China executes Beijing taxi driver serial killer

Reuters

Wednesday, June 16, 2004

China executed a Beijing taxi driver who killed seven people, including four prostitutes, and the daughter of his former boss, the official Xinhua news agency has said.

Li Pingping, 44, was executed on Tuesday after being sentenced to death in March by a Beijing court. He had murdered the prostitutes between November 2002 and April 2003.

After picking them up at local nightclubs and having sex with them, Li killed and dismembered them and dumped the remains in a garbage pit near his home, Xinhua said.

Li murdered them because he felt they made money more easily than taxi drivers, it said.

He had also stabbed to death his ex-employer, as well as the man's wife and 12-year-old daughter after he was sacked from a food company, Xinhua said.

Li's wife was sentenced to 15 years in prison for helping with the murders and keeping stolen money, Xinhua said.

Communist China has viewed itself as largely free of the mass violence in the West. Its sensationalist but still self-censoring media tends not to play up cases of serial killers.

In February, China executed one of its worst serial killers in history, a man who murdered 67 people and raped two-dozen women in a four-year crime spree.

A migrant worker who murdered at least 17 teenage boys in his home was executed last December.

Serial killer executed in Beijing

People.com.cn

June 16, 2004

A 44-year-old taxi driver has been executed for slaying seven people, three of whom he dismembered, in compliance with the verdict passed by the No. 1 Intermediate People's Court of Beijing.

Li Pingping, the taxi driver, was alleged to have engaged in transactions with call girls from local nightclubs and killed four girls after having sex with them at his home from November 2002 to April 2003 when he was a taxi driver of a Beijing taxi company.

Police found the dismembered bodies of the victims in a garbage tip near Li's home.

Li is alleged to have stated that he murdered these girls because he thought they made money much easier than taxi drivers.

He was executed on Tuesday.

The executed taxi driver was once put under one-year surveillance for sexual harassment in May 1980 and was jailed for six months in December 1985 for theft. He was captured by Beijing police in June 2003.

Li is also accused of slaying his ex-employer Song Shutian, Song's wife and 12-year-old daughter after he was sacked from Song's food company in May 1995 and of setting a wealthy person's house on fire the same year.

The No. 1 Intermediate People's Court in March this year sentenced Li to death and his wife, Dong Meirong, to 15 years in jail for helping her husband commit the murders and harboring stolen money.

Notorious killer sentenced to death

2004_03_02

Sentenced to death Tuesday by the Beijing No 1 Intermediate People's Court.

The 44-year-old's victims were four suspected prostitutes and a family of three in Beijing.
Li's wife, Dong MEIRONG, received a jail term of 15 years for aiding Li and concealing evidence.

When Li was a taxi driver with Beijing-based Wanquansi Taxi Company, he lured four young women to his home from November 2002 to April 2003 and killed them.

He dismembered bodies of three women and buried the parts, according to court documents, which do not say how he disposed of the fourth.

In 1995, after he was dismissed by Beijing Gaotelan Food Company as a boiler worker, Li killed the company's manager, Song SHUTIAN, who was in his 40's, his wife and their 12-year-old daughter one night in May.

In an attempt to cover up his crime, Li set fire to Song's home which gutted seven rooms and valuables. He also stole two rings and a TV recorder worth 2,560 yuan (US$310) from Song's home.

The court documents add that he also set fire to the house of another man, Wan BAOMING, in April 1995, causing a loss of more than 57,000 yuan (US$6,880).

Li was under detention for one year in 1980 for indecent assault; and served six months in 1985 for theft.