On this date in 1995, Nie Shubin was shot in the back of the head in Hebei Province for the rape and murder of a woman in Zhang Ying village.
According to a 1994 newspaper report (.pdf) supplied by the authorities,
After a week of skillful interrogation, including psychological warfare and gathering evidence, police officers made a breakthrough. On September 29, this vicious criminal finally confessed to having raped and murdered the victim. On August 5, while loitering around Zhang Ying village, he stole a shirt and then walked to the vicinity of the Xinhua Road police station, where he saw Ms. Kang ride her bicycle into a corn-field path. He went after her, knocked her off her bike, dragged her into the field, beat her unconscious and raped her. He then used the shirt to strangle her to death.
Sounds pretty definitive, even if they did have to beat it out of him. A confession is a confession, after all.
In 2005, another man admitted to the murder, reportedly supplying persuasive crime scene details to boot.
Nie Shubin’s parents — who had complied with China’s one-child policy — have unsurprisingly been devastated by the loss of their only son, which they learned about the day after his execution when the boy’s father attempted to deliver a care package to the prison.
“All my hopes,” said the mother, “rested with him.”
Update: As of late 2011, the poor mother is still fighting to formally exonerate her executed son.
On this day..
- 1663: Gustav Skytte, pirate
- 1877: James Singleton, Beeville character
- 1827: Joseph Sollis, the sheriff unmanned
- 1896: Carl Feigenbaum, the Ripper abroad?
- 1803: Michael Ely, personator
- 1889: The first executions in French-occupied Tunis
- 1883: Henry De Bosnys, bane of Elizabeths
- 1940: Wilhelm Kusserow, Jehovah's Witness
- 1945: German soldiers for cowardice
- 1649: Robert Lockyer, Leveller
- 1792: Jacob Johan Anckarström, assassin of Gustav III
- 1733: William Gordon, almost cheating death
The Communist party of China is just a gang of thugs and has always been a gang of thugs from Mao to the present. Their idea of law and order is whats good for the party is the law. What does it matter if a few million die (Famine) as long as the party survives. It’s a wonder we even know that he was executed as executions are a state secret in that world. I wonder if Shubin had fallen foul of some petty bureaucrat and paid the price. That’s not unknown in the enlightened society of China.
Pingback: ExecutedToday.com » 10 executions that defined the 2000s