A 44-year-old taxi driver has been executed for slaying seven people, three of whom he dismembered, in compliance with the sentence passed by the No. 1 Intermediate People's Court of Beijing.
On separate dates between November 2002 and April 2003, Li Pingping lured four call girls who worked at local nightclubs to his home and killed them after engaging in sexual intercourse with them. Li was a driver for a Beijing taxi company at the time.
Police found the dismembered bodies of three of the victims in a garbage bin near Li's home. Li reportedly stated that he murdered the girls because he thought they made money more easily than taxi drivers. He was executed on Tuesday.
Li was also convicted of slaying his former employer, Song Shutian, Song's wife and their 12-year-old daughter after he was sacked from Song's food company in May 1995.
Beijing police arrested Li in June 2003 and the court sentenced him to death in March this year. His wife, Dong Meirong, was sentenced to 15 years in jail for helping her husband commit the murders and concealing stolen money.
In May 1980, Li was given one year of probation for a sexual harassment offense and was jailed for six months in December 1985 for theft.
On Thursday in southwest China's Yunnan Province, Ma Jiajue, a student who was sentenced to death for killing four of his Yunnan University classmates, was executed.
The execution was conducted in compliance with the verdict of the Intermediate People's Court of Kunming.
Ma, 22, from the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, bludgeoned four classmates to death between February 13 and 15, 2004. The bodies of the four victims were found in a closet in a university dormitory on February 23.
Ma was captured on March 15 in south China's island province of Hainan after a much-publicized nationwide manhunt. The court sentenced him to death and deprived him of political rights for life on April 24.
The Yunnan Provincial Higher People's Court subsequently approved the verdict and sentence.
(Xinhua News Agency June 18, 2004)
