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Rurik Jutting
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Rurik Jutting was jailed for killing Sumarti Ningsih and Seneng Mujiasih. Photo: SCMP Pictures

Exclusive | Double murderer Rurik Jutting set for Hong Kong appeal court after 13 months in prison as family visits

Former British banker’s appeal over conviction for killing Indonesian women Sumarti Ningsih and Seneng Mujiasih expected to involve parts of judge’s directions to the jury

Rurik Jutting, the British banker jailed for the gruesome killings of two Indonesian women in Hong Kong, is expected back in the dock on Tuesday as he appeals against his murder conviction.

A source familiar with the matter also said that since the former banker was sentenced, his family had visited him at the maximum-security Stanley Prison on the south of Hong Kong Island, where he is serving time with some of the city’s most notorious criminals.

At 10am the Cambridge graduate is scheduled to turn up at Court No 4 at the High Court.

There, the Court of Appeal will hear from his lawyers why they say his conviction should be overturned.

Jutting will be represented by Gerard McCoy SC, who replaced Tim Owen QC, his British barrister at the trial, according to his solicitor Michael Vidler. McCoy will be joined on the defence bench by Tim Parker.

They will appear before appeal court vice-president Mr Justice Michael Lunn, Mr Justice Andrew Macrae and Court of First Instance judge Kevin Zervos.

Vidler said previously that the appeal would centre on “certain aspects of the deputy judge’s directions to the jury” and expert testimony.

Watch: Seneng Mujiasih’s family struggles with uncertain future

Mr Justice Michael Stuart-Moore jailed Jutting in November last year for killing Sumarti Ningsih, 23, and Seneng Mujiasih, 26. A nine-member jury had unanimously found Jutting guilty of double murder, after a trial notable for the deluge of gruesome details about his sadistic acts and mutilation of the two women.
The killings took place at his Wan Chai flat between late October and the early hours of November 1, 2014. Jutting had offered to pay the women for sex to get them into his home, but later murdered them, in separate crimes.
Jutting tortured Sumarti Ningsih for three days, before slitting her throat. Photo: SCMP Pictures

Fuelled by cocaine and alcohol, he tortured Sumarti for three days with, prosecutors told the court, “increasingly cruel acts of violence using his belt, sex toys, a pair of pliers and his fists” until he eventually slit her throat, capturing the killing on film, around October 27.

Five days later, he took Seneng back to his flat and cut her throat too.

Waitress killed by Jutting never saw house bought with her hard work

During the trial, he admitted killing the women, but claimed he was suffering from multiple mental disorders that substantially impaired his self-control. His barrister argued it was manslaughter, but that effort failed to convince the jury.

Jutting’s lodging of the appeal, first reported by the Post in September, was a U-turn on what he had said at the end of his trial, when he said he had no intention of appealing.
The second of Jutting’s victims, Seneng Mujiasih. Photo: SCMP Pictures

Before he was jailed, Jutting wrote in his statement: “The evil I have inflicted can never be remedied by me in words or actions.

“Nevertheless for whatever it may be worth, to Sumarti Ningsih’s family and friends, to Seneng Mujiasih’s family and friends, I am sorry. I am sorry beyond words.”

At the time Justice Stuart-Moore was not moved by the apparent display of contrition.

“Let no one be fooled by the defendant’s superficial charm,” the judge said. “[He] has not shown a shred of remorse.”

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