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Chinese Brothers Shen Changyin and Shen Changping Detained, Accused of Killing 12 Across Six Provinces

The brothers had fled their Henan village in 2000. Investigators later said they forced women they had captured to help lure and kill others.

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Illustration of two men walking along a dusty lane of old brick houses under poplar trees in a central Chinese town. Not an actual scene from the case.

Two brothers from a village in Henan province had been on the run for four years. On September 2, 2004, Chinese state media reported that they had been detained, accused of killing 12 people across six provinces.

Shen Changyin, 29, and Shen Changping, 21, were held over the killing of 11 waitresses and one man, the Yanzhao Metropolitan Daily reported. The two farmers had fled Nanwu village in Huojia county in 2000, after the elder brother killed a man, the paper said.

When the brothers went on trial in Lanzhou in May 2005, prosecutors said that from June 2003 to August 2004 they had lured women who worked in entertainment venues to rented rooms in Gansu, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Anhui and Hebei, robbed them and killed them. They forced some of the women they captured to join them and to help lure and kill others. In April 2004 one of those women escaped in Taiyuan and turned herself in to police, and the brothers fled through a window before officers arrived. The last killing came in Shijiazhuang on August 30, 2004. The victims named in court reports included Yao Fang, Zhao Dan, Zhang Chunling, Wang Fengjuan, Yang Zhiling, Shu Xiaomei, Shao Mei, Chen Qianqian, Shang Qian and Zhao Hongxia. Both brothers admitted the charges.

On September 1, 2005, the Lanzhou Intermediate People's Court sentenced both brothers to death. Li Chunling, a woman they had forced to take part, was also sentenced to death, and two other accomplices received 20-year terms.

State media reported in 2004 that the brothers were accused of killing 11 waitresses and one man, while the court in 2005 found they took part in 10 killings and a robbery in which another woman died.

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