His home is in one of the most expensive parts of Hong Kong, a city where property prices are among the highest in the world. It’s close enough to the coast for the former £350,000-a-year banker to feel a cooling breeze from the South China Sea.
Few ever complain about the free cuisine on offer to residents, with Chinese, Indian, Western and vegetarian options on the menu. In fact, the food is so good that many put on weight.
The living conditions are said to be among the best of their type in the world, with free board, electricity and air conditioning to cope with stifling summer heat.
British investment banker Rurik Jutting with young women in a ‘girlie bar’
It is here that the privately educated Cambridge graduate can often be found in his tiny ‘room’ or in the library, reading legal tomes as he acts as a de facto lawyer for fellow residents. His pro-bono work on their behalf has made him a particularly popular member of the community.
Welcome to maximum security Stanley Prison in Hong Kong, home of British sex killer Rurik Jutting, formerly of Cobham, Surrey, and probably the most dangerous man I have ever encountered in my long career – certainly in a courtroom setting.
There was a moment early in his trial at Hong Kong’s High Court when I was so appalled by the evidence I was reporting on that I put down my pencil and stared intently at the defendant sitting expressionless in the dock.
At the time, I had more than 20 years’ experience covering crime for the Mail, including the harrowing trials of serial killer Rosemary West and Soham murderer Ian Huntley, but had never heard anything as shocking.
The ex-financier was on trial for murdering two young Indonesian sex workers in the most horrific circumstances imaginable.
Jutting, charged with the grisly murders of two young Indonesian sex workers in the most horrific circumstances imaginable, smiles as he sits in a prison van leaving the eastern court in Hong Kong, 2014
I did not sense any shame or remorse. And then it dawned on me – he was probably enjoying reliving his crimes in court.
In the press gallery, a journalist was sobbing quietly as the court heard a recording Jutting had made on his iPhone of his gagged first victim in her final moments.
Her muffled cries could be heard against the incongruous sound of French electronic pop duo Daft Punk’s chart-topping hit, One More Time, which Jutting was playing in his flat at the time.
Death could not have come too soon for his victim.
Before she died, Jutting was heard saying: ‘Do you want me to hit you? If you say “Yes”, I hit you once. If you say “No”, I hit you twice. If you scream, I will punch you, you understand?’ The only sound that could be heard from his terrified victim was a muted squeal.
As the presiding judge would later observe, those present in court had ‘been made to dredge the very depths of depravity’ and that there were ‘insufficient superlatives’ to describe what Jutting did to the first woman he murdered.
High on cocaine, he tortured Sumarti Ningsih, 23, in his luxury Hong Kong apartment for three days before cutting her throat.
High on cocaine, he tortured Sumarti Ningsih, 23, in his luxury Hong Kong apartment for three days before cutting her throat
Jurors heard how Jutting took footage of the horrifying ordeal on his iPhone. He then filmed himself talking about the attack for several hours – describing how he had ‘enjoyed dominating the victim and killing her’.
What he intended to do to the second woman whose life he took, 26-year-old Seneng Mujiasih, was arguably more chilling.
His torture and murder kit included a hammer, nails, plastic cable ties, pliers, a Stanley knife, sandpaper, a gag, ropes and a blow torch.
Apart from being a cocaine addict, alcoholic and psychopath. He also had a sexual sadism disorder, a narcissistic personality disorder and was addicted to violent porn – was proof that murderers come from all backgrounds.
He had been given ‘every material advantage in life’, his trial heard, ‘starting with a very well-off family background and good education, leading to a job and salary which most people can only dream about’.
He got a scholarship at £51,000-a-year Winchester College in Hampshire – motto Manners Makyth Man – and went on to Peterhouse College, Cambridge.Photos of the time show a handsome, athletic young man who was secretary of an undergraduate history society and member of the lightweight rowing crew.
Yet the highly paid former Merrill Lynch banker was facing life in jail for two horrendous murders, which he boasted about in more than 40 videos he recorded before his arrest at his bachelor pad.
It is ten years (this autumn) since Jutting, then 29, butchered the two women. The dismembered body of his first victim, Miss Ningsih, was found in a suitcase on his balcony on the 31st floor of the J Residence tower. His second victim, Miss Mujiasih was found in the living room.
I travelled to the former British colony to report on the case in 2014 after Jutting’s arrest and got an exclusive interview with the psychopath’s ‘extremely lucky’ ex-girlfriend in the Philippines. She was a bar girl whom he’d met in Angeles City, a popular haunt of Western sex tourists.
I went back to Hong Kong two years later in 2016 to cover Jutting’s trial, where he denied murder and pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility – arguing that mental disorders had affected his behaviour.
His plea was not accepted by prosecutors, and so the most horrific evidence was made public.
His case appeared to confirm what locals have always believed: most gweilos (or foreign devils) in Hong Kong are crazy.
A decade on from Jutting’s crimes, it is time to reflect on the case. To try to understand his offences better, to investigate his new life in prison and to speak to those who’ve had dealings with him since he was jailed for life.
Can he ever be rehabilitated or returned to the UK to serve his sentence, as he wishes? And what has become of his victims’ families?
Jutting’s second victim Seneng Mujiasih, 26, was found dead in her living room
Hong Kong is a very different place today from the 2010s when Jutting arrived in the city and the economy, tourism and ‘Suzy Wong’ red light district were booming.
The recent clampdown on pro-democracy activists by the ‘motherland’ China and continuing fall-out from the pandemic has seen thousands of highly paid expatriates leave the territory. Tourism was well below pre-Covid levels. Jutting’s British lawyer in 2016, Michael Vidler, made a hasty exit two years ago.
Most of the ‘girlie bars’ such as Club Bunny and Cockeye, which used to line the notorious Lockhart Road in Wan Chai – where Jutting blew tens of thousands of pounds a week on cocaine and sex workers – have closed.
But one part of the city has not been so badly hit by the economic downturn – the prison population. In particular, Stanley Prison in the picturesque coastal town of Stanley on a peninsula on Hong Kong island.
It is here that Jutting – who speaks fluent Cantonese and likes to be known by his middle name ‘George’ as other inmates and staff have difficulty pronouncing Rurik – has been since his murder convictions in 2016.
Fellow prisoners have included notorious murderers, Triad gangsters, drug dealers and pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai, who is reportedly being held in solitary confinement.
Father John Wothorspoon, a prison chaplain in Hong Kong since 1995, first met Jutting after his 2014 arrest and has seen a different side to him, saying today he is ‘friendly and polite and kind’.
‘I did hear from more than one other prisoner that he had helped them with their cases, even successfully applying for appeal,’ he said.
He added: ‘Hong Kong prisons are among the best in the world, there’s no drugs, there’s virtually no violence.
‘So, from that angle, he’s in a good place compared to, say, if he was even in the UK, Australia, or America or much worse, in Africa or South America.
‘The food is good. In fact, a lot of overseas prisoners get fat in Hong Kong, people put on weight.’
Father Wothorspoon describes the facilities at the spotlessly clean Stanley jail as ‘excellent’.
‘All the prisoners have medical staff and psychologists. They can make a bit of money.
‘The only thing at the back of my mind… but something as serious as this, it almost makes me think, did he ever get involved in any satanism or anything like drugs?
‘It’s hard to understand why a person with that background would do such a thing,’ he added.
The priest urged me to write about the dangers of ‘getting into b****y drugs’, especially cocaine. ‘What happened to George, could happen if people put themselves in danger by using drugs.’
Jutting is thought to be living in an 80 ft sq single cell with a plastic bed, a plastic desk attached to the wall, a plastic chair, a sink and a stainless steel lavatory.
He wears brown prison clothes and is issued with one roll of toilet paper every three weeks, although he can buy extra with his earnings from menial work.
In an exclusive interview with the Mail, John Reading SC, the barrister who prosecuted Jutting, said members of his legal team were ‘very upset’ by the evidence police gathered against Jutting, including the murder video.
‘You know, he tortured the first victim over a period of several days and he’d video-taped bits and pieces of the torture…
‘I’ve been 40 years in Hong Kong, and it was probably the worst thing I’d ever seen. I know he had a problem with cocaine, and I think the problem probably commenced from when he had free rein, so far as obtaining cocaine.
‘He had a habit of visiting prostitutes, and the prostitutes used to provide him with the cocaine. But eventually, one of the prostitutes provided the details of her supplier and he then had access whenever he wanted it. And it was only then that he started to go downhill.’
Mr Reading revealed that in later police interviews Jutting ‘was pouring it all out, demonstrating in quite some detail how he killed.
Mr Reading added: ‘A lot of prisoners are turning up with grounds of appeal drafted by Jutting. And the judges now recognise the “Jutting style”, and they ask directly: “Were these grounds of appeal drafted by Mr Jutting, by any chance?”’
Mr Reading is in no doubt that the Cambridge graduate is wicked. In the run up to his trial, the psychopath admitted to a psychiatrist that he still had ‘sadistic fantasies’.
‘There had to be evil there in order to behave the way he did,’ said Mr Reading. ‘No right-thinking person, even most people affected by cocaine or alcohol, they might misbehave but not like this. This was terrible.’
Ten years have passed since Sumarti Ningsih was brutally murdered by Jutting.
For her parents in Indonesia, the pain of losing a daughter has been compounded by a decade of broken promises and financial struggles – in contrast to the killer’s seemingly stress-free life in jail.
In the quiet village of Gandrungmangu in Cilacap, a district in Central Java province, Ahmad Kaliman and Suratmi grapple with an enduring grief.
Their modest Javanese-style home is a testament to their simple life now.
His torture and murder kit included a hammer, nails, plastic cable ties, pliers, a Stanley knife, sandpaper, a gag, ropes and a blow torch
Suratmi, 65, tearfully recalled her daughter’s dedication to her family. ‘My daughter was the family’s breadwinner,’ Suratmi told the Mail, her eyes filled with tears. ‘After she was taken from us, our lives have been filled with nothing but grief and hardship.’
The Jutting murders shocked the world and brought attention to the stark contrasts between the lives of wealthy expatriates and vulnerable migrant workers in Hong Kong, who seek work driven by poverty and limited opportunities at home.
Ahmad added: ‘We have no objection to him [Jutting] being transferred to the UK or having his sentence reduced. Whether he’s transferred back or not, whether his sentence is reduced or not, just take responsibility.’
It is not only the victims’ families who have suffered from Jutting’s crimes.
His parents separated in the wake of his arrest, and his mother, who lives near London, did not respond to requests for comment from the Mail. The knowledge that you have brought a murderous monster into the world must be a heavy burden to bear.
Father Wothorspoon pauses for several seconds after I ask him whether it is possible for him to forgive Jutting for his crimes.
‘Well, that’s a very big question’ he says. ‘My heart goes out to the families of the people who are murdered and all the rest of it, but if we follow Bible teachings, somehow or other we must also show care for even the worst offenders.
‘And in my particular case, what motivates me more and more, is to try to stop this sort of thing from happening . . . while I feel great sympathy for the families of the victims and the victims themselves, and the jurors and the rest of it, I feel more and more angry at the way drugs are tearing apart the fabric of society.’
In 2016, the trial judge, Mr Justice Stuart-Moore was not in a forgiving mood when he said the words ‘evil’ and a ‘monster’ were inadequate to describe a man who committed crimes that were ‘almost beyond belief’ and cautioned the authorities not to fall for Jutting’s ‘superficial charm’.
‘No sex worker is safe from him if he is free to indulge his sexual cravings,’ the judge added: ‘This is one of those rare cases where a repetition of murder is highly likely if he ever gains his liberty in the future.
‘Given his sadistic and psychopathic traits he is considered to be a high-risk person to commit sex violence again.’
As someone who sat through his trial, I find it hard to disagree.
