Chinese police arrest 4 suspects in strangling of 13 women

Police in eastern China arrested four suspects believed responsible for a series of strangling deaths of women that terrorized a medium-sized city, the government said. The bodies of the women, aged 16 to 42, were found this year dumped in wells and buried near river banks in villages around Shandong province's Heze city, the official Xinhua News Agency said. The city has about 1.5 million residents.

Four unemployed suspects who were living together in a rented house on the outskirts of Heze were arrested on Nov. 13, Xinhua said. The suspects allegedly took the victims to dinner and bought them gifts before robbing and murdering them, it said. The women, all bar and restaurant workers, were robbed of a total of about 10,000 yuan (US$1,233; Ђ1,032), it said.

Xinhua quoted a villager as saying that children were escorted from school and not allowed to go out at night because of fear over the murders, reports the AP. I.L.