HONG KONG (AP) – A British banker was convicted of murder Tuesday for killing two Indonesian women in Hong Kong, torturing one of them over three days while using cocaine in a gruesome case that shocked the Chinese financial hub.
The nine-person jury returned unanimous verdicts against Rurik Jutting after a two-week trial in the High Court. The slayings in 2014 and disclosures as the case developed highlighted Hong Kong’s significant inequality as well as the decadent lifestyles of some members of the former British colony’s expatriate elite.
Jutting faces a mandatory life sentence. In a statement his lawyer asked to be read into the court record, Jutting said he was sorry and accepted the verdicts as “just and appropriate punishment.” He also said he was haunted by his actions and the pain he’d caused to the women’s loved ones.
He was convicted of killing 23-year-old Sumarti Ningsih and then killing 26-year-old Seneng Mujiasih days later.
Jurors were shown graphic smartphone video clips taken by Jutting in which he tortured Sumarti before slitting her throat and then stuffed her body inside a suitcase that he left on the balcony of his upscale apartment near Hong Kong’s famous Wan Chai red-light district.