Briton charged with two counts of murder in Hong Kong
Rurik Jutting, a 29-year-old British banker and Cambridge graduate, has appeared in a Hong Kong court after the bodies of two women were found in his apartment.
Wearing a black T-shirt and looking unshaven, Mr Jutting said “I do” when asked if he understood the charges against him. He will appear in court again on 10 November.
Mr Jutting called police and asked them to come to his luxury apartment in the Wan Chai district of Hong Kong in the early hours of Saturday morning. When they arrived, they found the body of a naked woman with cuts to her throat and buttock on the floor.
Later, police found another woman’s body, partially decapitated, hidden inside a suitcase on the apartment’s balcony. The two women are thought to have died days apart.
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The charge sheet at the hearing identified the woman in the suitcase as Sumarti Ningsih and said she had been killed on 27 October. The second woman, who was not identified, was killed on 1 November.
Email response
Martyn Richmond, Jutting’s duty lawyer, said his client had been denied contact with the British consulate and access to a solicitor of his choice prior to being interviewed.
Jutting had done up to seven police interviews over many hours, Richmond added.
Mr Jutting worked for Bank of America Merrill Lynch until around a week ago when he left his job.
An out-of-office email response on Mr Jutting’s account read: “I am out of the office. Indefinitely. For urgent enquiries, or indeed any enquiries, please contact someone who is not an insane psychopath. For escalation please contact God, though suspect the devil will have custody (Last line only really worked if I had followed through).”
According to a LinkedIn profile, Jutting moved to Hong Kong in July 2013. He worked at Barclays bank between June 2008 and June 2010.
According to people who were at Cambridge at the same time, Jutting attended Peterhouse, the oldest college, and was president of the Cambridge University History society. Prior to Cambridge he went to Winchester College, one of Britain’s most famous and oldest private schools.
Britain’s Foreign Office in London said on Saturday a British national had been arrested in Hong Kong, without specifying the nature of any suspected crime.