On this date in 2011, China executed a karaoke bar proprietor in Zhejiang province for a rape spree.
Not to be confused with his documentary filmmaker countryman, Chen Weijun “targeted young innocent middle-school girls after seducing them with money and violently threatening them,” said the official report. “He raped 14 Lishui middle-school girls, including nine children, in cars, karaoke bars, hotels and underground parking lots.” (The legal definition of a “child” here is 14 years old, which is why some students were and some were not.)
The crimes occurred from 2007 to 2009, but the context of the execution itself was a whole spate of recent unsettling special-victims-unit stories … like the peasant who raped over 100 women, and the firefighter who kept six sex slaves in his basement dungeon.
On this day..
- 1883: Mampuru, Sekukuni rival
- 1635: The village of Mattau
- 1872: Thomas Camp, the first hanged in Gibson County
- 1946: Twice double executions around the U.S.
- 1613: Matthäus Enzlin, fallen favorite
- 1793: Jean-Jacques Ampère, father of a savant, for Joseph Chalier
- 1955: Six Beria men
- 1318: Mikhail of Tver
- Feast Day of St. Cecilia, patron of music
- 1895: Florence English and Amanda Cody
- 1538: John Lambert, "none but Christ"
- 1799: Judith van Dorth