A Modern 'Jack the Ripper' Is Executed

China's "Jack the Ripper" is no more. Gao Chengyong, convicted of the rapes and murders of 10 women and an 8-year-old girl in northwest China between 1988 and 2002, was executed Thursday, CNN reports via state media. Sentenced to death last March, the 54-year-old was nabbed in China in 2016 after DNA collected from his uncle during a bribery arrest showed a relation to the serial killer. Gao, a grocery store owner, was known to target women in Gansu province and Inner Mongolia, particularly those wearing red. He'd follow them to their homes, slashing their throats and mutilating their bodies, including by removing reproductive organs in some victims, reports AFP.

His first victim, a 23-year-old killed in the year that Gao's wife birthed the first of two sons, was found with 26 stab wounds, per the BBC. Others had ears and hands removed. "The motives of the defendant's crimes were despicable, his methods extremely cruel, the nature of the acts vile, and the details of the crimes serious," the Baiyin Intermediate People's Court announced at his March conviction for robbery, rape, murder, and defiling the dead, also referencing "his perverted desire to dishonor and sully corpses." The Supreme People's Court confirmed the death sentence before it was carried out Thursday morning, per the South China Morning Post. China typically favors execution by firing squad or lethal injection. (The real Jack the Ripper might've been a cotton merchant.)