 22 and came from Heilongjiang, the same province as Hua. She was found strangled on July 31, 1999.
The second was 33 and came from Hebei Province, which surrounds Beijing. She was short and slight, Life Times wrote, and she had a son of nine at home. She had come to Beijing to save money so that she could buy her son a home.
On June 24, 2001, she was found dead in Chaoyang district.
Detectives of the Chaoyang branch of the Beijing Public Security Bureau linked her death to the series of unexplained deaths of women in the district since 1998. Two pieces of information pointed toward a truck. The woman from Hebei had mentioned to people around her a man who drove a white cement truck. And on April 12, 2001, the morning a woman was found dead at Dongba, a night guard working nearby had seen a white cement truck stop there.
Hua's workmates also told of something that had struck them: when Hua handed over his truck at the change of shift, the cab often smelled of perfume, and it had been cleaned unusually thoroughly.
At about 4 p.m. on July 16, 2001, Chaoyang detectives arrested Hua at a concrete mixing station in Beijing. After a short exchange, Life Times reported, he began to describe the killings, starting with the woman in July 1998.
He gave investigators the account of his relationship of 1994 and 1995 as the root of what he did. Asked by a prosecutor why he had killed so many women, he spoke of the girlfriend, of the quarrel and of losing her, and said that from 1998 he had felt that sex workers should die. He said the killings had become a pattern: after the first went unpunished, the urge came back again and again, and each time he went looking for another woman in the same district.
The prosecutor in charge of the case was the head of the prosecution division of the Second Branch of the Beijing People's Procuratorate. He told Life Times that in more than 20 years as a prosecutor he had not handled an intentional homicide case with so many victims. He called for severe and swift punishment for crimes so dangerous to society, with no leniency.
The Second Branch of the Beijing People's Procuratorate brought the case before the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court. The trial opened on the morning of November 20, 2001. Life Times, writing as the hearing began, said that Hua would now face the full force of the law. The paper did not report the verdict, which came later.
The date of the judgment, and what Hua or his defense said in court, have not been made public.
Time magazine, in a report on serial crime in China published on January 27, 2003, wrote that Hua had been executed the previous year for killing 14 women. The exact date of the execution has not been reported.
Time's correspondent Matthew Forney used Hua's case, along with others in Wuhan, Jilin and Henan, to describe a kind of crime that Chinese police were meeting more and more often at the turn of the century. Under Mao, he wrote, neighborhood committees and work units watched people so closely that there was little room for serious crime. By the early 2000s those controls had loosened, and tens of millions of people were moving from the countryside to the cities in search of work. For the first time, many people could live as strangers among strangers.
That anonymity is visible in Hua's case. Most of the women he confessed to killing had come from other provinces, their families could not be traced, and the people around them often did not know their real names; twelve of them were still unnamed when he went on trial. Time quoted Wang Dazhong, a criminal investigator who trained police at the Chinese People's Public Security University in Beijing: "We've reached the age of serial killing in China."
Forney also wrote that Chinese police, who solved most ordinary murders, were less prepared for serial cases. Local forces did not always share information with one another, and news of killings was often kept out of the press, so the public was not warned. In Hua's case, the deaths in Chaoyang district stretched over three years. The arrest followed the death of the woman from Hebei in June 2001, the night guard's recollection of a white cement truck and what Hua's workmates told police.
Several points in the case remain open.
The identities of twelve of the 14 women were not known at the time of the trial, and no later identification has been reported.
Life Times dated six earlier deaths that police linked to the series, plus the June 2001 death; the other killings Hua confessed to have not been individually dated.
Time and Life Times differ on where he met the women and on where they were found. Time also described other conduct toward the women that the Life Times report does not mention.
The dates of the verdict and of the execution have not been made public.
Autumn 1993: Hua, from Shuangcheng, Heilongjiang, takes over his retiring father's job at a Beijing construction group and gains Beijing residence.
1994: He begins a relationship with a young woman; it lasts, on and off, more than a year.
July 1998: By his own account, he kills the first woman, in Chaoyang district.
September 21, 1998: A woman is found dead at Dongba, Chaoyang district.
December 1998: Hua marries a woman from Sichuan.
1999: Their son is born.
July 31, 1999: A 22-year-old woman from Heilongjiang is found strangled in Chaoyang district.
September 4, 2000: An unidentified woman is found dead.
December 19, 2000: An unidentified woman is found dead.
April 12, 2001: An unidentified woman is found dead at Dongba; a night guard reports a white cement truck.
May 14, 2001: An unidentified woman is found dead.
June 24, 2001: A 33-year-old woman from Hebei is found dead in Chaoyang district.
July 16, 2001: Chaoyang detectives arrest Hua at a concrete mixing station; he confesses to 14 killings.
November 20, 2001: His trial opens at the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court.
2002: Hua is executed (Time, January 27, 2003).