Brit charged in HK double slay frequented Angeles client

ANGELES CITY, Philippines—A wealthy British banker charged with grisly twin murders in Hong Kong was a regular in a red-light district here where he liked to flash his cash and was treated like a king.

The women in skimpy outfits working the short stretch of go-go and hostess bars of Angeles City remember Rurik Jutting fondly.

At the cramped Del Rio bar, workers said Jutting would swig bottles of a local low-calorie beer while handing out cash, buying everyone rounds of drinks and keeping an eye on one of the dancers, who would become his girlfriend.

Women would rush to the door when they saw Jutting arrive and lead him to his favorite spot, a moldy fake-leather couch that they covered with a pink blanket so he would not get rashes on his legs, said 26-year-old hostess Joy Reyes.

“He’s a big spender. Everyone would welcome him whenever he’s here. It also doesn’t hurt that he is handsome,” she said.

Jutting would pull out a folded wad of cash from his right pocket and would peel off notes from the bundle to give away, according to bartender Linda Laida, 43.

“It shows that he’s a banker. He knows how to count his money fast and knew exactly how much he was giving out,” Laida said.

Breakup

 

The women at the Del Rio said Jutting would spend up to P20,000 a night at the bar—the equivalent of an annual income for many people in the Philippines.

Jutting had been a regular there since January and soon began dating one of the hostesses who would later appear in photos with him on his Facebook page, according to her colleagues.

But the two apparently broke up in August after he was seen with a different woman on his arm, they said. That was the last time they saw him there.

The ex-girlfriend, who now works at another Angeles bar, did not return messages from Agence France-Presse seeking comment. A coworker said on Wednesday that she had not reported for work for four days.

2 Indonesian women murdered

Jutting, 29, was charged with murder this week in Hong Kong, where he worked as a securities trader for Bank of America Merrill Lynch, after police found two dead Indonesian women—29-year-old Seneng Mujiasih and 25-year-old Sumarti Ningsih—in his luxury apartment.

Ningsih had stab wounds to the buttock and neck, and Mujiasih was stuffed into a suitcase left on the balcony, also with cuts to her neck.

Police were alerted by Jutting himself and was waiting for them in his apartment when officers arrived.

Escape from poverty

Angeles City emerged as a red-light district decades ago when the United States had a major air base nearby.

The bars and love hotels remained after the base closed in 1991, continuing to lure women from the poorest Filipino families.

One of the workers at Del Rio, Len Alumarde, said she lost her job as a computer saleswoman when Super Typhoon “Yolanda” (international name: Haiyan) hit her hometown last year.

She moved to Angeles two months ago after being unable to find a job at home.

“I want to find a foreigner to help me support my family, or even just for friendship,” said the 24-year-old.

Alumarde said she earned up to P3,000 a night in tips from Koreans and Australians at the bar.

A drink for the women at the bar costs P250 and they receive P100 of that.

Managers of other bars said it was up to women to negotiate with their clients if they wanted to take them outside of the bar, with a night of sex costing around P1,000.

‘Paradise’

At nightfall, the Angeles bars light up and huge speakers blare out pop music while women try to entice customers into the bars.

In the lobby of a hotel where a hostess worker said Jutting once stayed, one clock displays Sydney time, another London time, while a third clock is set to Manila time and labeled “Paradise.”

“This is an entertainment place,” said 48-year-old Carol Bomedian, who has been running one bar for over a decade. “We have what they’re looking for.”

As Jutting waits in detention for his next Hong Kong court appearance on Monday, those who remember him in Angeles ponder what went wrong.

The women at Del Rio said Jutting was never a mean drunk and always entertaining when he took them out for dinner and a night of karaoke.

“He is not a sex maniac and he was always neatly dressed,” said 22-year-old dancer Jovelyn de los Santos.

“He wasn’t like other men who have only sex on their minds,” she added.

Different image

Jutting has a different reputation in Wan Chai, the red-light district in Hong Kong.

Allen Youngblood, an American jazz pianist who has lived in Hong Kong since 1992, called Jutting a bully who used his bulky body to push his way through crowds and drink from other’s glasses.

“He wanted to get two or three girls at the same time,” he said while sipping a vodka tonic. “He had a lot of money and used it on women. There are a lot of guys around here like that.”

On any given night, scores of foreign men and young, made-up Asian women fill the pubs on Lockhart Road, while outside on the sidewalk, hostesses in cocktail dresses swarm passing Western men, hoping to entice them into booming nightclubs.

That seedy scene long defined Hong Kong to outsiders, even as prostitution became more established in other neighborhoods, said John Carroll, a professor who specializes in the city’s history at University of Hong Kong.

Suzie Wong

“When they think of Wan Chai, for a lot of people, they think of Suzie Wong,” he said, referring to the fictional Hong Kong prostitute in a 1957 book about the city’s sex industry. “But there’s much more to Wan Chai.”

The neighborhood on Hong Kong island now includes middle-class apartment towers as well as blocks with some of the highest land prices in the world. Even the red-light district has been transforming, with luxury stores and shopping centers moving in and rents shooting up.

The rent for one storefront on Lockhart Road is about HK$80,000 a month, said Steve Sayell, a former British policeman who said he met Jutting several times.

Many of those moving in are highly paid professionals working in the city’s finance sector and eager to blow their paychecks in Wan Chai’s bars and nightclubs, Sayell said.

For them, spending hundreds of dollars on prostitutes and cocaine is just part of a normal night’s agenda, he said.

“They need a release,” Sayell said. “In the old days, you just drank a lot. Now a lot of people are resorting to recreational drugs.”

Extra income

For many of the Southeast Asian women working in Wan Chai, stints on the strip help bring in extra income on top of day jobs as maids and nannies, Sayell said.

One of the victims, Mujiasih, had overstayed a domestic worker visa, said Sam Aryadi, an official with the Indonesian Consulate in Hong Kong.

About half of the 319,325 migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong are Indonesian and nearly all are women, according to the human rights group Amnesty International.

Mira Septyawaniti, a 36-year-old Indonesian who first came to Hong Kong in 1999 as a domestic worker, said many of her friends were mourning the two victims.

She said she got to know Mujiasih in Wan Chai and like her had left her domestic worker job.

“A lot of people are talking about her now,” Septyawaniti said. “We all felt like she was one of us.”

‘So sad’

A Zambian prostitute, who only identified herself as Suzie, said she wouldn’t be put off by the murders even though she worked in some of the same bars Jutting drank in.

“It’s so sad,” she said. “Have you heard of something like that? But if they try to cut me, I’ll fight back. I’m a fighter.”

A Filipino bartender, who identified herself only as Lisa, insisted the murders wouldn’t stop the party in Wan Chai.

“Wan Chai will stay exactly the same,” she said. “People will come here looking for fun. They’ll meet all kinds of different people, and when they’re tired, they’ll go back safely to their homes.”

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