Zhou Youping was a singer who earned his living moving from one song hall to the next in Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province in central China. Between October 11 and November 26, 2009, Changsha police found six men dead in the city on separate dates. Each had died by hanging. Investigators came to see the deaths as one series, linked to a dangerous practice the men had agreed to take part in, and to see one man as the partner the six had in common. That man was Zhou.
He was detained on November 28, 2009, on suspicion of robbery, and once in custody he confessed to the deaths. Prosecutors charged him with intentional homicide. The Changsha Intermediate People's Court found him responsible for all six and sentenced him to death on March 29, 2011. On appeal, the Hunan Higher People's Court upheld the judgment, but it was satisfied of only two of the six deaths; on the other four it found the evidence insufficient. The Supreme People's Court approved the sentence, and he was executed in Changsha on August 29, 2014.
Zhou was born in June 1972 in Xiangxiang (湘乡), a county-level city in Hunan, according to the Changsha daily 潇湘晨报. He had a secondary vocational education. By 2009 he was working in Changsha as what the local press called a 跑场歌手, a singer who ran from venue to venue, booking short sets at the city's song halls and karaoke lounges. A 2010 report by the Hunan news site 红网, summarized by 潇湘晨报 in 2014, described him as a bar singer who performed under the stage name 戴君. He was 38 at the time of his trial and 42 when he was executed, by the reports' figures.
He already had a criminal record. In October 2006 he was sentenced to three years in prison for robbery, 潇湘晨报 reported. Under Chinese criminal law that earlier conviction made him a recidivist, and it would weigh against him when the courts came to sentence him for the 2009 deaths.
Little else has been made public about his early life, his family or his schooling beyond the level he reached.
From September 2009, according to the 2014 reports, Zhou posted repeatedly on a gay website, seeking men from northern China. He told police later that he had never meant to pay anyone who answered. The posts drew many replies. 潇湘晨报 reported that most of the people involved in the case had met through the same online chat room, which had a large following and had been running for a long time.
Zhou told police that he knew how dangerous the practice was, and that he never took part in it himself.
The first death in the series was recorded on October 11, 2009; the last two came on November 26. Each man was found dead in Changsha, and each had died by hanging. Police described the six as men in their twenties to forties, tall and well built, several of them from northern China.
The earliest man the reports describe in detail was 冯宇, from Gansu Province in China's northwest. By Zhou's account to police, as summarized by 红网 and 潇湘晨报, the two met for the first time on September 28, 2009. On October 4 Zhou sent him away. 冯宇 came back to Changsha on October 9 and died the next day; by Zhou's account to investigators, he had wanted the man gone because he had become a nuisance to him. He said that when he later saw the death reported on television, he felt calm.
The second case the reports describe was a man identified only by his surname, 方, whom Zhou said he met on October 22, 2009. Zhou told investigators that the man's demand for 5,000 yuan made him angry and that he then wanted him dead.
The 2014 reports give the clearest picture of the last two deaths through the eyes of one family. A man from Henan Province told his wife in late November 2009 that he had found work in Changsha, and he travelled there. She later learned that he had been found dead in the city. On the same night, a man from Heilongjiang Province in China's far northeast was found dead in another part of Changsha. The two deaths were alike, and police used the likeness to connect the cases.
Which of the six men's deaths formed the two counts the appeal court later upheld has not been made public.
The Changsha police were dealing at first with a set of unexplained deaths in different districts of the city. What tied them together, according to 潇湘晨报, was the manner of death and the fact that each man had been in contact with the same person. Investigators traced the six to Zhou, and the website and its chat room turned out to be the common thread among the men who answered his posts.
The arrest itself came on another matter. On November 28, 2009, two days after the last two deaths, Zhou was detained on suspicion of robbery. In custody he confessed to the deaths, and he gave investigators a detailed account of each meeting, according to 潇湘晨报. The paper reported that the results of the investigation shocked the police.
News of the arrest reached the foreign press in April 2010. PinkNews, citing a report in Shanghai Daily, said on April 22, 2010, that a bar singer in Hunan named Zhou Youping had been arrested over the deaths of six men he had met through gay websites, that he was alleged to have caused the first death in October 2009, and that he was being held on murder charges.
Zhou's own account, as reported, centered on money and on what he called being cheated. He said men he had met had deceived him and pressed him for money, and that he came to resent them. That resentment, by his telling, was where his indifference to their lives began. He said he had felt that way about the man surnamed 方 because of the demand for 5,000 yuan.
In an exchange summarized by 潇湘晨报, he repeated that he had not taken part himself and that he knew the danger to the men.
His defense in court rested on a different reading of the same events. The men, he argued, had acted voluntarily, in something they had all agreed to do, and he had never intended that anyone should die.
Zhou was tried at the Changsha Intermediate People's Court on October 28, 2010, on charges of intentional homicide covering all six deaths. The 2010 report by 红网 called it the largest number of deaths tied to such a practice in China up to that time.
The court rejected his defense. It found that Zhou knew the risk of death, that he had used the victims' own willingness to draw them into a dangerous practice, that he had misled them, and that he had not saved them. On that basis it held him criminally responsible for the deaths of six people. Because of his 2006 robbery conviction it treated him as a recidivist, a factor that under Chinese law calls for a heavier sentence. On March 29, 2011, it sentenced him to death for intentional homicide and deprived him of his political rights for life.
The legal question at the center of the case was intent: whether a man who did not intervene could be guilty of killing. 黎四奇, deputy dean of the law school at Hunan University, explained the reasoning to 潇湘晨报 in 2014: a person who takes part in a deadly game, helps to set it up, and then does nothing when the other person is in mortal danger is guilty of intentional homicide, because he acts with what Chinese law calls indirect intent, knowing that death may follow and allowing it to happen. 黎四奇 added that society should be tolerant of homosexuality, but that tolerance could not extend to conduct that cost other people their lives.
Zhou appealed to the Hunan Higher People's Court on the same ground he had argued at trial: that the men had acted voluntarily and that he had had no intent to kill. The appeal court did not accept that argument as to two of the deaths. It upheld the first-instance judgment, including the death sentence. But it found the facts established in only two of the six cases. For the other four, it held that the evidence was insufficient and did not find them proved. Why the evidence failed on those four has not been explained in detail.
With the death sentence upheld, the Hunan court sent the case to the Supreme People's Court in Beijing, which reviews death sentences before they can be carried out.
The 2014 reports used Zhou's case to explain how that review works. The lower court must report a death sentence to the Supreme People's Court within ten days. The review covers a list of items that includes the defendant's background and prior record, how the case arose and was investigated, the defendant's age and mental capacity, whether the facts and evidence are sound, and whether the procedure was lawful. The Supreme People's Court must question the defendant and must hear defense lawyers who ask to be heard. It may approve the sentence, refuse approval and send the case back, or change the judgment. Once it issues an execution order, the court of first instance must carry it out within seven days; it must notify prosecutors in advance so that one can attend, and it must allow close relatives a final meeting if they ask for one.
The Supreme People's Court approved Zhou's death sentence and the lifelong deprivation of his political rights, and it ordered the Changsha Intermediate People's Court to carry out the execution. He was executed in Changsha on August 29, 2014. 红网 gave August 29 as the date of the approval as well. The execution was reported on September 16, 2014, when Hunan papers and national news sites carried the story.
Not every man who met Zhou in 2009 died. 潇湘晨报 reported that some of the men who answered his posts survived, two or three by the paper's inconsistent count. PinkNews, citing Shanghai Daily in 2010, reported that two intended victims had escaped.
The case was covered in China in 2010 and again in 2014. The Chinese reports framed it in sexual terms in their headlines, and commentators quoted by 潇湘晨报 used it to warn about dangerous practices among people meeting strangers through the internet. 张明海 and 邓觉峰, researchers of the media, said that a crime of this kind in an inland city should prompt public warning, and pointed to the chat room through which most of the men had met. 陈明明, a member of the Hunan Mental Health Association and a licensed counselor, described the behavior as a psychological disorder with no rational basis. Outside China, the arrest was reported in April 2010 by PinkNews, an outlet covering gay news.
Six men died, and Zhou was charged with all six deaths, but the final judgment rests on two. The Hunan Higher People's Court found the evidence insufficient for the other four, and those four deaths are not legally attributed to him. His confessions to police covered all six, according to the reports, and the Changsha court accepted them at first instance; the appeal court did not accept them as sufficient proof for four of the deaths.
Which two deaths the appeal court upheld has not been made public, so it is not possible to say whether the cases of 冯宇 and the man surnamed 方, described through Zhou's own statements, were among them.
The date of the first-instance judgment is reported in two ways. The 2014 reports give March 29, 2011. The 2010 report by 红网, as summarized in 2014 by 潇湘晨报, said the court announced a death sentence the day after the October 28, 2010 hearing. The difference has never been explained.
The number of survivors also varies: two in some accounts, three in another.
June 1972: Zhou Youping is born in Xiangxiang, Hunan.
October 2006: He is sentenced to three years in prison for robbery.
September 2009: He begins posting on a gay website, seeking men from northern China.
September 28, 2009: He meets 冯宇, a man from Gansu, for the first time, by his own account.
October 11, 2009: The first of six men is found dead in Changsha.
October 22, 2009: He meets a man surnamed 方, by his own account.
November 26, 2009: The last two of the six men are found dead in Changsha, in different parts of the city.
November 28, 2009: Zhou is detained on suspicion of robbery and confesses to the deaths.
April 2010: His arrest is reported in the English-language press.
October 28, 2010: Trial at the Changsha Intermediate People's Court on six counts of intentional homicide.
March 29, 2011: The court sentences him to death, with lifelong deprivation of political rights.
Date not reported: The Hunan Higher People's Court upholds the judgment on two of the six deaths and finds the evidence insufficient on the other four.
August 29, 2014: The Supreme People's Court approves the sentence; Zhou is executed in Changsha.
September 16, 2014: The execution is reported in the Chinese press.