Suspect previously served time for homicide, returned home in 1997

A man suspected of killing 11 people in the past four years has been arrested by police in Southwest China's Yunnan province after weeks of investigation.

The suspect, 56-year-old Zhang Yongming, is a villager in the Jincheng township of Jinning county. Zhang had attacked pedestrians walking by themselves on a road near his home since 2008, according to a statement by Yunnan police.

After each killing, Zhang would dismember the victim and burn and bury the remains, it said.

DNA tests have shown 11 people, all male, were killed, according to the statement. Previous media reports have said 17 people were missing in the area.

The statement did not mention a motive for the killings.

The information office of the Ministry of Public Security told China Daily in a written response on Sunday that police are still trying to figure out the potential motives

The deputy head of Jinning county, who was also the police chief, and the head of the police station at the Jincheng township were relieved from their post on May 23 in connection with the case, according to Xinhua News Agency.

The Ministry of Public Security said that any police officers suspected of dereliction of duty in the case would be investigated.

Zhang was convicted of homicide in 1979 and was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve.

He was released in 1997 and returned to his hometown after his death sentence was commuted.

After his release from prison, Zhang earned a living farming. He was often seen in the village carrying a pickaxe and would seldom greet fellow villagers, the Beijing Evening News quoted villagers as saying.

Suspicion of the killings did not surface until family members of Han Yao, a 19-year-old college student, found he had disappeared.

Han, a Kunming resident, was working at a local construction company in Jinning county when a colleague discovered he was missing on the night of April 25 and later notified his family.

Han's family came to Jinning to search for him and learned that eight other people were missing, all living nearby and aged around 20, the Oriental Morning Post reported.

The local police did not open investigations into those eight cases because the relatives "couldn't provide enough information," the paper quoted relatives as saying.

According to a statement on the Yunnan public security department's website, police in Kunming, the provincial capital, decided to investigate the cases after local media reported the disappearances.

Later, the Ministry of Public Security sent a team of investigators and a supervisory team to look into the case.

On May 9, Kunming police confirmed Han's death and placed Zhang in custody. It was then that the string of killings came to light, police said.

Zhang Yan in Beijing contributed to the story.

Contact the writers at xuwei@chinadaily.com.cn and guoanfei@chinadaily.com.cn