A SERIAL killer dubbed China’s “Jack the Ripper”, who targeted women and girls wearing red, has been sentenced to death for the killings of 11 people — including an eight-year-old.

Gao Chengyong, 54, was today sentenced by a Chinese court for the brutal crimes which he committed over the course of 14 years, state television reports.

Chengyong was tried for multiple counts of homicide, rape, robbery and mutilation of corpses. He confessed to killing 11 people between 1988 and 2002 in northwest China’s Baiyin city in Gansu Province and Baotou city in the northern region of Inner Mongolia, the report said.

The youngest of the victims was an eight-year-old girl.

Gao was arrested at his own grocery store in 2016 following a DNA test stemming from an unrelated crime committed by one of his relatives, according to state TV.

But before his crime sprees came to an end, the Gansu “Ripper” — who went on to become the country’s worst serial killer — invaded the nightmares of young Chinese women for decades.

Many were too scared to leave their homes, terrified they could be the next victim of the sadistic killer described by authorities as “reclusive”, “patient” and with a deep “hatred” for women.

For 14 years, he directed his loathing on women wearing red. He targeted those who lived alone, then followed them back to their homes. He then raped, murdered and in many cases, mutilated his victims’ bodies.

He got away with it for so long because he was careful, but he couldn’t get away with it forever.

Inside a grocery store in the northwest Chinese province of Gansu, alongside his wife, the terror inflicted by the man known as China’s Jack the Ripper finally came to an end in August 2016.

Police finally had their man. A married man. A father-of-two. A grocery store owner. A serial killer.

A BIG YEAR FOR GAO CHENGYONG

In 1988, Chengyong welcomed his first son into the world. That same year, aged 34, he claimed his first victim.

Police alleged Gao followed, raped and murdered a 23-year-old woman wearing red clothes. She was found dead at her home with 26 stab wounds.

In November that same year, he killed Cui Jinping, but he was not satisfied with stabbing her to death. Meticulously, according to reports at the time, the killer cut off her hands and her breasts.

Her mother found her body but, despite extensive searches, parts of her body were never found.

The body count piled up as women continued to be murdered by the then-unidentified killer between 1998 and 2002. Then suddenly there was nothing. No more murders. No more clues for police to follow.

In 2004, forensic officers working on the cold case murders linked one man to all 11 killings. They released a statement alongside a reward for information amounting to $30,000.

“The suspect has a sexual perversion and hates women. He’s reclusive and unsociable, but patient,” it read.

The killer’s notoriety grew when people began comparing him with East London’s Victorian-era serial killer, the original Jack the Ripper. Those crimes — five murders in which the victims were cut up after the killings — have never been solved.

For police, the breakthrough in the case came about unexpectedly when a clue — courtesy of one of Gao’s relatives — landed in their laps.

KILLER’S SON ‘APPALLED’ AT CONFESSION

Gao lived in a small city and therefore managed to avoid fingerprint checks required by other Chinese citizens who apply for national identity cards.

He had left DNA at a number of crime scenes but police could not link it to any suspect. That changed this year when Gao’s uncle was arrested for a minor crime in Baiyin. According to the China Daily, the relative’s DNA was collected and tested.

The killer was related, police determined. Then they closed in on Gao.

The New York Times reported Gao’s son was shocked when he heard his father had confessed.

“I didn’t know what to say, or how to deal with it,” he said.

The South China Morning Post reported Gao was quiet and that his last job was at a trade school. His sentence ends years of worry for many women who would not walk alone in the streets of the Gansu Province without being accompanied by male friends or relatives.

megan.palin@news.com.au | @Megan_Palin