The New York Times reports that Gao, 52, led an apparently peaceful life: He once worked as a migrant laborer before opening a grocery store. The authorities then conducted a DNA test and found that the man was related to the killer they were looking for. He would follow them home, rape them, and kill them.
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His crimes were carried out between 1988 and 2002 and created panic in Baiyin, with many women afraid to go out alone. There was reportedly a pattern to the murders though, in that women who were wearing red were often the victims, and many were young (the youngest just 8) and lived alone.
A person answering the telephone at the Baiyin police station on Monday afternoon would not comment on the case, and no one could be reached at the Gansu provincial public security bureau.
The Y-chromosome can not be used to investigate female samples, but women and girls carry mitochondrial DNA, which carries genetic information passed from mother to daughter, hence useful for forensic investigation, said Li.
He would also mutilate the bodies of the victims, some as young as eight years old, leading to his being dubbed “China’s Jack the Ripper”. That provided a link to the killings and Gao’s DNA matched the murderer’s.
Police said Gao had confessed to the murders.
Yin Guoxing, a DNA expert, said Gao’s detention came after his uncle was put under house arrest in Baiyin over allegations of a minor crime.
Detectives screened his male relatives and identified Gao, a villager from Lanzhou, the provincial capital, as the prime suspect.
The Chinese news media reports that Gao eluded police for years because he’d managed to avoid having his fingerprints taken, usually a requirement for every citizen applying for a national ID card.
Cui Xiangping, whose sister Cui Jinping was stabbed 22 times by Gao in 1998, told Beijing News that he had believed the case would not be solved.
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Reconstructing one of the crime scenes, the Jack the Ripper Museum tries to transport visitors to some of the darkest chapters of the Victorian Age.
