Blood In the Streets

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D

uan was a bit of a dandy, fond of neatly pressed Western-style suits. But he had led a troubled life. He had twice been sentenced to jail for robbery, and he was estranged from his father, Duan Shengqing, a trash collector whom he blamed for the family's poverty. "He'd say other people's dads earned money, but that I can't read and can't do anything," recalls his father. Duan's mother, however, had doted on him—her fourth and final child—and he used to confide in her about his frustrations over women. "We'd talk about this often," Hu says. But only once did he bring a woman home. "She saw we had no money, so she left him."

Convinced that Duan had fled the city, the police in Yueyang locked his mother in a cell with prostitutes and drug addicts for a week in hopes that she would tell them his whereabouts. She didn't. So they sent a bulletin on the nationwide police-computer network with Duan's particulars. Wuhan's police received the notice, but since they routinely ignored bulletins from other provinces, "they didn't pay much attention," says a source who has seen the Wuhan police reports. "They lost their best chance to crack the case early."

On the run, Duan checked into a series of $5-a-night hotels in Wuhan using his mother's surname. On May 7 a young woman was stabbed to death after midnight on her way home from work. By early June three women, including Wang Guiyu, had been killed and another three survived nearly identical attacks, all within a few kilometers of one another. Then, a few hours after midnight on June 4, a waitress at a Sichuan restaurant was attacked after entering the front gate of her apartment building. She was just meters from her door, on which she had tacked a poster featuring the Chinese character for fortune. The assailant stabbed her repeatedly in the chest, stripped her and sliced off her breasts, say neighbors who saw police photos.

In early May, Wuhan's police formed a special investigation team, which eventually grew to more than a thousand cops. The cases were such a high priority that the team members were made to work overtime and cancel their vacations. Young female officers walked the empty streets at night as bait. But the Red Dress Killer continued to strike, thanks in part to police slip-ups and lost opportunities. Despite the rising body count, Wuhan's police didn't check with neighboring cities, including Yueyang, for similar cases. The summer murders took place in a district crammed with migrants, but Inspector Zhang Dehua admits that his officers didn't check the cheap hotels in his area. Local reporters covering the cases had their stories spiked, but the reports were distributed internally to city officials. The news blackout choked off possible leads from ordinary citizens—and kept potential victims clueless as to the dangers of walking home from work at night. "If we'd known there was a killer around, we would have been more careful," says Yao Ping, the truck-driver husband of victim Wang Guiyu. "But nobody told us."

On Aug. 10, three months after the killings in their city began, Wuhan's police finally sent a bulletin to nearby cities, including Yueyang, describing the cases. Yueyang's police immediately responded with information on Duan Guocheng, including his alias Hu Cheng. Three days later, Wuhan's police found a Hu Cheng registered at the 719 Aerospace Institute Inn, a military-run guesthouse minutes from Zhang's police station. Zhang and two other officers burst through Duan's door and found him standing in the room in his underclothes. Duan attacked them, says Zhang, and "it took all three of us to hold him down." They asked Duan if he knew why they had come. "I robbed people," he replied. In a drawer they discovered bloodstained shorts and a pair of shoes that matched a print taken from the last murder. Police say he confessed to the killings a few hours later. They charged him with the "Red Dress Murders."

At present, Duan is confined in the Wuhan No. 2 Detention Center, a quiet prison surrounded by two-story walls. His trial began on Dec. 16 and is expected to end sometime in February. In all likelihood he will be convicted and swiftly executed. On Christmas Eve, Duan's mother went to the prison to bring him some clothes. She received a receipt signed by her son—the only form of contact they have been permitted. The family doesn't even know if he has a lawyer.

The day after Duan's capture, the news blackout was lifted and the front page of Wuhan's main newspaper hailed the nabbing of the "Psycho Killer" accused of murdering 13 women. It showed Hubei's top cop, Chen Xunqiu, handing $20,000 in reward money to Inspector Zhang and a handful of colleagues involved in the investigation. "This is a typical example," Chen said, "of successfully breaking a case using high-tech methods and strategies." It was deft p.r., but the reality is more chilling: monsters are on the prowl in today's China—and someone's got to learn how to stop them.