Court sentences murderer to death

Shanghai No.1 Intermediate People's Court has sentenced an Anhui Province man to death for drugging, kidnapping and murdering a woman who he believed had the money to save him from financial ruin, the court said Wednesday.

The court found the unidentified defendant guilty of murder and robbery for smothering the victim to death with a pillow and stealing 44,300 yuan ($7,234) from her bank accounts, according to a court press release.

The court handed down the death sentence due to the brutality of the murder, which it believed to be premeditated, said Pan Jingbo, a press officer for Shanghai No.1 Intermediate People's Court.

"The defendant planned the whole thing," Pan told the Global Times. "He drugged the woman's coffee because he was afraid of a violent struggle. He spent several hours considering his next move before he finally killed her. According to him, he murdered the woman simply because he was afraid she would call the police."

The motive of the murder appears to be money. The defendant, who is in his 40s, owned a failing advertising company in Shanghai. "His business was pretty bad and he hadn't had a stable income for nearly six months," Pan said.

The defendant got acquainted with the victim, who was also not identified, at a driving course last year, the court said. It remains unclear why he believed she had the money to help him, but in November, he came up with the idea of asking her for a loan. He asked her out under the pretext that he was having a get-together for the students in their driving class.

After picking her up at noon on December 2, he gave her a cup of coffee spiked with sleeping pills. Once the woman felt light-headed, he suggested that they go to a nearby hotel room. They spent several hours talking together, but when the defendant got around to asking her for a loan, she flatly turned him down.

Before she could leave, the defendant grabbed her, threw her on the bed and tied her hands and feet. He also removed five bank cards from her purse. The court said he "coerced" her into telling him the passwords to the accounts.

Around 1 am the next day, he killed her.

The court said the defendant had put down a 700-yuan deposit on the room and told the hotel staff that he planned to stay there for three days.

He left the body in the room and went out to empty her bank accounts. According to the court, he withdrew more than 40,000 yuan from two accounts over the next two days.

On the evening of December 4, he went back to the hotel room, wrapped up the body and put it in the trunk of his car. He drove about three hours to neighboring Zhejiang Province and dumped her half-naked body in the woods. The court said he tried to make it look as if she had been sexually assaulted.

The next morning, he used the victim's cellphone to send a text message to her father, demanding 3 million yuan for her safe return, the court said.

The father immediately called police, who caught the defendant on December 7.

The defendant plans to appeal the sentence, the court said.