On this date in 2013, Li Xingpong, the former deputy Communist Party chief of Yongcheng city, Henan, was executed for a spree of child rapes.
He reportedly exploited his position to take advantage of a number of schoolgirls, and exploited his position to cover it up — growing so bold that he was finally arrested in May 2012 in flagrante delicto in front of a middle school. His hard drive yielded graphic firsthand records of his conquests.
Public fury predictably ensued, at least as measured by the online response. “Yet another great example of a party cadre,” cracked one wag on Weibo.
The execution certainly suited the anti-corruption line set by then-new President Xi Jinping, not to mention an announced commitment by the judiciary to chastise offenders against children.
On this day..
- 2014: Mahmoud Al Issawi, murderer of Laila Ghofran's daughter
- 1944: Seisaku Nakamura, Hamamatsu Deaf Killer
- 1985: Kent Bowers, the last hanged in Belize
- 1996: Daren Lee Bolton
- 1857: George Sharpe and John Johnson, Edwardsville murderers
- 1936: Arthur Gooch, the only execution under the Lindbergh Law
- 1699: Madame Tiquet, "nothing more beautiful"
- 1784: Jean Saint Malo, New Orleans Maroon
- 1937: Jan Sten, Stalin's tutor
- 1312: Piers Gaveston
- 1867: Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico, "Archdupe"
- 1953: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, "the first victims of American fascism"