Between 1996 and 1999, after becoming a romantic couple, Fa and Lao committed a series of crimes, including kidnapping, robbery, and murder in Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Anhui.
Fa was arrested on 23 July 1999 when a ransom handoff was interrupted by police and subsequently sentenced to death, deprived of political rights for life, and fined 20,000 yuan,[1] by the Hefei Intermediate People's Court.
Lao Rongzhi lured wealthy men to hotel rooms, where Fa Ziying would pose as her husband, violently rob the victims, and make off with hush money sums ranging from 70,000 to 80,000 yuan.
[5] Fa Ziying confessed to kidnappings in multiple cities, including Guangzhou, Changzhou, Nanning, Xiamen, Dongying, and Huangmei.
However, due to insufficient evidence beyond his own confession and the technological limitations of the time, these additional crimes were not included in the final judgment.
In the night club Lao met a customer Xiong Qiyi, a 35-year-old general manager of an air conditioning sales company who also ran a hotel.
Fa further intimidated Zhang and her daughter by showing off two plastic bags that contained, among other body parts, her husband's severed head.
The rest of Xiong's remains were discovered two days later when neighbours noticed a rotten smell emanating from two black trash bags by the community dumpster.
On 29 July, Nanchang Municipal Public Security Bureau of opened a robbery and homicide investigation, eventually identifying Fa and Lao as the perpetrators, issued a wanted notice for them on 18 August that same year.
[7][9][10] After spending over a year wandering across East China, typically staying for no longer than 10 days at a time in each city, financing themselves through the adultery scams, Fa and Lao settled in Wenzhou in early October 1997.
[7] At Lao's suggestion, the duo decided to rob 22-year-old Liang Xiaochun (梁晓春), another escort girl working at the KTV club.
Unsatisfied with the loot, Fa forced Liang to call over another woman, 29-year-old Liu Suqing (刘素清), who was a forewoman at the KTV club.
[7] Fa Ziying's verdict stated that after Lao Rongzhi successfully withdrew the money, she called him, and he immediately strangled both Liang and Liu using an electric wire and a belt.
Lau Rongzhi worked as an escort at the Royal Ballroom near Tongji Bridge in Changzhou, where she met Liu, the owner of an auto repair shop.
According to Fa's defense attorney later, Yin was not actually wealthy and had to pretend to be affluent in social settings to maintain his company's business.
Yin, however, proved defiant and refused to cooperate with his captors, even after Fa reveals that he had done this before and killed people, brushing this off as a lie, believing him to not be capable of murder.
To prove they were not bluffing, Fa went out on the street and convinced a 33-year old carpenter named Lu Zhongming (陆中明), to come to their apartment to fix a window.
[16] At 11:00 a.m., after hours of negotiations failed, tear gas was deployed, leading to Fa exiting the flat and opening fire upon the police officers.
[7][18][19][20][21] Fa Ziying was born on 1 October 1964, in Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province, (his ancestral home is in Henan, and his family lives in Xunyang District).
The family lived next door to the block's public toilet, the area of the house having been only about 30 square meters, and they had to collect cinder and waste wood to maintain heating every winter.
In 1989, after graduating from junior high school with excellent grades, Lao Rongzhi was admitted to Jiujiang Normal College to be trained as a future preschool teacher.
During his interrogation, Fa gave the police a false name Ye Weiming, he also made up a convoluted backstory for himself, claiming to have been orphaned during the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, then raised by an elderly man in Jiangshan, Zhejiang.
[31] The Hefei Intermediate People's Court sentenced Fa Ziying to deaths separately for kidnapping, intentional homicide, and robbery.
Fa's final visitation was instead with one of his assigned public defenders, Yu Xi (俞晞), to whom he confessed all the murders once again, as well as several gun charges and associated thefts he committed in Huangmei, Chongqing, and Yunnan.
By 2016, Lao settled in Siming, Xiamen, presenting herself as being from Nanjing, and took up work as a waitress at a night club as Xue Li (a transliteration of an English name, Sherry).
[33] On 13 June 2019, in order to ensure the smooth progress of the celebration of 70th anniversary of the National Day, the Ministry of Public Security of China deployed the "Cloud Sword Operation" to combat crimes using scientific and technological means.
On 27 November, the big data analysis of the Siming police showed that the woman in a photo has a 97.33% similarity to the wanted criminal Lao Rongzhi.
[46] Lao Rongzhi's defense attorney argued that she was a minor participant in the crimes, took the lead in confessing to the Changzhou kdinapping and robbery, demonstrated active rehabilitation efforts, maintained a clean criminal record for two decades prior to her arrest, expressed genuine remorse, and willing to compensate the victims' families.
On 29 April 2022, Lao's defense lawyer received a notice stating that the court had decided to suspend the second-instance trial due to "irresistible forces".
[50] On 30 November 2022, the Jiangxi Provincial Higher People's Court issued a second-instance judgment, announcing that the appeal was rejected and the original death penalty verdict was upheld.