Murder suspect held ‘sex-and-drugs’ parties

Rurik George Caton Jutting, a British banker charged with two counts of murder, sits in a prison van as he leaves the Eastern Law Court in Hong Kong. Picture: Tyrone Siu

Rurik George Caton Jutting, a British banker charged with two counts of murder, sits in a prison van as he leaves the Eastern Law Court in Hong Kong. Picture: Tyrone Siu

Published Nov 4, 2014

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Hong Kong -

The vice girl found almost beheaded in a suitcase in British banker Rurik Jutting’s flat was “booked for £1 000” for the evening, her friends said on Monday night.

Cambridge-educated high-roller Jutting was also allegedly spotted arguing with and “strangling” the second victim in a seedy Hong Kong street on Halloween night.

This was just hours before her throat was slashed in his apartment.

As the 29-year-old Merrill Lynch trader appeared in a Hong Kong court charged with two murders, police were widening their inquiries to the Philippines, where Jutting was seen visiting the “sex capital” city of Angeles.

Detectives are investigating whether there are other victims after hundreds of macabre pictures were allegedly found on Jutting’s smartphone in a folder named “Yan corpse photos”.

The self-confessed “insane psychopath” - said to lavish up to £10 000 a night on call-girls - quit his job in Hong Kong days before the two prostitutes were found butchered in his high-rise apartment close to the Wan Chai red light district.

On Monday night a friend of the women told the Mail: “He is rich but he’s a mean guy. He never liked to pay the girls, not even their taxi fares. He would argue and slap the girls.”

Five days ago, the 25-year-old escort who ended up in a suitcase, Sumarti Ningsih, from Indonesia, told the friend: “I am going to meet a man who booked me for HK$12 000 (£1 000).”

Police found her body stuffed into the black suitcase on Jutting’s balcony. She was “nearly decapitated” and had been there for up to five days, they said.

The second victim, 32-year-old Jesse Lorena Ruri, was found dying with her throat slashed and stab wounds to her buttocks.

Jutting, a former pupil of £34 000-a-year Winchester College in Hampshire, called police himself.

Earlier, he was spotted allegedly “strangling” Jesse outside New Mekati nightclub in the heart of the red light zone.

A girl called Lynn who works in a nearby bar said: “He was having an argument with Jesse in the street. He strangled the girl.

“We saw Rurik every single night walking up and down this street.”

Another friend of Sumarti claimed: “Rurik liked to pick up 10 or 11 girls at a time and often had huge drug-fuelled sex parties at his flat in J Residence in Wan Chai. The girls, from Philippines and Indonesia, would also take drugs.

“He would pay each girl around HK$11 000 (£880) for the whole night, so in total it would cost him about HK$121 000 (£10 000) per party. Sometimes the parties would last two or three days.”

Jutting was “pre-occupied with power and money” and liked going out and buying tables at private members clubs, an associate said.

A chilling “out of office reply” set up on Jutting’s bank email responded to anyone who emailed him with the message: “I am out of the office. Indefinitely. For urgent enquiries, or indeed any enquiries, please contact someone who is not an insane psychopath.”

Jutting was unshaven and dressed in a black T-shirt when he appeared at Hong Kong’s Eastern magistrate’s court on Monday, replying “I do” when asked whether he understood the charges. He declined to enter a plea and was remanded until November 10. His lawyer Martyn Richmond said Jutting had been interrogated “six or seven times at length” and that he “may well” take part in a video reconstruction at the alleged crime scene at his flat, a common practice in Hong Kong, on Friday.

Police are widening the investigation to the Philippines. It is understood Interpol and British police are liaising with law enforcement officials in Hong Kong in an effort to piece together his movements.

Robert van den Bosch, 47, of the Queen Victoria pub in Wan Chai, said “well informed sources” had told him that the murder suspect had regularly been to Angeles City, where prostitutes cost a fraction of the rate charged in Hong Kong.

Police are expected to look at the travel movements of Jutting throughout his two years working in the Far East. Manila, Bangkok and the former Portuguese colony Macau are other popular destinations of sex-hungry expatriates.

Sumarti, the suitcase victim, had only been in Hong Kong a month, having travelled from her home in Indonesia to seek a better life - and earn enough money to send back to her family in Cilacap, on the island of Java. She was described as a “small and quiet” girl.

The 32-year-old victim, Jesse Lorena - real name Seneng Mujiasih - had been in Hong Kong for eight years after leaving her home on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.

Van den Bosch, who knew her too, said: “Jesse said ‘I’m going to have fun. I’m going to a Halloween party’. Those really were the last words. She was nice, normal, she didn’t use drugs. And her life comes to an end like this. It is just crazy, really crazy.

He said she had been sending money back to Indonesia where she was building a house.

He added: “The terrible thing is that her house in Indonesia was just finished and she said she would leave Hong Kong and go back to Indonesia to enjoy life.”

Daily Mail

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