Fa Ziying (Chinese: 法子英; pinyin: Fǎ Ziyīng; 1 October 1964 – 28 December 1999) and Lao Rongzhi^[1] (Chinese: 劳荣枝; pinyin: Láo Róngzhī; 25 December 1974 – 18 December 2023) were a pair of Chinese serial killers, con artists, and robbers born in Jiujiang, Jiangxi. Between 1996 and 1999, after becoming a romantic couple, Fa and Lao committed a series of crimes, including kidnapping, robbery, and murder in Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Anhui. A total of seven people were killed and a total of over 100,000 yuan were stolen by the couple (roughly ¥30,000 through property theft and ¥70,000 through kidnapping ransom). Fa was arrested on 23 July 1999 when a ransom handoff was interrupted by police and subsequently sentenced to death, deprived of political rights for life, and fined 100,000 yuan, the same amount stolen in total from the pair's victims, by the Hefei Intermediate People's Court. On 28 December 1999, Fa was executed by being shot.^[2]

Lao, who had been on the run since 1999, was captured and arrested on 28 November 2019 in Xiamen, Fujian. Lao appealed in court, and the trial opened at the Jiangxi Provincial Higher People's Court on 28 August 2019, and announced in November 2019 of the same year that the death sentence was upheld. Although Lao admitted to being an accomplice to Fa, she claimed to have only done so in fear of her own life, as Fa had physically and sexually abused her throughout their relationship. On 9 September 2021, she was sentenced to death by the Nanchang Intermediate People's Court for her deliberate crimes that she had committed. On 18 December 2023, upon the endorsement from the Supreme People's Court, Lao was executed.^[3][4]

Crimes

• May – December 1995 in Shenzhen: While Fa and Lao were reportedly operating a business in Shenzhen, a murder occurred that was later connected to the pair after Fa's arrest, which he nor Lao were ultimately convicted of due to a lack of hard evidence.^[5]
• c. Mid-late February, 1996 in Jiujiang: Sometime after February 19 (that year's date for Chinese New Year), Fa was implicated in a non-fatal harpoon stabbing. Fa and Lao fled Jiujiang for Nanchang, where Lao took the name Chen Jia from a Shenzhen woman's stolen identity card and began working as a hostess for night locales, claiming to be a native to the area, despite her ID being from Guangdong and her not speaking the local Chang-Du dialect. Fa and Lao then concocted a scam that they would pull off several times for the next three years, in which Lao would moonlight as either a sex worker or unfaithful wife looking for an affair. After identifying and bringing home married men for sexual liasions, Fa, playing the part of Lao's husband, would be waiting there and confront the men about their adultery, demanding hush money as an apology for dallying with his "wife" and to ensure the couple's silence. To avoid attracting attention, they would regularly move across China, which they were able to do with their monthly haul of 70,000 to 80,000 yuan on average per scam victim. They repeated the scheme in Guangzhou, Changzhou, Nanning, Xiamen, Dongying and Huangmei for five months before returning to Nanchang.^[6]
• 28 – 29 July 1996 in Nanchang: Posing as an escort at a dance hall, Lao lured 35-year old Xiong Qiyi (熊启义), a local hotel owner and general manager of an air-conditioning company, to the home she and Fa shared. Fa remained hidden as he observed Xiong and taking noticing of his jewelry and expensive watch, he ambushed Xiong, with Lao tying him up. After stripping him naked and taking his belongings, Fa forced him to divulge his address with a knife before strangling him to death with a wire and dismembering his body, packing it up into four trash bags. The pair scoped out the apartment twice before entering, once to confirm they had the right place and a second time to cut the phone line. The same evening, they gained access using Xiong's keys, and found Xiong's wife, 28-year old Zhang Li (张麗), and their three-year-old daughter Xiong Lingxuan (熊灵萱) asleep. Fa awoke both, robbed Zhang at knifepoint, then tied them up as he ransacked the apartment for the next hours, leaving Lao to keep watch. Fa further intimidated Zhang and her daughter by showing off two plastic bags that contained, among other body parts, her husband's decapitated head. Afterwards, Fa fatally strangled both Zhang and her daughter with a belt before burning down the apartment in the early morning. The couple ended up getting away with 20,000 yuan (sometimes falsely reported as 200,000). It was alleged at Lao's trial that she was the one to suggest the fire, though Lao insisted it was just to "eliminate fingerprints". The rest of Xiong's remains were discovered two days later when neighbours noticed a rotten smell emanating from two black trash bags by the community dumpster. On 29 July, the Public Security Bureau of Nanchang opened a robbery and homicide investigation, eventually identifying Fa and Lao as the perpetrators, issuing a wanted notice on 18 August that same year.^[7][8]
• 10 October 1997 in Wenzhou: After spending over a year moving across East China, typically staying for no longer than 10 days at a time in each city, financing themselves through the adultery scam, Fa and Lao settled in Wenzhou, where Lao went by "Gege" and claimed to be from Sichuan. At Lao's suggestion, the couple decided to rob the flat of 22-year old Liang Xiaochun (梁晓春), whom she had met through their shared workplace at a KTV club, where they were waiting staff, though it was later uncovered that the two also worked with an escort agency on the side. Lao believed Liang to be well-off after seeing her wear an Omega wrist watch to work. They tricked Liang into opening her front door by pretending to be interested in renting out the place, at which point Fa took her at knifepoint and searched her apartment for expensive goods or money, but found that she actually had very little cash, with the only things of value being the watch, her phone and a passbook. Unsatisfied with this, the pair forced forced Liang to call over another woman, 29-year old Liu Suqing (刘素清), who was a maître d' at the KTV club, as well as Liang and Lao's boss. Reciting an excuse give to her by Lao, Liang claimed she wouldn't be able to make it to work due to sickness and asked her to come over to confirm her state to their employer. Liu agreed and when she entered, Fa overpowered Liu, taking her Bell & Ross watch, phone, pager and wallet, containing her credit card and 1,000 yuan. Fa tied both women up and kept an eye on them while Lao went to a nearby bank to empty their accounts. Lao was almost caught when a teller familiar with Liu recognized that it wasn't her account, but was appeased by her explanation that she was a friend of Liu's and doing this in her name as a favor. After Fa received a call from Lao confirming the transaction of her savings of 25,750 yuan, he strangled both of their hostages to get rid of any witnesses. They left Wenzhou the same day by coach. Only a few hours later, Liang's phone was called several times by her boyfriend, identified by his surname Li, and after putting him on hold repeatedly, Lao eventually picked up, hoping to placate him with a cover story. Li immediately noted that Lao answered the call in Mandarin Chinese rather than Wenzhou dialect, yet still claimed to be an old friend of Liang, who never left Wenzhou in her whole life, and grew even more suspicious when Lao, unaware of who Li was, claimed that Liang went on a trip with her boyfriend. Li went to Liang's flat the next day, but found the door locked and tried calling her again to no avail. On 12 July, Li used a neighbour's window to get to the balcony of Liang's apartment, where he discovered the bodies of the two women by the doorway, still bound by rope. Detectives matched fingerprints on the bodies' clothes to Fa Ziying the following week.^[9]
• September 1998 in Changzhou: Lao coaxed an auto shop owner named Liu Hua (刘华), who had met Lao at a KTV club, to her rented apartment. There, Fa deviated from their scam routine by attacking Liu as he entered, non-fatally stabbing him in the chest, tying him up and taking 5,000 yuan and his car keys. Liu was ordered to call his wife and ask her to pay ransom for him, with Fa briefly interjecting and threatening to kill both her and her husband. When Liu's wife arrived with the money, they tied her up as well, as Fa was now entertaining the idea of killing the couple anyway, though he eventually relented after Liu repeatedly begged him to reconsider. The pair received 70,000 yuan, whereupon they left their victims in the rental place to be found by neighbours, again fleeing the city in Liu's sports car. Although Fa confessed to the kidnapping while in custody, there was insufficient evidence to charge him, as the victims did not alert the authorities, though by the time Lao's confession allowed police to identify the Liu couple as victims, they were called upon to testify in Lao's second trial.^[10]
• 22 – 23 July 1999 in Hefei: After another year of travelling through China, including Guangxi, Shantou, and Hangzhou, Lao and Fa arrived in Hefei on 21 June, and using the taken names Shen Lingqiu and Ye Weiqiang of Zhejiang respectively, they checked into different hotels in the same district, but also rented out an apartment in Shuanggang, Luyang District, together to continue their scam. On 15 July, Lao met 35-year old Yin Jianhua (殷建华), the general manager of an electronics company, while working as a bargirl at a dance hall. Within a week, sensing that Yin might be particularly wealthy due to his tendency to give out free rounds to people at the bar and his talk about sharing his money with friends, Lao invited Yin to her and Fa's new apartment on the evening of 22 July, where he was taken hostage with a knife and locked in a repurposed dog cage the couple had prepared for him, with intent to extort Yin's wife Liu Min (刘敏) for 300,000 yuan. Yin, however, proved defiant and refused to cooperate with his captors, even after Fa reveals that he had done this before and killed people, brushing this off as a lie, believing him to not be capable of murder. To prove they were not bluffing, Lao wanted Fa to kill someone in front of Yin. She first called their landlord, Wu Yonggui (吴永贵), but he did not pick up the phone.^[11] Instead, they called a 33-year old repairman named Lu Zhongming (陆中明) of Lu'an Road Carpentry, under the pretense that they needed a window fix. When Lu entered, the carpenter was attacked by Fa, who dragged Lu into a nearby bathroom and stabbed him 20 times in the back before beheading him with an axe. Fa then presented the head to Yin while Lao stored Lu's body away in a freezer the couple bought the same day for easier body disposal. Yin, now realizing the gravity of his situation, wrote a note asking his wife to pay his kidnappers, with Lao forcing him to add that he'll "be dead for a penny less" and make reference to Lu's fate. Liu, who had noticed her husband's absence, was called at 9:05 p.m., with Yin reading out the note and asking her to go to Chang Jiang Hotel in Shushan District in 15 minutes to wait for a "middle-aged man wearing a black T-shirt and mustache" with as much money as they had. Unknown to Fa, however, Yin and Liu lived in Lujiang County, which was one hour away from Shushan District, due to which Liu missed the deadline. Investigators also speculated that due to Yin and Liu being native speakers of Hefei dialect with only working proficiency in Mandarin, there had been a miscommunication during the relay of instructions. Fa called in before midnight and rescheduled a ransom hand-off the next morning at Yin's home. Unsure of how to proceed, Liu called her manager, identified by the surname Qi, who suggested calling police to surveil the meeting to be safe and text Qi via pager once she felt her life was in danger. The next day, Lao was left to watch over Yin while Fa travelled to Lujiang County and met with Liu at 8:45 a.m. According to Liu, after cutting her landline, Fa behaved very erratically and repeatedly boasted about having killed before, eventually accusing Liu of stalling for time and threatening her with a home-made gun. Liu was able to contact Qi about the situation, notifying police to prepare for the arrest. She managed to convince Fa to wait in the apartment while she would leave to collect the money from friends and colleagues. Instead, she fled the building as police raided the location with three riot teams, positioning snipers on nearby buildings and stationing officers at ground level in case Fa attempted to leap from the third story apartment's window. Fa hid behind a bed and only demanded food, which he then denied upon being shown to him. During this time, he made rambling statements, such as that he would "beat them all to death" and how everyone's life was worth the same; when the negotiating officer, Du Mingke (杜明克), agreed, saying that all life was precious, Fa retorted "Precious like shit!". At one point, he raised his gun at brigade captain Wang Wancheng (王万成), who was the only one of the negotiators without a bulletproof vest, and repeatedly threatened to shoot him, in what was later deemed an attempt to commit suicide by cop. At 11:00 p.m., after three hours of negotiations failed, tear gas was deployed, leading to Fa exiting the flat and opening fire upon the officers. The standoff and subsequent fire exchange was filmed by a television crew filming an episode for "Police Window" (警视窗), a television documentary about police operations. Fa was apprehended after being shot in the thigh by officer Zhou Yong (周永). Fa, still clutching the weapon, only dropped it in surrender upon having the barrel of a rifle pressed against his head by Zhou, at which point he was carried off by four officers to a transport vehicle. The bodies of Yin and Lu were located on July 27, when neighbours noticed the smell of Yin's decomposing corpse and had the landlord open the apartment to check. Due to the summer heat accelerating decomposition, it was initially unknown whether Yin had been killed by either Fa or Lao, who had escaped, though his estimated time of death point towards Lao being the culprit. Lao left only a note addressed to Fa, saying that she'd "wait for [him] at home".^{[12][13][14][15]}

Early life events before crime

Fa Ziying

Fa Ziying was born on 1 October 1964, in Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province, (his ancestral home is in Henan, and his family lives in Xunyang District). Some reports say that the Fa family had been formerly wealthy, but by the time of his birth, Fa Ziying's family was poor. His father worked as an auto rickshaw driver, delivering goods to local markets, and his mother was a tea saleswoman. The family lived next door to the block's public toilet, the area of the house having been only about 7 square meters, and they had to collect cinder and waste wood to maintain heating every winter. His parents had four sons and three daughters, and Fa Ziying was the youngest and thus last to be born, hence the nickname "Fa Seventh-Eldest".^[11]

Compared with several of his siblings who worked in the business department, Fa Ziying did not like to read, had very poor academic performance, and dropped out after three years of primary school, but he liked to play football and was the captain of the junior football team. In 1977, Fa Ziying's father died in an accident while swimming in the Yangtze River. Later, his mother suffered a car accident which left her paralyzed from the waist-down. Fa returned to school the same year and completed secondary education, graduating from junior high school in 1979 and briefly held an apprenticeship at the local power plant.^[15] In 1981, Fa Ziying was sentenced to eight years of labor re-education for armed robbery, assault, and hooliganism, but ended up being released three years later when his sentenced was commuted.^[17] In 1985, he was sentenced to ten years in prison by the Jiujiang Intermediate People's Court after another conviction for robbery and intentional injury, but was again released early in 1989. Following his release, Fa Ziying began legitimate work as a business owner and married a woman surnamed Miao in 1990, having a daughter with her in 1991. Despite this, Fa remained locally known as a "gangster" and a close associate to organized crime in Jiujiang, and was privately known as "Pharaoh Seven", which was derived from his pet name, due to "法老" (fǎlǎo) also being the Chinese transcription for "Pharaoh". Less than two years into the marriage, he and his wife agreed to divorce. Miao changed her mind midway as she concluded that divorce would be "dishonorable", cancelling the divorce procedures, and instead opting for marital separation. Fa Ziying paid his wife 85,000 yuan in compensation and moved out of the house they shared in 1994.^[15]

Police custody

During his interrogation, Fa was generally unhelpful, initially giving the false name Ye Weiming, refusing to reveal the location of Yin, and never indicating that he had a partner, despite having referred to one in the ransom note. When asked about this detail, Fa claimed that there were several accomplices and that he had agreed to meet with them later that day at the hotel he stayed. Police sent a patrol out to the hotel, but no accomplices turned up. Fa also made up a convoluted backstory for himself, claiming to be have been orphaned during the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, then raised by an elderly man in Jiangshan, Zhejiang who took him out to participate in antelope poaching in Tibet before being abducted by Yao Long (姚龙) from Gushi, Henan and taken to Hefei against his will; both "Ye Weiming" and "Yao Long" were names on fake ID cards later found in Fa's hotel room. Police still investigated the human trafficking claim, but it turned up no leads, from which point on Fa responded to questioning in "gibberish", as well as dialects unknown to most of the police officers, including Tongcheng Jiang-Huai, Henan Zhongyuan, Zhejiang Wu, and Sichuan dialect, apparently to sow more uncertainty about his origin. On 28 July, after confirming his alias was fake and positively identifiying him as Fa Ziying after matching his fingerprints, they demanded to know the location of Lao Rongzhi, who had since been linked to all of Fa Ziying's murders, but refused to aid them in any way.^[15]

When Fa was informed about the discovery of his latest victims' bodies and the manhunt for Lao, Fa confessed to the seven murders and admitted to committing the murders while accompanied by Lao. Fa made contradicting statements concerning the murder of Yin Jianhua, first stating that he had told Lao to kill Yin and flee if he had not returned by 12:30 a.m. before revising his confession to say that he had tied a noose around Yin's neck and attached it to a timed mechanism (which could not be found on the scene) that would asphyxiate him after an allotted amount of time. Finally, Fa reportedly settled on the version that he had manually strangled Yin before he went to collect the ransom. However, an autopsy determined that Yin died on 24 July, a day after Fa had already been taken into custory and furthermore, transcripts show that Fa initially wouldn't provide details about the murder, stating that he killed Yin "whenever the prosecutor says I did" and when he was asked what weapon he used, Fa shrugged and said "a knife, a rope, anything really".^[10] His death was officially attributed to Fa by the Nanchang Intermediate People's Court.^{[4][15][18][19][20]}

At his trial, Fa retracted his confession, stating that he acted alone and now claimed that he had acted as a hitman for the Taiwanese heidao and that he robbed people only so he could give their belongings to the poor later on. The prosecution rejected this claim, pointing out that, besides the lack of evidence for this, his self-professed righteousness did not match up with his murder of a toddler and needless beheading of a working class carpenter, as well as the fact that despite many of the victims being known for their generosity and expensive tastes, none of them were actually wealthy and had instead lived with minimal expenses for many years to afford luxury goods. Fa had also openly admitted to fellow inmates that he had "regretted" not making an escape attempt when guards had brought him into the infirmary of the detention center while awaiting interrogation to have his gunshot wound treated with saline solution, clarifying in a later interview before his execution with reporters that he contemplated breaking a saline bottle and stabbing the attending doctor to death with a glass shard to "make [himself] known in the [detention] facility".^[15]

Lao Rongzhi

Lao Rongzhi
劳荣枝
Lao Rongzhi in 2021
Born	Lao Mozhi (劳末枝) (1974-12-25)25 December 1974 Jiujiang, Jiangxi, China
Died	18 December 2023(2023-12-18) (aged 48) Nanchang, Jiangxi, China
Cause of death	Execution by lethal injection
Other names	Chen Jia (陈佳) Gege (格格) Shen Lingqiu (沈令邱) Xue Li (雪莉) Hong Yejiao (洪夜交)
Height	5 ft 4 in (1.63 m)[21]
Conviction(s)	Murder, kidnapping, robbery
Criminal penalty	Death
Details
Victims	7
Span of crimes	1996–1999
Country	China
Date apprehended	28 November 2019

Lao Rongzhi was born on 25 December 1974 in Jiujiang City, Jiangxi Province. Both parents are originally from Huanggang, Hubei.^[22] The Lao family worked for the Jiujiang Petroleum Branch in Xunyang District and lived on company premises in the Petroleum Family Home on Binjiang East Road. Her father was a security guard in charge of the oil depot while her mother was a family worker of the Jiujiang Petroleum Branch. Lao Rongzhi's parents have three daughters and two sons, and she is the youngest in the family. Lao Rongzhi was named Lao Mozhi (劳末枝) when she was a child, and took the school name Lao Rongzhi when she was in elementary school. In 1989, Lao Rongzhi graduated from junior high school with excellent grades.^[22][23][24]

At that time, the state assigned jobs to graduates of normal schools, and the admission line of Jiujiang Normal College (which was merged with the Jiujiang College of Finance and Economics, Jiujiang Medical College and Jiujiang Education College into Jiujiang University in 2006) was higher than that of Jiujiang No. 4 Middle School, a key local high school. Lao Rongzhi did not choose the path of high school and university, but chose to study secondary school and was admitted to the preschool teacher major of Jiujiang Normal College. Her alumni recalled that at the time of Lao's graduation from junior high, there was only one kindergarten teacher class at Jiujiang Normal College, and only students with excellent appearance, figure, and character could be selected for the kindergarten teacher class. In 1989, Lao Rongzhi graduated and was assigned to the Jiujiang Petroleum Branch Children's School as a primary school Chinese teacher. By then, the school had declined, and the original junior high school and high school had been closed, leaving only the elementary school in 1992. After teaching at her children's school for about two years, Lao Rongzhi remained without pay (a resignation).^[10] Her classmates recalled that at that time, it was rumored that the children's primary school was about to be disbanded, and the teaching union was arranged to work at the gas plant, which made Lao Rongzhi feel depressed. According to her brother, it was around this time she first began associating with Fa Ziying, but the family initially disagreed, and she had a fight with her mother. However, in the end, her family allowed her to leave home to keep in contact with Fa Ziying.

In 1993, while still working at the primary school, Lao Rongzhi met Fa Ziying at the wedding of the vice principal's son,^[22] though others like Lao's brother claimed that they had met earlier at a birthday celebration. According to Lao Rongzhi's testimony in her second trial, she met Fa Ziying, who owned a company, through a friend. Lao was aware of Fa's criminal past and that had served a prison sentence for fighting, but the two still began dating. That same year, after she came home too late after a date, she was raped by Fa Ziying, resulting in an unwanted pregnancy. Fa forced Lao to have a drug-induced miscarriage and according to Lao, she continued to be raped by Fa, and as a result, she became pregnant again four months later. This time, she went to get an abortion, accompanied by Fa Ziying's sister, who claimed that Lao admitted to having had no romantic experience before she met Fa Ziying. Fa Ziying once told his defense lawyer that on the night of the banquet when the two met, he rode Lao Rongzhi home on a motorcycle, which greatly moved her. Lao's attraction to Fa was supposedly partially a result of hybristophilia, to the point she began to engage in "hero worship" of Fa Ziying in a codependent manner.^[22] Despite this, during the second trial, Lao Rongzhi flatly denied that she and Fa Ziying were in a relationship, saying that she was "controlled and coerced" by Fa Ziying and that she was "mentally distracted" when they were together. Fa on the other hand covered for Lao no less than seven times during his interrogation, provided false information about her whereabouts and claimed most of the responsibility during the five months before his execution.^[17][7]

Lao Rongzhi said at the first instance that after leaving her post without pay, she left Jiujiang with Fa Ziying in May 1995 with 6,000 yuan and went to Shenzhen and Shanghai to start a business; the venture was unsuccessful and soon ran out of money. They returned to Jiujiang in December 1995 where they stayed until late February, just after New Year, when they left once more, marking the beginning of their crime spree. It is reported that the move was a result of Fa Ziying attempting to evade a charge for injuring a man with a harpoon during a group fight in Jiujiang, which was suspected to have been related to Fa's recent attempts to reestablish himself in the local criminal underground. Lao Rongzhi said that the two had a large living expenses, spending about 15,000 yuan a month, but they had no stable source of income. Due to the lack of money, Lao Rongzhi began working at dance halls as a waitress and bargirl to make money, looking for robbery targets by the way.

Life as a fugitive

After Fa's arrest, Lao fled Hefei for Wuhan. She then traveled to Henan before moving to Chongqing, where she and Fa had established a safehouse to return to in case their crimes became public. She stayed there until January 2000, when she heard of Fa's execution in December. For the next few years, Lao kept on the move through China, staying at hostels, hotels, and guesthouses, while engaging in prostitution to support herself. By 2016, Lao settled in Haicang District, Xiamen, presenting herself as being from Nanjing, and took up work as a waitress at a night club as Xue Li (a transliteration of the English name Shirley). After a failed relationship with a male employee, she quit in 2017 and got a job at a car dealership as a saleswoman.^[25]

2019 arrest

When Lao was discovered in November 2019, she had been living in Huli District, Xiamen under the name Hong Yejiao and was working part-time as a watch vendor at Dongbai Caitang Plaza.^[26] She had a boyfriend at the time, whom she met at the car dealership, and apologized to him for hiding her past from in court.^[15]

In court, Lao acknowledged her guilt, but contended that none of the murders were premeditated, despite evidence showing that she and Fa had constructed a cage to imprison Yin Jianhua and bought a freezer with the intent of storing a human body in it, as when Lu Zhongming was found, no spoilt foods normally held in cold storage could be found in the apartment. She also said that she felt threatened to stay with Fa and assist him in his crimes, stating that "[Fa Ziying] often beat me, choked me and tortured me. He threatened my family if we broke up... I didn't want to kill anyone. I just wanted to live," in a report by the People's Daily.^[27] Lao would contradict this statement by outright denying being present for most of the murders, saying that Fa would always tell her to leave before he killed the victims. Concerning the first murder, Lao claimed that the first victim, Xiong Qiyi, had been her new boyfriend rather than another mark for their scam, and that the reason why Fa attacked him wasn't for his money but because he was enraged that Lao was dating someone behind his back. After Xiong was dead, so Lao claimed, Fa figured that he could steal his belongings since he didn't have any use for them anymore and when the pair found Xiong's family at the home, Fa told Lao to leave while he followed up on his plans.^[23] Lao made varying statements regarding the double murder in Wenzhou, first saying that she had only helped tie the victims up and left after failing to convince Fa to spare them, but later alleged that she had only told Fa about Liang Xiaochun as a potential victim, despite the fact that eyewitnesses and surveillance footage proved that she was inside the bank to empty Liu Suqing's account. Regarding the kidnapping of Liu Hua and his wife, Lao claimed that she wanted to stop their criminal activities, but was beaten by Fa for suggesting change. She denied having been present during the kidnapping until Liu and his wife were identified as the victims and called upon to provide testimony, with both stating that although Fa and Lao didn't talk much during their abduction, they visibly cooperated with one another without hesitation or dysfunction. Finally, Lao denied being responsible for the death of Yin Jianhua, despite pathological evidence pointing towards his death by strangulation as having occurred a day after Fa's arrest, with her being the only other person who could have killed him. Lao also insinuated that Fa raped his female victims, despite autopsies having shown no signs of sexual assault on any of the deceased. Lao insisted that she had also been victimized by Fa, at once point going as far as to state "My scream was louder than the victim's", in regards to the death of Lu Zhongming.^[28][29][11]

Lao apologized to the surviving victims and families of the deceased, including Zhu Dahong, the widow of Lu Zhongming, who was left to raise three children by herself and financially support five more relatives, including Lu's mother, who had reportedly "cried so much she went blind". According to Beijing Youth Daily, Lao claimed that she felt "relief" after being caught, despite the fact that she had put great effort into changing her appearance through surgery.^[30] She also offered to recompensate the money stolen during the crimes; Lao only had 30,000 yuan on her bank account at the time of her arrest and the lawyer representing Lu's family stated that she sought 1.3 million yuan from Lao in damages.^{[7][27][31][32][33]}

Two of Lao's siblings gave interviews to reporters, describing how in the 20 years their sister had disappeared, during which time their father died and their mother would cry over Lao's actions on an almost daily basis, supposedly to the point her hair turned white, she had never once tried to contact them. Lao's brother also said that he did not believe Lao's story that she had been with Fa unwillingly, recalling that he overheard Lao constantly swoon over her new boyfriend, even when scolded, and had naively fallen for Fa, who had apparently been locally known as a "bad boy", something that Lao not only found attractive, but actively encouraged.^[22] Before Lao's execution, she was granted the right to a final visitation with her immediate family.