On this date in 2014, China executed a man named Li Hao “for keeping six women in a dungeon as sex slaves and killing two of them,” per CNN’s gloss on Xinhua reports.

A Luoyang government clerk, this Gary Heidnik-like monster turned his basement into a cramped prison where he held six women lured into his clutches from nightclubs and karaoke bars. All were subjected to rape and forced prostitution; two he eventually forced their fellow-inmates to murder.* His spree ended only when one of his captives managed to escape and take the report to police — whose failure to have detected the predator earlier became a public scandal.

“The victims ranged from about 16 to 23 in age, and one who was 20 at the time of kidnap became pregnant,” according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Their lengths of captivity in Li Hao’s personal hell ranged from two months to nearly two years.

* Three of the women Li kidnapped were also convicted of murder. In view of their coercion, they received light sentences (three years for one of them; probation for two others). While this is certainly preferable to execution, there was also understandable protest about victims in such a desperate and traumatic circumstance being prosecuted at all.

On this day..

• 1867: Ciosi and Agostini, at the Polygone of Vincennes
• 1716: Stefan Cantacuzino, Wallachian prince
• 1876: Marshall Crain, Bloody Williamson killer
• Daily Double: Saddam Hussein crushes a coup
• 1970: Twenty-two in Baghdad
• 1932: Two-Gun Crowley
• Feast Day of Saint Agnes
• 1535: Six Protestants for the Affair of the Placards
• 1880: Daniel Searles, the first hanging in Tioga County
• 1943: Hemu Kalani, Sindh revolutionary
• 1670: Claude Duval, gentleman highwayman
• 2001: Larry Keith Robison
• 1793: Louis XVI