A man described as China's "Jack the Ripper" has been executed after being convicted of robbing, raping and murdering 11 women and girls.

Gao Chengyong, 54, was compared to the infamous killer who prowled Whitechapel in the late 1880s because he cut victims' throats before mutilating their bodies.

Some of the women Gao targeted had their reproductive organs removed, the Beijing Youth Daily said when he was arrested in 2016. At least three of Jack the Ripper's victims had internal organs cut out too.

Image: Gao Chengyong targeted young women wearing red and followed them home

Gao targeted young women wearing red and followed them home, according to state media reports, attacking his victims between 1988 and 2002 in Gansu province and the neighbouring Inner Mongolia region.

His youngest victim was just eight years old.


Police hunted Gao for 28 years and finally caught him after a DNA test of a relative over a separate minor crime, the China Daily said.

After finding similarities to Gao's DNA they tested him too, and got a match.

He was sentenced to death at a court in Baiyin, Gansu province, in March last year.

The court announced on China's version of Twitter, Weibo, that the sentence had been carried out. China's supreme court had approved the execution, it added.

Police first linked Gao's crimes in 2004 - with a police profile at the time describing him as "reclusive and unsociable, but patient".

When he was convicted, the court said on Weibo that "to satisfy his perverted desire to dishonour and sully corpses, many of his female victims' corpses were damaged and violated".

It added: "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."

He was found guilty of robbery and intentional homicide, rape and dishonouring corpses.