A SALESMAN was yesterday found guilty in the High Court of murdering a nightclub hostess he had taken to a hotel for sex and then robbed. Mr Justice Leong is due to hand down the mandatory death penalty on Chong Muk-lung after a jury found him guilty of the murder of Ms Lung Suet-ching, 21. Chong had denied the murder charge. The court heard that Chong had robbed eight nightclub hostesses in less than three weeks after taking them to apartment houses for sex. Chong, 35, had already admitted eight counts of robbery, including holding up Ms Lung, and five counts of theft. The judge will deal with these offences at the same time. In the murder trial, the court heard evidence called by Senior Crown Counsel Mr Alain Sham that Ms Lung worked at a Tsim Sha Tsui nightclub. She was seen leaving the club at about 7.15 pm on December 30, 1991, with Chong. She was found dead in a Nathan Road hotel room less than two hours later, gagged and tied up. Chong, represented by Mr Chan Siu-ming, did not dispute threatening Ms Lung with a knife and robbing her after they had sex. He claimed that before he went to the nightclub, he had taken some cough medicine which previously had made him feel high. As he was about to leave after robbing Ms Lung, he said, she tried to stop him and shouted for help. He grabbed her around her neck until she appeared to faint. Fearing that she might go after him when she regained consciousness, he tied and gagged her, Chong told the court. He maintained that he had not intended to kill her. Before the trial, Chong had admitted committing seven other robberies between December 13 and 28, 1991. On each occasion he went to the nightclubs where his victims worked, took them out and rented a room in an apartment house, then had sex with most of them before robbing them. More than $27,000 in cash was taken from the hostesses and he also got more than $50,000 from pawning valuables he had stolen from them. He also used the bank cards taken from three victims, including Ms Lung, to withdraw $24,700 from their accounts. Some of the victims were injured during the robberies and one of them was knocked unconscious by Chong, who grabbed her by the neck with both hands.