Chinese serial killer 'arrested'

Xinhua news service has put the arrested killer's picture on their website

By Staff and wire reports

WUHAN, China -- A suspected serial killer wanted for the murder of at least 13 women over two years in central China has been arrested by police, official state media has reported.

Some of the women were sexually assaulted, but none of them was raped.

According to the Xinhua news agency women in Wuhan province -- where four of the murders took place -- cut their hair and stopped wearing red clothes after residents rumored the man had targeted women fitting that description.

The women were killed between April 1999 and June 2001, one of them after being stabbed more than 30 times.

Xinhuanet published the suspect's photo and named him as 28-year old Duan Guo-cheng.

It quoted police as saying Duan was an introvert who has never dated girls and has no hobby.

Alcoholic

It said he was an alcoholic and a gambler who had spent all of his adolescent life in prison for theft offences.

The agency quoted police as saying they believed his long isolation during his teenage years and his physical impotency might have led to his murderous rampage.

The first victim was a 24-year-old university student in Wuhan, who was stabbed several times with a large knife and had her wallet and keys stolen.

Over the following month the attacker killed three other women and seriously injured two others.

About a month later, he struck again, this time in the victim's home.

Amid what police said appeared to have been a massive struggle the girl was stabbed more than 30 times.

An investigator was quoted at the time as saying "he despises women -- the more they struggle the angrier he seems to get."