China executed former truck driver Hua Ruizhuo for...

China executed former truck driver Hua Ruizhuo for killing 14 Beijing prostitutes over three years, the official Xinhua news agency said.
Hua, 28, confessed to the killing spree which spanned from July 1998 to June 2001, saying he did it after he found out his ex-girlfriend was a prostitute, state media have said.
Hua lured his victims to remote locations in the suburbs before strangling or bludgeoning them to death, and typically disposed of their bodies in wells or rubbish dumps.Another three persons were executed in Beijing and a further five in Zhengzhou in central China. An indeterminate number of convicts were put to death in Canton in southern China during a public rally, the Canton daily reported. The mass execution was aimed to "enable the public to celebrate the [Chinese] new year in total security," the daily said. China executes a large number of convicts before every public festivity to deter criminals and transmit a sense of security to the public.
Death sentences in China are typically carried out with a bullet to the back of the head, although the country's Supreme Court asked provincial and city courts in September 2001 to introduce lethal injection by the end of the year.