Fa Ziying

Fa Ziying (1 October 1964 – 28 December 1999) and Lao Rongzhi (12 December 1974 – 18 December 2023) were a pair of Chinese serial killers, con artists, and robbers born in Jiujiang, Jiangxi.

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 an auto rickshaw driver, 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 7 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 and thus last to be born, hence the nickname "Fa Seventh-Eldest".

Compared with several of his siblings who worked in the business department, Fa Ziying did not like to read, 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 the junior football team.

Lao Rongzhi was born on 12 December 1974 (the date of birth registered in the household registration is 25 December) in Jiujiang City, Jiangxi Province.

Both parents are originally from Huanggang, Hubei.

The Lao family worked for the Jiujiang Petroleum Branch in Xunyang District and lived on company premises in the Petroleum Family Home on Binjiang East Road.

Her father was a security guard in charge of the oil depot while her mother was a family worker of the Jiujiang Petroleum Branch.

Fa also made up a convoluted backstory for himself, claiming to be have been orphaned during the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, then raised by an elderly man in Zhejiang who took him out to participate in poaching in Tibet before being abducted and taken to Hefei against his will.

After confirming his alias was fake and positively identifiying him as Fa Ziying after matching his fingerprints, they demanded to know the location of Lao Rongzhi, who had since been linked to all of Fa Ziying's murders, but refused to aid them in any way.

When Fa was informed about the discovery of his latest victims' bodies and the manhunt for Lao, Fa confessed to the seven murders and admitted to committing the murders while accompanied by Lao.

Fa reportedly confessed that he had strangled Yin before he went to collect the ransom.

However, an autopsy determined that Yin died on July 24, a day after Fa had already been taken into custory and furthermore, transcripts show that Fa wouldn't provide details about the murder, stating that he killed Yin "whenever the prosecutor says I did" and when he was asked what weapon he used, Fa shrugged and said "a knife, a rope, anything really".

His death was officially attributed to Fa by the Nanchang Intermediate People's Court.

At his trial, Fa retracted his confession, stating that he acted alone and now claimed that he had acted as a hitman for an underground organization from Taiwan and that he robbed people only so he could give their belongings to the poor later on.

The prosecution rejected this claim, pointing out that, besides the lack of evidence for this, his self-professed righteousness did not match up with his murder of a toddler and needless beheading of a working class carpenter.

In 1977, Fa Ziying's father died in an accident while swimming in the Yangtze River.

Later, his mother suffered a car accident which left her paralyzed from the waist-down.

Fa returned to school the same year and completed secondary education, graduating from junior high school in 1979 and briefly held an apprenticeship at the local power plant.

In 1981, Fa Ziying was sentenced to eight years of labor re-education for armed robbery, assault, and hooliganism, but ended up being released three years later when his sentenced was commuted.

In 1985, he was sentenced to ten years in prison by the Jiujiang Intermediate People's Court after another conviction for robbery and intentional injury, but was again released early in 1989.

Following his release, Fa Ziying began legitimate work as a business owner and married a woman surnamed Miao in 1990, having a daughter with her in 1991.

Less than two years into the marriage, he and his wife agreed to divorce.

Miao changed her mind midway as she concluded that divorce would be "dishonorable", cancelling the divorce procedures, and instead opting for marital separation.

Fa Ziying paid his wife 8,500 yuan in compensation and moved out of the house they shared.

During his interrogation, Fa was generally unhelpful, initially giving the false name Ye Weiming, refusing to reveal the location of Yin, and never indicating that he had a partner, despite having referred to one in the ransom note.

When asked about this detail, Fa claimed that there were several accomplices and that he had agreed to meet with them later that day at the hotel he stayed.

Police sent a patrol out to the hotel, but no accomplices turned up.

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 were 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 and subsequently sentenced to death, deprived of political rights for life, and fined 100,000 yuan, the same amount stolen in total from the pair's victims, by the Hefei Intermediate People's Court.

On 28 December 1999, Fa was executed by being shot.

Lao, who had been on the run since 1999, was captured and arrested on 28 November 2019 in Xiamen, Fujian.

Lao appealed in court, and the trial opened at the Jiangxi Provincial Higher People's Court on 28 August 2019, and announced in November 2019 of the same year that the death sentence was upheld.

Although Lao admitted to being an accomplice to Fa, she claimed to have only done so in fear of her own life, as Fa had physically and sexually abused her throughout their relationship.

On 9 September 2021, she was sentenced to death by the Nanchang Intermediate People's Court for her deliberate crimes that she had committed.

On 18 December 2023, upon the endorsement from the Supreme People's Court, Lao was executed.