Li Pingping was a taxi driver in Beijing who was sentenced to death in March 2004 for killing seven people. According to the Xinhua news agency, four of them were young women he killed in the city between November 2002 and April 2003. The other three were a former employer, Song Shutian, and Song's wife and daughter, who were killed in 1995 after Li lost his job at Song's company. Li's wife, Dong Meirong, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for helping him. Li was executed in June 2004.
Radio Free Asia's Mandarin service said the case, known in Chinese as the "六一五" (6-15) series of killings, had caused a stir in Beijing.
Li was 44 years old when he was sentenced, Xinhua reported, and he drove for a taxi company in Beijing. His date and place of birth were not reported, and little was published about his family or schooling.
He had a criminal record well before the killings. In May 1980 he was placed under one year of surveillance, and in December 1985 he was jailed for six months for theft, according to Xinhua's account of the case.
He had worked for a food company run by Song Shutian. Xinhua described Song as his former employer and the business as Song's food company; Radio Free Asia described Song as the manager of the company where Li had worked. Li was dismissed. Reuters, relaying Xinhua, wrote that he had been sacked.
In May 1995 Li killed Song Shutian, Song's wife and their daughter, Xinhua reported. Radio Free Asia said he acted out of resentment at being dismissed. Reuters, citing Xinhua at the time of the execution, said that he stabbed all three to death and gave the daughter's age as 12. The names of Song's wife and daughter were not published in the reports.
Xinhua's report of the sentence also said that in the same year Li was accused of setting fire to the house of a wealthy person. It did not name the owner and did not say how the court ruled on that accusation.
How investigators came to connect Li with the 1995 killings was not reported.
Between November 2002 and April 2003 Li killed four young women in Beijing, according to Xinhua and Radio Free Asia. Their names, ages and home towns were not published, and the reports give no date for any of the four deaths beyond that five-month span.
Li gave the police a plain explanation. As Radio Free Asia reported it, he said the women earned money more easily than he did driving a taxi. Reuters, relying on Xinhua, put it the same way: he felt the women "made money more easily than taxi drivers." In his own summary of all his crimes, according to Xinhua's report of the sentencing, Li attributed them to his "discontent against society."
Beijing police captured Li in June 2003, Xinhua reported. Acting on information he gave them, officers recovered the women's remains. The reports do not describe how police first identified him, how long the investigation had run, or what he said in later questioning beyond the explanation of his motive.
On Tuesday, March 2, 2004, Xinhua reported that the Beijing Municipal No. 1 Intermediate People's Court had sentenced Li to death that Tuesday for killing seven people. Radio Free Asia also gave the court as the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court (北京市第一中级人民法院) and the month of the sentence as March 2004.
The English-language Xinhua report did not list the individual charges on which he was convicted, the evidence presented or any accessory penalties. Whether he appealed, and the higher-court review of the death sentence, were not reported in those accounts.
Li's wife, Dong Meirong, was tried with him. The same court sentenced her to 15 years in prison. Xinhua said she was convicted as his accomplice and for harboring stolen money; in its body text, the English report said she had been accused of helping her husband commit the murders and of harboring stolen money. Radio Free Asia said she was sentenced to 15 years' fixed-term imprisonment for intentional homicide (故意杀人罪) for helping her husband kill. Reuters wrote that she was jailed for 15 years for helping in the murders and keeping stolen money.
Her age, her background and which of the killings she was found to have taken part in were not reported. Her release date was not reported.
On Wednesday, June 16, 2004, Reuters, citing Xinhua, and Radio Free Asia both reported that Li had been executed on the Tuesday. The Reuters report, carried by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, gave his age as 44 and described him as a Beijing taxi driver; Radio Free Asia called him the principal culprit (主犯) in the case. Neither report said where he was executed or how.
Reuters set the case beside two others. In February 2004, it said, China had executed a man who killed 67 people over four years, and in December 2003 a migrant worker who killed at least 17 teenage boys had been put to death. The agency wrote that China's media was "sensationalist but still self-censoring" and tended not to play up cases of serial killers, and that the Communist state had long seen itself as largely free of the mass violence of the West.
Radio Free Asia's report, by its correspondent 江楠, placed the case among several series of killings reported in China during the previous year. It quoted a worker at a psychological counseling center in Shandong province, who was not named, as saying that Li clearly had serious psychological problems. The worker attributed the recurrence of such cases to rapid change in Chinese society, which had left many people with serious psychological disorders. A former reporter for Xi'an television, 马晓明, told the station that more and more people in China had psychological disorders but often had nowhere to turn for help.
The reports agree on the main outline: a Beijing taxi driver, seven people killed, a death sentence from the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court in March 2004, a 15-year sentence for his wife and an execution in June 2004. They differ on several points.
Dates of the killings. Xinhua's report of the sentence and Radio Free Asia place the killings of Song Shutian and his family in 1995 and the killings of the four women in 2002 and 2003. The Reuters report of the execution says that all seven killings, the daughter's included, took place between November 2002 and April 2003, while also describing the killing of the former employer and his family as a separate matter. The sentencing report and Radio Free Asia agree with each other on the dates.
His wife's conviction. Radio Free Asia names the offense as intentional homicide. Xinhua and Reuters describe her role as helping him and harboring or keeping stolen money, without naming the offense.
The house fire. Xinhua said Li was accused of setting fire to a wealthy person's house in 1995. Radio Free Asia instead describes a fire set in connection with the 1995 killings of the family. Neither report says how the court ruled on an arson charge.
The execution date. Both reports of June 16, 2004, place the execution on the Tuesday; neither gives the date in figures, the place or the method.
May 1980: Li Pingping is placed under one year of surveillance.
December 1985: jailed for six months for theft.
May 1995: Song Shutian, Song's wife and their daughter are killed in Beijing after Li's dismissal from Song's company.
1995: Li is later accused of setting fire to a wealthy person's house.
November 2002 to April 2003: four young women are killed in Beijing.
June 2003: Beijing police capture Li; information he gives leads them to the women's remains.
March 2, 2004 (reported): the Beijing Municipal No. 1 Intermediate People's Court sentences Li to death for killing seven people and sentences Dong Meirong to 15 years in prison.
June 2004: Li is executed; Reuters and Radio Free Asia report on June 16 that the execution took place on the Tuesday.