In 2003 six women in Anshan, an industrial city in Liaoning province in northeastern China, were killed after taking a taxi late at night. Each had been traveling alone. In late November the city's police detained the driver, Zhou Wen, who was 38 and, according to the state news agency Xinhua, had a previous criminal conviction. He confessed, and police said he had kept a written record of the dates and places of the killings.
The Anshan Intermediate People's Court sentenced him to death for robbery. The Liaoning High People's Court rejected his appeal on January 12, 2004, and he was executed the next day. The afternoon before he died, he told reporters from the local press that he did not regret what he had done.
The reports give two different spans for the killings. China News Service, the state agency, said in January 2004 that Zhou killed six women passengers between May and October 2003. Xinhua, announcing his detention in 2003, said the killings had begun in July. Both agree that there were six victims and that all six were women who had got into his cab alone.
According to the account of his confession that Xinhua released, Zhou said he had strangled or choked the women to death. They were, in Xinhua's words as carried by Reuters, young women who had hailed his taxi late at night. Their names, their ages and where they were from were not published, and no individual account of any of the six has appeared.
In his interview before his execution, he said that after each killing he went on driving at night, and that when he heard passengers talking about how seriously the police were treating the case, he felt relief at having escaped once more.
The killings hurt the taxi trade in Anshan. One driver told Xinhua that business had suffered for months because nobody dared to take a taxi at night. "Our business has been affected by the rascal for months," he said.
The local press gave the unknown killer a name, the "taxi devil" (出租车恶魔). When the detention was announced, Xinhua reported, many residents set off fireworks, and several hundred taxi drivers marched carrying national flags and logos saying they were glad someone had been caught.
Anshan police detained Zhou on November 28, 2003, Xinhua reported. The agency made the detention public a few days later, on a Wednesday, in a report that Reuters carried from Beijing. It described him as an ex-convict from Anshan, without saying what his earlier conviction was for. His date of birth was not reported.
He confessed after his detention. In his confession, as quoted by Xinhua, he linked the killings to his former wife. "I began to hate women when my ex-wife aborted without my permission," he told police.
The Anshan Public Security Bureau said he had kept a diary of the killings, and quoted his explanation for it. "I jotted down the dates and places in case I couldn't remember them," he said, according to the bureau.
The case went to the Anshan Intermediate People's Court (鞍山市中级人民法院). On December 1, 2003, according to China News Service, the court convicted Zhou at first instance of robbery (抢劫罪) and sentenced him to death. The reports name robbery as the offense; they do not describe a separate conviction for intentional homicide, and they give no account of the evidence heard in court, the length of the hearing, or the names of the judges and prosecutors.
Zhou appealed. On January 12, 2004, the Liaoning High People's Court (辽宁省高级人民法院), the provincial high court, rejected the appeal.
On the afternoon of January 12, 2004, the day his appeal was rejected, reporters from Qianhua Web (千华网), the news site of the Anshan Daily, interviewed Zhou at the Anshan No. 1 Detention Center (鞍山市第一看守所). China News Service relayed their report two days later.
The reporters found him shackled in his cell. He appeared fairly calm, they wrote, but he kept asking them for cigarettes and would not answer questions unless he was given one. Asked whether he regretted the deaths of the six women, he said he did not: "不后悔" (no regrets).
He told them that the sight of certain women out late at night made him uncomfortable, and that when he saw a woman who angered him he could not hold himself back. He said he had felt fear after each killing, but that the fear did not last. He spoke for more than an hour and said he remembered the crimes clearly. To keep away bad dreams, he said, he tried each day to think about other things.
The reporters said rules barred them from telling him that his execution was close. He seemed to sense it anyway, they wrote, and he added details of the crimes that he had not given before.
Asked about his family, Zhou said he loved his wife and his daughter. When the reporters pointed out that the women he had killed were also someone's wives and daughters, he said he did not want to talk about his family, and admitted that thinking about them hurt.
He also explained why he had appealed. He knew the appeal could not save him, he said; he had filed it so that he would die sooner. As he understood it, an appeal meant the provincial court would review the case the next day and could only confirm the sentence, while without one the process would take about 15 days longer. "速死是对我最好的解脱," he said: a quick death was the best release for him.
Zhou Wen was executed on January 13, 2004, the day after the Liaoning High People's Court rejected his appeal. China News Service carried the news on January 14 under a headline saying that he had remained unrepentant to the end. The report did not say how the sentence was carried out.
The published reports leave much of the case unexplained. The women were not named in them, and their ages and lives were not described, beyond Xinhua's description of them as young women. The reports differ on when the killings began, May in the China News Service account and July in Xinhua's. They do not say what Zhou's earlier conviction was, how long he had driven a taxi, or how the police came to identify him. They do not set out what the court found about each death, or why the conviction was recorded as robbery.
Zhou's own explanations are known only from his confession, as summarized by the police and Xinhua, and from the interview on the eve of his execution. He gave more than one account of why he did it: his anger at his former wife in the confession, and in the interview his resentment of women he saw out late at night.
2003, May to October: six women passengers killed in Anshan, according to China News Service (Xinhua said the killings began in July).
November 28, 2003: Anshan police detain Zhou Wen; he confesses. Xinhua announces the detention days later; residents set off fireworks and several hundred taxi drivers march.
December 1, 2003: the Anshan Intermediate People's Court convicts him of robbery at first instance and sentences him to death, according to China News Service.
January 12, 2004: the Liaoning High People's Court rejects his appeal; that afternoon he is interviewed at the Anshan No. 1 Detention Center.
January 13, 2004: Zhou Wen is executed.
January 14, 2004: China News Service reports the execution.