HONG KONG, Nov. 8 (UPI) — A Hong Kong jury sentenced a British banker to life imprisonment Tuesday in the cocaine-fueled rape, torture and deaths of two Indonesian women.
Rurik Jutting, 31, employed in Hong Kong by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, received two concurrent life sentences in the 2014 deaths of Sumarti Ningsih, 23, and Seneng Mijiasih, 29. Evidence at the trial, including graphic video taken by Jutting on his cellphone as well as his own recorded commentary, showed Jutting subjected Ningsih to three days of torture in his apartment. Mijiash was killed several days earlier, her body found decomposing in a suitcase on Jutting’s apartment porch.
“My name is Rurik Jutting. About five minutes ago, I just killed, murdered this woman,” he is heard saying at one point. “It’s Monday night. I’ve held her captive since early Saturday. I’ve raped her repeatedly, I tortured her, tortured her badly …”I feel a bit sad because she was a good person, but I don’t really feel guilty,” Jutting is heard to say on the cellphone recording.
In court sentencing Tuesday, Judge Michael Stuart-Moore called the case “one of the most horrifying murder cases to ever come before the courts in Hong Kong,” adding that Jutting demonstrated “the very depths of depravity” during the killings. Stuart-Moore described the Cambridge-educated Jutting as an “archetypical sexual predator.”
“He described himself as evil and a monster and neither description is adequate to bring home the true horror of what he did to that woman.”
Jutting originally pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder, his defense arguing psychological issues affected his judgement, but eventually pleaded guilty to manslaughter charges. Prior to the incidents Jutting left a message on his automated email at work, “I am out of the office. Indefinitely. For urgent inquiries, or indeed any inquiries, please contact someone who is not an insane psychopath.”
At the sentencing hearing, Jutting apologized for the crimes, saying in a written statement read by his lawyer, “My actions were horrific even by the standards of homicide trials. The jury has delivered a verdict that I cannot and do not have any objection to. I remain haunted daily by my actions. The evil I have inflicted can never be remedied by me, neither words nor actions. I am sorry, I am sorry beyond words.”
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