Fa Ziying (; 1 October 1964 – 28 December 1999) and Lao Rongzhi (; 25 December 1974 – 18 December 2023) were a pair of Chinese serial killers, con artists, and robbers born in Jiujiang, Jiangxi. Fa and Lao met first at a friend's wedding in 1993. Between 1996 and 1999, after becoming a romantic couple, Fa and Lao committed a series of crimes, including kidnapping, robbery, and murder in Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Anhui. A total of seven people were killed and a total of over 100,000 yuan was stolen by the couple (roughly ¥30,000 through property theft and ¥70,000 through kidnapping ransom).
Fa was arrested on 23 July 1999 when a ransom handoff was interrupted by police. He was subsequently sentenced to death, deprived of political rights for life, and fined 20,000 yuan by the Hefei Intermediate People's Court. On 28 December 1999, Fa was executed by firing squad.
Lao, who had been on the run since 1999, was captured and arrested on 28 November 2019 in Xiamen. She was sentenced to death in September 2021 by the Nanchang Intermediate People's Court for intentional homicide, kidnapping, and robbery. She was also stripped of her political rights for life and had all of her personal property confiscated. Although Lao admitted to being an accomplice to Fa, she claimed to have only done so in fear of losing her own life, as Fa had physically and sexually abused her throughout their relationship. She appealed her conviction in court, though a second trial in August 2022 upheld the death sentence. Lao was executed on 18 December 2023 with the approval of the Supreme People's Court.
Early life events before crime Fa Ziying
Fa Ziying was born on 1 October 1964, in Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province, (his ancestral home is in Henan, and his family lives in Xunyang District). Some reports say that the Fa family had been formerly wealthy, but by the time of his birth, Fa Ziying's family was poor. His father worked as a cart puller, delivering goods to local markets, and his mother was a tea saleswoman. The family lived next door to the block's public toilet, the area of the house having been only about 30 square meters, and they had to collect cinder and waste wood to maintain heating every winter. His parents had four sons and three daughters, and Fa Ziying was the youngest.
Fa Ziying had very poor academic performance, and dropped out after three years of primary school, but he liked to play football and was the captain of a junior football team. In 1979, Fa Ziying's father drowned while swimming in Yangtze River. Later, his mother suffered a car accident that left her with sequelae in her waist. Fa was sentenced 3 years labor reeducation for robbery when he was 15. In 1981, Fa was sentenced 8 years in jail for armed robbery and intentional injury by Jiujiang Intermediate People's Court. Following his release, Fa Ziying started a business owner and married a woman surnamed Miao in 1990, had a daughter with her in 1991. Less than two years into the marriage, he and his wife agreed to divorce.
Lao Rongzhi
Lao Rongzhi was born on 25 December 1974 in Jiujiang City, Jiangxi Province. Both her parents are originally from Huangmei, Hubei, and they worked for SINOPEC Jiujiang Company. Lao's father was a security guard of the oil depot while her mother was a family worker for the company. Lao Rongzhi was the youngest of five siblings. In 1989, after graduating from junior high school with excellent grades, Lao Rongzhi was admitted to Jiujiang Normal College to be trained as a future preschool teacher. She graduated from Jiujiang Normal School in 1992 and became a primary school Chinese language teacher in the school of the Jiujiang Company.
In 1993, while still working at the primary school, Lao Rongzhi met Fa Ziying. According to Lao Rongzhi's testimony in her second trial, she met Fa Ziying, who then owned a company, through a friend. Lao was aware of Fa's criminal past and that had served a prison sentence for fighting, but the two still began dating. Once on a date which was too late for her to go home, she was raped by Fa and became pregnant. Afterwards, Fa induced her to take a medicated abortion. After the abortion, she was raped by Fa again, resulting in another pregnancy four months later; this time, she had an abortion accompanied by Fa's sister.
The school Lao worked for was declining, it was rumored that the primary school was about to be discontinued, and the faculty would be assigned jobs at gas stations, which made Lao Rongzhi feel depressed. After teaching for about two years, Lao resigned. According to her brother, it was around this time she said she's going to do business with Fa Ziying. The family disagreed, and she even had a quarrel with her mother over this. In the end, her family allowed her to leave. During her second trial, Lao Rongzhi flatly denied that she and Fa Ziying were in a relationship, saying that she was "controlled and coerced" by Fa Ziying and that she was "mentally distracted" when they were together.
Lao Rongzhi said at the first instance that she left Jiujiang with Fa Ziying in May 1995 with 6,000 yuan, and they went to Shenzhen and Shanghai to start a business. The venture was unsuccessful and they soon ran out of money. They returned to Jiujiang in December 1995 where they stayed until late February, just after the Chinese New Year, when they left once more, marking the beginning of their crime spree. According to Lao, while in Shenzhen, their living expenses were high, about 200 yuan per day, but they had no stable source of income. Due to the lack of money, Lao began working as escort to make money, and she also looked for robbery targets along the way.
Crimes The prosecution accused Fa Ziying of kidnapping, robbery, and intentional homicide in Nanchang, Wenzhou, and Hefei. When Lao Rongzhi was tried, the prosecution added the kidnapping and robbery case in Changzhou to the list of cases. According to the trial, before the Nanchang murder, the duo had engaged in a string of crimes involving a "honey trap" scheme. Lao Rongzhi lured wealthy men to hotel rooms, where Fa Ziying would pose as her husband, violently rob the victims, and make off with hush money sums ranging from 70,000 to 80,000 yuan. Fa Ziying confessed to kidnappings in multiple cities, including Guangzhou, Changzhou, Nanning, Xiamen, Dongying, and Huangmei. During his final meeting with his defense lawyer, he admitted to additional crimes. However, due to insufficient evidence beyond his own confession and the technological limitations of the time, these additional crimes were not included in the final judgment.
Nanchang murder case Fa and Lao came to Nanchang in May 1996, where Lao rented an apartment with the identity card stolen from a Shenzhen woman named Chen Jia, and she began working as an escort in a night club. In the night club Lao met a customer Xiong Qiyi (熊启义), a 35-year-old general manager of an air conditioning sales company who also ran a hotel. According to Fa Ziying's verdict, Lao Rongzhi identified Xiong Qiyi as a kidnapping target, and Fa Ziying followed Xiong Qiyi home but without further actions. On the morning of 28 July, Lao Rongzhi called to lure Xiong Qiyi to her apartment, where Fa Ziying appeared holding a knife and tied up Xiong with ropes, then robbed him of his watch, jewelry, and other valuables. Fa forced him to divulge his address before strangling him to death with a wire and dismembering his body, packing it up into four trash bags.
At the same night, they went to Xiong's home and gained access using Xiong's keys. Xiong's wife, 28-year-old Zhang Li (张莉), and their three-year-old daughter Xiong Lingxuan (熊灵璇) were asleep. Fa awoke both, robbed Zhang at knifepoint, then tied them up as he ransacked the apartment for the next hours, leaving Lao to keep watch. Fa further intimidated Zhang and her daughter by showing off two plastic bags that contained, among other body parts, her husband's severed head. Afterwards, Fa fatally strangled both Zhang and her daughter with a belt. Their corpses were left in a bathtub along with Xiong's body parts. According to the appraisal, Fa Ziying and Lao Rongzhi robbed the victims of valuables worth 30,274 yuan, 8,090 yuan, 110 Hong Kong dollars, and 10 US dollars in cash, 1,000 yuan worth of Jiangxi Post and Telecommunications Enterprise bonds, 1,000 yuan worth of Nanchang Telecommunications Bureau fundraising receipts, and a 95,000 yuan worth certificate of deposit. The rest of Xiong's remains were discovered two days later when neighbours noticed a rotten smell emanating from two black trash bags by the community dumpster. On 29 July, Nanchang Municipal Public Security Bureau of opened a robbery and homicide investigation, eventually identifying Fa and Lao as the perpetrators, issued a wanted notice for them on 18 August that same year.
Wenzhou murder case After spending over a year wandering across East China, typically staying for no longer than 10 days at a time in each city, financing themselves through the adultery scams, Fa and Lao settled in Wenzhou in early October 1997. Lao worked at a KTV club as an escort with a stage name "Gege" and claimed to be from Sichuan. At Lao's suggestion, the duo decided to rob 22-year-old Liang Xiaochun (梁晓春), another escort girl working at the KTV club. Lao believed Liang to be well-off after she saw her wearing an Omega wrist watch to work. They accessed Liang's apartment by pretending to be interested in renting out the place, at which point Fa took her at knifepoint and searched her apartment for valuables. Unsatisfied with the loot, Fa forced Liang to call over another woman, 29-year-old Liu Suqing (刘素清), who was a forewoman at the KTV club. Upon Liu's arrival, Fa forced her to hand over a thousand yuan in cash and a 25,000 yuan deposit slip. He then tied her up with an electric wire. Following Fa 's instructions, Lao took Liu's phone and deposit slip to the bank to withdraw money. According to reports, the bank teller knows Liu Suqing and inquired why Lao Rongzhi, not Liu herself, was withdrawing the money. Lao replied that she was borrowing money from Liu. The teller did not stop her. Lao withdrew the entire 25,750 yuan from the account and signed Liu Suqing's name. Fa Ziying's verdict stated that after Lao Rongzhi successfully withdrew the money, she called him, and he immediately strangled both Liang and Liu using an electric wire and a belt. Fa Ziying took an Omega watch, a Rado watch, a mobile phone, and a pager from the two victims.
They left Wenzhou the same day by long-distance bus. Only a few hours later, Liang's phone was called several times by her boyfriend, identified by his surname Li. Lao eventually picked up, hoping to placate him with a cover story. Li immediately noted that Lao answered the call in Mandarin Chinese rather than Wenzhou dialect, yet still claimed to be an old friend of Liang, who never left Wenzhou in her whole life, and grew even more suspicious when Lao, unaware of who Li was, claimed that Liang went on a trip with her boyfriend. On 12 October, Li entered Liang's apartment by climbing over the balcony from a neighbour's room, where he discovered the bodies of the two women. Police detectives matched Fa Ziying's fingerprints on the electric mosquito repeller of which the wire was used to tie up the victims.
Changzhou kidnapping and robbery case