Chinese trio get death for killing 9 prostitutes

BEIJING - A Chinese court has sentenced three men to death for robbing, raping and killing nine women, most of whom were prostitutes, and then skinning one of them.

Hong Kong's Beijing-funded Wen Wei Po newspaper said the Shaanxi province High Court upheld death sentences handed down by the Intermediate People's Court in the city of Xian to Yin Xiaomin, Cao Ying and Hu Yuelong.

They dismembered their first victim, a prostitute who had worked at a barber shop serving as a front for a brothel, in 1993 after raping and robbing her of 20 yuan ($4), according to Beijing's mouthpiece in Hong Kong.

The gang also kidnapped and skinned a nightclub hostess and made a vest out of her skin, the newspaper said.

Crime was virtually unheard of in China in the years after the Communists swept to power in 1949 but it has staged a comeback since economic reforms introduced in the late 1970s widened a wealth gap and left an ideological vacuum.

- REUTERS