Hong Kong court sees chilling torture video in British banker’s murder trial

A jury in Hong Kong watched a chilling video on Tuesday of Rurik Jutting describing how he tortured and killed an Indonesian woman he met in a bar, saying he repeatedly raped her and 'tortured her badly'.

Rurik Jutting, a British banker, sitting in a prison bus in November 2014. Vincent Yu / AP Photo / File

HONG KONG // A British banker accused of murdering two women described how he raped, tortured and killed his first victim over three days, in a chilling video he made.

“My name is Rurik Jutting. About five minutes ago I just killed, murdered, this woman here,” he says, pointing the camera down to show the body of Sumarti Ningsih, 23, an Indonesian woman he met in a bar three days earlier, on the floor of his shower.

“It’s Monday night. I’ve held her captive since early Saturday. I’ve raped her repeatedly. I tortured her – tortured her badly.”

The iPhone video was played to a jury in Hong Kong’s high court on Tuesday and shows Mr Jutting, a Cambridge University graduate, sitting shirtless in his flat.

Sumarti’s body is later seen wrapped in a grey blanket, with her legs sticking out and blood streaks on the floor. Mr Jutting says it was “several hours” after he killed her.

His rambling monologue continues for hours over several video clips in which he talks of his use of drugs and prostitutes, whether to commit suicide and how he felt no guilt after killing Sumarti.

Earlier, the jurors were played about 20 minutes of audio from a video hidden from the public, in which Mr Jutting is apparently torturing Sumarti and at one point says: “If you scream I will punish you. Understand?”

That is followed by the sound of smacking and slapping.

It was shown on the second day of Mr Jutting’s trial for murdering Sumarti and Seneng Mujiasih, 26. Prosecutors say he killed them by slitting their throats.

Their bodies were found in his flat near the Asian financial centre’s Wan Chai red-light district in 2014. The city has a large expatriate elite and more than 300,000 migrant domestic workers, almost all women from Indonesia or the Philippines.

Mr Jutting, who worked in the Hong Kong office of Bank of America-Merrill Lynch in equity finance and trading, pleaded not guilty on Monday to the two murder charges.

Prosecutors rejected his attempt to plead guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter. If convicted, he faces life in prison.

Mr Jutting, 31, watched the proceedings from the glass-screened dock, showing no expression. He wore a pale blue shirt.

During his monologue, Mr Jutting says he had “always had dark fantasies” of rape, torture, murder.

He says he earned more than $1 million from his bank job over the previous two years but had spent most of it on drugs and prostitutes.

At one point, he holds up to the camera a small plastic bag apparently containing cocaine, which he snorts several times in the clips.

In opening remarks on Monday, prosecutor John Reading told court that Sumarti, who was in Hong Kong on a tourist visa, went home with Mr Jutting after he offered her “a large sum of money”.

After she died, he put her remains in a suitcase that he left on the balcony, Mr Reading said.

His other victim was officially in Hong Kong as a maid but was working at a bar when Mr Jutting met her and after offered her money for sex, days after killing Sumarti, the prosecutor said.

* Associated Press