The killings were placed in Hubei province between 1997 and 1998. The victims were women, and the case involved rape as well as murder. He was arrested on March 1, 1998 and executed by shooting on September 24, 1998, at a public execution. A process that took under seven months from arrest to death. Chinese reporting called him the Monster Murderer. Zhang Lisong was born in 1968.
A brief agency report of the execution is the whole of the accessible record. No judgment is published, the victims have not been named, no method is recorded, and there is no available account of the investigation or the evidence.
The speed of the proceeding is itself the notable fact. This was the period of China's yanda anti-crime campaigns, in which capital cases were tried and carried out on timetables that left no room for appeal in any meaningful sense. The figure of nine should be read as one announced by the state, and the entry stands on that basis.