Ex-Cambridge student Rurik Jutting locked up for life over double murder

Cambridge alumnus Rurik Jutting has been found guilty of the murder of two Indonesian women in Hong Kong.

The ex-history and law student graduated from Peterhouse in 2008.

While at Cambridge, Jutting was a member of the lightweight rowing club and the cross-country club, as well as the secretary of Clio – the History Society. An anonymous Peterhouse fellow told the BBC he was “ambitious, a keen athlete, committed to his studies and from a stable Catholic background”.

Jutting got a first in History, but only managed a 2:1 in Law. He was disappointed and challenged the examiner according to forensic psychiatrist Dr Richard Latham. He told the court how Jutting refused to accept he only got a second class honours degree in law from Cambridge University.

Rather than blame himself, Jutting insisted the examiners were too stupid to understand him. A symptom of narcissistic personality disorder is not wanting to show any weakness.

Jutting was a part of the Peterhouse rowing team

Educated at Winchester College, Jutting originally worked for Barclays and then Merrill Lynch. While in London, he spent his spare time at an exclusive private members’ club in Shoreditch. He moved to Hong Kong in 2013 where the court was told that his life descended into drugs, drink and sex workers. Apparently, he traded the private members’ clubs for less-exclusive lap dancing clubs.

The mutilated bodies of two Indonesian women, Sumarti Ningsih and Jesse Lorena, were found in his apartment in 2014, alongside a foot-long knife, sex toys and cocaine.

One woman had had her throat slit and the other – murdered days earlier – was rotting in a suitcase, tied up and nearly decapitated.

The case has attracted huge attention in Hong Kong

Both had various other cuts and lacerations from being tied up and tortured – his first victim was tormented with his belt, pliers, sex toys and his hands for three days.

The banker, who was 29 at the time, later told police that his second victim “was simply, the word I’d use is prey. I was hunting for prey and she was unfortunately the person who was hunted”

The banker put on weight after spending his days binging, drinking and playing video games

The night of the murders, Rurik Jutting had updated his Facebook status, saying “money does buy happiness”. Police found selfies the ex-Cantab had taken with the corpses on his phone and a video confessing to the murder.

After the murder, he changed the out-of-office message from his work email to: “I am out of the office. Indefinitely. For urgent enquiries, or indeed any enquiries, please contact someone who is not an insane psychopath. For escalation please contact God, though suspect the devil will have custody. [Last line only really worked if I had followed through..]”

Jutting pled guilty to manslaughter, saying his narcissistic personality disorder and sexual sadism were grounds to find that he had diminished responsibility. His lawyers pointed to his sexual abuse at boarding school and his father’s attempted suicide when Jutting was 16 as causes for his lack of capacity. They also cite “cocaine use disorder” and “alcohol use disorder”.

Psychiatric reports also said his narcissism was caused by his mother, who had doted on him as a child. The name “Rurik” was even chosen as it means “special one or great leader” and was the name of a Russian prince.

The judge didn’t accept his apology when sentencing him to life in prison. He said he believed he posed an “immense danger… if he is ever again given his liberty beyond the prison gates”.

According to the judge, the trial had had to “dredge into depths of depravity”.