Fa Ziying and Lao Rongzhi

Fa Ziying (1 October 1964 – 28 December 1999) and Lao Rongzhi (25 December 1974 – 18 December 2023) were a pair of Chinese serial killers, con artists, and robbers born in Jiujiang, Jiangxi. Fa and Lao met first during a wedding of their friend in 1993. Between 1996 and 1999, after becoming a romantic couple, Fa and Lao committed a series of crimes, including kidnapping, robbery, and murder in Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Anhui. A total of seven people were killed and a total of over 100,000 yuan were stolen by the couple (roughly ¥30,000 through property theft and ¥70,000 through kidnapping ransom). Fa was arrested on 23 July 1999 when a ransom handoff was interrupted by police and subsequently sentenced to death, deprived of political rights for life, and fined 20,000 yuan, by the Hefei Intermediate People's Court. On 28 December 1999, Fa was executed by being shot. Lao, who had been on the run since 1999, was captured and arrested on 28 November 2019 in Xiamen, Fujian. On September 9, 2021, Lao was sentenced to death by the Nanchang Intermediate People's Court for intentional homicide, kidnapping, and robbery. She was also stripped of her political rights for life and had all of her personal property confiscated. Lao appealed her conviction in court, and the second trial was held on August 18, 2022 at Jiangxi Provincial Higher People's Court. Although Lao admitted to being an accomplice to Fa, she claimed to have only done so in fear of losing her own life, as Fa had physically and sexually abused her throughout their relationship. On November 30 of the same year, the court upheld the death sentence. On December 18, 2023, the Nanchang Intermediate People's Court carried out the execution of Lao Rongzhi, with the approval of the Supreme People's Court.

Crimes
The prosecution accused Fa Ziying of kidnapping, robbery, and intentional homicide in Nanchang, Wenzhou, and Hefei. When Lao Rongzhi was tried, the prosecution added the kidnapping and robbery case in Changzhou to the list of cases. According to the trial, before the Nanchang murder, the duo had engaged in a string of crimes involving a "honey trap" scheme. Lao Rongzhi lured wealthy men to hotel rooms, where Fa Ziying would pose as her husband, violently rob the victims, and make off with hush money sums ranging from 70,000 to 80,000 yuan. Fa Ziying confessed to kidnappings in multiple cities, including Guangzhou, Changzhou, Nanning, Xiamen, Dongying, and Huangmei. During his final meeting with his defense lawyer, he admitted to additional crimes. However, due to insufficient evidence beyond his own confession and the technological limitations of the time, these additional crimes were not included in the final judgment.

Nanchang murder case
Fa and Lao came to Nanchang in May 1996, where Lao rented an apartment with the identity card stolen from a Shenzhen woman names Chen Jia, and she began working as an escort in a night club. In the night club Lao met a customer Xiong Qiyi, a 35-year-old general manager of an air conditioning sales company who also ran a hotel. According to Fa Ziying's verdict, Lao Rongzhi identified Xiong Qiyi as a kidnapping target, and Fa Ziying followed Xiong Qiyi home but without further actions. On the morning of July 28th, Lao Rongzhi called to lure Xiong Qiyi to her apartment, where Fa Ziying appeared holding a knife and tied up Xiong with ropes, then robbed him of his watch, jewelry, and other valuables. Fa forced him to divulge his address before strangling him to death with a wire and dismembering his body, packing it up into four trash bags.

At the same night, they went to Xiong's home and gained access using Xiong's keys. Xiong's wife, 28-year-old Zhang Li (张莉), and their three-year-old daughter Xiong Lingxuan (熊灵璇) were asleep. Fa awoke both, robbed Zhang at knifepoint, then tied them up as he ransacked the apartment for the next hours, leaving Lao to keep watch. Fa further intimidated Zhang and her daughter by showing off two plastic bags that contained, among other body parts, her husband's severed head. Afterwards, Fa fatally strangled both Zhang and her daughter with a belt. Their corpses were left in a bathtub along with Xiong's body parts. According to the appraisal, Fa Ziying and Lao Rongzhi robbed the victims of valuables worth 30,274 yuan, 8,090 yuan, 110 Hong Kong dollars, and 10 US dollars in cash, 1,000 yuan worth of Jiangxi Post and Telecommunications Enterprise bonds, 1,000 yuan worth of Nanchang Telecommunications Bureau fundraising receipts, and a 95,000 yuan worth certificate of deposit. The rest of Xiong's remains were discovered two days later when neighbours noticed a rotten smell emanating from two black trash bags by the community dumpster. On 29 July, Nanchang Municipal Public Security Bureau of opened a robbery and homicide investigation, eventually identifying Fa and Lao as the perpetrators, issued a wanted notice for them on 18 August that same year.

Wenzhou murder case
After spending over a year wandering across East China, typically staying for no longer than 10 days at a time in each city, financing themselves through the adultery scams, Fa and Lao settled in Wenzhou in early October 1997. Lao worked at a KTV club as an escort with a stage name "Gege" and claimed to be from Sichuan. At Lao's suggestion, the duo decided to rob 22-year-old Liang Xiaochun (梁晓春), another escort girl working at the KTV club. Lao believed Liang to be well-off after sew her wearing an Omega wrist watch to work. They accessed Liang's apartment by pretending to be interested in renting out the place, at which point Fa took her at knifepoint and searched her apartment for valuables. Unsatisfied with the loot, Fa forced Liang to call over another woman, 29-year-old Liu Suqing (刘素清), who was a forewoman at the KTV club. Upon Liu 's arrival, Fa forced her to hand over over a thousand yuan in cash and a 25,000 yuan deposit slip. He then tied her up with an electric wire. Following Fa 's instructions, Lao took Liu's phone and deposit slip to the bank to withdraw money. According to reports, the bank teller knows Liu Suqing and inquired why Lao Rongzhi, not Liu herself, was withdrawing the money. Lao replied that she was borrowing money from Liu. The teller did not stop her. Lao withdrew the entire 25,750 yuan from the account and signed Liu Suqing's name. Fa Ziying's verdict stated that after Lao Rongzhi successfully withdrew the money, she called him, and he immediately strangled both Liang and Liu using an electric wire and a belt. Fa Ziying took an Omega watch, a Rado watch, a mobile phone, and a pager from the two victims.

They left Wenzhou the same day by long-distance bus. Only a few hours later, Liang's phone was called several times by her boyfriend, identified by his surname Li. Lao eventually picked up, hoping to placate him with a cover story. Li immediately noted that Lao answered the call in Mandarin Chinese rather than Wenzhou dialect, yet still claimed to be an old friend of Liang, who never left Wenzhou in her whole life, and grew even more suspicious when Lao, unaware of who Li was, claimed that Liang went on a trip with her boyfriend. On 12 October, Li entered Liang's apartment by climbing over the balcony from a neighbour's room, where he discovered the bodies of the two women. Police detectives matched Fa Ziying's fingerprints on the electric mosquito repeller of which the wire was used to tie up the victims.

Changzhou kidnapping and robbery case
In September 1998, Fa Ziying and Lau Rongzhi came to Changzhou. They rented a room and settled down. Lau Rongzhi worked as an escort at the Royal Ballroom near Tongji Bridge in Changzhou, where she met Liu, the owner of an auto repair shop. According to Liu's testimony, Lao tried every possible way to get him to go to her place. Around 11:30 pm one night, he drove Lao home and went in with her. He has barely entered the door when Fa Ziying stabbed him in the chest with a knife. After Liu was subdued, Lao tied Liu's legs and arms to a chair with a wire. Liu recalled that Fa and Lao communicated very little during the process, and they were very tacit. Fa searched Liu, took his car key and left. The 5,000 yuan cash in Liu's car was also taken. The next morning, Fa told Liu to call his wife. Liu's wife, following his instructions, went to the designated bus stop with 70,000 yuan cash to meet Lao.

According to Liu's recollection, Fa instructed Lao to go out and meet Liu's wife, saying that if Lao did not return within two hours, he would kill Liu and then escape. Lao Rongzhi took a taxi back together with Liu's wife. Seeing her husband's mouth was stuffed and his hands and feet tied up, the wife handed over the ransom right away. Fa then tied her up and gagged her. After a brief conversation in dialect between the duo, Lao Rongzhi left first with the cash. About ten minutes later, she called Fa to indicate that she had safely evacuated. Fa was now entertaining the idea of killing the couple anyway, though he eventually relented after Liu and his wife repeatedly begged him to reconsider. Liu and his wife were the only survivors of the series of robberies and murders committed by Fa Ziying and Lao Rongzhi.

Hefei murder case
After nearly a year of hiding around in Guangxi, Shantou, and Hangzhou among other places, Lao and Fa arrived in Hefei on 21 June, 1999. Using false names and identities, they checked into two separate hotels less than two kilometers apart. In July, Fa Ziying rented a two-bedroom apartment, ordered a dog cage, and purchased a freezer. On 15 July, Lao began working as an escort at a local nightclub, with her false identity. There, she met Yin Jianhua (殷建华), the founder and owner of Hefei Anjida Electric Co., Ltd. According to Fa's defense attorney later, Yin was not actually wealthy and had to pretend to be affluent in social settings to maintain his company's business.

Lao invited Yin to her and Fa's apartment on July 22, where he was taken hostage with a knife and locked in the dog cage, with intent to extort Yin's wife Liu Min (刘敏) for ransom. Yin, however, proved defiant and refused to cooperate with his captors, even after Fa reveals that he had done this before and killed people, brushing this off as a lie, believing him to not be capable of murder. To prove they were not bluffing, Fa went out on the street and convinced a 33-year old carpenter named Lu Zhongming (陆中明), to come to their apartment to fix a window. There the carpenter was attacked by Fa, who dragged him into bathroom and stabbed him 20 times in the back before beheading him with an axe. Fa then showed the head to Yin while Lao stored Lu's body away in the freezer. Yin, now realizing the gravity of his situation, wrote notes asking his wife to pay his kidnappers. Liu was called at 9:05 p.m. by her husband Yin asking her to go to Changjiang Hotel and handover the ransom to Fa. However, the two missed each other at the hotel somehow, and Fa rescheduled a ransom handover the next morning at Yin's home.

The next morning, Yin wrote one more note to his wife, and their home address on another note, as Fa requested. According to Fa's first instance verdict, Fa then strangled Yin with a wire, before he when to Yin's home with the two notes and a home-made gun. At her home, Liu managed to convince Fa to wait in the apartment while she would leave to collect the money from friends and colleagues. Instead, she fled the building as police raided the location, positioning snipers on nearby buildings and stationing officers at ground level in case Fa attempt to jump from the third story apartment's window. At 11:00 a.m., after hours of negotiations failed, tear gas was deployed, leading to Fa exiting the flat and opening fire upon the police officers. The standoff and subsequent fire exchange was filmed by a television crew. Fa was apprehended after being shot in the thigh.

The bodies of Yin and Lu were located on 27 July, when neighbours noticed the smell and had the landlord open the apartment to check. Yin was immediately identified by his wife. Unable to identify the body in the freezer, the police published a notice in local newspaper, but over 20 days passed and no one had contacted them. Only when Lu Zhongming's wife went to Hefei to report to police because she could not contact her husband, did the police confirm Lu's identity. Lu's wife quickly recognized his tool box. It was initially unknown whether Yin had been killed by Fa or Lao, who had escaped, though his estimated time of death point towards Lao being the culprit. Lao left only a note addressed to Fa, saying that she'd "wait for [him] at home".

Fa Ziying
Fa Ziying was born on 1 October 1964, in Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province, (his ancestral home is in Henan, and his family lives in Xunyang District). Some reports say that the Fa family had been formerly wealthy, but by the time of his birth, Fa Ziying's family was poor. His father worked as a cart puller, delivering goods to local markets, and his mother was a tea saleswoman. The family lived next door to the block's public toilet, the area of the house having been only about 30 square meters, and they had to collect cinder and waste wood to maintain heating every winter. His parents had four sons and three daughters, and Fa Ziying was the youngest.

Fa Ziying had very poor academic performance, and dropped out after three years of primary school, but he liked to play football and was the captain of a junior football team. In 1979, Fa Ziying's father drowned while swimming in Yangtze River. Later, his mother suffered a car accident that left her with sequelae in her waist. Fa was sentenced 3 years labor reeducation for robbery when he was 15. In 1981, Fa was sentenced 8 years in jail for armed robbery and intentional injury by Jiujiang Intermediate People's Court. Following his release, Fa Ziying started a business owner and married a woman surnamed Miao in 1990, had a daughter with her in 1991. Less than two years into the marriage, he and his wife agreed to divorce.

Lao Rongzhi
Lao Rongzhi was born on 25 December 1974 in Jiujiang City, Jiangxi Province. Both her parents are originally from Huangmei, Hubei, and they worked for SINOPEC Jiujiang Company. Lao's father was a security guard of the oil depot while her mother was a family worker for the company. Lao Rongzhi was the youngest one in 5 siblings. In 1989, after graduated from junior high school with excellent grades, Lao Rongzhi was admitted to Jiujiang Normal College to be trained as a future preschool teacher. She graduated in 1992 and became a primary school Chinese language teacher in the school of the Jiujiang Company.

In 1993, while still working at the primary school, Lao Rongzhi met Fa Ziying. According to Lao Rongzhi's testimony in her second trial, she met Fa Ziying, who then owned a company, through a friend. Lao was aware of Fa's criminal past and that had served a prison sentence for fighting, but the two still began dating. Once on a date which was too late for her to go home, she was raped by Fa and became pregnant. Afterwards, Fa induced her to take a medicated abortion. After the abortion, she was raped by Fa again, resulting in another pregnancy four months later; this time, she had an abortion accompanied by Fa's sister.

The school Lao worked for was declining, it was rumored that the primary school was about to be discontinued, and the faculty would be assigned jobs at gas stations, which made Lao Rongzhi feel depressed. After teaching for about two years, Lao resigned. According to her brother, it was around this time she said she's going to do business with Fa Ziying. The family disagreed, and she even had a quarrel with her mother over this. In the end, her family allowed her to leave. During her second trial, Lao Rongzhi flatly denied that she and Fa Ziying were in a relationship, saying that she was "controlled and coerced" by Fa Ziying and that she was "mentally distracted" when they were together.

Lao Rongzhi said at the first instance that she left Jiujiang with Fa Ziying in May 1995 with 6,000 yuan, and they went to Shenzhen and Shanghai to start a business. The venture was unsuccessful and they soon ran out of money. They returned to Jiujiang in December 1995 where they stayed until late February, just after the Chinese New Year, when they left once more, marking the beginning of their crime spree. According to Lao, while in Shenzhen, their living expenses were high, about 200 yuan per day, but they had no stable source of income. Due to the lack of money, Lao began working as escort to make money, and she also looked for robbery targets along the way.

Interrogation, trial, and execution of Fa Ziying
On July 23rd, 1999, after apprehending Fa Ziying, the police rushed him to a local ospital for emergency treatment. Initially, Fa refused to reveal the whereabouts of Yin Jianhua. During his interrogation, Fa gave the police a false name Ye Weiming, he also made up a convoluted backstory for himself, claiming to have been orphaned during the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, then raised by an elderly man in Jiangshan, Zhejiang. He claimed that a man named Yao Long (姚龙) from Gushi, Henan, brought him and two other unidentified individuals to Hefei to carry out the kidnapping, and that the hostages had already been taken back to Gushi by them. On the morning of the 24th, Fa claimed that his accomplices would meet him at Changjiang Hotel. The police followed the information and set up an ambush, but to no avail. The police then took Fa to Gushi and asked him to identify the location where his accomplices were holding Yin Jianhua captive. On July 27th, the bodies of Yin and Lu were located, Fa was brought back to Hefei and interrogated, Fa Ziying reveals his true identity, and confessed to how he and Lao Rongzhi killed Yin and the carpenter Lu, during interrogation in the early hours of the 28th.

When Fa was informed about the discovery of his latest victims' bodies and the manhunt for Lao, Fa confessed to the seven murders and admitted to committing the murders while accompanied by Lao. Fa made contradicting statements concerning the murder of Yin Jianhua, first stating that he had told Lao to kill Yin and flee if he had not returned by 12:30 a.m. to "avenge [Fa] as [he] would be dead" before revising his confession to say that he had tied a noose around Yin's neck and attached it to a "timed mechanism" (wire attached to a vise was strung around Yin's neck, but there was not indication that it was attached to a timer and could be used any way but manually) that would asphyxiate him after an allotted amount of time. Finally, Fa reportedly settled on the version that he had manually strangled Yin before he went to collect the ransom. However, an autopsy determined that Yin died on 24 July, a day after Fa had already been taken into custody and furthermore, transcripts show that Fa initially wouldn't provide details about the murder, stating that he killed Yin "whenever the prosecutor says I did" and when he was asked what weapon he used, Fa shrugged and said "a knife, a rope, anything really". His death was officially attributed to Fa by the Nanchang Intermediate People's Court.

At his trial, Fa retracted his confession, stating that he acted alone and now claimed that he had acted as a hitman for the Taiwanese heidao and that he robbed people only so he could give their belongings to the poor later on. The prosecution rejected this claim, pointing out that, besides the lack of evidence for this, his self-professed righteousness did not match up with his murder of a toddler and needless beheading of a working class carpenter, as well as the fact that despite many of the victims being known for their generosity and expensive tastes, none of them were actually wealthy and had instead lived with minimal expenses for many years to afford luxury goods. Fa had also openly admitted to fellow inmates that he had "regretted" not making an escape attempt when guards had brought him into the infirmary of the detention center while awaiting interrogation to have his gunshot wound treated with saline solution, clarifying in a later interview before his execution with reporters that he contemplated breaking a saline bottle and stabbing the attending doctor to death with a glass shard to "make [himself] known in the [detention] facility".

The family of Fa, including his estranged wife, declined to visit him before his execution. Fa's final visitation was instead with one of his assigned public defenders, Yu Xi (俞晞), to whom he confessed all the murders once again, as well as several gun charges and associated thefts he committed in Huangmei, Chongqing, and Yunnan.

Life as a fugitive
After Fa's arrest, Lao fled Hefei for Wuhan. She then traveled to Henan before moving to Chongqing, where she and Fa had established one of two safehouses (the other was in Wuhu, Anhui) to return to in case their crimes became public. She stayed there until January 2000, when she heard of Fa's execution in December 1999. For the next few years, Lao kept on the move through China, staying at hostels, hotels, and guesthouses, while engaging in prostitution to support herself. By 2016, Lao settled in Haicang District, Xiamen, presenting herself as being from Nanjing, and took up work as a waitress at a night club as Xue Li (a transliteration of an English name, most commonly cited as Shirley, although other sources say it is Sherry). After a failed relationship with a male employee, she quit in 2017 and got a job at a car dealership as a saleswoman.

2019 arrest
When Lao was discovered in November 2019, she had been living in Huli District, Xiamen under the name Hong Yejiao and was working part-time as a watch vendor at Dongbai Caitang Plaza. The boss of the watch shop was her boyfriend at the time, whom she met at the car dealership, and apologized to him for hiding her past from in court. In turn, the boyfriend paid some of her legal fees and stated that he would stand by Lao, refusing any interviews with reporters.

In court, Lao acknowledged her guilt, but contended that none of the murders were premeditated, despite evidence showing that she and Fa had constructed a cage to imprison Yin Jianhua and bought a freezer with the intent of storing a human body in it, as when Lu Zhongming was found, no spoilt foods normally held in cold storage could be found in the apartment. She also said that she felt threatened to stay with Fa and assist him in his crimes, stating that "[Fa Ziying] often beat me, choked me and tortured me. He threatened my family if we broke up... I didn't want to kill anyone. I just wanted to live," in a report by the People's Daily. Lao would contradict this statement by outright denying being present for most of the murders, saying that Fa would always tell her to leave before he killed the victims. Concerning the first murder, Lao claimed that the first victim, Xiong Qiyi, had been her new boyfriend rather than another mark for their scam, and that she brought him to the apartment after he offered to install an AC unit for free. Lao said that the reason why Fa attacked him wasn't for his money but because he was enraged that Lao was dating someone behind his back. After Xiong was dead, so Lao claimed, Fa figured that he could steal his belongings since he didn't have any use for them anymore and when the pair found Xiong's family at the home, Fa told Lao to leave while he followed up on his plans. Lao made varying statements regarding the double murder in Wenzhou, first saying that she had only helped tie the victims up and left after failing to convince Fa to spare them, but later alleged that she had only told Fa about Liang Xiaochun as a potential victim, despite the fact that eyewitnesses and surveillance footage proved that she was inside the bank to empty Liu Suqing's account. Regarding the kidnapping of Liu Hua and his wife, Lao claimed that she wanted to stop their criminal activities, but was beaten by Fa for suggesting change. She denied having been present during the kidnapping until Liu and his wife were identified as the victims and called upon to provide testimony, with both stating that although Fa and Lao didn't talk much during their abduction, they visibly cooperated with one another without hesitation or dysfunction. Finally, Lao denied being responsible for the death of Yin Jianhua, despite pathological evidence pointing towards his death by strangulation as having occurred a day after Fa's arrest, with her being the only other person who could have killed him. Lao also insinuated that Fa raped his female victims, despite autopsies having shown no signs of sexual assault on any of the deceased. Lao insisted that she had also been victimized by Fa, at once point going as far as to state "My scream was louder than the victim's", in regards to the death of Lu Zhongming.

According to Beijing Youth Daily, Lao claimed that she felt "relief" after being caught, despite the fact that she had put great effort into changing her appearance through surgery. Lao also apologized to the surviving victims and families of the deceased. The most vocal of these was Zhu Dahong (朱大红), the widow of Lu Zhongming, who was left to raise three children by herself and financially support five more relatives, including Lu's mother, who had reportedly "cried so much she went blind". Shortly after Lu's death rainstorm caused a part of the family's house to break in and it was never repaired as Zhu earned little selling rice she farmed during the day and working 10-hour night shifts as a hotel cleaner, a job she had to quit in June 2022 after a fall left her with a permanent limp. Lao has offered to recompensate the money stolen during the crimes; Lao only had 30,000 yuan on her bank account at the time of her arrest and Liu Lingjie (刘静洁), the lawyer representing Lu's family, stated that she sought 1.3 million yuan from Lao in damages. Meanwhile, relatives of Xiong Qiyi, those being his younger brother Xiong Qizhong (熊启重) and the sister of Xiong's wife Zhang Li, told the press that they did not seek compensation and only wanted Lao to be sentenced to death. The murder of their loved ones was the first of many more deaths in the family, with Xiong's youngest brother dying in a car accident in 1999, followed by his mother from illness the same year and finally his father in 2003. Xiong Qizhong said that the parents' health had declined sharply from losing two of their sons, with his father in particular having been traumatized as he was one of the people to find their bodies after the fire was extinguished. The deaths affected Xiong Qizhong and his sister-in-law not only emotionally, but led to them having difficulty in financially support their own families, which included their children and Zhang's parents. After losing the air conditioning business, Xiong Qizhong joined the police department, in part due to the way his brother's family died.

Two of Lao's siblings gave interviews to reporters, describing how in the 20 years their sister had disappeared, during which time their father died and their mother would cry over Lao's actions on an almost daily basis, supposedly to the point her hair turned white, she had never once tried to contact them. Lao's brother also said that he did not believe Lao's story that she had been with Fa unwillingly, recalling that he overheard Lao constantly swoon over her new boyfriend, even when scolded, and had naively fallen for Fa, who had apparently been locally known as a "bad boy", something that Lao not only found attractive, but actively encouraged. Before Lao's execution, she was granted the right to a final visitation with her immediate family.