Rurik Jutting guilty of Hong Kong double murder

Rurik Jutting 'pleads not guilty' to Hong Kong murders

8 May

Rurik Jutting, the British investment banker accused of murdering two Indonesian women in Hong Kong, has indicated that he will not plead guilty to the charges.

He did not offer a formal plea during the hearing in Hong Kong, but when the magistrate asked: "I take it as not guilty?" he responded: "Correct". The case has now been sent to the High Court and his next hearing is expected to be in the next four to six weeks, AFP reports. Jutting faces life in prison if convicted.

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The Cambridge graduate appeared in court sporting the same black 'New York' T-shirt he wore at last three court appearances. "He also appeared noticeably thinner than when he was arrested last year," says the BBC.

The 29-year-old was charged with murder in November last year after police found the bodies of Seneng Mujiasih and Sumarti Ningsih in his apartment. One of the victims was found naked with her throat slashed, while a second body was discovered in a Chanel suitcase on Jutting's balcony.

He quit his job at Merrill Lynch days before the alleged murders, leaving an out-of-office voicemail saying: “For urgent inquiries, or indeed any inquiries, please contact someone who is not an insane psychopath".

Following extensive psychiatric tests, he was deemed mentally fit to stand trial last year.

Rurik Jutting ruled fit to stand trial for Hong Kong murders

24 November

The British banker accused of murdering two Indonesian women in Hong Kong has been found mentally fit to stand trial next year.

Rurik Jutting, 29, was charged with murder earlier this month after police found two bodies in his apartment. One had been put inside a suitcase and left on his balcony for days.

The next hearing has been set for 6 July 2015 after prosecutors said they would need several months to examine some 200 pieces of evidence, reports the South China Morning Post.

Judge Bina Chainrai said the hearing could be brought forward if needed.

Sporting a thick dark beard and the same 'New York' T-shirt as his last two court appearances, Jutting said he understood he would be held in custody until next year.

Jutting, who is yet to enter a plea, was forced to undergo a two-week psychiatric assessment at the maximum-security Siu Lam psychiatric centre.

He was pictured laughing and smiling in the back of a police van after leaving court earlier this month.

The accused had worked at Merrill Lynch, the wealth management division of Bank of America, in Hong Kong but left just days before the alleged murders.

On 1 November, he called police to his apartment in the Wan Chai district, where they found the body of Seneng Mujiasih on his living room floor with wounds to her throat and buttocks.

The decomposing corpse of a second woman, Sumatra Ningsih, was later discovered inside a Chanel suitcase on his balcony. She had sustained neck injuries and police believe she was killed on 27 October. Both women worked in the sex industry, according to local media.

Rurik Jutting: victim sent final message - 'I want to get out'

11 November

The second woman believed to have been killed by British banker Rurik Jutting sent a text message to a friend minutes before she died, saying: "Something smells really bad – I want to get out of here."

Seneng Mujiasih, thought to be around 30, was found dead on the living room floor of Jutting's Hong Kong apartment with wounds to her throat and buttocks on 1 November.

The decomposing corpse of a second woman, believed to have died five days earlier, was later discovered inside a Chanel suitcase on Jutting's balcony.

According to two witnesses, Jutting had brought Mujiasih, also known as Jesse Lorena, home from a nightclub called the New Makati Pub & Disco at sometime between 1.35am and 2.15am on the Saturday morning.

The Daily Telegraph says her final message was sent at 3.25am that morning, just 20 minutes before police arrived at the apartment in Hong Kong's Wan Chai district following a call from Jutting.

"It is not clear what 'smell' the victim was referring to or why exactly she wanted to leave the flat," says the Telegraph. "However, following Mr Jutting's arrest, residents of the 'J Residence' building where he lived complained of noticing a stench like a 'dead animal' in the corridors." Residents later learned the smell came from the first victim's decomposing body.

The first victim has been named as Sumatra Ningsih, 25. Her father has called for his daughter's murderer to face the death penalty.

Both woman are said to have been from Indonesia and working in the sex industry.

Jutting, a Cambridge-educated banker, has been ordered to undergo two psychiatric evaluations to determine his fitness to enter a plea.

The 29-year-old quit his job at Merrill Lynch days before the alleged murders, leaving an out-of-office message saying: "For urgent inquiries, or indeed any inquiries, please contact someone who is not an insane psychopath."

Rurik Jutting: British banker to undergo psychiatric evaluation

10 November

The British banker suspected of murdering two women in Hong Kong has been ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation in order to determine whether he is fit to stand trial.

Rurik Jutting appeared briefly in court for a pre-trial hearing and has now been remanded in custody for two weeks of psychiatric tests.

The 29-year old looked "bored, but calm", during the proceedings, the Daily Telegraph reports, only uttering the words "yes, madam" when asked if he understood the arrangements.

However, after leaving the court house, Jutting was pictured laughing and smiling in the back of a police van.

When asked about the mental state of his client Jutting's lawyer, Tim Parker, said: "We are not going to be commenting".

Police believe he was responsible for the brutal murder of two Indonesian women in his luxury apartment in the centre of Hong Kong. Jutting was arrested after police discovered the mutilated bodies of Seneng Mujiasih and Sumarti Ningsih.

Mujiasih was discovered with knife wounds to her neck and buttocks while Ningsih's body was found partially decapitated in a suitcase on Jutting's balcony.

The BBC's Hong Kong correspondent Juliana Liu believes that it could take "months or even years" for the case to reach a conclusion.

In a separate development, an Indonesian woman has come forward to report that Jutting invited her to his apartment on the night of the murders, but she rejected him.

Speaking anonymously to the Daily Telegraph, she said she turned him down because he was acting "strangely". She claims he was pacing around the busy nightclub, occasionally grabbing different women.

After she turned him down, Jutting is believed to have moved on to speak to Mujiasih, his alleged second victim.

The woman said she was shocked to hear of the deaths of the other two women. "I felt sad," she said. "I was lucky."

Rurik Jutting left glamour model for a new life in Hong Kong

5 November

The British banker charged with murdering two women in Hong Kong is believed to have had a long relationship with a glamour model known as "Sonya Milkshake" before leaving Britain.

The 29-year-old was arrested in the early hours of Saturday, the night of Halloween, after police found the bodies of two women, both believed to be sex workers, in his home in the city's Wan Chai district.

According to reports, he remained calm throughout a court appearance yesterday, drumming his fingers against his chest. He spoke only to confirm that he understood the charges against him. He declined to enter a plea and will be remanded in prison until 10 November.

More reports continue to emerge about his life in the UK, including a four-year relationship with a woman called Sonya Lorretta Dyer. She apparently lived with Jutting in his east London flat until shortly before he moved to Hong Kong last year.

Dyer has modelled for a number of publications described as "racy" by The Times and filmed a video for the men’s magazine CandyMagUK, in which she poured a milkshake over herself while wearing a bikini.

Before dating Dyer, Jutting had reportedly been engaged to a colleague at Barclays, says the Daily Telegraph. But the relationship came to an end when she allegedly kissed another man while seconded to New York.

Who is Rurik Jutting?

Jutting was born in London to an engineer father and a nursery teacher mother, the Daily Mail reports.

He grew up in a Grade-II listed house in Chertsey, Surrey, and attended Winchester College, an independent school for boys in Hampshire.

After high school, he studied law and history at Cambridge University's Peterhouse College in the mid-2000s. As well as being gifted academically, Jutting was a keen athlete – at university he was a member of both the lightweight rowing club and the cross-country running club.

A senior member of the university told the Daily Mail: "He was a bit of an action man, always on the move. I never heard about him getting into any serious trouble, so this comes as a real surprise."

After graduating, Jutting became a financier with Barclays bank, where he worked in a "controversial" division called Structured Capital Markets, the Daily Telegraph reports, which helped clients minimise their tax bills.

Jutting "enjoyed skiing holidays in Courchevel, the Alpine playground for the elite, and when in London he relaxed at a private members' club in Shoreditch," the Daily Mail says.

After leaving Barclays he began work at Merrill Lynch, the wealth management division of Bank of America, initially in London, then transferring to Hong Kong in July 2013.

Just days before the alleged murders, Jutting quit Merrill Lynch leaving a "chilling" out-of-office message.

The message read: "I am out of the office. Indefinitely. For urgent inquiries, or indeed any inquiries, please contact someone who is not an insane psychopath. For escalation please contact God, though suspect the devil will have custody (Last line only really worked if I had followed through)."

An ex-girlfriend of Jutting who asked to remain anonymous told Channel 4 News that Jutting suffered from depression during the time she went out with him.

"He's a perfectionist. He was always strict with other people. I understand that because he's from an educated family. We'd often see each other every Friday after he finished work. Every time we met he was always stressed because of work. He told me that he had financial problems and some issues with stuff. Last October he told me that he tried to kill himself. I think he tried to kill himself because he's under pressure with his job. He was depressed."

She added: "People who knew him thought he was a nice person, intelligent and smart … I really don't have any idea why he'd do something like that."

According to the Wall Street Journal, Hong Kong regulators cancelled Jutting's trading permits on the day he allegedly killed the first of two women, although there is no suggestion that this was linked to the alleged crimes. The newspaper also describes him as a "competitive poker player".

The Times says Jutting had hired a British-based headhunting company to seek other positions at banks in Hong Kong in the weeks before the bodies were discovered. However, he abruptly cut off his dealings with them on the same day that he left Merrill Lynch, allegedly telling the headhunting company that "something big" had happened in his life.

Rurik Jutting: British banker charged with 'American Psycho' murders

3 November

British banker Rurik Jutting has been charged with the murder of two sex workers in his luxury Hong Kong apartment.

The 29-year-old former Cambridge student was arrested in the early hours of Saturday, the night of Halloween, after calling police to his home in the city's Wan Chai district.

Officers discovered the naked body of an Indonesian woman whose throat had been slashed. She was pronounced dead at the scene and hours later police found a second body in a Chanel suitcase on Jutting's balcony, where it had been decomposing in the heat for an estimated four or five days.

The two women are believed to be of Indonesian origin and worked in the sex trade. The first was identified locally as a 30-year-old known as "Jesse". The second, whose head was almost completely severed from her body, was identified in court documents as 25-year-old Ningsih Sumarti.

Local media claim that detectives also found 2,000 images of dead bodies on the suspect's phone, including photographs of women's genitals and an almost severed head. Police also reportedly seized weapons, including a large knife and a small quantity of cocaine.

Newspapers, including the Daily Telegraph, are comparing the reported crime scene to Bret Easton Ellis' book American Psycho, in which a Wall Street investment banker goes on a killing spree.

Jutting, who grew up in Surrey and studied history at Peterhouse, Cambridge, had worked for Bank of America Merrill Lynch, where he was paid a six-figure salary, reports The Times.

He is believed to have transferred from the bank's London offices to Hong Kong in July last year, but resigned about a week ago.

Bloomberg News says he left an automated email response saying: "I am out of the office. Indefinitely. For urgent enquiries, or indeed any enquiries, please contact someone who is not an insane psychopath. For escalation please contact God, though suspect the devil will have custody [Last line only really worked if I had followed through]."

Murders are rare in Hong Kong. According to the police, there were just 14 homicides between January and July, down from 56 over the same time period in 2013.